It’s pretty easy to start a new church. In the US, the government doesn’t want to be seen as obstructing the free practice of religion, so getting your House of Prayer up and running is fairly hassle-free. In the time that I have lived in the land of the Suwaree, I have seen a number of congregations congregate, some of which have subsequently consisted of only a sign on a store front. Others existed for a long time only to fade into extinction. I have heard that at one point almost a third of the people living in the South were Methodist. Today I sit down the street from a modest Methodist church which my great uncle used to serve but whose congregation has since been absorbed by another church which is within walking distance. Yet a third defunct Methodist church stands between them. Clearly that sort of market share could not last.
As a denomination which values the autonomy of individual churches, the Baptists are notorious for getting into fights and making new congregations. All you really need is a group of angry people and an empty gymnasium and you are all set. For better or worse, that is not how Anglicans and Catholics roll. Since we are governed by bishops, no individual congregation can split off on its own accord. Nor can a group of people just get together and call themselves Catholics. Then there’s the whole apostolic succession thing, not to mention freaky-deeky transubstantiation. Hierarchy and tradition have a lot to recommend them, but sometimes I wish we could be a bit more Baptist.
Apparently, Pope Benedict is down with this too. He has just announced a plan to allow groups of Anglicans to come into the Catholic church by marking a check-off box. By and large, the groups who might be expected to take the Pontifex Maximus up on this offer are folks who are pretty well dissatisfied with the rest of us Anglicans for ordaining women and gay people. I am satisfied that the Episcopal Church has worked very hard to try to make room for people who disagree on these and other issues within the Church. At some point, however, saying who you are will, by its converse, imply who you are not.
Saying who we are as a church can send the message that if you are not us you are wrong. I don’t think this is the case. The church is a human institution, not a divine one. Episcopalians can do our best to discern who we are called to be and wind up being wrong about it. For those who can’t stay with the Anglican church as it is today, I am grateful that there may be a place which will allow them to continue a tradition and a connection to the earliest days of our faith. This is a connection we all find important. And if, in the final analysis, we turn out to be wrong, I hope they will invite us to bingo.