Nate Knows Nada

I’ve been watching the “conservative”* Anglican blogs this morning, and a funny coincidence occurred to me.

(* I use the term “conservative”, but of course, there’s conflict about this. The people of this group want to be called “orthodox”, thereby implying that their opponents are heterodox. None of my core beliefs are heterodox. I am not an Arian, or a Nestorian, or a Donatist. I disagree about the interpretation of Scriptures, but to my knowledge there’s never been an “official”, orthodox position on how to interpret Scripture. So I’m as orthodox as the conservatives.)

If you look at the demographics of the Episcopal church, and its historical reputation, two trends emerge. First, even today, the ECUSA is about 89 percent white/Caucasian in its makeup. See this page for more info. Second, the Episcopal Church was traditionally known as the “Republican Party at prayer.” We have often been associated with the upper classes. As James Pritchett of St. John’s, College Park, Georgia noted in a sermon, “We Episcopalians are often known as the church of the elite. We can rattle off facts about how George Washington was an Episcopalian; in fact, we have had more Presidents than any other denomination; we have a long list of the famous and powerful people who were Episcopalians (some of whom were also “Robber-Barons”), and there is a book proudly documenting the overlap between the Episcopal Church and American aristocrats called The Episcocrats.”

There’s more than a good chance, statistically and qualitiatively, then, that the people concerned with the changes in the church are white and have incomes above the national average.

It seems ironic to me, then, that the people complaining about the loss of power, about the loss of ways that have always been, about the loss of what is traditional (which is often equated with the good, an equation that we shouldn’t toss out, but which we should question mightily) are the very people who have the most social power in our country. As one of my college professors noted ten years ago, “Try this–who has more real power than white, heterosexual, New Class men
in the US, and who feels so picked upon?”

I’d postulate that at least part of this brouhaha derives from certain quarters becoming frustrated with their perceived loss of power. But it’s less a loss of legitimate power to persuade than the loss of power to determine. The Episcopal Church, and our society in general, have opened up to alternative bases of political and social power in recent years, and it means that any one group can no longer control, set, and implement an agenda. Action requires more discernment and persuastion than it did in the past.

And don’t tell me this has nothing to do with politics, social relations, or power, that it’s only a religious problem. Human social interaction is never so neat as to fit in discrete, manageable categories like that. You start trying to pull them apart and tell me how easy it is.