November 16, 2004

Finding ways to live together amid disagreement has long been an Anglican ideal. That ideal is receiving its severest test as the Anglican Communion discusses the Windsor Report, issued in October in response to the election of an openly gay bishop in the U.S. and the blessing of same-sex relationships by some American and Canadian dioceses.

The Supreme Court’s June ruling on whether “under God” should be part of the Pledge of Allegiance passed with relatively little notice, since the case was rejected on procedural grounds. For those who paid attention to the arguments, however, it conclusively exposed the incompatibility of American civil religion with any kind of robust Christianity. If one considers Elk Grove Unified School v.

A while back a Duke student was telling me that he and his roommate were not getting along well. I asked him why. “Because he is a Muslim and I’m not.” I asked him how that made a difference.

“When we moved in together, he asked me what my religion was. I told him that I was a sort of Christian. A Lutheran. I told him up front that my family and I weren’t the very best Christians, that we only went to church occasionally, and it wasn’t that big a deal to me. But my roommate has this nasty habit of asking embarrassing questions.”

“What sort of questions?” I asked.

I keep getting e-mails from people who say, “Your church sounds nice. I wish I could find one like that.”

Writer-director Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake is about a real-life figure jailed in England in 1950 for administering abortions. The film’s point of view is pro-choice.

I know what it’s like to be a preacher desperate for some point of contact with an otherwise inert congregation. You can’t stand the thought of another Sunday facing the same blank faces, the distracted fidgeting, and the outright snoozing. As fascinating as you think the doctrine of perichoresis is, you know it’s not likely to draw Amens. So you turn away from dusty old churchspeak toward pop culture.