The Apolitical Episcopal Church

When I was an Episcopalian and serving on the board of the Episcopal Church’s pro-life lobby NOEL, as I write in “The Whole House,” published in the October New Oxford Review,

Episcopal leaders are almost universally pro-choice, and only a handful of conservatives were willing to be publicly pro-life. Pastors of large conservative parishes would refuse to allow a chapter of NOEL because it might “divide the parish” and “distract us from mission.” Abortion was a problem to be handled or managed, not a cause to be taken up

A reader writes to tell me of his experience trying to interest Episcopal parishes in his area in joining a Celebration of Life and being politely shown the door with the explanation that that would be “political.” One suspects those ministers might have been happy to join a group lobbying to increase welfare payments tax policy or decrease carbon emissions, but even if they weren’t, they come from a religious tradition unable to distinguish “political” in the sense of prudential decisions about policy and “political” in the sense of matters on which Christians can and must speak with certainty. They defer to the consensus of their class, summarized as the views of the New York Times editorial board.

The reader’s story reminds me of an English friend’s joke about the Episcopal Church: What’s worse than an established church? A church of the establishment.