I’m an Episcopalian

After years of infertility, I finally hauled out the Yellow Pages and

started working down the lengthy list of adoption agencies offering
hope to heartbroken, desperate women.

 After years of infertility, I finally hauled out the Yellow Pages and
started working down the lengthy list of adoption agencies offering
hope to heartbroken, desperate women.

I noticed that one local agency promised terrified young girls that
their babies would be brought up in loving, secure, Christian, Protestant homes – just like mine. So I called. The phone was answered by a sweet-voice
young woman who asked a few basic questions – my name, my age, my
husband’s age, how long we had been married. Then she asked what church
I belonged to.

I’m an Episcopalian.

"I’m sorry," she stammered, obviously deeply embarrassed. "I’m afraid
that’s not on our list of Christian churches." Their agency recognized
only "evangelical Christian" denominations. Mainline Protestants like
me didn’t make the cut.

Mercifully, God’s requirements for parenthood are less stringent.
Thanks to the power of fervent prayer (or the vagaries of human
biology, take your pick) I got pregnant soon afterward, and eventually
gave birth to a beautiful daughter. But now, years later, I still
remember the unsettling realization that, to many of my brothers and
sisters in the often dysfunctional family of faith, I’m not a real
Christian.

Yet my faith is fervent enough to raise hackles on otherwise liberal
folks. I found that out earlier this year, when I rashly quit my job to
volunteer for a primary campaign for Cook County Board President.

As a Christian, I felt I had no choice. Rampant patronage and waste
meant that sick people were being turned away from the county hospital.
Children were being abused at the county juvenile home. For uninsured
people with diabetes, with heart disease, with cancer, this election
was literally a matter of life and death. With so much at stake, I
didn’t see how any person of faith – any person of conscience – could
sit safely on the sidelines.

Yet it was clear my secular
campaign colleagues found my Christianity a little, well, weird. When I
came in on Ash Wednesday with a dark smudge on my forehead, I could
feel the stares; I think they would have been less shocked if I’d
sashayed in displaying a new belly button piercing.

I felt no more at home with
Christians outside the campaign. I called around to suburban
megachurches, begging them to set up forums to let their congregations
hear the candidates’ positions and decide for themselves. The church
secretaries always demurred, saying their pastors preferred not to get
involved in election-year politics. "But these are justice issues," I harangued. To no avail.

Ultimately, our guy lost. The
election was a heartbreaker, for all of us. But for me, there was the
added pain of confronting the distance that separates me, as a liberal
Christian, from other liberals on one side and other Christians on the
other. My worldview doesn’t fit neatly onto anyone’s bumper sticker. So
here I sit, neither fish nor Darwin.

Do people like me have a prayer of redefining ourselves as "real" Christians and
"real" Democrats? Or are we religious and political dinosaurs, doomed
to dwindle away while other, fitter species take over the Earth?