How Weird is Episcopacy?

The piece by Tara Isabella Burton in the New York Times on weird Christianity is strange in more ways than one. A reader may have well thought that evangelical Protestants are the weirdest of all professing Christians. They are bigoted, vote for even more bigoted candidates, and cultivate practices like worship music (led by “rock” bands) and megachurches. These are strange pieces of piety that surely the editors and writers at the Times find bizarre.

But evangelicals do not fit Burton’s narrative because of their politics and the weird Christianity she has in mind is decidedly anti-POTUS Trump:

Weird Christians reject as overly accommodationist those churches, primarily mainline Protestant denominations like Episcopalianism and Lutheranism, that have watered down the stranger and more supernatural elements of the faith (like miracles, say, or the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ). But they reject, too, the fusion of ethnonationalism, unfettered capitalism and Republican Party politics that has come to define the modern white evangelical movement.

Being weird seemingly means running contrary to established ways, opposing forms of Christianity that sell out to power and profit, and trim teachings to maintain a place within the cultural establishment.

If that is true, you might think the people Burton chose to feature in her piece would come from Anabaptist backgrounds. Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren were historically some of the most anti-establishment Protestants around and that reputation was one of the reasons why Stanley Hauerwas, when he was looking for alternatives to establishment Christianity during the Reagan era (and before)turned to Anabapitsts and not mainline Protestants.

But Burton did not go to the radical part of the Reformation. Instead, she turned to six Christians, all of whom belong to communions and practice their faith under the oversight of bishops. That is, she featured Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Each of these traditions historically emerged from working in close cooperation with emperors and monarchs. For the Orthodox you can start with Constantine and work your way through the emperors who ruled in Constantinople. For Roman Catholics, the papacy cultivated and worked with the rulers who gave shape to the Holy Roman Empire that began roughly in 800 in the person of Charlemagne. Episcopalians and Anglicans have a long history of being governed by the English monarch who going back to Henry VIII is the head of the Church of England and the related Anglican communions.

To practice Christianity under a bishop is not weird but arguably the most established, respectable, and prestigious way to be a Christian in the history of the church.

Richard Hooker, who wrote vigorously against Presbyterian and Puritan challenges to episcopacy (or prelacy) during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, was very clear about the sort of authority and honor that bishops deserved:

Bishops Theodoret entitleth “most honourable.” Emperors writing unto bishops, have not disdained to give them their appellations of honour, “Your holiness,” “Your blessedness,” “Your amplitude,” “Your highness,” and the like: such as purposely have done otherwise are noted of insolent singularity and pride.

Honour done by giving preeminence of place unto one sort before another, is for decency, order, and quietness’ sake so needful, that both imperial laws and canons ecclesiastical have made their special provisions for it. Our Saviour’s invective against the vain affectation of superiority, whether in title or in place, may not hinder these seemly differences usual in giving and taking honour, either according to the one or the other. (Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 3, VII.xx.2)

Not even Christ’s warnings about his disciples’ rivalry over who would be first in the kingdom could not derail Hooker’s defense of the place of bishops in both the church and the kingdom.

Of course, weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. But Burton’s case for weird Christianity would seem a lot more plausible if her Christians were not so much a part or churches with such a long history of belonging to a political and ecclesiastical establishment.

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