The Church, the Future, and the Vow of Stability

Last updated on: June 23, 2022 at 9:29 am By Frederick Schmidt

In March, the Pew Foundation reported on trends in church attendance: …attendance at in-person services – which grew steadily from July 2020 through September 2021 – has plateaued, as has the share of adults watching religious services online or on TV. In July 2020, roughly four months after COVID-19 upended life in America, 13% of U.S. adults reported having attended religious services in person during the previous month. That figure rose to 17% in March 2021 and then to 26% in September... Read more

Theology and the Church

Last updated on: June 13, 2022 at 9:40 am By Frederick Schmidt

Rowan Williams argues that there are three approaches to theology: the “celebratory,” the “communicative,” and the “critical.”[i] The “celebratory” is the “attempt to draw out and display connections of thought and image so as to exhibit the fullest possible range of significance in the language used. It is typically the language of hymnody and preaching,” but it can also be found in the work of Dante and Langland, Byzantine iconography, and some of “the more intelligent modern choruses.”[ii] Williams... Read more

Does theology really matter?

Last updated on: June 8, 2022 at 3:29 pm By Frederick Schmidt

Recently my own denomination has been roiled by debate over whether we should extend Communion (or the Eucharist) to the unbaptized. There has been a surprising amount of energy around the issue, and people have weighed in on both sides of the argument. Inevitably, there have been those who have appealed to the state of the world as a justification for setting aside the church’s theology, which restricts the Eucharist to those who are baptized. Others have made the... Read more

Pentecost in the Twenty-First Century

Last updated on: June 6, 2022 at 6:32 am By Frederick Schmidt

Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996) When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them... Read more

An Atheist Responds to Open Communion

Last updated on: June 2, 2022 at 12:06 pm By Frederick Schmidt

I am not an atheist, but as the debate in my own denomination begins to heat up around the issue of “open communion”, I have wondered what an atheist or agnostic would make of it. Here is how I imagine that someone with some knowledge about the debate, but without connection or affection for the church’s message might respond. Dear Mainline Protestants: I can’t help but notice you are debating what you call “open communion”. I’ve watched you make... Read more

Evil and the Witness to Divine Love

Last updated on: May 29, 2022 at 1:44 pm By Frederick Schmidt

“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26) The message of Scripture and the message of John’s Gospel – in particular – is that God loves us more than we love ourselves that that we... Read more

The Dogma & Vocation of the Church

Last updated on: May 27, 2022 at 5:28 am By Frederick Schmidt

“…he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father” There is a school of thought that argues the church is unnecessarily obsessed with dogma. Christianity is a way of life, not a body of beliefs – so the argument goes. And, for that reason, there are those who think that the Nicene Creed should be cut from our liturgy. Emphasize the experience, set aside the unnecessary, distracting theology. There are countless problems with this kind... Read more

Freed from the Righteous Indignation of Others

Last updated on: May 24, 2022 at 9:44 am By Frederick Schmidt

Some years ago, publishers began demanding that authors have a media platform. So, for my sins, I have far more social media accounts than I ever planned to have. When we were living in Illinois, I made a passing observation about communion on Facebook. There was a lot of press around those little shrink-wrapped communion kits that include a shot glass of grape juice and chicklet-sized cracker. And I observed that as Episcopalians, our reaction was “No. Just No.”... Read more

Navigating the Decline of America’s Seminaries

Last updated on: May 17, 2022 at 11:36 am By Frederick Schmidt

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has announced that it is selling its campus in Hamilton, Massachusetts. The administration describes the sale as “the latest in a long series of re-inventions” for the school”, but for those familiar with the academy this is happy-talk. A seminary without a library and a campus has to make steep compromises in the size of its faculty, the programs it offers, and the kind of community it can build. And such announcements are always the beginning of... Read more

Spirituality and the Seminary of the Twenty-First Century

Last updated on: May 9, 2022 at 4:35 pm By Frederick Schmidt

I’ve been looking back over the work I’ve done in spirituality and spiritual formation. The programs I inherited. The reforms I’ve tried to put in place and the changing fortunes of formation programs that I have followed over the years. The Lily Foundation gave significant funding for those programs in the early 21st Century. The motives for such programs undoubtedly varied. Some seminaries had a spiritual formation program, but they yielded uneven results. Others had noted that the interest in... Read more