An unaccredited seminary with neither buildings nor faculty — yet buttressed by a robust endowment — EDS is determining what particular offering it will bring to the church in its current iteration.

In the spring of 2023, EDS parted ways with Union Theological Seminary, through which it offered a residential, degree-awarding program. At the time of the announcement, the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, the former dean, said the disaffiliation positioned the school to offer the kinds of “flexible formats, creative pedagogies, and innovative credentialing opportunities” students now seek.

A year and a half later, many questions remain as the school emerges from 12 months of strategic planning: Should the school seek reaccreditation? Does it need a faculty? What academic programs, if any, might it offer?

“We’re kind of flying the plane as we’re building it,” said Bucklin, who began in her role August 1.

Being unburdened by overhead costs gives EDS time to consider those questions and find the gaps in current theological education offerings, Bucklin said.

A 2015 EDS graduate, Bucklin succeeds Douglas, who served as dean from 2017 to 2023 and then as interim president until June of this year. Bucklin has served since 2018 as canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Northern Michigan in Marquette. She plans to keep working from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as dean of EDS.

As the daughter of the late Rt. Rev. James Kelsey, former Bishop of Northern Michigan, Bucklin grew up in a ministry family and was formed by the church. Kelsey’s tragic death in 2007 prompted Bucklin, who has a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, to reconsider her professional calling.

“It was one of those moments where life is just flipped upside down and you reevaluate everything,” she said.

She joined the staff of the Diocese of Iowa as a lay leader of children and youth ministry. In 11 years with the diocese, she oversaw young adult ministry, communications, congregational development, church planting, and lifelong formation.

She didn’t have ordination in mind when she enrolled at EDS.

“I really just wanted some good theological formation that would kind of put me at the same level as my clergy colleagues,” she said. “And then, part way through my education at EDS, I planted a little church and started needing those sacramental tools in order to live into my vocation. And, so, by the time I graduated I was on the ordination track.”

She was initially hesitant to pursue orders. Her father and other mentors had always affirmed the role of lay leaders, and that’s how Bucklin had envisioned herself living her calling.

“I didn’t want to change who I was, and I had seen that happen with others where they got ordained and all of a sudden, they [felt] they had to live into what felt intimidating in terms of the ‘mother knows best’ or ‘father knows best’ model,” she said. “And what I found was that I could still be Lydia while I was ordained. I could still be called into a ministry of reconciliation and healing, just in different ways as an ordained person.”

Since graduation, Bucklin has remained connected to her alma mater. In the past year, Bucklin has convened listening sessions seeking feedback from among the school’s 1,650 living alumni on what they found valuable about their formation at EDS, and the needs they have in their current ministries.

Bucklin said those conversations revealed gaps in the traditional theological education landscape, which is designed to equip clergy to serve in a different context than where many find themselves. In particular, Bucklin said there is a need in the church for training related to “community engagement in an intercultural context.”

“This model of one priest per congregation is no longer the norm for most places in the Episcopal Church,” she said. “… What we found is that there are a lot of needs that are really different for the church right now that the seminaries haven’t been able to keep up with, just because of the fast pace of the changing church.”

How EDS plans to meet those needs remains to be determined. Bucklin said it could look like offering certificate-granting continuing education programs. Another opportunity is in Clinical Pastoral Education, especially for students living in rural areas where the long distance to CPE placements are prohibitive, she said.

“EDS could partner with a diocese or with another school to offer a hybrid-remote CPE experience, where someone could find a local hospital or prison or chaplaincy location and then we would hold the online cohort to do the formation piece of it,” she said.

She also would like EDS to offer writing labs for up-and-coming scholars.

“It’s a hard time to be a scholar and theologian, especially for emerging scholars and theologians. I would love to find ways that we can support the writing and advancement of theological thought in fresh ways for those folks who are called into that ministry,” she said.

The school does not plan to resume a Master of Divinity program, the standard offering of a seminary.

EDS traces its origins to the 1974 merger of Philadelphia Divinity School and Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, both of which were founded in the mid-19th century. Facing declining enrollment and a deficit, the EDS board of trustees voted in 2016 to stop granting degrees at the end of the academic year.

The school sold its Cambridge campus and affiliated with Union Theological Seminary in New York City, allowing Episcopal seminarians to enroll in EDS’s Anglican studies program at UTS. The partners announced their disaffiliation in March 2023, halfway into the decade-long term of their agreement.

In its next chapter, EDS is well-positioned to host online learning groups, as the school was an early adopter of distributed learning, said Bucklin, who completed her M.Div. through the school’s hybrid program.

“In a lot of ways, that cutting-edge, different way of doing theological education has been part of the EDS story, she said. “Now we’re seeing more seminaries that are doing that, but that’s definitely part of my hope for what we continue to do, is that we make theological education accessible to people.

“I think there will always be a place for the residential seminaries and that standard three-year program, and I think it’s a ‘both/and,’” she added. “I wonder where those gaps are that EDS can, in a noncompetitive collaborative way, work together with other seminaries and formation programs in diocese and supplement what’s already out there.”

At a time of decline in the church and among seminaries, Bucklin’s outlook on theological education is expansive. As many schools are downsizing or eliminating programs, EDS has resources to share, she said.

“I take that responsibility really seriously in terms of how we can be generous and, in hospitality with the other seminaries, how we can share resources,” Bucklin said of her school’s $80 million endowment.

Similarly, as parishes are increasingly unable to sustain a full-time priest, Bucklin said it’s time to equip more laypeople for the work of the church.

“What this shift in the church has resulted in is the need for not just ordained folks to talk about theology and to use their gifts for ministry, but really … for everybody digging in to use our baptized gifts for collaborative shared ministry.”

Without buildings to maintain or faculty to support, administrative costs at EDS are low. The school’s sole footprint is the office space it leases at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. In addition to Bucklin, the staff includes a director of programming and operations, a director of strategy and operations, and a part-time office assistant. The school is seeking a communications manager. The next high-priority hire, Bucklin said, is to bring on someone to oversee theological formation and develop curriculum.

After a month at the Lake Delaware Boys Camp, campers have returned home. The staff, too, have left for the summer. And for the first time in over four decades, camp directors Fr. Adams and Sue don’t need to rush back three hours west to resume parish ministry in Geneva, New York.

“We are, for the first time, I think, experiencing what being retired is like,” said Sue. “It hasn’t quite hit yet.”

Jim closed out his career of 43 years as rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Geneva, a town of 13,000 people in the Finger Lakes Region, just before camp began in July. It’s a remarkable tenure when compared to national pastoral tenure averages, which are estimated around five and seven years.

Jim’s longevity at the parish has lent the stability needed to develop and grow thriving ministries, of which St. Peter’s is home to many: a nonprofit community arts academy, four active choirs, well-attended Adult Christian Education classes and a weekly free meal program. It has kept the congregation strong and stable at a time when many churches across the Northeast have seen major decline.

Sue has served as Jim’s partner in ministry, both as St. Peter’s church administrator and a leader of its various ministries. Since 1988, the couple has also run Lake Delaware Boys Camp, an academy-style summer camp that offers — in addition to the customary summer camp activities of sports, zip lines, swimming, and overnight camping — a Drum and Bugle Corps and daily chapel services from the Book of Common Prayer.

While churches led by long-tenured clergy can run the risk of stagnancy — and, often, decline — throughout his career Jim innovated as he remained rooted in a single community.

“In Pentecost, the Old Testament readings from Joel talk about your young people having visions and old men dreaming dreams, and I think that’s true for parish ministry — to have visions and dream dreams,” Jim said.

Jim attended Nashotah House Theological Seminary in the late 1970s, when former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey taught ascetical theology.

“I remember him saying that, as a parish priest, you can never expect the commitment of the congregation ever to be any greater than your own,” Jim said. “And so that stuck with me, that the commitment to the gospel, the commitment to Christ, the commitment to the parish, was at the core of leadership.”

Upon graduation, Jim completed his curacy at Christ Church in Cooperstown, New York. He served there for three years before accepting the call in 1981 as rector of St. Peter’s, described by his bishop at the time as “a parish with a distinguished past and a questionable future.” Founded in 1853 by the first bishop of Western New York as an Episcopal mission, the church had fallen on “some hard decades” amid the wider economic decline of its region, Jim said.

“The bishop said, ‘We can give it three years and see what happens,’” he said.

Jim and Sue quickly “fell in love” with St. Peter’s and were captivated by its history. They also sensed parishioners were eager to grow, Jim said.

“It was a small congregation at the time that really wanted to grow spiritually and really wanted their church to thrive, so they were totally open to change and to new visions,” he said.

Jim started offering Bible studies, and parishioners showed up in large numbers.

“It was a real time of spiritual renewal for the congregation and for us,” he said, adding that Christian education and Bible studies have remained a core part of the church’s life over the decades.

Five years into his ministry at St. Peter’s, Jim spearheaded a large capital campaign to renovate and restore the church’s gothic architecture in accord with the original design, while also creating a space suited for worship according to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

The result was a downtown campus better positioned to serve the community, and the church began channeling its energy and resources into local mission. Looking to strengthen the parish’s connection to the local community, Sue launched a weekly event called Neighbors Night, openings the doors to area children to enjoy a free meal, games, and fellowship.

“It began with that handful, eight to 10 kids every Wednesday night, and we’d have some fun songs and games and crafts and a Bible story — just planting some seeds — and we’d have a snack,” Sue said. “And then after several months we realized that for some of the kids that was going to be their dinner, so we asked people from our church to provide a pot of soup. As our numbers grew, then we had a retired teacher, who was a member of the parish that loved to cook, and he cooked a full dinner for the neighbors. We’d have up to 100 kids.”

The ministry continues today. The church now delivers meals — a response to COVID — often accompanied by crafts and school supplies. The change in model has given volunteers more insight into the transient living situations of some neighborhood children and allows the church to serve the entire family, Sue said.

“It’s been really important to the parish,” she said. “A number of years ago, a member said to me, ‘If Jesus belonged to St. Peter’s, he’d be volunteering at Neighbors Night.’ It became highly recognized and appreciated in the whole community throughout the years, and as St. Peter’s has continued to grow and develop and thrive, it has become more and more recognized as a real important asset to the community.”

Inspired by a sabbatical spent at Salisbury Cathedral in the early 1990s, Jim realized the next opportunity for St. Peter’s was to build a great music program. The parish then hired a recent graduate of the University of Cambridge as the church organist, choirmaster, and youth director. That seed of a music ministry would eventually grow to include three youth choirs and an adult choir.

“It was, again, the parish being willing to hear about a dream and them being willing to carry it out and support it,” Jim said.

In the early 2000s, the Adamses began pursuing their next dream: opening an Episcopal parish school. After touring 20 Episcopal schools throughout the country, the couple saw a more pressing need in the community for arts education that was accessible to students, regardless of their families’ ability to pay, and St. Peter’s had the resources to meet that need.

“We already had great musical people on staff, and we have these great big buildings that were inspiring places to make music,” Jim said. “Again, the parish got behind it and there was a lot of seed money that had to go into it.”

For the first few years, St. Peter’s Community Arts Academy ran on a deficit, but the parish continued to invest in the program until it became sustainable, Jim said. Today, it serves over 300 students. St. Peter’s held a successful $2 million capital campaign for a new building, with funds coming largely from outside the parish. Through a collaboration with the Geneva City School District, the arts academy offers lessons for free to public school students who might not otherwise be able to afford them.

Sue has led the arts academy as executive director, in addition to her work as parish administrator.

“We didn’t do rest very well,” Jim said. “We took two sabbaticals in the 43 years, and one led to us starting choirs and the other led to us starting the school.”

There were plenty of opportunities to take other jobs over the years, including some at “very attractive parishes,” but Jim said he always felt there was more work to be done at St. Peter’s.

“We kind of made the decision that, instead of looking to move to a larger church or a bigger position, it was going to be much more rewarding to try and make St. Peter’s a great church,” Jim said. “And so that became our goal: to make St. Peter’s a great church rather than to climb a ladder.”

Some studies, including a 2014 survey of the Episcopal Church, show a bell-curve relationship between clergy tenure and church growth. A congregation is likely to grow gradually through a priest’s initial years with the parish, with the likelihood of growth beginning to decline after five years. Clergy age is also associated with parish growth, the same study found. The rate of congregational growth was highest among parishes with a priest 39 years and younger, with rates decreasing accordingly with older priests.

Still, Jim remains convinced of the value of an effective long-term pastorate. Membership and attendance at St. Peter’s have been remarkably stable, even as the town’s population steadily declined. Even after a pandemic slump common to many churches, attendance at St. Peter’s in 2022 was 85 percent of what it was a decade before.

Often when churches reflect on their golden age of growth and stability, it was under the leadership of a long-term pastor, he said.

“None of [St. Peter’s initiatives] could have happened if we hadn’t been there that long,” he said. “It was long enough, several times over, to have a dream, and then make that dream become a concrete goal. It takes years to accomplish those things. I don’t think any of those things could have happened without the long-term trust.”

He shares the credit with St. Peter’s vestries, which grounded his big dreams in practicality and found the resources to execute them.

The search is now underway at St. Peter’s for its next rector. Sue and Jim plan to remain in Geneva and, after giving the parish space during the transition, they say they might make their way back to its pews.

“If whoever the next rector is is comfortable to invite us to sit in the pew, that might be on our radar,” Sue said.

“We ended with so much mutual love and admiration and appreciation between pastor and people there. That meant so much to us and leaves us feeling so fulfilled,” Jim said. “During that last year, there were a lot of tears, but also a feeling of real gratitude. It was not contradictory for them to be sad at the thought that we were going to be retiring but yet knowing it was time and looking forward with excitement to the future.”

By Simon Cotton

It’s the tower that does it. Your first sight of Ludlow from afar is drawn to the great middle 15th-century central tower of the church. The gateway to the Western Marches, Ludlow was an important frontier town, whose castle was built around the end of the 11th century to ensure the security of the area by the Lacys, the Marcher Lords mandated by William the Conqueror to secure the border against the unconquered Welsh. It was the administrative capital of Wales in the 16th and 17th centuries. Arthur, Prince of Wales and heir to King Henry VII who had lately married Katharine of Aragon, died here of the “sweating sickness” in 1502, which meant that his younger brother, Henry, succeeded him, becoming king and marrying Katharine. How different might history have been if Arthur had recovered?

Ludlow remains an unspoiled town. The church is surrounded by so much later infilling that you are not aware of its size until you push the door open and enter the vast aisled nave. Before that, though, you have to traverse the rare early 14th-century hexagonal porch — the only others are at Chipping Norton and St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. Although there are parts of earlier building from the 12th century onward, what you see in the church today is largely from a middle 15th-century rebuild — and what a rebuild.

The chapels at the ends of the aisles contain much medieval glass, like a restored Jesse Tree in the south chapel, but this is outdone by the north chapel, where you find the legend of Edward the Confessor and his ring in the “Palmers’ Window.” The story was that King Edward gave a gold ring to a beggar, and sometime later two pilgrims to the Holy Land (palmers) met a man who revealed himself to be the Apostle John, who handed back the ring, instructing them to return it to the king and tell him that he would be in Paradise within six months.

This window is topped by a fine carved medieval canopy of honor. Other windows to notice in this aisle includes Saint Christopher bearing the Christ Child and the Twelve Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem, while one should also look for the small kneeling figure of John Parys and his wife. Parys, a wealthy draper, was warden of the Palmers’ Guild, and died in 1449. There is a fine set of Royal Arms, whose Dieu et Mon Droit motto suggests a Stuart origin, confirmed by the initials CR and the date 1674. The 20th century enters the picture with the banner of the patron, Saint Laurence, by Ninian Comper (1923).

The rebuild of the chancel was completed by 1450 — don’t miss the stalls and misericords, whose subjects include an owl, a dragon-like wyvern, a hart, and a king, as well as some fine post-Reformation monuments, like that to Edward Waties and his wife, who face each other across a prie-dieu (1635). Also spot a putto from the Salway monument.

Here also there is excellent medieval glass. A south window features six of the Ten Commandments, while above the reconstructed reredos is the great East Window. Most of it is taken up with the Passion of the patron saint; above it — at the apex the Holy Trinity, below are the Virgin and Child; St. John the Baptist with the Agnus Dei; St. Anne teaching the Virgin to read; Bishop Spufford of Hereford (1422-48); a king; and St. Laurence.

Returning to the crossing, look up at the tower, building c. 1450-71 with contribution from the guilds — carpenters, smiths, dyers, tailors, cordwainers, butchers, bakers (but not candlestick makers). The great poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936) — who is buried here — celebrated the great tower in verse:

Leave your home behind, lad,
    And reach your friends your hand,
And go, and luck go with you
    While Ludlow tower shall stand.

Simon Cotton is honorary senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and a former churchwarden of St. Giles, Norwich, and St. Jude, Peterborough. He is a member of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

O Nature! Thou hast fed / My lofty speculations; and in thee, / For this uneasy heart of ours,

I find / A never-failing principle of joy, / And purest passion.

To read William Wordsworth’s The Prelude is to discover anew, in our memories and “spots of time,” the joy and reverence we have for the natural world. And yet when we forgo the meaning, the true value of our “purest passion” for nature and its gifts, especially now as we face the enormous challenge of climate change, Wordsworth summons us to recover our passion, to ponder what it reveals about our faith, our God, and our mission to protect the earth and all that dwell therein.

Even the simplest encounter with nature, Wordsworth tells us, has the power to awaken this passion. Last summer, my husband and I hiked the beautiful fells of Grasmere in the Lake District. The lush green landscape, the bubbling Rothay River, the grazing Herdwick sheep, and the sight of chaffinches, English robins, and goldcrests along the trails, inspired our every step.

Our visit to Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home, served as a commentary on this love of the land and its creatures. In the reception room, we were greeted by a large written quotation from his poem The Tables Turned: “Come forth into the light of things, / Let nature be your teacher.” The verse comes from one of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, in which the speaker in the poem invites his friend to put aside his books, to enter the woods, and to hearken to the songs of the linnet and the throstle.

There, in nature, his friend will find a wisdom beyond the “barren leaves” of books: “One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and good, / Than all the sages can.” There is an inherent goodness in nature, Wordsworth claims, whose moral lessons reveal hidden depths of our human nature. When the tables are turned, not only are our senses awakened, but our hearts and minds as well. I left Dove Cottage thinking about the “light of things” — the enlightened spirit that allows us to confront the weighty concerns of climate change, forest fires, floods, oil spills, extinction of species, with courage and fortitude.

Wordsworth’s voice is only one of many calling us into “a vernal wood” to explore its deeper wisdom. Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, and Robert Macfarlane have all made this same plea on behalf of nature and our deeper selves. “Brought into right relationship with the wilderness,” John Muir writes, a person “would see that he was not a separate entity endowed with a divine right to subdue his fellow creatures and destroy the common heritage, but rather an integral part of a harmonious whole.”

In like manner, Wendell Berry writes a half-century later: “We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence.” Standing in awe of creation, seeing ourselves as part of a harmonious whole, will do more than renew our commitment to preserving it. Nature will help renew our faith.

For Christians, our awakened senses remind us that this rock, this lake, this land, this bird, this mountain, is a part of creation and the work of our God the Creator. Theologian Norman Wirzba asks us to embrace an existential logic “rooted in the assumption that the world is not an accidental or amoral realm that can be manipulated and exploited at will, but is instead divinely created, and therefore to be nurtured, cherished, and celebrated.” And we, the faithful, are commissioned to be caretakers of this sacred realm.

Wirzba’s existential logic is deeply embedded in Christian tradition. Theologians, scholars, and church leaders of all sorts have long wrestled with questions about nature, creation, and morality from a similar perspective. Among the most prominent contemporary exemplars are Rowan Williams, Pope Francis, Patriarch Bartholomew, Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, Ellen Davis, Kathryn Alexander, Thomas Berry, Denis Edwards, Jim Antal, and John Gatta. Chryssavgis speaks for them all when he writes: “Respect for the natural beauty of the world leads us to reverence before the divine beauty of God.” It is a reverence as old as Scripture itself. As St. Ephraim the Syrian observes: “Wherever you turn your eyes, there is God’s symbol. Look and see how nature and scripture are linked together.”

The opening chapter of Genesis points our eyes to this symbolic link. A loving God creates a natural world that is sacre good, harmonious, beautiful. He also creates human beings on the sixth day, the same day as he creates wild animals and the creeping, crawling creatures of the earth (Gen. 1:24-26). In this one creative act, human beings and wild animals are intimately bound together in the web of life.

And although Adam and Eve are given dominion over the fish, the birds, the cattle, and wild animals, they do so — in this often misinterpreted passage — to serve as God’s overseers and caretakers of creation. God thus directs Adam to “till and keep” Eden’s earthly garden and charges him to provide names to the animals — a caring task for establishing a deep and personal bond. And with these first acts, God blesses Adam and Eve and commissions them to care for the beauty and goodness of the earth, for “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” In like manner, the land and its creatures (in their goodness) are entrusted to us today.

It is a call that extends beyond Genesis. Throughout the Pentateuch, God demands that Moses and his people take responsibility for the land (Lev. 25:1-5), care for its wildlife (Deut. 22:6), and tend to the birds in their nests (Deut. 22:30). In so doing, they honor God as sovereign landlord, for the land is ultimately his. As the Psalmist declares: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein” (24:1). God’s demands are ours today, writes Gregory of Nyssa: Human beings have received the breath of life for the sake of all creation “in order that the earthy might be raised up to the divine [so] that the one grace might pervade the whole of creation.” Wordsworth, good Anglican that he was, would doubtless agree.

Jesus embodies that “one grace” pervading all creation. The incarnate Son of God cherishes the sparrow, admires the lilies of the field, holds up the wonder of the mustard seed, and even calms the sea. And yet there is a more cosmic dimension to this sustaining love, for Jesus was present and coexistent with God the Father from the beginning of time: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible … all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:15-16). The same Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Galilee, made his way through fields of grain, and spent time in the wilderness pervades the whole creation. Our reverence for this world becomes all the deeper when we grasp the full measure of Christ’s incarnational presence in all things visible and invisible, for in him lies our “never-failing principle of joy.”

And once our “purest passion” for nature is joined to our faith in God’s sovereignty and the sanctity of his creation, the call to care for God’s handiwork will be inescapable. Discerning how to respond will not be easy. Nature may be our teacher, but we must pray and brood over Scripture if we are to learn its deepest lessons. Our first steps will be simple: worship, retreats, nature walks, holy hikes, new gardens, tree planting, re-wilding, efforts to protect our parks, our wetlands, our conservancies — perhaps establishing a green rule of life.

But underlying all that we do will be a radical change of heart. As Rowan Williams reminds us: “[L]iving in a way that honors rather than threatens the planet is to convert what it means to be made in the image of God.” We begin with fundamentals: Come forth into the light of things: honor nature, honor the planet, become faithful caretakers. And in our delight in the order, harmony, and beauty of nature, we will discover God’s “purest passion” for us and for all that he has made.

The Rev. Elizabeth Orens is a priest associate at St. Paul’s K Street, Washington, D.C.

A good friend of mine recently confessed, “I am giving up on organized religion.” He had been in an Episcopal parish that had torn itself apart over issues of human sexuality, with many conservatives splitting off to form a new congregation. It didn’t help his attitude that the new congregation soon split again.

He has witnessed what he describes as hate coming from newly formed denominations. He is a tenderhearted individual, so I am not surprised by his revulsion, but I believe he is not alone. Except for the highly partisan, people have little tolerance for the ugliness that has spawned in so many churches. It would seem a good hypothesis that the rise of nones (religiously unaffiliated) is fueled in large measure by this. Cue R.E.M.’s 1991 classic “Losing My Religion.”

I am not going to defend the way these conflicts have played out, either from the progressive or the traditional side. Nor am I going to suggest a way to end such conflicts. I want to go to a different place that looks at my friend’s decision to give up on organized religion. Something there points to a deeper, more important issue.

In a sense, giving up on organized religion is in the same boat as spiritual but not religious. In both cases, there is a large kernel of truth. When organized religions eat and devour one another (Gal. 5:15), they clearly have strayed from the call to love one another. The excuse that they are just standing for the truth is negated by the methods they use to defend that truth. Speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) is not easy, especially when emotions run high. That people flee such places where truth is often spoken without love is not surprising, and those people should be commended for it.

Likewise, those who self-describe as spiritual but not religious correctly point to a deep truth. Humans add requirements that can deny deeper things. Jesus was pointing to this when he said,

“You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” (Mark 7:9-13, NIV)

While dropping organized religion and being spiritual but not religious serve as a judgment on human religions and can call us back to key principles lost along the way, both reactions lead almost inevitably to an unhealthy individualism. There is a reason that religions become organized. It is because humans were made to live in community. And if one is going to live in a community, there must be organization. This does not mean hierarchy, necessarily; authority structures are not even necessary (although in our current state of brokenness it is hard to imagine how we can live in community without such structures). If you put even two people together, they will need to order their common life.

But living in community is hard! There is not space to list what drives us crazy when we come together. It is to be expected that our groups, without a lot of intentional effort, will be highly homogeneous. The vision of the people before the throne in Rev. 7:9 (“from every nation, tribe, people, and language”) is hard to wrap our brains around when we hardly like the people who are similar to us! Giving up on organized religion and being spiritual but not religious is akin to saying, “I don’t want to have to accommodate others.”

C.S. Lewis gives a powerful image of how this centrifugal tendency works out in his description of the “Grey Town” in The Great Divorce. The shades there tend to move away from each other until they are so far apart that they can no longer interact. It is a stark picture of eternal loneliness and isolation.

I would like to venture that religion often has a component of “what should be.” This is true both socially and theologically. And yes, I am speaking of what is called morality. Certainly a person can pursue this holiness alone, but there is a significant part of our growth that can only be accomplished in the company of others. We love ourselves. That is, we do what is best for ourselves, but even this we tend to mess up. We need others to help us better love ourselves well.

The deep darkness in us, however, is only revealed as we try to love others. That is when we discover the desire for comfort, security, and control prevents us from truly loving. This only happens in community, and because we are not capable of doing this, even together, we are pushed back on religion, organized religion.

A season of being apart is healthy, especially when we have been severely burned by the fires that rage in our ordered, religious communities. But in time we have to return to community.

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Heb. 10:23-25)

And finally we have Jesus’ promise: “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matt. 18:20). There should be no question that Jesus will be with us as individuals, but there seems to be something more when we gather together, for in verse 19 he said, “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.”

This startling statement implies that community is a root of God’s further action among us. Why would we give that up?