night I began to see, dimly at first, then more clearly that part of the reason I had decided not to be a priest was because of words. Partly because of being a writer of words.
I preached on and off during the years of discernment, and one Sunday in Santa Barbara, one of my closest friends, Jodie Ireland, came to hear me. Her mother had just died. She told me later she began to cry at some point during the service. Churches are one of the few places left where you can publicly and honorably cry.
“Then you stood up,” she said, “and started saying, ‘I believe in God the Father, and his only Son,’ and I didn’t believe it, so I stayed put.” (She didn’t come back.)
She was referring to the Nicene Creed, which begins: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son. I believe that he came down from Heaven …” I had been standing up and saying the creed since I joined St. John’s Cathedral. I can recite it like the poems I memorized in the fourth grade. But I took note that Sunday that one of my dearest friends found the words of the creed the thing that divided her from the other people in the church, and from me, when she had, moments before, found a place to grieve.
Shortly thereafter I was at breakfast one morning at an Episcopal monastery in the hills above Santa Barbara, and I asked a table full of priests what they thought about the creed. Three of them said they only
mouthed
parts of it. One of them, a young man from Los Angeles, said he was entirely frustrated with it because on Sunday morninghe didn’t have time to explain to the new people who might be there out of deep need or longing or because they had experienced something they didn’t understand, that the “Virgin Mary” in the Nicene Creed was a metaphor. I thought of Jodie.
“The church is better at telling people what the church believes than at eliciting from people what they believe,” said Gary Hall, dean of the Washington Cathedral in Washington, D.C. “I think that anyone who gets themselves and their family up and goes to church in the face of so many attractive alternatives must have access to some deep truth or experience of God that they are seeking to make sense of in community. The church responds by boring them out of their minds and telling them what we think is shameful.”
The words of the creed were written down in Nicaea, in what is now Turkey, in the fourth century, at a meeting organized by the Roman emperor Constantine, a new and opportunistic convert to Christianity. Constantine wanted to bring some order to the many stripes and communities that made up this now-popular religion. And because of that, a lot of things changed:
“In the changed world of the fourth century, … when Christians ceased to be liable to occasional persecution and became instead
the favoured cult of the Roman empire
, the character of their Eucharistic worship also changed,” says Paul Bradshaw, an authority on the Eucharist (communion). “Celebrated now in large public buildings, it took on the style of imperial court ceremonies and incorporated features drawn from the pagan religions around, of which it saw itself as the true fulfilment.”
Before this meeting at Nicaea, there had been no creed, no special buildings for worship. There had been instead gatherings of people in houses, around a table.
The meeting at Nicaea and the creed itself were the beginning of the large map of Christianity. It was an effort to gather up disparate strands, different stories, a ragtag band of men and women who were following what was a memory and to make them into One. Out of Nicaea came the ideas—“God, the Father Almighty,” “Jesus Christ, his only Son,” “He was born of the Virgin Mary,” “He ascended into Heaven.”
What had been a messy group of followers on a road of discovery suddenly became the empire’s religion, linked, fatefully, to a state, to power, and to
I preached on and off during the years of discernment, and one Sunday in Santa Barbara, one of my closest friends, Jodie Ireland, came to hear me. Her mother had just died. She told me later she began to cry at some point during the service. Churches are one of the few places left where you can publicly and honorably cry.
“Then you stood up,” she said, “and started saying, ‘I believe in God the Father, and his only Son,’ and I didn’t believe it, so I stayed put.” (She didn’t come back.)
She was referring to the Nicene Creed, which begins: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son. I believe that he came down from Heaven …” I had been standing up and saying the creed since I joined St. John’s Cathedral. I can recite it like the poems I memorized in the fourth grade. But I took note that Sunday that one of my dearest friends found the words of the creed the thing that divided her from the other people in the church, and from me, when she had, moments before, found a place to grieve.
Shortly thereafter I was at breakfast one morning at an Episcopal monastery in the hills above Santa Barbara, and I asked a table full of priests what they thought about the creed. Three of them said they only
mouthed
parts of it. One of them, a young man from Los Angeles, said he was entirely frustrated with it because on Sunday morninghe didn’t have time to explain to the new people who might be there out of deep need or longing or because they had experienced something they didn’t understand, that the “Virgin Mary” in the Nicene Creed was a metaphor. I thought of Jodie.
“The church is better at telling people what the church believes than at eliciting from people what they believe,” said Gary Hall, dean of the Washington Cathedral in Washington, D.C. “I think that anyone who gets themselves and their family up and goes to church in the face of so many attractive alternatives must have access to some deep truth or experience of God that they are seeking to make sense of in community. The church responds by boring them out of their minds and telling them what we think is shameful.”
The words of the creed were written down in Nicaea, in what is now Turkey, in the fourth century, at a meeting organized by the Roman emperor Constantine, a new and opportunistic convert to Christianity. Constantine wanted to bring some order to the many stripes and communities that made up this now-popular religion. And because of that, a lot of things changed:
“In the changed world of the fourth century, … when Christians ceased to be liable to occasional persecution and became instead
the favoured cult of the Roman empire
, the character of their Eucharistic worship also changed,” says Paul Bradshaw, an authority on the Eucharist (communion). “Celebrated now in large public buildings, it took on the style of imperial court ceremonies and incorporated features drawn from the pagan religions around, of which it saw itself as the true fulfilment.”
Before this meeting at Nicaea, there had been no creed, no special buildings for worship. There had been instead gatherings of people in houses, around a table.
The meeting at Nicaea and the creed itself were the beginning of the large map of Christianity. It was an effort to gather up disparate strands, different stories, a ragtag band of men and women who were following what was a memory and to make them into One. Out of Nicaea came the ideas—“God, the Father Almighty,” “Jesus Christ, his only Son,” “He was born of the Virgin Mary,” “He ascended into Heaven.”
What had been a messy group of followers on a road of discovery suddenly became the empire’s religion, linked, fatefully, to a state, to power, and to
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