Further introduction: challenging belief and Episcopal heritage

I have mentioned that I'd been confirmed in the Episcopal Church. I didn't realize it at the time, but the process of preparing for confirmation profoundly affected my thinking about faith. Rather than study a traditional catechism, our prepartion course was "Refutations", an experimental course that the church was evaluating. Each week we were introduced to a proof or argument against God and challenged to respond to it. For example, "If God exists and is omnipotent, why is there suffering?" The intent was to prepare us as Episcopalians and Christians, but the course also taught me that it was good and appropriate to think critically about issues of faith, to own them by way of struggling with the arguments for and against them.

Because of that experience, I understood that it was more than appropriate to struggle with questions of belief and to think critically about articles of faith. At no point in my early religious life did anyone ever ask that I accept uncritically, that I believe without thinking, that I choose silence over questioning. Because I know that many people of faith had the opposite experience, I am deeply thankful that the Episcopal church of my childhood gave me the protection and permission to think critically about the divine.

As a young adult, I had another experience that cemented and made explicit this understanding. I took a class in Medieval Theology with Dr. Anthony Neimitz at that big southern university, back in the late 1980's. It was a combination grad/undergrad class, and pretty heady stuff, covering key texts by Bonaventure, Anselm and Aquinas. Aquinas especially spoke to me, because his Summa Theologica made explicit what I'd understood implicitly about the pairing of thought and belief. There are certainly limits to what Aquinas can say to me, or to theists like me, but much of what he wrote about the nature of belief rang clear and true.

The third big experience was going on pilgrimage to Grace Cathedral and discovering that as a place where I felt comfortable and welcome. In the late 1990's, I began an annual tradition of going to Grace for the liturgical holiday of Michaelmas, to take communion and reaffirm the part of my spiritual nature that is nurtured by the Anglican tradition. I could go on and on about what makes Grace so important to me -- and I probably will, in an other entry -- but one of the most important things I found there was this statement of purpose and acceptance which is posted inside the entrance. I have felt explicitly invited to partake of the Eucharist even though I struggle with assenting to the entirety of the Nicene Creed, even though I don't feel comfortable claiming the identity 'Christian' for myself. Grace Cathedral and its dean, the Very Rev. Alan Jones have been instrumental in leading me to a revelation and appreciation of the value of my Episcopal heritage.