... but unbaptized inquirers are a sign of hope
The following is adapted from Rev. Stephen Reynolds' introduction to the 2001 edition of MacCausland's Order of Divine Service. The adaptation and the reprint are with the author's permission
Christendom is dead - I mean, the way of things when the Western world identified itself with the Christian religion, and Christian churches claimed whole societies and peoples for their own. Christianity itself is still alive, and I am reckless enough to think that it has a future. But not as the religion privileged by statutory law and social custom, in a world where belonging to a Christian church was an ordinary part of belonging to one's society and the sine qua non of respectability. That was the world of Christendom, and that world is extinct.
But why bring the matter up here? What does the death of Christendom have to do with the Anglican Church of Canada? We are not hindered from assembling in our churches on Sunday or at any other time; Anglicans are as free to perform their services of worship as Muslims, Roman Catholics, Jews, Greek Orthodox, Buddhists, Presbyterians, or any other religious group.
So the end of Christendom does not appear to have any serious impact on our liturgy. And indeed, governments and the courts have tended to treat the internal life of the churches as a "No Go" zone. Neither the federal government nor the courts show any eagerness to compel the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, or the Pentecostal Assemblies, to ordain women as well as men; it seems unlikely in the extreme that they will seek to regulate the number of baptisms, or the proportion of eucharistic celebrations to services of Morning Prayer, that we Anglicans can perform. So our liturgy would seem to be safe from the consequences of Christendom's demise.
But the death of Christendom was not a government initiative, nor was it the result of a judicial conspiracy. The Parliament of Canada, the provincial legislatures, and the courts merely followed where society at large led the way; and society at large decided long ago that religion was a wholly private matter, without relevance in public affairs. We are talking about a social, a cultural revolution, not a political programme.
The proof lies in a much quieter phenomenon than judicial decisions and governmental policies, a phenomenon which is taking place in the Christian churches themselves, including our own.
In the old world of Christendom, baptism was not only a religious obligation; it also had the nature of a social entitlement. As a result, mainline churches did not feel that they had the moral (or, as is still the case for the Church of England, the legal) right to refuse the baptismal sacrament to anyone.
Within the past few years, however, we have begun to notice the appearance of unbaptized adults at our Sunday worship. They come as inquirers, "checking out" our church and the faith we confess to see if we and our faith are really for them. These unbaptized inquirers are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s - which means that their parents saw no need for baptism and church-membership over a generation ago.
It is as if a full generation had to pass before those who went unbaptised in the 1950s and '60s could begin to show up in our midst. For they had to grow up and mature and come to realize for themselves that something might be missing in their lives, and that the something might be Christianity. But the fact that it was missing at all means that society had already lost the reflexes of Christendom - that Christendom had already failed - when they were infants.
The church now stands - and has been standing for some time - in a society where a great many people have, at best, only a second-hand memory of any religion. To all intents and purposes, Christianity is new to them, and those who have come to us as inquirers are reconnoitreing the Christian religion for the first time in their lives. What we are seeing now are people coming out on the other side of Christendom's collapse, where Christianity is not a settled expectation which might as well be accepted, but a possibility which may be worth exploring.
In many respects, we are in a situation akin to that of the primitive church, communities at the centre of reality and on the fringes of society. We are an ancient option which, because of the failure of Christendom, has once again become new.
The very fact that such inquirers are showing up in our pews is, of course, a very good sign. Christendom may be dead, but there is (as I say) life in the old church yet. The arrival of inquirers "not previously baptized" gives us reason to believe that there is - and always was - more to Anglicanism in particular than aerating white Anglo-Saxon culture with the afflatus of religion.
Their presence also challenges us to identify what is authentically Christian about Anglicanism, what is at the very centre of our life together, for the sake of welcoming them all the more deliberately and including them all the more genuinely.
But that is how the arrival of unbaptized inquirers, in itself a sign of hope, may also be a problem for our church. Identifying "what is authentically Christian about Anglicanism" is no easy task. What makes it difficult, of course, is the sheer diversity of standpoints that Anglicanism harbours. This may be why, in recent years, several parties within the Anglican mix have sought to outflank the diversity by forging a common front and producing quasi-confessional statements of "Anglican essentials."
Such statements might make the parties involved feel better about being Anglican, insofar as they can project an Anglicanism which "stands for something" - or rather against certain things. But I am not sure that they will make inquirers feel better about us and our faith.
On the contrary, I suspect that confessional formulas are more likely to puzzle inquirers and put them off. For inquirers are not yet part of the internal conversation (or debate) which has given rise to the formulas. One has to be already "in the loop" to figure out the point of the exercise.
I am all for the Anglican Church of Canada "standing for something," but I tend to think that the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed together provide a sufficient statement of what it does in truth "stand for" in the confessional sense.
To uphold the two creeds as sufficient statements of faith is, of course, to suggest that "authentic Christianity" - and therefore "authentic Anglicanism" - will include sound belief. But sound belief itself is and always has been much, much more than a matter of knowing and repeating the correct answers to certain doctrinal questions. The church does not have doctrines for the sake of making everybody toe the same ideological line. Doctrines are in place for the sake of living: they are meant to enable the whole community, and each of its members, to grow toward God more deliberately, more authentically, and more fruitfully.
It is a matter of integrating the way we behave with what we know of God in Christ - and of knowing and loving God in Christ with such consistency that our behaviour manifests a pattern of divine grace.
