Faith Rules: An Episcopal Manual

by Samantha R. E. Gottlich, Ian S. Markham PhD, Michael B. Curry (Foreword by)

Overview

This easy-to-use guide can be used as a confirmation resource, in a new member class, or adult study groups.

Ian Markham, Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary, introduces both the Christian faith and The Episcopal Church to the seeker and Episcopal laity in this indispensable manual. Each page in Faith Rules is Episcopal wisdom set in concise, straightforward language for anyone in the 21st century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819232984
Publisher:	Morehouse Publishing
Publication date:	02/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Samantha Gottlich is a graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary and active in ordained ministry in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. She is the coauthor of Faith Rules: An Episcopal Manual.

Ian S. Makham is the Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and a Professor of Theology and Ethics. He is the author of numerous books, including Against Atheism and An Introduction to Ministry (co-written with Oran Warder). His awards include the Robertson Fellow; Claggett Fellow attached to Washington National Cathedral; Frank Woods Fellow at Trinity College, Melbourne; and F. D. Maurice Lectures at King’s College, London. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry is the Episcopal Church’s 27th Presiding Bishop. He was the Bishop of North Carolina from 2000 to 2015. Bishop Curry has a national preaching and teaching ministry and is a regular on TV and radio and a frequent speaker at conferences around the country. His books include Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus; Following the Way of Jesus: Church’s Teachings for a Changing World; and Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times.

Read an Excerpt

Faith Rules

An Episcopal Manual

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By Ian S. Markham, Samantha R. E. Gottlich

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2016 Ian S. Markham
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-3298-4

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CHAPTER 1

Section One

Rules For Finding Faith

To appreciate experiences, you need a guide. Appreciating architectural genius requires a guide who explains to you the differences between brickwork that is flemish bond (alternating stretchers — which is where bricks are placed long side — and headers — which is where bricks are placed short side) and basket weave (where pairs of bricks are laid vertically and then another pair horizontally). In fact, you don't notice the differences in brickwork until someone points this out to you. Appreciating the nose (the smell) on a glass of wine requires a person who can invite you to find grass cuttings and gooseberries in a Sauvignon Blanc or the blackcurrants in a glass of red Zinfandel. Appreciating the achievement of football requires a guide who can explain the blitz, zone read, and fumble. Without these guides, we just don't see the depth and texture of life. Without the guide, bricks are just bricks; wine is just wine; and football is just football. We stop at the surface and don't dig deeper.

In the first six rules, you will find an invitation to see the normal and mundane in a new and different way. It is an invitation to look beyond the surface experience of life to see depth and texture. Look hard enough and you will start to see the transcendent and the spiritual all around you.

(1)

Disconnect from the tech

Most of us live with our heads stuck in the immediate. Our senses are bombarded by sounds and sights generated by screens. We are plugged in — listening to music or a podcast or audiobook; we are sliding our hands over a phone to read the latest text, e-mail, and Facebook status update; and we are moving from a laptop to a tablet to a smartphone constantly. Never is there a moment when we are not connected.

So let us start by putting all this stuff down. Let us disconnect from our virtual world and engage with the real world. Pause and focus for a moment on the moment. Find the quietest place you can and listen attentively to the silence. Hear how interesting and deep the silence is. The great spiritual guides of humanity invite us to become conscious of our bodies — focus especially on the miracle of breath. Feel the action of inhaling, followed by the action of exhaling. Move around your body inviting each part to relax. Do this by tensing an area, for example, your feet and ankles, and then instruct the area to relax. Move from your feet up to your waist, right up to your shoulders and head. Marvel at the complex story that science tells about our bodies. Notice the miracle of yourself.

This is basic meditation; it is what the Buddhists would call "mindfulness." Mindfulness is an awareness of the moment and everything that is going on inside you; it is entering deep inside, while making no judgments and acknowledging the feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. If you go no further in this book, then this basic practice is worth learning. The health benefits of mindfulness are considerable.

But we want you to notice something more. We want you to allow the silence to embrace you. Allow yourself to marvel at who you are. And at a stroke, you have started the journey to faith. The embrace of silence is the presence of God surrounding you; the miracle of you is the gift of being made possible by God. Welcome to the journey of faith.

(2)

Walk, linger, and marvel

We are always going somewhere. The journey is often a means to an end. For most of us the journey is a drive. If we walk at all, then it consists of the stroll to a car to then be transported from home to wherever — the grocery store. This rule invites us to walk with no regard for the destination. Find a park, maybe a river, perhaps just an interesting street — and walk slowly, pausing to admire the grass that peeks through a crack in the sidewalk, or the tree that was there a long time before you were born, or the bird chirping on the edge of a wall. Everywhere you look there are wonders of life abounding.

The story of life is amazing. Through an elaborate process of natural selection the biodiversity of the world came to be. Life is a journey of 3.8 billion years. Just take that in. The faith instinct sees life as intended. God's chosen mechanism was evolution. Everything has purpose.

Seeing the world around us as intended is an act of faith. We are taking the risk of seeing things differently. Pause and marvel — suddenly, we matter.

(3)

Enjoy the company of someone you love

Solitude and silence are packed with signs of the transcendent; they make you aware that you are part of a bigger picture — that living is part of a bigger story that comes from above and surrounds us. But so is company. Now you need to find someone you can love — a friend, spouse, child, parent, or sibling. Enter into a conversation where you explore the other. Every person is a deep well of complexity. So explore this person you love — remember together, laugh together, and discover together.

So what is love? Is it just a trick of the evolutionary process to encourage parents to care for their young or spouses to reproduce? Or is it more? Reflect on the rich conversations you have had with the one you love. Think about the feelings deep inside of you that you have for the special one. The Christian claim is that love is our purpose for being; it is the reason the world was made. The God, which is goodness and love at the heart of the universe enabling everything that is and sustaining everything that is, invites us to discover love. We are created out of love in order to love. We are hardwired for connection with others. The love two people share is a glimpse of our divinely intended purpose for being.

(4)

Let the music take you higher

What do Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff all have in common? What do Bono, Faith Hill, Kristin Chenoweth, and the Jonas Brothers all have in common? The answer is not simply that they were amazing composers, but also that they were persons of faith. It was George Steiner who observed that great musicians have an heightened sensitivity to the transcendent; very few are atheists. They really believe that their music is a discovery; there are certain notes that are just right for the piece that they are seeking to birth. And of course, as we listen to great music, we cannot help being lifted out of ourselves into the realm of the transcendent. As one closes one's eyes, the music does indeed take you higher.

And all of this is made possible by the simple notations on a page. A musical score looks so flat upon the page. Yet when these notations are taken, interpreted, and voiced, out from the page comes forth music that resonates with the chords of our souls. Music has power. Music can capture our feelings for us (think how often it is music that helps us get over a relationship breakup); music can aid recollection (think how often we listen to that old childhood song that instantly brings to mind where we were and what we were doing); and music can cut to our very souls (those moments when the music is all we are hearing).

Music is a glimpse into the divine. It is a gateway; it is a vehicle into the transcendent.

(5)

Recognize that we are infinitely more than just complex bundles of atoms that came from nowhere and go nowhere

Faith is the act of seeing the world in a certain way. It is the capacity to see that life is not just the immediate, the ephemeral, but it is much more. Life has texture; life has depth. How do we make sense of this depth? One option is the answer of reductionist science. Everything is made up of complex bundles of atoms that come from nowhere and ultimately go nowhere. There are many problems with this. Quantum mechanics talks about a universe that is much more mysterious and puzzling. At the quantum level, there is unpredictability and openness. But more, reductionist science just feels wrong. Love is not just a trick of the evolutionary process to encourage us to reproduce. Music is not just a remarkable human achievement. Mind is not just reducible to brain activity. Life's depth and texture point to something more than that; they point toward the transcendent.

Faith affirms we are in an intended universe. We are meant to be here. The Goodness and Love at the heart of the universe wanted humanity to emerge. The response of faith need not conflict with the insights we are learning from science. Antibiotics work and, when you have an infection, are great. Evolution is true; the multiverse might be true. Truths learned through science are part of the picture. But we locate our scientific picture of the world within a bigger framework of the transcendent. One that we correctly intuit (or sense) is part of the truth about reality.

(6)

Allow yourself to pray

Prayer is the connection of the soul with the transcendent (the height and depth of everything) that is all around us. The soul is our fundamental self; it is our core being and identity. Prayer happens when we open our inner being to conversation — to communion — with the loving embrace of the transcendent. Prayers sometimes use words, but, perhaps, more often do not. In fact, it might feel quite strange to speak with words at first. Therefore, especially at its core, prayer is the act of enjoying quiet, becoming conscious of the fact that we are loved, and allowing that love to surround us.

Prayer is felt and experienced. Thinking too much is unhelpful. Put aside your pictures of God and suspend your questions for a moment. Instead just allow the desire for love to come forth from your soul. This can be either verbal or silent. And then allow yourself to sense that God's love is present, real, and surrounding you.

The first conscious prayer is the baby step of faith. It is the act of relocating our lives away from the mundane and immediate and into the real and transcendent. Now we are living our lives on multiple levels — both in the immediate moment and the deeper more textured level of the transcendent. Welcome to the world of faith.

CHAPTER 2

Section Two

Rules For All Your Choices and How to Make One

So you have arrived at faith, but how do you decide which religion is right? This looks like a massive problem. But actually if you think about any other subject, this problem is much less significant. Economists divide into monetarists and Keynesians (as well as many other groups); psychologists divide into Jungians and Freudians (and many other groups). Disagreement in these subjects is not evidence for the non-existence of the economy or the non-existence of the psyche. Instead, we recognize that disagreement is inevitable because of the complexity of these areas. What is true in economics and psychology is even more true in religion. Metaphysics (i.e. the study of ultimate reality) is especially complicated. Fortunately, we have been thinking about religion for several millennia, so the collective wisdom of the world in this area is amazing. And there are certain insights that the major religions agree on. Most agree that the transcendent is best spoken about as an underlying unity (ultimately there is the oneness underpinning everything) and that we are being invited into a life-transforming project of love. Religious diversity, then, isn't a threat to faith.

But on what basis do we decide to follow Jesus? What we have to do is encounter the living Son of God we find in the church and in the Bible. We will suggest that the Gospels (the books in the Bible about Jesus' life and teachings) "have the ring of truth" (to use J.B. Phillips's lovely phrase). We are invited to make the decision to follow Jesus as an act of trust grounded in the plausibility of the witness of the Gospels.

(7)

Remember it is all about the love project

So what is this love project? When people ask the question, "Why did God create the universe?," the answer of the major religions is that God created the universe as the setting in which women and men can learn the hard work of giving and receiving love. This is God's project. This is the love project.

Religious people are often the strongest argument for atheism. We can be so unkind and cruel. Points of principle (often of a pretty abstract form) become reasons for schism. We have a long list of folks we dislike, which often includes all the adherents of the other religions. In the past, we wrote lengthy tracts defending patriarchy and slavery. We can be smug, indifferent, and downright unpleasant.

It is worth remembering that our core experience of God is of a unity that surrounds us with love. The primary theme underpinning the message of countless prophets, teachers, and priests is that the divine calls us to focus less on ourselves and more on others. The big picture here is really important. Any religious community that is not life-enhancing and does not lead to the goals of peace and love is wrong. You must stay away from it.

Now being in a community that is focused on the life-enhancing love project is not easy. It is hard. One of the reasons religious people can be so unpleasant is that they are human. And people everywhere have moments when they enjoy being selfish, tribal, unkind, and even cruel. Sitting around in a like-minded group and complaining about Democrats, Republicans, immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites, or the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church is great fun. So don't be misled: focusing on the love project is hard work and challenging. Do know, however, that it is worth all the struggle, challenge, and hard work. A life focused on self is tragic and lonely; a life focused on love is rewarding and enhancing.

(8)

God is complex — so don't be surprised that folks understand God in different ways

Surprise! God is complicated. Religion is in the business of talking about ultimate reality. The disciplines of economics and physics are complicated. But religion is even bigger; it embraces economics, physics, and every other subject. Religion is an attempt to describe the origins and nature of the author and designer of this cosmos (and if there are other universes — those as well).

Now with any complicated topic there are many vantage points. Different cultures generated different accounts of ultimate reality. This happened in every subject — the science of Aristotle is different from ancient Han Chinese science, which in turn is different from the science of Newton. Different economic models emerged in different cultures over time from the very simple — the hunting and gathering economic model of certain tribes — to the very complicated, like capitalism or planned economies.

The point is different cultures in different times arrived at different accounts of everything, from science to economics to religion. It is just the way the knowing process works. We live in community and strive to make sense of our complicated experience of life. As we do so, different theories and traditions emerge in different places.

(9)

Don't believe God is a robot — do believe God is Spirit

It is possible to decide between different accounts of God. Some are more plausible than others. Some are more coherent than others. We use our reason. Self-contradictory accounts of God are unlikely to be true (God cannot be both within time and timeless); some accounts have an elegant simplicity (so one God is more likely to be true than a whole pantheon of gods all squabbling together); and some make sense of key themes both of the world Scriptures and our experience (so every tradition that believes in God postulates a God that is calling us to live according to transcendent moral standards).

The weird thing is that if you take the four influential religions — Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — there is agreement about the basics. God is a unity — the oneness of God; God is creator; God is a revealing God — telling us in a variety of ways what God is like; and God is love — inviting us all into the love project.

Naturally there are differences between the religions, for example, the nature of the afterlife. However, on the big picture, there is agreement.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Faith Rules by Ian S. Markham, Samantha R. E. Gottlich. Copyright © 2016 Ian S. Markham. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
Section One: Rules for Finding Faith l,
Section Two: Rules for All Your Choices and How to Make One,
Section Three: Rules for Becoming an Episcopalian,
Section Four: Rules for Every Day,
Section Five: Rules for When Life is Hard,
Section Six: Rules for Cool Episcopalians,
Section Seven: Rules for Hanging Around Episcopalians,
Section Eight: Rules for Remembering the Big Picture,
Glossary,
For Further Reading,