I was raised in a non-denominational Christian community which split from one of the more well-preserved Anabaptist movements existing in North America. This afforded a stable community and a concrete worldview with which I could navigate life. But I’ve always been one to challenge the status quo– to question the underlying principles of what most take for granted– always keen on uncovering truth, professing it, and calling out transgressions against it. This persistent skepticism can create a painful perception of dissonance between yourself and the world around you, especially if your world seems unintelligible, not to mention it will make you out to be pedantic and cynical. Nevertheless, life without meaning is no life at all and meaning is not found without asking questions. In my early twenties, I was introduced to some material that clued me into some dimensions of biblical interpretation to which I was previously oblivious. I became obsessed with uncovering these unknowns; I was troubled by the idea that there were gems hidden in plain sight not shown to me by my spiritual elders and in many cases not known to them. It was gratifying to follow the rabbit holes of podcasts and books but, at the same time, it kept producing unanswered questions. Many of my questions were graciously indulged by one mentor in particular, a pastor of outstanding dedication to his community. Over time, though, I ventured beyond the bounds of what the local cosmology, as it were, could support. I lived with a growing dissonance for quite a while until I felt I was an utter stranger to the world around me– it was time to accept the path of exile in hopes of finding the deeper meaning for which I thirsted.

My journey has brought me through quite a range of Christian faith traditions and expressions. I spent some time in charismatic-pentecostal circles. In fact, my curiosity for charismatic Christianity was provoked by the general aversion to the same by my former community. “They are wolves in sheep’s clothing”, I heard spoken of their popular teachers. So, I listened to their sermons, worshiped with them, prayed with them, attended their conferences, etc. What I discovered was that, for the most part, people were doing their best to follow Christ in a manner most authentic– Their “false teachers”: genuine men, offering their best for their congregants. In contrast with my conservative background, charismatic Christianity felt like a breath of fresh air. Like a dog let loose from his leash, I could frolic over the grassy knolls of Holy-Spirit-freedom.

But, eventually, I became disoriented. Where are the pointers? Where is the center? What is the structure on which this vibrant spiritual life can grow? It began to feel like an anxious search for novelty, an incessant need to find the “next thing” God was revealing to me.

I had been exposed to sacramental Christianity through an Anglican Church and began attending there on Sundays and the charismatic church on other evenings– business in the front, party in the back. But I eventually committed to the former completely. What others had called “dead religion”, as if these words were synonymous, I found to be beautiful, immensely meaningful. The liturgy, authentic to ancient Christianity, didn’t feel decrepit or rigid. It felt organic most of all. The so-called “empty ritual” was alive and God was in it. It was the curation of the best words and music the tradition had to offer to the God worthy of our best and more, all culminating in the humble offering of bread and wine in which God would deign to become so vulnerable as to commune with us unworthy men.

Schism

But before we continue my story, how did we get here? Why is there so much division? How is it that the church down the street is at such dissonance with the other that it delineates itself by another name and does not align with the other in teaching or form of worship? Let’s start at the very beginning…

The Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles in the upper room in the year 33. They began to preach the gospel and establish the Church in Jerusalem and beyond (See Acts 2). Naturally, as the Church crossed ethnic boundaries, ethical controversies arose.

A major issue in the first-century Church was the question of the extent to which gentile converts are bound to Torah. The Church appoints “Paul and Barnabas and some of the others … to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question” (See Acts 15). Through much debate and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they reach a conclusion which is proclaimed via encyclical.

Acts 15:23b-29
"The brethren, both the apostles and the elders, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cili'cia, greeting. Since we have heard that some persons from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell."

This council, known as The Apostolic Council, would constitute the model for how future serious theological issues would be settled ecumenically.

“Since its early years the Church has endured assaults from its enemies both from without and within. From without, Jews and idolaters sought with hatred to destroy the Church, but in doing so only succeeded in strengthening it. The schisms and heresies that have arisen from within, however, have tormented the Church to an even greater extent and continue to do so.
Christ had warned His twelve disciples that obstacles are bound to come (Matt. 18:7) and that they should beware of false prophets (Matt. 7:15). The Apostle Paul spoke even then of existing schisms, in the sense of disputes and divisions, between the members of the Church, and called on Christians to be of the same mind and remain united (cf. 1 Cor. 1:10). …
The term ’heresy’ denotes any false doctrine which deviates from the true Christian faith. This term also came to be applied in a wider sense to any particular community which, by following heretical teaching, found itself in disagreement with the doctrines held by the Church, thereby cutting itself off from communion and unity with it. On this question St Basil the Great says: ‘By heresies people in older times meant those who were completely cut off and alienated in matters relating to faith itself; by schisms it is meant those who for certain ecclesiastical reasons had taken a different path over the questions in dispute which could have been mutually resolved.”
Hieromonk Gregorios, The Orthodox Faith, Worship, and Life, 90

Here are some of the major heresies faced by the Church in its first millennium:

Gnosticism (2nd century): a mixture of pagan, Judean and Christian elements
Arianism (4th century): the rejection of Christ’s divinity
Pneumatomachi (latter 4th century): denial of the divinity of the Holy Spirit
Nestorianism (5th century): rejected the union of divine and human natures in the one person, Jesus Christ
Monophysitism (5th century onwards): denies that the human nature of Christ is the same in essence as that of mankind
Pelagianism (5th-6th century): the belief that man can save himself by his own efforts without the assistance of divine grace
Monotheletism (7th century): denied that Christ had both a divine and human will
Iconoclasm (8th-9th century): considered the veneration of icons to be idolatry

“The emergence of different heresies obliged the Church to formulate the truth as dogmas. … In order for dogmas to be formulated, councils of Fathers were convened. Normally, if all the local churches were represented at the Council it was called Ecumenical, otherwise it was characterized as a Local Council. In any event, the authority of a Council depends on the conformity of its decisions with the truth revealed to the saints of the Church.”
Gregorios 99

There have been seven universally recognized Ecumenical Councils.

The First Council of Nicea (325) repudiated Arianism and adopted the Nicene Creed.
The First Council of Constantinople (381) revised the Nicene Creed into the present form
The Council of Ephesus (431) repudiated Nestorianism and proclaimed the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God (Θεοτόκος).
The Council of Chalcedon (451) repudiated Monophysitism, described and delineated the two natures of Christ, human and divine, and adopted the Chalcedonian Creed.
The Second Council of Constantinople (553) reaffirmed decisions and doctrines explicated by previous Councils and condemned new Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite writings.
The Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) repudiated Monothelitism and affirmed that Christ had both human and Divine wills.
The Second Council of Nicea (787) restored the veneration of icons and ended the first iconoclasm.

It seems to me that there are many aspects of the Christian faith that Protestants take for granted. Many are unaware that the dogmas they consider essential to the Christian faith (such as that of the Trinity) were formulated at these councils and would not have proliferated as dogma otherwise. Some scoff at the catholic Christian’s citation of them, considering them an unnecessary human institution at best as opposed to the “invisible church” of believers. Perhaps they think they could dispel the heresies themselves, bible in hand. Perhaps they should go back in time and show these spiritual giants, the church fathers convened at these councils, how easy it is. I digress.

In what is known as The Great Schism of 1054, the Church overseen by the bishop of Rome broke communion with the Church in the east. This division happened gradually and for a few reasons but the most cited reason is a change made to the Nicene creed affirmed by the bishop of Rome supposing he had the prerogative to do so without council or consensus. After co-excommunication and passage of time, the schism deepened and solidified. This is the most significant and tragic schism the Church has experienced to date. Both east and west continued to claim to be the true Church and were later delineated by the names, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. The Roman Catholic church would later reinforce their supremacy with the dogmas of papal primacy and infallibility. Largely due to relative geopolitical ease, it has grown at a much greater rate than the Orthodox Church.

The Stripping of the Altars

Many point to The Enlightenment as the impetus of the reformation and Protestantism in general. Broadly speaking, I agree. But I think there is a deeper, more specific idea, a sort of seed that preceded enlightenment thinking. Namely, the idea that the Eucharist is a mere symbol, and the ontology underlying that idea. That the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in the Liturgy was a belief held by the entire Church for 1500 years and is still held by the Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant churches. While some of my readers may not share that belief, let them bear with me as we follow the consequences of this parasitic idea.

Symbol or Real?

In his incredible work, The Ethics of Beauty, Timothy Patitsas summarizes the genesis of the idea.

“Paschasius Radbertus (786-860), who wrote the first major Western treatise on the Eucharist and who is a saint canonized by the Western Church, wanted to emphasize the reality of the change effected in the prayers of consecration. Somehow, his explanations of how this transformation happened provoked other clerics to insist that the change had a spiritual, or symbolic, dimension as well. Both Radbertus and his respondents (and the Western Church more generally) were seeking an orthodox formulation that could convey why the real Body and Blood of Christ still looks like bread and wine after the consecration – that is, why it appears to us symbolically.
The issue … is that in these early theological discussions we see a struggle to capture both the symbolic and the real aspects of the Body of Christ in the Eucharistic mystery.
… The Western Church correctly discerned that to say the Eucharist is only a symbol and not really the Body and Blood of Christ, is clearly heresy. But to phrase the question in this particular way is a trap and has no good answer. Once you pit the symbolic against the real, once you forget that this world is real only because it is the symbol of the heavenly realm, then everything about the created order becomes by definition arbitrary.
… This view of creation will underlie the philosophy of the Enlightenment, but its source was centuries before, in an accidental turn within sacramental theology at these councils held at Lateran in the 1070s.”
Timothy G. Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty, 133

Thus, the knot of Christianity in the West was loosened. This sacramental theology would be codified in the Roman Catholic church with the doctrine of transubstantiation defined at the council of Trent (1551).

Let us now turn our gaze to Catholic England on the eve of reformation.

The popular Protestant portrayal of late-medieval Catholicism is less than generous and is used to denigrate Catholicism in general and to justify Protestantism. The portrayal is basically one of lay ignorance and superstition, tyrannical leadership (ecclesial and secular), and a religion bereft of genuine piety. In his work, The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy provides a meticulous, yet lush survey of the English Reformation and its effects. Here are some poignant excerpts.

Literacy and Bible Reading

There is a perception among Protestants that 1) Medieval Christians were biblically illiterate for their religious tyrants’ desire for control and that 2) A bible in the hand of every Christian as well as their daily reading and interpretation thereof would liberate them from said tyrants and empower them to unite around biblical truth, the latter of these myths we will dispel in the next section. But we can see from Duffy’s survey that this perception of religious tyranny is skewed.

“[King] Henry was deeply worried by the religious divisions which had sprung up in the realm, and by the rumble of discontent from the conservative mass of the population. A draft proclamation ‘for uniformity in religion’, dating from April 1539 and heavily corrected in Henry's hand, makes it clear that he blamed the rising tide of ‘murmur, malice and malignity’ among the people in large part on unfettered Bible-reading. He had hoped that the English Bible would be read ‘with meekness and not to maintain erroneous opinions’. Instead, the people disputed ‘arrogantly’ in churches, ale houses, and taverns, and slandered each other ‘as well by word as writing, one part of them calling the other papist, the other part calling the other heretic’. Such name-calling was to stop, and to prevent further dispute none except curates, or licensed graduates of the Universities, were to expound scripture. Moreover, though lay people might continue to read the Bible, this was to be done, as Henry himself insisted, ‘quietly and with silence ... secretly’; there was to be no more of the ‘open’ reading ‘with any loud or high voices, and specially during the time of divine service or of celebration and saying of masses’. Instead, the people were ‘virtuously and devoutly to hear their divine services and masses’, and to use their time ‘in reading or praying with peace and silence, as good Christian men ought to do’.”
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 422

Besides the issue of accessibility of scripture, the lack of common vernacular in the Liturgy is often criticized.

“…the available models of prayer – supremely in the day-to-day liturgy of the parish churches, but also in monastic piety and the great literary models of devotion – were all in Latin. The highest form of prayer was uttered by the priest at the sacring, the moment of consecration at the Mass. It was part of the power of the words of consecration that they were hidden, too sacred to be communicated to the ‘lewed’, and this very element of mystery gave legitimacy to the sacred character of Latin itself, as higher and holier than the vernacular. Moreover, since the words of scripture and the liturgy came from God, they were held to convey power even to those who did not fully comprehend them.”
Duffy 217

The Attack on Traditional Religion

Zealous for truth, Lollards and reformers seemed to cause more chaos and dissent than reform with their anti-tradition attitudes.

“There was a snake in the grass of this traditionalist Eden [in Suffolk]. Robert Ward, an Essex man and former friar who had been in trouble in 1535 and the following year for his vehemence against ceremonies and superstition, had moved into Suffolk, and was a regular participant in services at Barking. He was something of a self-appointed watchdog against the ‘old ways’, and on 15 September, … 1538, he attended matins, sitting in choir next to the parish priest. When Adryan invoked the Virgin’s prayers, ‘Divina solatia impetret nobis Virgo Maria’, Ward said ‘with a submiss voice’, ‘That is naught.’ There was clearly a history of friction between the men, and Adryan, nettled, declared aloud that ‘I believe the Church better than you.’ Ward reminded him that it was ‘the Popish church’ which ‘did make and maintain that’, and bade Adryan ‘Say forth your matins and make no more din.’ But while Adryan was completing the service ‘with murmuring cheer’, Ward took the opportunity to scour through the missal to see if the Pope’s name had been duly scraped out [as was mandated at the time]. Evidently it had in most places, but he managed to find a rubric in the marriage service which referred to a matter debated ‘in Palatio Domini Papae’, and an undefaced collect headed ‘pro Papa’. Adryan, spotting what Ward was doing, provocatively emphasized those parts of matins which he thought Ward would find theologically offensive, pausing to ask each time ‘Is this naught also? Ye will say this is heresy.’ At the end of the service he confronted Ward with the missal, asking ‘Is there anything in that book which is naught?’ This interchange ended in violence with the two men wrestling for possession of the missal. One of the ‘great-men’, Nicholas Fowler, came up to Ward ‘with threatening words and great oaths’, saying ‘It were alms that thou were hanged and all such as thou art. Camest thou hither to control our priest?’ A headstrong man prone to violence, he had to be restrained by other parishioners from stabbing Ward, and Ward and some supporters left to avoid further violence. A group of parishioners went back to the parsonage with Adryan, where he held forth on the necessity of the intercession of saints.”
Duffy 416

King Edward VI, Henry VIII’s son, succeeded Henry at the age of 9. Though Henry was against the Papacy, he was attached to the traditional forms of Catholicism. But, upon his death, protestantism could run rampant via manipulation by the child-king’s council. The abandonment of the old rites had catastrophic effects on religion in the realm.

“At a more obvious level, the switch from Latin to English immediately rendered obsolete the entire musical repertoire of cathedral, chapel, and parish church. Not the least of the shocks brought by the prayer-book at Whitsun 1549 must have been the silencing of all but a handful of choirs and the reduction of the liturgy on one of the greatest festivals of the year to a monotone dialogue between curate and clerk.”
Duffy 465
“…this determination to stamp out immemorial devotional customs, even at the cost of preventing those who continued to use them from ‘taking their rights’ by excluding them from Communion, effectively a redefinition of the community of the parish to include only the reformed. We have a vivid contemporary account of the effect of just such attempted interference in one of the stories told by John Hooker about the Devon revolt. Sometime in Whit week 1549 Walter Ralegh (the father of the famous seaman) was riding to Exeter. Near the village of Clyst St Mary he overtook an old woman on her way to Mass; she was praying upon a pair of rosary beads in her hand. Ralegh, a staunch supporter of the Reformation, challenged the old woman, asking her what she meant by carrying such beads, ‘[saying further that there was a punishment by the law appointed against her & all such as would not obey & follow the same & which would be put in execution upon them.]’ The old woman hurried to the church, where the parishioners, already disgruntled by the imposition of the [reformed] 1549 prayer-book on the previous Sunday, were gathering for Mass,
[And being impatient & in an agony with the speeches before passed between her & the gentleman began to upbraid in the open Church very hard & unseemly speeches concerning religion, saying that she was threatened by the gentleman, that except she would leave her beads & give over holy bread & water the gentlemen would burn them out of their houses & spoil them.]
It is clear from the reference to holy bread and water that the altercation between the old woman and Ralegh had focused not on the book, but on the whole question of sacramentals. This, almost as much as the question of the Mass, was where the reform challenged lay religion. The enraged parishioners all but lynched Raleigh, a local mill was burned, and the rebellion escalated. The incident, not without elements of farce, was to end in black tragedy. When ultimately Lord Russell was despatched by Somerset to put down the rebellion, Clyst St Mary was the scene of a particularly bloody pitched battle, in which the local peasantry were ruthlessly butchered, along with all the prisoners captured by the royal forces then and previously. The village was put to the torch. Archbishop Cranmer’s dislike of rosary beads and holy water had cost the people of Clyst dear.”
Duffy 467

I am not trying to make this reformation seem like a perfectly clean cut controversy. From Duffy’s accounts above and elsewhere in his work, we see a priest attempting to stab a dissenter, the rioting of the traditional parishioners of Clyst, the burning of Lollards, etc. Neither side was a paragon of morality. But all of this really supports my thesis: denigration of the Holy Sacraments and rejection of hierarchy inevitably leads to chaos and division. I will elaborate on this later.

After the reign of Edward, Queen Mary I, attempted to recover Catholic tradition.

“Though the bibles … were collected up from the churches …, Bible-reading or the possessions of Bibles was never condemned by the regime. Protestant versions of the Bible were suspect, not English Bibles as such. [Cardinal Reginald] Pole, [the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury] … had a deep sense of the value of scriptural preaching and expounded the Bible daily to his own household. A new English translation of the New Testament was one of the projects agreed and begun at Pole’s legatine synod at the end of 1555. But he abhorred religious argument and the spirit of self-sufficiency which he believed indiscriminate Bible-reading by lay people was likely to encourage. Better for the people to absorb the faith through the liturgy, to find in attentive and receptive participation in the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church the grace and instruction on which to found the Christian life. This was the true Catholic way, the spirit of the parvuli, the ‘little ones’ of Christ, for whom penitence, not knowledge, was the true and only way to salvation. The object of preaching and teaching was not to impart knowledge, but to cause the people to lament their sins, seek the healing of the sacraments, and amend their lives.”
Duffy 530

The attempted restoration of Catholic Christianity under Queen Mary I makes apparent the persistence of the brain worm of Lollardy.

“Not that the Marian authorities were unaware of the need to teach the people once more to appreciate and value the ceremonies which had been proscribed by Cranmer and the Council under Edward. Behind the repudiation of ceremonial by the reformers lay a radically different conceptual world, a world in which text was everything, sign nothing. The sacramental universe of late medieval Catholicism was, from such a perspective, totally opaque, a bewildering and meaningless world of dumb objects and vapid gestures, hindering communication. That spirit of determined non-comprehension was very much in evidence in Marian England. It had been the lifeblood of Lollardy, and had been enormously encouraged by the spread of reformed teaching and practice. …
Accordingly, it was realized that any secure restoration of Catholicism must be based on a long-term process of catechesis which would enable lay people to understand and benefit from the ceremonies of the Church.”
Duffy 532
“We can only guess at the impact on their sense of the sacred when they saw their priest feed his swine from a trough which had once been the parish holy-water stoup, or heard Thomas Carter jingle about the parish with a bell on his horse's harness which had once summoned them to adoration at the sacring. Elsewhere holy-water stoups became the parish wash-troughs, sanctus and sacring bells were hung on sheep and cows, or used to call workmen to their dinner, pyxes were split open and turned into balances to weigh out coin or spice. The insistence of the authorities that all such sacred objects be defaced and ‘put to profane use’ represented a profound recognition of the desacralizing effect of such actions.”
Duffy 585

Over time, in Protestant churches, the altar was stripped and moved aside (or removed altogether) and the pulpit was brought front and center; The mystery of the Eucharist was replaced by a man and his exegetical prowess.

Walking into the sanctuary of my home church, you’ll see walls painted an agreeable beige, plain and bereft of any art or artisanry. A visitor once exclaimed, “your church is very… vanilla”. Above the recessed lights in suspended false ceilings, instead of the heavens in the vault above or Christ Pantokrator in the dome, the ceiling fades into the blackness of painted HVAC ducts and trusses to which the humming video projector is rigged. A stage occupies the front of the space, the stately pulpit prominent at its center. A solitary wooden cross hangs behind it. Under that and occluded by the pulpit, at the back of the stage, sits a sort of pseudo-altar, an accent table ornated with candles which are never lit, rustic figurines, and other faux-primitive ephemera.

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

Let us now examine how a post-reformation, Protestant nation grapples with issues of ethics, theology, society, and politics without hierarchy or tradition.

Some Protestant groups, desiring religious freedom, emigrated to America. Considering this concept of religious exodus and the revolution against the British Empire, it is not difficult to understand why America developed such a strong ethos of liberty, anti-institution, and individualism. Although this exodus narrative is not so neatly descriptive of the reality of America’s birth, it remains strong in the American Protestant consciousness.

The Civil War was a defining moment for American Protestantism; it was a crisis for a people who assumed the bible and the light of reason would illuminate the way to peace and prosperity. The two poles of ideological position, the north and south, would set themselves against each other over the issue of slavery and, eventually, resolve it via combat. Would this ordeal be the revelation of God’s will in the matter or of the debased nature of American Protestantism as a whole? In his work, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Mark A. Noll provides us with a survey of the era, comprehensively illustrating how American Protestant ideas work themselves out in history.

Historical Contexts

“The most important first step toward understanding the civil war as a theological event is to recognize how reasoning about the war reflected long standing habits of mind. For more than a century before 1860, American theologians had been uniting the historical Christian perspectives with specific aspects of American intellectual experience. The ubiquitous Christian reflection on the war followed trails blazed in the late eighteenth century and then set firmly in place by a confluence of intellectual forces during the early years of the Republic. A culturally powerful combination of intellectual ingredients gave American theologians their categories for apprehending sectional controversy and the war itself. For the most numerous and most public American religious groups, biblical Protestantism of a primarily evangelical cast provided the religious content of the synthesis. Despite tumultuous conflicts with each other, these Protestants shared a number of fundamental convictions that grew directly out of their American experience.
…the evangelical Protestantism that dominated public life at midcentury had gained its place because it successfully clothed the Christian faith in the preeminent ideological dress of the new Republic. In particular, it had vivified, ennobled, and lent transcendent value to republican political assumptions, democratic convictions about social organization, scientific reasoning pitched to common sense, and belief in the unique, providential destiny of the United States.
More particularly, America’s leading Protestant theologians first argued convincingly that the people of the United States stood in a covenantal relationship with God. For most of them, a vocabulary of corporate repentance and renewal, handed down from the Puritans, remained an appropriate vocabulary for addressing the American public about its privileges and duties before God.”
Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 17

The Crisis over the Bible

But America faced a theological crisis when the supposedly perspicuous scriptures were weaponized by the north and south for their opposing views on slavery.

“During the years of conflict, countless believers illustrated [their] convictions by assuming that moral or spiritual perception could be crystal clear and that the means of moral action lay entirely within the grasp of well-meaning individuals. Thus in 1860 the Kentucky Presbyterian Robert Breckinridge told readers how they could discover the essence of a Christian church: ‘If the world, and more especially the children of Christ, would follow simply and earnestly the light of reason … and the teachings of that divine word, which he has given to be a map unto our feet …, it is not easy to imagine how the least obscurity could hang over such a question.’ In 1861 the Brooklyn Presbyterian Henry Van Dyke expressed bewilderment when he pondered how abolitionists could read the Bible as they professed to read it: ‘When the Abolitionist tells me that slaveholding is sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy Scriptures, I point him to this sacred record, and tell him, in all candor, as my text does, that his teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine.’ That very year, however, the abolitionist Gerrit Smith thought it was just as uncomplicated to come to the opposite conclusion: ‘The religion taught by Jesus is not a letter but a life. So simple is it that the unlearned can both understand and teach it. … The true religion is too simple to make the training of a theological seminary necessary for those who teach it. We should allow the wisdom and goodness of God to assure us that the religion which He has given to the world must correspond in its simplicity with the simplicity of the masses.’”
Noll 19

Noll cites four distinct factors that make sense of how foreign, bible-believing communities came to different biblical interpretations. I’ve summarized them.

They were a- or antirepublican so they didn’t have the bias to make republican interpretations
They weren’t democratic and their scripture interpretation wasn’t either, rather corporate
There wasn’t some link between heterodox theology and antislavery
Different exegetical process; They didn’t see each and every verse to have some isolated meaning

“[Catholics] suggested that the Protestant embrace of unfettered economic freedom actually damaged Christianity. They asked whether American definitions of liberty were the only, or the best, formulations for modern societies. And as a special contribution to debates over Scripture and slavery, they dared to wonder whether Protestant American individualism might not account for the sad fact of confusion in the interpretation of sacred writings. On this last sensitive matter, some Catholics even expressed the bold opinion that the vaunted Protestant attachment to Scripture as final religious authority may have undercut the power of the Bible rather than unleashed it.”
Noll 125

The Crisis over Providence

This whole controversy was cause for doubt not only in hermeneutics, but the very providence of God.

“After Lincoln, American thinkers were increasingly divided between those who, on the one side, continued to trust in providence and who knew very well what God was doing in the world, and those, on the other, who gave up on providence and embraced agnosticism about the ultimate meaning of the world. …
The difficulty was not trust in providence as such but trust in providence so narrowly defined by the republican, covenantal, commonsensical, Enlightenment, and – above all – nationalistic categories that Protestant evangelicals had so boldly appropriated with such galvanizing effects in the early decades of the nineteenth century.”
Noll 94
“The issue for American history was that only two courses of action seemed open when confronting such a deadlock. The first was the course taken in the Civil War, which effectively handed the business of the theologians over to the generals to devise by ordeal what the Bible meant. … The second course, though never self-consciously adopted by all Americans in all circumstances, has been followed since the Civil War. That course is an implicit national agreement not to base the public policy of any consequence on interpretations of Scripture.”

Noll 160

My home church still sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Here is the first verse.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

The End of Protestantism

Mormonism, to me, is the sign that Protestantism has reached its end– the farce has run its course. It’s implicit in the Protestant mindset that the several centuries of Christianity after the first are a blur. But the Mormons explicitly erase them. They profess mass apostasy from very early on; even the Nicene creed and the doctrine of the Trinity are rejected. Noll cites archbishop Karl August von Reisach’s commentary on the rise of Mormonism.

“With so complete a separation of church and state, ‘the individual [was] independent and sovereign,’ but with fateful consequences. Reisach then spelled out the theological reasons for what the [Historical and Political Newspaper for Catholic Germany] would later criticize as American materialistic greed: ‘The sectarian spirit, with its dualism [between personal and the social] has given an immense boost to materialism in the new United States; this religious individualism also produces the general egotism that characterizes the society of that country and testifies clearly that these people lacked any social tradition and that they had not been educated in a religious community chosen and founded by God.’ In short, the sectarian spirit produced not only bad religion but also a corrupt society.
But precisely this sectarian spirit explained the rise of Mormonism. To prove his point, Reisach quoted a Mormon leader, Parley Pratt, who had argued that the mere presence of many American denominations made it impossible to receive a clear and authoritative word from Scripture: ‘Thus the usefulness of the Bible is made the most uncertain of all books. It would have been better for people if God had revealed nothing than to have revealed a book which leaves them uncertain and dubious and that forces them to dispute continually over the significance of what is contained in it.’ For Cardinal Reisach, Parley Pratt was making exactly his point: ‘So the Mormon doctor, with consummate reason, refutes the Protestant system.’ In other words, the rise of Mormonism underscored the disaster of Protestant fragmentation and pointed toward the abiding human need for religious authority, stability, and community.
Of course, to the Catholic cardinal Mormonism was not the answer but only an advanced sign of the problem. The absurdity of Mormonism was shown by its reliance on continuing fresh revelations: ‘the most impudent fables’ spun out by Joseph Smith ‘totally destroy the foundations of Christ.’ By contrast, the Catholic Church ‘conserves, unfolds, applies, and promulgates – under the continual assistance of the Holy Spirit promised to the church until the end of time – the revelation that God, ‘speaking to our fathers through the prophets, now in these last days has spoken to us by his Son’ [Hebrews 1:1-2 quoted from the Latin Vulgate]. He has given [this revelation] to the world as a precious deposit and is present at all times.’
Reisach interpreted the prophetic principle of Mormonism as a corrective intended to counter the fragmenting force of Protestant individualism, but also as creating ‘a perfect social theocracy’ based on ‘a pure religion of materialism.’ Mormonism for this conservative Catholic, was thus a perfect case study to show how wrong the history of Protestantism in America had gone. As an outgrowth of Protestant principles, it represented a very late manifestation of Protestantism’s fatal weakness; as an outgrowth of American political liberalism, it embraced a religion of materialism; as an outgrowth of Joseph Smith’s heated fancy, it was a perverted reflection of the Catholic Church as guardian of divine revelation. In sum, by trying to correct American and Protestant problems, but by doing so the wrong way, Mormonism ‘produced the monstrous socialistic theocracy of the most shameful materialism [la mostruosa teocrazia socialistica del più vergognoso materialismo].’”
Noll 151

A Pope’s Entreaty

As we see in Noll’s work, the Catholic Church was very much aware of the development of Protestantism in America and was not indifferent. The following is a letter from Pope Pius IX at the convocation of the First Vatican Council (1868) which addressed the rising influence of modern philosophical trends and condemned the errors of rationalism, anarchism, communism, socialism, liberalism, materialism, modernism, naturalism, pantheism, and secularism. Some of you know that I am Greek (Eastern) Orthodox. We have our own problems with the Papacy, most of which Protestants share. But the departure from rite, sacrament, and apostolic tradition altogether is of another order than a schism between bishops.

TO ALL PROTESTANTS AND OTHER NON-CATHOLICS
Pius IX, Pope
You all know already that We, having been raised, notwithstanding Our unworthiness, to this Chair of Peter, and therefore invested with the supreme government and guardianship of the whole Catholic Church, divinely entrusted to Us by Christ our Lord, have judged it seasonable to call to Us Our Venerable Brethren, the Bishops of the whole earth, and to unite them together, to celebrate, next year, an Ecumenical Council; so that, in concert with these Our Venerable Brethren who are called to share in Our cares, We may take those steps which may be most opportune and necessary, both to disperse the darkness of the many noxious errors which everywhere increasingly prevail, to the great loss of souls ; and also to establish and confirm daily more and more among the Christian people entrusted to Our watchfulness the Kingdom of true Faith, Justice, and the Peace of God. Confidently relying on the close ties and most loving union which in so marked a way unite to Ourselves and to this Holy See these Our Venerable Brethren, who, through all the time of Our Supreme Pontificate, have never failed to give to Ourselves and this Holy See the clearest tokens of their love and veneration; We have the firm hope that this Ecumenical Council, summoned by Us at this time, will produce, by the inspirations of Divine Grace, as other General Councils in past ages have done, abundant fruits of benediction, to the greater glory of God, and the eternal salvation of men.
Sustained by this hope, and roused and urged by the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave his life for the whole human race, We cannot refrain Ourselves, on the occasion of the future Council, from addressing Our Apostolic and paternal words to all those who, whilst they acknowledge the same Jesus Christ as the Redeemer, and glory in the name of Christian, yet do not profess the true faith of Christ, nor hold to and follow the Communion of the Catholic Church. And We do this to warn, and conjure, and beseech them with all the warmth of Our zeal, and in all charity, to consider and seriously examine whether they follow the path marked out for them by Jesus Christ our Lord, and which leads to Eternal Salvation. No one can deny or doubt that Jesus Christ himself, in order to apply the fruits of his redemption to all generations of men, built his only Church in this world on Peter; that is to say, the Church, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic; and that he gave to it all necessary power, that the deposit of Faith might be preserved whole and inviolable, and that the same Faith might be taught to all peoples, kindreds, and nations, that through baptism all men might become members of his mystical body, and that the new life of grace, without which no one can ever merit and attain to life eternal, might always be preserved and perfected in them; and that this same Church, which is his mystical body, might always remain in its own nature firm and immovable to the end of time, that it might flourish, and supply to all its children all the means of Salvation.
Now, whoever will carefully examine and reflect upon the condition of the various religious societies, divided among themselves, and separated from the Catholic Church, which, from the days of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles has never ceased to exercise, by its lawful pastors, and still continues to exercise, the divine power committed to it by this same Lord; cannot fail to satisfy himself that neither any one of these societies by itself, nor all of them together, can in any manner constitute and be that One Catholic Church which Christ our Lord built, and established, and willed should continue; and that they cannot in any way be said to be branches or parts of that Church, since they are visibly cut off from Catholic unity. For, whereas such societies are destitute of that living authority established by God, which especially teaches men what is of Faith, and what the rule of morals, and directs and guides them in all those things which pertain to eternal salvation, so they have continually varied in their doctrines, and this change and variation is ceaselessly going on among them. Every one must perfectly understand, and clearly and evidently see, that such a state of things is directly opposed to the nature of the Church instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ; for in that Church truth must always continue firm and ever inaccessible to all change, as a deposit given to that Church to be guarded in its integrity, for the guardianship of which the presence and aid of the Holy Ghost have been promised to the Church for ever. No one, moreover, can be ignorant that from these discordant doctrines and opinions social schisms have arisen, and that these again have given birth to sects and communions without number, which spread themselves continually, to the increasing injury of Christian and civil society.
Indeed, whoever recognizes religion as the foundation of human society cannot but perceive and acknowledge what disastrous effect this division of principles, this opposition, this strife of religious sects among themselves, has had upon civil society, and how powerfully this denial of the authority established by God, to determine the belief of the human mind, and to direct the actions of men as well in private as in social life, has excited, spread, and fostered those deplorable upheavals, those commotions by which almost all peoples are grievously disturbed and afflicted.
Wherefore, let all those who do not hold to the unity and truth of the Catholic Church avail themselves of the opportunity of this Council, whereby the Catholic Church, of which their forefathers were members, displays a fresh proof of her perfect unity and her unconquerable vitality; and let them, in obedience to the longings of their own hearts, be in haste to rescue themselves from a state in which they cannot be assured of their own salvation. And let them not cease to offer most fervent prayers to the God of Mercy, that he may break down the wall of separation, that he may scatter the mists of error, and that he may lead them back to the bosom of Holy Mother Church, where their fathers found the wholesome pastures of life, and in which alone the doctrine of Jesus Christ is preserved and handed down entire, and the mysteries of heavenly grace dispensed.
As for Us, seeing that We ought, in accordance with the duty of Our supreme Apostolic Ministry entrusted to Us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, to fulfill with most fervent zeal all the offices of a good Shepherd, and with paternal love to follow and embrace all men throughout all the world — We therefore address this Our Letter to all Christians separated from Us, wherein We exhort and entreat them, again and again, to hasten their return to the One Fold of Christ; for with Our whole soul We ardently desire their salvation in Jesus Christ, and We fear lest We may one day have to render an account to the same Lord, who is Our Judge, if We do not, so far as is in Our power, show them, and prepare for them the way to attain to this eternal salvation. Truly, in every prayer of Ours, beseeching and giving thanks, We cease not, day and night, to entreat humbly and earnestly for them, from the Eternal Pastor of souls, the abundance of light and heavenly grace.
And since, notwithstanding Our unworthiness, We are his Vicar here upon earth, We therefore wait, with outstretched hands, and with most ardent desire, the return of Our wandering children to the Catholic Church, that We may most lovingly welcome them to the home of their Heavenly Father, and enrich them with his inexhaustible treasures. Upon this longed-for return to the truth and unity of the Catholic Church depends the salvation not only of individuals, but also of all Christian society; and never can the whole world enjoy true peace, unless there shall be one Fold and one Shepherd.
(Given at Rome, in St. Peter’s, on September 13th, 1868)
Source

Athanasii Kircheri, The tower of Babel (1679)

Babel: The Schema of Protestant Fracture

A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

Psalm 127:1 RSV

How does a Christian community govern itself without hierarchy? How does it determine what is right teaching without tradition? What is its identity if not Catholic? How do you determine who is part of the community– by sacraments, a single profession of belief, ascent to the pastors' teaching? Where does this teaching come from? If not from tradition, it emanates from within, an enlightenment proclivity, resembling Lucifer’s rebellion: setting oneself outside, over, and against the hierarchy, pretending your luminance is self-existing, self-reliant: “my interpretation is preeminent, my epistemological framework is infallible, and I can grasp reality with my intellect”. A contemporary scholar coined the term, “luciferian rationalism”, to describe this mindset.

This archetype can be thought of in terms of neuroscience. The left brain is logical. It imposes order on the world in front of it. It says, “If it’s not on my map, it doesn’t exist”. This is deconstructionism, a privileging of epistemologies. The right brain is perceptive. It has the ability to “look up”. The left must submit itself to the right– to attention– or it becomes a tyrant to its host and to all that it perceives.

The black and white dichotomies of Protestant theology are not just rigid or nuance-less, they are stripped down, bare, fleshless, a skeleton of what was once orthodoxy. This is not distinct from the removal of rite, sacrament, and tradition; they are of the same error: a failure to understand that Theophany (beauty) precipitates Tradition (goodness) and, subsequently, dogma (truth) and an attempt to contain the divine with a rationalistic, reductive (Truth-first) approach. The rationalist fears anything not scientific or mathematical. When you divorce truth from beauty, when you tear ineffable mystery from its nest of sanctity, you make it something you can grasp and control, something to which you can ascend with your own intellectual volition. It all comes down to grasping for certainty amidst mystery.

“Rationalist approaches … tempt us because they promise easy understanding (truth) and effective action (utility, or goodness). In practice, however, they so often lead to tragic confusion and wasted effort. Indeed, reductionist methods applied to any living system may be examples of man’s perennial attempt to live away from God, for they are often the attempt to substitute sure though partial knowledge for a living relationship. Such an attempt is the repetition of the primordial error of Adam and Eve.”
Patitsas vii

If a structure is unified around a flawed purpose, if it is not oriented properly, it will fall. The Tower of Babel is an image of this concept. Its builders were not unified by the highest principle, God. Therefore, as they amassed more people, more “body”, their purpose was confused and their identity crumbled. Early in the reformation project, the identity of the communities were fairly cohesive (i.e. Lutheran). But as the new system attempted to comprehensively incorporate more people, the more its internal diversity grew. Unable to reconcile the competing “language”, it disperses into chaos, and the project has failed. Despite their attempt to reconstitute the Christian faith, they are unable to maintain a cohesive identity. The pattern repeats fractally over time until Protestantism resembles a sprawling landscape of secluded suburbs. Really, the most generous critique of Protestantism we can give is that its fruit is incredible fragmentation and division, of which the Apostle Paul gravely warned.

Post-Protestantism: The Black, the White, and the Ugly

Today, non-denominational congregations outnumber denominational congregations and, practically, all flavors of Protestantism disagree on some things.

Some of them call the others, “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. One of said wolves to some in my home church was a well-known figure from a charismatic church. Being a skeptic, I began to consume his content. I found this man to be genuine, a diligent student of scripture, and well-meaning. This was one of the watershed moments when I realized that many of the so-called, “wolves”, are actually people like you and me, just doing their best to live faithfully. And “false teacher” is a pseudonym for anyone who doesn’t exegete exactly as we do. This is precisely the sort of observation that should make every Protestant question their belief system; Among all of these “christianities”, are your beliefs correct? You can say “Sola Scriptura” and “the bible says it” all you want, holding tight to your particular flavor of conflicting “theologies” as gospel truth, and yet there will be others that say the same but disagree with you on significant points. This is the dilemma of conservative Protestant Christianity.

Others pretend that we all believe basically the same thing, claiming the common denominator of Christian belief (notwithstanding sects like Mormonism which reject the Trinity or Nicene Creed) is the “essential” faith. I’m afraid this is what C.S. Lewis calls watered-down Christianity.

Both extremes are adolescent and, despite the conservative’s abhorrence for liberalism, it is precisely his Enlightenment rationalism that provokes this relativism.

Community: You’re either with us…

Christian community is no longer about union in the body of Christ through the sacraments, but whether you think the same way we do, whether you align with our particular statements of faith, generated within the confines of our own epistemological silo. The body of Christ is now a body of believers, of individuals. In some of these communities, once you start looking into other sources of theological discourse, you're at least suspect and maybe even not a “believer”.

Salvation: Are you saved?

Watching old films in my great grandma’s living room is one of my cherished memories. In The Little Colonel (1935), there is a dialogue between Shirley Temple’s character, Lloyd, and her caretakers.

“Mom’ Beck, why do they dunk the women in the river that way?”
“That's to save their souls and wash their sins away.”
“Will it wash my sins away?”
“Well, honey, you ain't got no sins. You’s a little angel!”
“Well, would it wash my sins away if I had any?”
“Yes, honey, if you carried the right thought and believed it would.”

Later, young Lloyd is found baptizing her friend.

“Now, Henry Clay, are you all ready?
Have you got the right thoughts?
Do you believe that it'll wash your sins away?”
“Uh-huh”
“All right then. Come on.
One, two, three.
Hallelujah
Are you saved?”
*shakes head no*
“Well, we'll have to do it again.
One, two, three.
Hallelujah
Are you saved?”
“Uh-huh”

Captured in this cute, satirical scene is a portrayal of the anxiety to “get saved” and the self-sufficiency in the decision to do so, reflecting the zeitgeist of the last couple centuries of American spirituality– a spirit of revival.

“While still a Roman Catholic priest, [Martin Luther] felt a growing anxiety around the idea that he might not be saved. Any theological system or ethical practice of which he knew seemed to leave a debilitating doubt on this point. Finally, he resolved to vanquish all such ‘thoughts’ through reliance on ‘faith.’ In other words, Martin Luther built his theology and later his church around his personal necessity to conquer a particular [idea] about his own salvation. And this is why mission work in the churches Luther fathered often begins by trying to inculcate a similar [idea] in the would-be convert – a similar anxiety about one’s eternal salvation. The American Evangelical solution to the spiritual life presupposes a particular Lutheran problem – the problem of deep emotional agitation about one’s eternal fate.”
Patitsas 274

There is an irony in this blend of intellectual ascent with belief in the efficacy of the sacrament of baptism. The acceptance of the “forms” handed down to us (e.g. water baptism) hangs by a thread as radical individualism attempts to stir up a new spirit to supplant the forms of sacred tradition.

In my home church community, baptism is generally performed upon public testimony of faith which happens whenever the person feels convicted to do so. I was already in my 20’s when I began to consider getting baptized. It seemed odd to me; I had been thoroughly taught in the faith and had already accepted its propositions and was attempting to “live them out”. I vocalized my confusion, “I don’t understand why I have to perform this ritual to be saved” (it contradicted the intellectualism of the community), to which was responded with, “it’s not a ritual”. I replied, “It is a ritual and I don’t even mean that in a pejorative sense”. You see, Protestantism today has convinced itself that we can have meaning without ritual; that we are just, as James K.A. Smith says, “brains on a stick”– autonomous, rational beings detached from the material and that God declares us arbitrarily saved upon our mouthing of some words. “Ritual” has become a dirty word. I really pressed my mentor over my confusion which he appreciated and graciously indulged. “Am I really not saved if I don’t do this?”, I asked. He couldn’t bring himself to give me a definitive answer but only said that this was a serious command from Jesus and it was just assumed to be performed for all believers. So, the meaning and significance of the forms has been smeared into gray, vagueness and the mystery of salvation reduced to a moment of individual, intellectual ascent and the rest of life and repentance to trite moralism.

The Calvinist says you are either predestined or you are not, and only God knows and determines that. For those who don’t have the gall to hold to this black and white, fatalistic view or who realize there is not enough mercy in it, the watered-down solution is to say, “If you're asking the question, if you’re worried about whether you are saved, then you are. So, don’t worry about it.”

As for evangelism, this anxiety about salvation manifests as a sort of spiritual colonialism: We simply need to convince others of the same “truths”.

Scripture: Bible Church

Now, without accepting the orthodoxy of tradition, relying only on the bible as the only “authority” necessitates a simplistic approach to scripture where the meaning of the text must be just as clear as black from white on the page and, at times, just as dull. The biblical corpus becomes part history textbook, part rule book. Whereas the theophanies (Beauty) of Christ to the apostles precipitated the church and tradition (Goodness) and, consequently, these scriptures (Truth), Protestants attempt to work their way backwards (Truth, Goodness, Beauty) and contain the uncontainable God with their own theological machinations based on their interpretations of the text.

“One of the mistakes of our using the truth-first approach is that this approach belongs properly to Christ. He is the Logos, the Truth, who consents to the Goodness of self-emptying, and thus shines out radiantly as Beauty. For him, the progression is Truth-Goodness-Beauty.”
Patitsas 461

This history-textbook-reading is why we see the literal interpretation of the creation narratives of Genesis defended as if their faith depends on it– crumbles altogether without it. The Gospels lose their primacy among all sacred scripture. In yet another way the attention is shifted away from the Resurrection which, in fact, is a light that shines backward, illuminating these Old Testament texts, these shadows of the ultimate revelation to come. See, the landscape of scripture is flattened into an ocean of equal bits (verses and passages) which must be reconciled into a monstrous web (systematic theology) that attempts to account for every data point but inevitably fails to do so.

Among the many theologians of the Orthodox Church, ONLY THREE have been given the official appellation, Theologian: Saints John the Theologian, Gregory the Theologian, and Symeon the New Theologian. Now, everyone with a bible in hand can be a theologian– everyone their own bishop. It’s like that quote attributed to Martin Luther himself, “I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.”

As for the liberal end of the protestant spectrum, some run wild with the idea of scripture’s multi-dimensionality of meaning. At a charismatic Christian conference on healing that I attended, I think I heard more different translations of the bible referenced than I had ever heard of in my whole life prior to that point. Translators take matters into their own hands to bring out the “wealth of meaning” in the text. But there is no translation without interpretation. And these translators, in effect, make the text say whatever their bias informs. They go beyond what might be called “dynamic equivalence” in versions such as “The Passion Translation” which outright expounds the original text and presents it as God’s word. So, these translations can be cherry-picked and wielded to support whatever agenda the speaker may have.

Telos: I’ll Fly Away

Oh, glory.

The dualism resulting from the pitting of the symbolic against the real as we discussed with respect to the Eucharist has far-reaching consequences. The eternal life that Christ offers is traded for a sort of Christian escapism. We see this in the uniquely Protestant teachings about the rapture and the obsession over when that will happen with respect to the eschaton– oh, goodness, that’s a whole conversation in itself. Now, material is bad or, at best, neutral, inert and spiritual or ethereal is good which is really just a kind of materialism. Salvation is less about transformation or renewal of the soul, but whether I will go to heaven or hell when I die. There is provision for transformation within the concept of sanctification (now delineated from salvation whereas it was not before) but it is more like evidence of God’s “irresistible grace” than a process in which your will actually participates. Within this dualistic soteriology, sins don’t damage the soul because inasmuch as they are done against God they are arbitrarily forgiven and because inasmuch as they are done in the flesh they are irrelevant because material is supposedly unrelated to the spiritual. Therefore, all sins are also supposedly equal.

There was recently a funeral at my home church for a boy who struggled with severe disabilities his whole life. An elder of the church who had dedicated much love and service to this boy and his family was sharing some words. “Innocent, I believe he had a pure heart standing before God. Don’t ask me chapter and verse on that; It’s just simply a personal conviction”. Indeed, the purity of this boy was apparent to his loved ones. But this intuition can’t be substantiated by a fleshless, Protestant systematic theology. The disclaimer is a perfect portrayal of how a “biblical” theology derived from truth-first methods completely melts in the face of the glorious life and precious death of a saint, in the face of beauty– how a skeletal theology crumbles under the weight of Glory. Earlier, the boy’s sister had shared that, despite her reluctance, she kept feeling prompted to say some words at the funeral. She concluded that it was her brother asking her to come and say what he never could, to thank his parents for everything they did for him. Protestants deny the intercession and, really, the communion of the saints but no one at this funeral with a milligram of empathy could deny that in this case and I doubt anyone did.

Footprints in the Sand and The Big Man Upstairs

The hierarchy of the Kingdom of Heaven and of the Church in contemporary American Christianity has been hollowed out, rid of intermediaries, reflecting American individualism, dualism, and modernism.

“Why would I ask the saints for intercession when I can just pray directly to God who alone answers prayer?”

“God forgives me. I don’t need a priest to hear my confession and guide me through repentance.”

“The Master, the Lord, Jesus Christ, he’s my buddy. He condescends to me. I don’t need to be ascetic.”

The “Our Father” is replaced with “You’re a good, good Father … and I’m loved by you, it’s who I am”

The corporate, familial dimension of the Liturgy is all but lost; Faith is all about “my walk with God”.

“I don’t need ritual; I can grab my plastic communion cup on the way into the sanctuary.”

“It’s just me and my bible in my favorite chair with a cup of coffee, revelating the divine mysteries of God.”

Clearly, the Protestant theological self-sufficiency is reflected in its spirituality.

There are no degrees of sanctity. The Mother of God and all the Saints are people just like you and me. There is no honor for these Champions of the faith but there is fanaticism for the reformers. Therefore, veneration of the Saints seems like idolatry to the Protestant. The “ladder of divine ascent” is without rungs; there is only Holy God above and totally-depraved human below who waits to be apparated into the by and by.

Worship

The Liturgy was designed around and culminates in the Eucharist. Now, there is neither Liturgy, nor Eucharist. “Communion” is observed something like once or twice a year. What was the liturgy of the word composed of the reading and veneration of scripture is now a 40-minute bullet-pointed exegetical opinion piece or a spiritual motivational speech. Either way, novelty is key to keep your congregants buying your product. Besides the more traditional protestant communities, the hymnography has been traded for sensational rock-concert-esque worship bands. The music itself has become indistinguishable from the popular or secular: “an industrial rattle combined with rhythmic intensification … elevated acoustically to insupportable levels … stimulating and anesthetizing the listener’s nerves and … dulling his higher faculties”, as Tage Lindbom describes it. At the extreme end of this faith-without-boundaries continuum are the “holy rollers”, the rampant babble of crowds “speaking in tongues”, and services evolving into a parade of individuals giving “prophetic words”, fresh revelations directly from God to them.

All sign and ritual are regarded as superstition, leaving the worship bereft of the formative power of procedural memory. Pure intellectualism smashes the “idol” of sacred image, leaving the worship space brutally sterile. Of Catholics, reformed protestants say, “They left Christ on the cross”, as if they are being clever in making a metaphor between the crucifix and their flawed understanding of Christ’s self-offering.

Beauty Will Save The World

My journey was always motivated by a search for Truth. The uniqueness of an Anglican church in America lent to the community being composed of members similarly veracious– many of them were on the same journey. In this environment, I found others, both clergy and laity, whom I could ask the “dangerous” questions, who held space for nuance and differing perspectives. It was here that I grasped the importance of tradition. It’s not empty ritual or repressive restraint. It is the organic structure by which teaching and practice are transmitted. It is the way in which the church lives and lives on.

I first observed a liturgical Holy Week in the Anglican tradition. Not having experienced this before, I didn’t know what to expect. The following is some of the liturgy on Maundy Thursday according to The Book of Common Prayer (2019).

✤✤✤

This liturgy is celebrated in the evening. A silent procession may replace the processional hymn.

Celebrant Blessed be our God.

People Now and for ever. Amen.

This is the night that Christ our God gave up this holy feast, that we who eat this bread and drink this cup may here proclaim his perfect sacrifice.

THE COLLECT

Celebrant The Lord be with you.

People And with your spirit.

Almighty Father, whose most dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it in thankful remembrance of Jesus Christ our Savior, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

THE LESSONS

…

I CORINTHIANS 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

…

LUKE 22:14-30

And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, "Take this, and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And likewise the cup after supper, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But behold the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of man goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!" And they began to question one another, which of them it was that would do this. A dispute also arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves. "You are those who have continued with me in my trials; and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

…

The liturgy continued as normal. But, at its completion, a ceremony called, “The Stripping of the Altar”, was observed in silence. The altar and sanctuary were stripped of all linens, ornaments, candles, etc. The crucifix at the front of the sanctuary was veiled. The “eternal flame”, a candle behind the altar which signifies the presence of God in the consecrated host and is otherwise never extinguished, is snuffed.

The table of the new covenant was bare. Our savior, the bread of life, was taken from us. And I wept.

The final blessing and dismissal are omitted. The Congregation departs in silence.

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Let me at once dispel the conception of the aesthetic sense or a Beauty-first approach as frivolous or sensual. It is the beauty of the Resurrection that is the beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel. It is the beauty in a person that makes us come alive when we fall in love as if we had not until that moment really existed. It is the beauty of a holy person’s countenance that reveals to us our impurity in the best of ways. And it is the ineffable Beauty of every theophany we experience, every moment we sense God's presence, that calls goodness out of us, reveals the goodness in others and in the world to us, and is the force which transforms us into our "true self" which is a life wholly rooted in Christ the Logos, in union with him, and in reflection of his image who is the image of the immortal and invisible heavenly Father.

Earlier, I postulated that the debate in the West over the Eucharist and the eventual denial of that mystery was the cause of the unraveling of Christian unity and the precedent for the loss of an ancient Christian ontology. Doesn’t this actually harmonize with another issue, a heresy cited earlier? Iconoclasm was a sort of precursor to this denigration of the Eucharist. What is the difference between an Iconoclast and an Iconophile? Why do the former see icons as idolatry and not the latter? Saint John of Damascus (8th century), the primary defender against iconoclasm in the Orthodox Church said the following regarding the veneration of icons.

“...since the law is a forerunner of images, how can we say that it forbids images? Should the law ban us from making images, when the tabernacle itself was a depiction, a foreshadowing? No. There is a time for everything. [Eccl. 3.1] In the old days, the incorporeal and infinite God was never depicted. Now, however, when God has been seen clothed in flesh, and talking with mortals, [Baruch 3.37] I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation.”
Source

At the core of iconoclasm and of all of the decadence about which I have here been perseverating is a misunderstanding of the mystery of the incarnation which is, in fact, the glorious evidence that earth’s “iconicity” of heaven is not as “mere symbol” but real union of creature with creator, real participation of earthly substance in heavenly realities. I remember during a summer internship while I was at University, I would regularly listen to sermons by John Piper, a reformed pastor. I remember him once talking about the Nativity of Christ and how it is NOT “Joy to the World” but rather bad news for a sinful people upon the advent of a domineering messiah. Oh, the irony.

“It is the ultimate irony that the Reformers were all such terrible iconoclasts, that the Reformation leads to the greatest destruction of art in European history, and that the Reformation has now morphed into this destruction of the body, of gender, and of marriage– when all along it was the very lack of a Beauty-first approach, of the remembrance that the world and the Church were icons, that had caused their crisis to begin with!”
Patitsas 143

The true Christian worldview is not a dualist one in which, some day, “I’ll fly away” from this earth to a disembodied, disconnected, heavenly realm. No! Christ has united heaven and earth, God and Mankind, by his incarnation. He has come to restore his defaced icons. He has come to resurrect the dead. I have even heard it said that all Orthodox Theology lives and dies in St Athanasius’s work, On The Incarnation.

Thus, upon addressing the issue of iconoclasm by Ecumenical Council in 787, the Church proclaimed the following.

As the prophets beheld, as the apostles have taught, as the Church has received, as the teachers have declared, as the world has agreed, as grace has shown forth, as truth has been revealed, as falsehood has been dispelled, as wisdom has become manifest, as Christ awarded; Thus we declare; thus we affirm; thus we proclaim Christ our true God, and honor His saints in words, writings, thoughts, sacrifices, churches and holy icons; on the one hand worshiping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord, and on the other, honoring the saints as true servants of the same Lord of all, and offering them proper veneration.
This is the faith of the apostles. This is the faith of the fathers. This is the faith of the Orthodox. This is the faith on which the world is established.
Therefore with fraternal and filial love we praise the heralds of the faith, those who with glory and honor have struggled for the faith, and we say: to the champions of Orthodoxy, faithful emperors, most-holy patriarchs, hierarchs, teachers, martyrs and confessors: May your memory be eternal!
(Synodikon of the 7th Ecumenical Council)

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From the hub of Anglicanism, I explored historical Christianity. I’ve spent many weeks with the monks of a nearby Roman Catholic monastery, practicing their Benedictine prayer rule, sitting under their teachings, and attending Mass. I would use these times of silence and solitude for reading books about the faith and, generally, for contemplation. I came to see my situation as a forking path between East and West, Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. A third option was to abide in the via media, the middle way of Anglicanism. It’s a strange thing to have to retrace these lineages of faith. For most of Church history, this was either not a necessity for lack of schisms or not a known option for lack of accessibility. For the average believer for most of history, this has been above their pay grade, the business of bishops. For that, I hope that God extends mercy to the spiritual children of those in error. But, for a couple reasons, this notion is irrelevant to me. First, the trajectory of this notion is nihilism, an ocean of meaninglessness which our array of “christianities” in America unfortunately resembles. Second, I have ventured into this mess of history and must hold myself accountable to the resulting convictions. There are no words that could encompass the entirety of my conversion or anyone else's and this is something we must ultimately respect about each other. But there was a moment of clarity when I was on one of my monastic retreats reading a catechism outline by Heiromonk Gregorios called The Orthodox Faith, Worship, and Life. It felt like I was reading a love story. I knew it was time to commit to what I had really known I was being drawn to for quite some time. It started as an insatiable hunger for knowledge and search for the Truth. Over the course of my journey, I thought that the Truth would be like an object with a particular shape and set of parameters. But when I found it and touched it, I felt that it was alive! The Truth is Beautiful! After months of catechism and participation in the liturgical cycles, I was Chrismated as Christopher and entered the Greek Orthodox Church on Holy Saturday, May 4, 2024. All Glory to God.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Matthew 13:44-46 RSV

The Kouvouklion at All Saints in Peoria, IL
Great and Holy Friday, 2024

Afterword: To the Exiles

To the nihilists, the agnostics, the “none”s of religious surveys, particularly to those whom American Protestant Christianity has disappointed,

I am truly sorry. Whether staunchly conservative or contemporary liberal, American Christianity has not satisfied you. And neither your demand for satisfactory religion nor your judgement in their sufficiency are at fault. It is the fault of the deeply flawed religion you inherited. Not that I am ungrateful for my upbringing. I am thankful for my Christian heritage. But I maintain that Protestantism is not the fullness of the faith and, therefore, could not possibly satisfy the soul whose thirst for meaning goes deeper than the local well– whose domain of inquiry exceeds the city limits.

I am sorely burdened with the weight of nihilism on this young generation. In my deconstruction phase, I was quite cynical; I had more questions than answers and felt a constant awareness of the dissonance between my worldview and that of those around me. So, I understand the weight and the alienation.

All I want to say is this: Don’t give up on Truth. I don’t mean, “don’t rule out the Christian Gospel as the truth”. I mean, aim up (pay attention) and tell the truth (be genuine). I mean, consider yourself an investigator of truth. I know it is, at times, tedious. But, through perseverance, you will discover meaning like a diamond in the rough or a treasure in a field. Think of it as an adventure, the pursuit of Σοφία.

Wisdom of Solomon 7:7-14 RSV

Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me;

I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.

I preferred her to scepters and thrones,

and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her.

Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem,

because all gold is but a little sand in her sight,

and silver will be accounted as clay before her.

I loved her more than health and beauty,

and I chose to have her rather than light,

because her radiance never ceases.

All good things came to me along with her,

and in her hands uncounted wealth.

I rejoiced in them all, because wisdom leads them;

but I did not know that she was their mother.

I learned without guile and I impart without grudging;

I do not hide her wealth,

for it is an unfailing treasure for men;

those who get it obtain friendship with God,

commended for the gifts that come from instruction.

American Protestantism: Christianity in Black and White

Schism