MORTAL FOLLIES
Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity

By William Murchison
(Encounter Books, hardcover, 208 pp, $25.95)

Reviewed By Auburn Faber Traycik
Mandate - Sept/Oct 2009 Issue



FOR ALL ITS IGNORANCE ABOUT (not to mention contempt toward) Christianity in America, even Hollywood sometimes gets it right. The 1996 movie Mighty Aphrodite includes a scene in which the somewhat ditsy character Linda Ash (Mira Sorvino) asks the lead figure, Lenny (Woody Allen), if he works out at a gym. “Not religiously,” Lenny replies. “Oh,” says Ash, “I’m not religious either...my folks were Episcopalians.”

Of course, it is “not that the dignified and rarefied old Episcopal Church (TEC) quit believing in God,” says the book jacket of the recently-published Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity, penned by William Murchison, a nationally syndicated columnist and longtime commentator on Episcopal affairs. “It’s that the God you increasingly hear spoken of in Episcopal circles is infinitely tolerant and given to sudden changes of mind – not quite the divinity you thought you were reading about in the scriptures.” In th e last 40 years, God seems to have changed His mind about several important matters in TEC, while not always doing the same in other Anglican provinces.

The question is – as distressed believers not infrequently asked me during my two decades of covering Anglican/Episcopal news – how and why did The Episcopal Church come to this pass? What happened to loose it from its historic theological moorings, and transform it within a few decades from a prominent and noble (if imperfect) branch of U.S. mainline Christianity to a shrunken distortion of its former self?

The continued timeliness of these questions was underscored in July by the Episcopal General Convention’s clear and decisive support for homosexual practice. And it is these same questions that my friend and colleague, Mr. Murchison, a longtime Episcopal layman and former editor of Foundations, attempts to ans wer in a comprehensive way in Mortal Follies.

He further uses the situation of the once-influential TEC – out of which formerly came so many American statesmen and other leading figures - as a frame of reference by which to assess, and offer a cautionary tale to, other U.S. Protestant mainline churches. As well, he probes the prospects for a restoration of those bodies to their true calling.

It is a daunting undertaking, but one that he completes with humility, grace, and a surprising lack of prolixity.

A historian with an extraordinary command of the English language, Mu rchison proffers an engaging and flowing examination of the salient events, trends and currents of thought that combined to draw TEC into a pattern of focusing more on temporal than eternal concerns; a pattern of taking more of its cues from – instead of trying to sway - a secular culture increasingly fond of self-expression and relaxed about historic norms and truths.

With a vivid, broad-brush style, he shows how, after they got a taste of successful social justice activism in the Civil Rights crusade of the 1960s – a cause that Murchison agrees was a Christian as well as American imperative – TEC leaders and some clergy wanted more.

Galvanized also by the convulsive societal changes of the 1960s - during which many aspects of the old order which had undergirded society were challenged, diminished, or overturned - they set out to find who and what else needed to be liberated, un-repressed, granted “equality,” given their “rights,” freed from their victimhood, and what have you.

Unlike the effort to secure full civil rights for African-Americans, however, the causes they successively chose to champion all clashed in some way with the church’s historic theological or doctrinal positions. For the putative liberators to achieve their objectives, those positions had to be compromised, and that meant coming up with new theological and biblical arguments and invoking cultural and emotional appeals. To be sure, the changes they advocated faced strong opposition from TEC’s rank and file. But church “progressives” were well organized and ahead of the game; they gained control of TEC’s levers of power early on, and effected their revolution from the top down, piece by piece.

Thus, we see TEC in e nsuing years decide in favor of other innovations and changes meant to bring “justice” or liberation (each of which Mortal Follies examines): the ordination of women; abortion; remarriage after divorce; prayer book revision and “gender-neutral” language; and homosexual relationships, including among clergy and bishops.

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer draws positive mentions throughout the book, and Murchison devotes a full chapter to the historic liturgy and the far-reaching effects of TEC’s process of prayer book revision.

What in the world has happened to The Episcopal Church? Mortal Follies is an extremely valuable book for anyone interested in better understanding the answer to that question.