With fewer and fewer people attending the spiraling Episcopal
Church, some prelates seem to see opening the doors to Wall Street
Occupiers as a potential solution.
Since Occupiers lost their protest encampment at Boston’s
Dewey Square, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts has hospitably
opened the doors of its Cathedral Church of St. Paul to the
Occupiers to perpetuate the “conversation” about social
justice.
“The issues raised by the Occupy movement are important to
be discussing in society, and so I’m happy to offer our cathedral
to provide hospitality and a venue so those conversations can
continue,” enthusiastically chimed cathedral dean the Very Reverend
Jep Streit. According the diocesan
website, Occupation “general assemblies”
would begin at the cathedral on December 13 and would continue
three times a week.
At such a rate, perhaps Occupation rallies will become
more frequent at the cathedral than worship services. Or perhaps
for leftist “social justice” churches, demonstrations for
governmentally orchestrated massive income redistribution are
themselves a form of worship.
The Episcopal cathedral in Boston seems to resemble what
comedian Flip Wilson once spoofed in the early 1970s as the “Church
of What’s Happening Now.” Rev. Strait boasts
on his cathedral website that this church named for the
Apostle Paul resembles a “United Nations gathering” and holds
weekly Muslim prayer meetings. One canon priest, he notes, is quite
“disciplined” in yoga practice. And “ancient church traditions” mix
with “urban grooves” at the cathedral’s “emerging church worship
community.” No doubt.
Meanwhile, the rector at historic and very wealthy Trinity
Episcopal Church at Wall Street in New York recently observed,
somewhat defensively, that his church has “probably done as much or
more for the protestors than any other institution in the area.”
Trinity has given the Occupiers “meeting rooms and offices” for
assemblies, private discussion, computer use, cell phone charging,
and bathroom visits, he announced. “Hundreds” of these young class
warriors have availed themselves of Trinity Church’s radical
hospitality but apparently are not satisfied.
“We disagree with those who argue that Trinity
should—indeed, must as a matter of conscience—allow Occupy Wall
Street to liberate its Duarte Square lot at Avenue of the Americas
and Canal Street for an open encampment and large scale
assemblies,”
protested the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper. “In
all good conscience and faith, we strongly believe to do so would
be wrong, unsafe, unhealthy and potentially injurious.”
Rev. Cooper complained of Occupiers who have vandalized church
property even while demanding access to it. “Calling this an issue
of ‘political sanctuary’ is manipulative and blind to reality,” he
reasonably surmised. “Equating the desire to seize this property
with uprisings against tyranny is misguided,” Cooper fumed, citing
“hyperbolic distortion” by grandstanding Occupiers seeking arrest.
Apparently political correctness has limits, even in the Episcopal
Church.
This Saturday, the Occupiers plan a “non-violent”
occupation of Trinity Church’s Duarte Square, against which the
church rector has threatened police action. Naturally,
a retired Episcopal bishop will join the Occupiers. “Trinity
might mobilize platoons of police in riot gear and ring this sad
little space with multiple barricades,”
bemoaned Bishop George Packard. “No room in
this Inn!” Denouncing Trinity Church as “profoundly wrong,” he
likened the potential confrontation to “some mythological drama out
of C.S. Lewis.”
Located at the heart of the original Wall Street
Occupation, Trinity Church, even if perhaps the Episcopal
denomination’s richest congregation, can only afford so much
patience and will risk the “drama.” In contrast, the Episcopal
cathedral in Seattle has offered property to the Occupation.
All these ecclesial hugs for the Occupy movement are just fine with
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori. In a recent
sermon at the Episcopal cathedral in St. Louis, she
compared the Occupiers to the communal generosity of Jesus’
Disciples. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, titular head of
the Anglican Communion, has likewise
embraced Occupiers in Britain with mystic terminology, despite
the mishaps encamped Occupiers have inflicted on St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London.
Leftist prelates internationally have identified with
Occupy Wall Street. The head of the Geneva-based World Communion of
Reformed Churches (WCRC) pronounced in a lecture at Princeton
University last month that John Calvin would have backed the
Occupation. “I am sure he would have been in the streets of New
York or London with a placard,” asserted WCRC General Secretary Setri
Nyomi. “Calvin expressed opposition to all forms of social
oppression resulting from money,” the Reformed theologian
reportedly insisted.
Similarly, the top Capitol Hill-based lobbyist for The
United Methodist Church declared that John Wesley would have
supported the Occupation. “There is no question in my mind that
Wesley would have protested greed and the neglect of the poor,”
said Jim Winkler of the General Board of Church and Society.
“He would support the goals.” Doubtless plenty of liberal Catholics
also think St. Francis of Assisi would be encamped in Washington,
D.C.’s McPherson Square or blocking traffic on K Street.
The prelates and theologians who eagerly invest Occupy
Wall Street with transcendent authority almost all share a common
spiritual ennui. No longer enlivened by the drama of their own
faith’s teachings about divine redemption, they instead look for
excitement in the bedraggled camps of unemployed twenty-somethings
a fraction of their own age. The Occupiers will eventually get
bored with their own tedium and move on. But will their ecclesial
admirers?
