Monday, May 20, 2013

The NRA and Episcopal Church


As a boy in Stafford, KS, learning how to shoot a rifle was a part of growing up. I got proficient with a 22 caliber single shot rifle and could down a rabbit at a good distance. In Scout Camp, we got excellent instruction using NRA materials and learned the golden rule of shooting: Never raise your gun unless you intend to shoot. So with more practice, I could raise my rifle and put five bullets into a nickel size bull’s eye at fifty feet. It was the only sport I was ever much good at. However having become a sharpshooter, I got immediately bored with the activity and never pursued shooting again nor did I want to kill rabbits anymore after also wounding a few, hearing them scream and clubbing them to death. Yes, I figured out that putting bullets into live objects was in fact about killing.

About the same time at twelve years old, I fell in love with the Episcopal Church on one visit to a little chapel in Larned, KS where the Shahan’s took me to worship while my brother was in the hospital there to have his tonsils out. The priest actually asked me to help serve, an exotic activity for a Methodist kid but one who had already kind of liked taking Wesley’s communion twice a year.  The priest was a very nice man serving in a pretty chapel with a small congregation of eccentric Episcopalians on the prairie. I fell in love with it. When we moved to Oklahoma City three years later, first my Dad and I attended St. James in Capitol Hill; then Mom and Bruce followed. By that time guns were hardly even a memory as I had found a great new life and the meaning of life. I felt like I was really growing up.

Well fifty years have passed. The NRA has more members by about a third than there are Episcopalians. It has grown like crazy and has lots of money to do public relations and publicity. The NRA can aim and shoot so well as to slay the popular will for background checks and get our whole federal legislative process bent their way. That is impressive, this organization so full of mission energy that they can aim at and kill any opposition. Don’t point at anything you do not intend to shoot: a evangelical mission statement that they make work.

Well five decades have come and gone. In 1963, the Episcopal Church was about the size the NRA is now in membership. We were full of mission zeal and record breaking confirmation classes, fifty one year at St. James in Oklahoma City with our zany Detroit Irish priest, Fr. Wellwood, who had run with Jesse Owens for the Olympics.  At that time there were a lot of wild priests who had chosen the Church over all sorts of other fascinating potential first careers. . . . That was the time of global mission called Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence, liberating colonial Anglicans into new national churches from which Anglicanism has exploded in the southern hemisphere. That lead to the last spurt of growth with Venture in Mission, directly an outgrowth of MRI, the largest single mission funding in North American Church history.

About thirty years ago, the tide went out in the Episcopal Church. The spiritual climate change brought in a new wind on the land, one where guns get more mission power than our take on New Life. . .  Wonder what happened. . . .

9 comments:

  1. This is an excellent comparison Ron. What did happen? Well for one thing we no longer have the brave and courageous priests, well educated and connected, who know how to lead a church with a sense of purpose and mission. We now look more like an ageing long distance runner who has lost strength in the legs and exhilaration in the heart. The NRA has a single, dynamic purpose with an evangelical following that is full of energy and devotion. We are more like Sisyphus, pushing and rolling our stones up and down the hill. Sad don't you think?

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  2. Yup, my first priest, an Olympic runner in little St. James. The great football coach at OU, Bud Wilkinson's son, Jay, became one of the first vocational deacons in the 60's going to Union Seminary before heading off to law school. As you know, the list of such quality went on and on in clergy and lay leadership all over the country. There were many, many stellar examples.

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  3. Question: Did the tide start going out about the same time as we kind of eliminated Morning Prayer as a Sunday morning option? I'm basing my question on the article below.

    http://www.nvo.com/bartley/nss-folder/mythesisdoesparishcommunioninhibitchurchgrowth/C%20-%20Chp%203%20-%20Whatever%20Happened%20to%20Morning%20Prayer.pdf

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  4. Read it with considerable fascination. Thank you.

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  5. My history with the NRA is very much like yours. I have many awards for my marksmanship and enjoyed developing my skill.

    I, too, learned the sound of death which was far different from shooting the paper targets.

    My wondering matches your own. Indeed, what happened?

    RJ, the answer to your question is "Yes" and there was much more to be changed without thinking about the consequences and the other possibilities of a more gentle/thoughtful manner of making desired changes.

    Ron, we must share strong genes!!! Which I know we do!!!

    Thank you.

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  6. My history with the NRA is very much like yours. I have many awards for my marksmanship and enjoyed developing my skill.

    I, too, learned the sound of death which was far different from shooting the paper targets.

    My wondering matches your own. Indeed, what happened?

    RJ, the answer to your question is "Yes" and there was much more to be changed without thinking about the consequences and the other possibilities of a more gentle/thoughtful manner of making desired changes.

    Ron, we must share strong genes!!! Which I know we do!!!

    Thank you.

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  7. Bob Shahan said:
    RJ, the answer to your question is "Yes" and there was much more to be changed without thinking about the consequences and the other possibilities of a more gentle/thoughtful manner of making desired changes.
    ==================

    As I recall, there was little or no discussion beforehand in our parish. It was just done, and that was it. A bad decision with no recourse.

    So now, can Morning Prayer be put back in without raising an army and going to war? As I understand it, there is a great deal of leeway for experimentation these days.

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  8. Morning Prayer is always a possibility but for the fact that Holy Communion may be the standard that is accepted by most of the congregation. If this is the case, it is possible for you to request morning prayer but remember, do no more harm to the parish. Morning Prayer can be combined with Holy Communion as the first part of the service, replacing all that now goes before the Offertory.

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  9. I was ordained in 1966 and served in small towns. Commissions on Ministry are mostly middle-aged folks from large parishes who select folks like themselves.

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