FEATURE STORY

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

 

Episcopal Church Makes Startling Gains

by Christopher S. Johnson
COUNTRY LIFE ACRES, Mo. – For several decades, mainline Protestant churches have been losing members at an alarming rate. Many attribute this decline to the perceived “liberalism” of those churches while others look to the general decline in specific Christian identification in the United States.
There is one exception to this trend.

In one of the most astonishing turnarounds in American religious history, the Episcopal Church, which a little over a year ago claimed under two million members, now claims a membership of slightly over 600 billion, according to a report from Kirk Hadaway, the church’s director of research.

How did this happen?  How did a church go from near-death to become the largest Christian church the world has ever seen?  How did the Episcopalians go from slightly under two million members to a membership 100 times the world’s entire population?

“When you get right down to it,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said recently, “it’s a fantastic illustration of Ben Franklin’s old adage about how, ‘A little child shall lead them.’”
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Ron and Nadine Habermayer attend St. Brendan Faherty’s Episcopal Church in Country Life Acres, Missouri, just outside St. Louis.  Both are active in parish life.  Ron is currently St. Brendan’s Senior Warden while Nadine serves on the church’s vestry.

“Ron and I were eating dinner one night,” Mrs. Habermayer recalls.  “We were talking about outreach toward young people, programs we could do for kids, that kind of thing, when my four-year-old daughter Nora Sue suddenly blurted out that she wanted to take Casper to church with her.”

“That’s her imaginary friend, Casper Van Frehlingshuysen IV,” added Ron Habermayer.   “Nadine and I looked at each other and thought, yeah, that sounds pretty good.”

“So I brought it to the next vestry meeting,” said Nadine.  “Everybody loved it and Take Your Imaginary Friend To Church Day was officially launched.  It was a great success.”

“Many adults wanted to support and encourage the kids,” Ron remarked.  “I guess that’s what it was since I noticed that quite a few of the men brought copies of People magazine with pictures of Angelina  Jolie or Kim Kardashian on the cover.”

“All of which got me to thinking,” said St. Brendan Faherty’s rector the Rev. Gabrielle Fortunato.  “Has my church done all that it can do to minister to Fictional-Americans?

“In Paul’s letter to the Effusions, he mentions a ‘great cloud of witnesses”  You can’t see them, can you?  And since working as a Hooter’s waitress got me through seminary, I knew as well as anyone that Fictional-Americans were as real as I am.

“After consulting my colleagues at many a clergy conference, I realized that Jesus love was all-inclusive and unconditional and that He wouldn’t have turned away anyone simply because that person lacked an identity, a body, an actual existence and stuff.”

The result of Rev. Fortunato’s musings, Resolution XR4Ti which Ron and Nadine Habermayer put forward at Missouri’s last diocesan convention, called for the implementation of three things.

(1) Diocecan-wide repentance for the sin of existentialism.
(2) An aggressive program of anti-existentialism training.
(3) Devoting diocesan resources for outreach to the non-existent.

And the result?  In about a year, membership in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri went from approximately 14,000 to just over 4.5 billion.  “And it’s still climbing,” said Fortunato.

“Then our program went national,” St. Brendan’s rector recalled.  “Dioceses began implementing it all over the country and showed the same gains we did here or even better.

“Northern Michigan’s membership was down to, what, 25 or so?  They reported an increase of 3 billion.  New York went up to 18 billion last I checked.  And LA’s up to something like 144 octillion.”

The Diocese plans to submit a resolution to this summer’s General Convention to formalize and officially implement national Episcopal Church outreach to the Non-Existent-American community.  Church liberals welcome the move.

“It’s high time that my church reached out to the incorporeal,” said controversial former bishop John Shelby Spong.  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s positively shameful that we’ve limited our ministries to people with legal existences and I’m ecstatic that we’ve repented of that barbaric stance.”

George W. Hackenschmidt, the Episcopal Church’s conservative, isn’t so sure.  “What’s next?” the Rapid City, South Dakota actuary recently asked.  “Are we going to let some loser ‘marry’ his sexual fantasy?  Because if we are, I am so out of here.”

Blessing the relationship between real people and fictional ones is not on the radar screen, says Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, “because a liturgy has not yet been approved.”

St. Eoin Kelly's Episcopal Church, Rancho Cucamonga, California during worship last Sunday

That hasn’t stopped some churches from implementing the blessing of the relationships of real and fictional people.  Last month, Daniel “Steve” Blankenship of St. George Clooney’s Episcopal Church in Lakeshire, Missouri had his relationship with his fictional girlfriend Darla blessed at a packed ceremony at his church.

“It was incredibly moving for me and for Darla,” the 59-year-old meth addict recalled.  “It’s all kinds of encouraging to know that your church has your back.”

Other Episcopal churches have established satellite churches specifically for Theoretical-Americans in their communities.  All Saints of Pasadena, California recently planted a church in Rancho Cucamonga, California called St. Eoin Kelly’s.

“So far, it’s been a great success,” said All Saints’ Susan Russell.  “Packed every single Sunday.  Anybody who thinks the Episcopal Church has got one foot in the grave is invited out to St. Eoin Kelly’s next Sunday."