ENS Online Feature Articles

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Questioner finds connection with believers

By Sharon Sheridan

PHILADELPHIA (July 18, 1997) - The author of the prize-winning book "GOD: A Biography" described a church united by love rather than by a uniform concept of God in a lecture as the General Convention of the Episcopal Church got underway.

Jack Miles, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, July 15 delivered the Bohlen Lecture to an ecumenical audience of nearly 200 people at Church of the Holy Trinity, which co-sponsored the talk with the Philadelphia Theological Institute.

In his talk titled "Night Thoughts of a Pious Agnostic: Gambling on God," Miles detailed his attempt to present God only as a literary character and his reluctance to reveal publicly his own spiritual journey.

He noted the "difference between talking as if God were real and talking about a real God" - and that he had remained in the "as-if zone." Yet believers received this with "unexpected warmth," and he found himself pondering how what he considered a purely literary interpretation "was obscurely meeting a religious need."

"I am taking the occasion of this lecture to try to bring what I have learned into focus," Miles said. "What strikes me most powerfully is the existence of a principle of cohesion within the church and within the synagogue that is relatively impermeable to changes in the concept of God. To say this is not to say that differences in the understood character of God do not matter.

"I mean to suggest only that at the level of organizational stability a church or synagogue may be able to sustain a surprisingly high degree of disagreement about the character of God if there is something other than such agreement to bind the congregants together," Miles said.

That binding force, he believes, is love: "the love of the members of a given congregation for one another in imitation of Christ and the love that they may collectively demonstrate for others in the larger society who are in need of love."

After the lecture, PTI's executive director, the Rev. James Shannon, said he appreciated Miles' "humility to the subject of God."

"I am struck with how he seems to be able to translate God as a presence for all of us. That's what attracted me to him as a speaker, because his faith journey came through his academic experience and through people. Isn't that what the Incarnation is?"

The rector of Christ Church, Eddington, Pa., Shannon wasn't bothered by the discussion of agnosticism. "It's not a bad thing to be a questioner," he said. "Isn't that what we all are?"

- Sharon Sheridan is a free-lance writer for the Convention Daily.

Youth singing — and writing — the music

By Sharon Sheridan

PHILADELPHIA (July 18, 1997) — The regional youth choir that sang during morning worship at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention didn’t just showcase the talents of young singers. It featured the work of a 19-year-old composer.

Michael Levinson, a music major at Yale University, wrote the Agnus Dei in E-flat minor, which the choir sang during the prelude to the Eucharist. He started composing the piece one summer when he "had this ambitious idea of writing a Mass," he said.

He finished it at college and, at a professor's suggestion, recorded it at St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia during Christmas break.

Levinson sang counter-tenor at St. Peter's during high school and sang at the convention in the youth choir, directed by St. Peter's organist and choirmaster, Tom Whittemore.

Levinson studied piano for several years as a child, then taught himself to play rock music by ear. He said his a capella Agnus Dei contains "modern chords" and reflects the rock and jazz music he enjoys playing.

While interested in music recording, Levinson said he planned to major in composition. His latest composing project is orchestral music.

The son of Roman Catholic and Jewish parents, Levinson began singing at St. Peter's in the church's choral scholars program.

The scholars apprentice with the professional singers in the choir. It's a way for the church to hold on to talented youths such as Levinson and allow them to "express that talent in a Christian context," Whittemore said.

As a college student, Levinson sang last year at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Conn., and will sing at Christ Church, New Haven, this year.

"I definitely take some spiritual fulfillment out of singing and listening, even though I can't say I'm actually Episcopalian," he said.

The youth choir also sang Ned Rorem's "Sing My Soul, His Wondrous Love," unpublished works by Alan Rideout and Anthony Piccolo, and a Michael Tippett arrangement of a spiritual. On July 19 they will sing two Renaissance pieces.

Whittemore said he aimed for a varied repertoire, including different styles by American composers. He also wanted to make the point that "children can do all kinds of music ... I thought it was important to do sophisticated music."

The youth choir features 40 to 50 singers, eighth-graders through college students, from four Episcopal churches: St. Peter's, Philadelphia; Trinity, Princeton; St. Peter's, Morristown, N.J.; and Immanuel Church, Highlands, Wilmington, Del.

God's flocks celebrate her creation

By Mary Lee B. Simpson

PHILADELPHIA (July 20, 1997) - Around an altar of an overturned canoe perched on two sawhorses on the banks of Schuylkill River, nearly 150 Episcopalians, joined by a community of geese, celebrated an early Sunday morning Eucharist.

They came to celebrate the environment, to escape the hermetically sealed environs of the convention center and to be inspired by the words of Bishop Steven Charleston, preacher and celebrant.

The prelude to the service was time out on the river for the orange life-vested worshipers to savor sunshine and a soft easterly breeze as they paddled canoes around the Strawberry Mansion Bridge. The only traffic they encountered were serious skullers from nearby university boat houses, the geese and one another.

Sponsored by the Episcopal Environmental Coalition, the service included a thanksgiving over water.

Water brought from rivers in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New York and Israel was poured from a one-liter plastic Coke bottle into a wooden bowl as Charleston, surrounded by his congregation, blessed and sanctified it.

Water isn't merely a symbol of soft, spiritual syllables, Charleston noted. It's a symbol of authority.

"We're entering a new age where economic power is the biggest threat we're facing," Charleston said. "Faceless, anonymous, international corporations are strangling our Mother Earth."

The only authority that can stop this threat to our very existence is each of us, he said.

Like a single person, "a simple drop of water may seem small and inconsequential, but water that gathers becomes a stream of life with enough strength to move rocks," Charleston said. "Tiny streams become rivers, and rivers become one mighty river of justice that can become one beautiful shining sea of humanity over which no CEOs of any corporations can prevail."

Steve MacAusland, a steering committee member of the coalition from Province I, dreamed up the idea for the service after seeing the convention's logo, "With water and the Holy Spirit...."

He said the coalition wanted to give convention participants a chance to appreciate God's outdoors and this seemed to be the best way.

The geese enjoyed it, too. During the service the flock paddled single file up the middle of river and then over to the site where another community of God's family was celebrating life.

At the conclusion of the Eucharist, God's human flock fed them the remaining consecrated bread.

- Mary Lee Simpson is a writer and editor from the Diocese of Southwestern Viriginia and is reporting for The Convention Daily.

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