It’s the here and now that’s important; the next life will sort itself out.
This is the conclusion I’ve come to in my ponderings on mortality and the afterlife, ponderings on which I imagine nearly all people dwell throughout their lives. I also imagine that many individuals in my demographic – educated millennials – have reached a similar conclusion to mine. If you are one of those individuals, this letter is for you.
My church, St. Stephen’s on the Green, has recently initiated a series of informal conversations around the topic of millennials in the Episcopal Church – or, more specifically: why aren’t there any? Episcopal congregations, and congregations of nearly every Christian denomination, are getting older and older, and very few millennials – those reaching young adulthood in the first decades of the twenty-first century – are stepping forward to carry on the traditions and teachings. Why is this so? Research suggests that it is not for a lack of spiritual need in the younger generation; rather, millennials statistically report greater spiritual need than their baby-boomer counterparts. It seems to me that the empty pew seats are a result of increased distrust of organized religion and of the Christian Church in particular.
This is a very good thing, I think, for the Church and for the collective enlightenment of humankind. Blind trust in any doctrine leads unavoidably to perversion of that doctrine’s moral pillars, as those in power know how easy it is to manipulate the blindly trusting. What is not so good is the blind distrust that I observe in my fellow millennials toward the Church.
I was one of those blindly distrustful, contentedly ignorant, non-practicing Christian millennials until a personal crisis four years ago led me to seek refuge in a non-denominational church sanctuary in New Haven, CT. I found the Episcopal Church a year later and have since become a student of the ways and beliefs of this particular denomination. Over time I have developed in the Episcopal Church a deep trust – not blind, but based on what I have observed, and restricted by my finite understanding of the institution. I have learned along the way that many of the assumptions that the contentedly ignorant me had about the Church were quite wrong.
For example, I thought that people went to church because they thought it would help them get into heaven. This was wrong to me on so many different levels. To start, I didn’t think of heaven as something you get into. I imagine this is a source of skepticism for many educated millennials, and so I endeavor now to put this one misconception to rest.
My time in the Episcopal Church has taught me that at least some practicing Christians don’t fit the stereotype I imagined four years ago. But it wasn’t until this past Sunday, in my pastor Susan’s sermon, that I finally heard this particular stereotype, and its origin, eloquently expressed:
“We cannot do anything to earn eternal life, like a commodity - neither by what we do, or I would say neither by what we believe. And I think the Church with a big ‘C’ and many churches continuing today have really failed in this message over the ages. The Church has said, 'Join us, believe this, get baptized, and you will have eternal life.' What we should have said instead, I think, is this: When you open yourself to Christ, you will be transformed by Grace to live a life of love. And, living a life of love, you will put fear behind you, and live life with love. And that is eternal life.”
This rang true to me; tears sprang from my eyes, and those sitting around me possibly heard me whisper, “That’s it!” Eternal life, that phrase we hear thrown around in Christian dialogue so often, isn’t about “getting into heaven.” It is perhaps clearer to think of eternal life not as life that goes on forever in a temporal sense but life that goes on for- ever in a spatial sense. A heart-soul extraphysical self that transcends boundary and restriction, that transcends fear.
It’s the here and now that’s important. The next life will sort itself out.
The Episcopal Church, for me, is a place of communion. Yes, communion means eating the Body and drinking the Blood of Christ, but more importantly for me, it means community, a word more readily understood in the secular world than communion is. St. Stephen’s is a place where I can be in a living dia- logue with the spiritual ideas of the past three millennia, where I can exchange ideas with friends and spiritual think- ers whom I’ve grown to trust, where I can keep my own spirituality living and growing. And it is flourishing.
So my challenge to you, educated millennial, is this: examine your distrust, identify that which is blind and go looking. Perhaps you'll find a community that satisfies your spiritual need in abundance, as I have.
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