I have had to reflect about the relevance of churches, not only the big institutions like the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, and the various national Orthodox churches – but also the various traditionalist churches born of frustration with the “official” institutions.

Back in 2013, I wrote Stages of Spiritual Life as a comment to the analogy of human life to various stages in religious belief and practice from primitive paganism, Judaism to the stages of church history. I have read other things related to this subject, in particular Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. Myself, I mentioned my time as a student at Fribourg and my disenchantment (a word that I stick on a posteri) with institutional religion whilst at the same time aspiring to the priesthood. A kind Old Catholic priest in Lausanne advised me to seek therapy. I went just once to the psychotherapist. His advice to me was to change my whole paradigm, either towards a more mature Christian Weltanschauung or look into other world cultures. He introduced me to books by Soloviev and Nikolai Berdyaev. This more mystical, Romantic and individuated view prevented me from rejecting Christianity.

Many people leave the Church because the experience is lifeless. However, atheism is not the winner. People are seeking and finding the divine without going anywhere. One route is connecting with the natural world – the forests, the mountains and the sea. Another is discovering the Christian Tradition through Orthodoxy or a Romantic (I mean Romantic and not “romantic” / sentimental) vision of medieval Catholicism à la Novalis. It all has to come from within, from the presence of God and the Sophia within ourselves.  

Suggestions coming from others about our churches (whether they are big or little) being irrelevant tend to throw us off. Should I relinquish my priesthood? And then what? Nihilism? Many do, or do stupid things that get them disciplined by their bishops. It is time we grew up! I lay no claim to mysticism or being spiritual or virtuous – but I have come to understand many things. The only thing that can remotely resemble a priestly ministry is writing and being something of a teacher. I am not a pastor because I have no parish. I live in a spiritual desert where the near totality of the population would have no interest in attending religious services, and to boot in a private chapel. Were I to leave my little Anglican church and relinquish the priesthood, I could return to Roman Catholicism – but the cycle would turn yet again like when I was in Switzerland. I see absolutely no point in it. The Eternal Church is within and between each of us who has that γνῶσις. Without falling into the temptation of heretical Gnosticism, it is the communion of all those who follow Christ according to their maturity and understanding.

The first step for us is to shift from the extrinsic to the internal, the immanence of God in all nature, rejecting the separation of natural and supernatural we find in Nominalism, Protestantism and Roman Catholic Scholasticism. Literalism gives way to a deeper understanding of meanings. We acquire a capacity for critical reflection, but there is always the danger of “throwing out the baby with the bath water” and claiming to be an atheist, where all meaning of life ceases.

We need to forsake the black and white attitude, the all-or-nothing, that plunges the human person into depression. We also need to adopt a sceptical attitude to epistemology, not that there is no truth, but that truth is outside and beyond us, defying our understanding. No one possesses truth, still less can he lord it over others like brandishing a weapon. Perhaps it would be useful for some of us to discover other peaceful religions like Hinduism, not to join their communities, but to find what they and we have in common. Cultural shock can bring healing and growth.

In my various comments on Facebook, I have emphasised the need for us priests to be subordinate to our bishops. It can happen that we find ourselves under a tyrant whose requirements of obedience are unreasonable. It happens all the time, often in proportion to the size of the bishop’s jurisdiction. The structure of an institutional church can be an icon or analogy of the communion of God’s people, but is not always. How do we judge when we are discouraged from the “private judgement of the Protestants”? Simply by critical thinking and our built-in Bullshit ‘o’ Meter. Archbishop Haverland is my Ordinary, and I have never had any problems from him, nor he from me. I still believe in the place and mission of the Anglican Catholic Church, which I understand as a prolongation of medieval and pre-Tridentine Catholicism – like historical Gallicanism.

Some of us need to become entirely separate from institutional Christianity and justify ourselves in some way. Myself, I am inclined to compromise between a small and non-bureaucratic institutional church and my independence in my life of study and writing. We all have to calm down, find healing and stick with it.