An Alien in the Church

I have considered the topic of Christians in an academic setting; as promised, I will now attempt to analyse the experience of academics in a Christian setting. Since I have experienced both evangelical and Anglo-Catholic approaches to academics, I will attempt to write about both.

Growing up in an Evangelical church, I often felt isolated by my propensity for asking questions. Theological questions were considered a threat to "simple faith," and were therefore discouraged. Other sorts of questions (usually complex academic questions) were usually discouraged because they did not fulfil the allegedly utilitarian purpose of the gospel; if our primary purpose consists of compelling people to pray the so-called prayer of salvation, why should we ask questions about, and read books about, topics that are irrelevant to this purpose? This ecclesiastical discouragement of question was, of course, never overtly stated (the governing principalities and powers never openly reveal their natures and names), and I was unaware of its influence during the time that I was under its power; I simply assumed that most people felt lonely and isolated because it is part of the human condition.

Because of the influence of this unspoken antiquerianism (my own name for this particular heresy), I could not justify a "frivolous" degree when I entered university, and therefore sought the most "practical" degree I could think of, pre-Medicine. However, I gradually began to discover that human "practicality" and God's plan are not always synonymous, and that God often uses human "impracticality" in unpredictable ways; as the Ecclesiast puts it, "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all" (Eccl. 9:11). During this time, I was especially nourished by the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group on my university campus. After seeing God use people through their supposedly "useless" degress, I realised that I needed to study what God designed me to study, rather than that which was most "practical." I therefore converted to a Bachelor of Arts program, with a focus on English.

When my fiance and I began dating, we decided to find an Anglican church together. I cannot speak for her, but my motivations were fairly clear; I was looking for an escape from the anti-intellectualism of the mainstream evangelical church, and the Anglican church, with its rich history of thinkers ranging from John Donne to C. S. Lewis, seemed like an attractive alternative. Interestingly enough, however, I have found that, while anti-intellectualism is not the particular bane of the Canadian Anglican church, it has other intellect related problems.

Perhaps the most pressing intellectual problem in the Canadian Anglican Church is its promotion of "reason" over biblical revelation and tradition. Typically, liberal Anglicans argue that the bible and tradition are difficult to interpret, and they thereby render these sources of God's voice mute. They then unquestioningly espouse the most trendy forms of secular thought (usually a sentimentalised version of multicultural and gender studies), and claim that God endorses this espousal because such espousals are "reasonable." I am frustrated by this syncretistic adoption of values fostered and incubated in a secular hothouse that is itself already imploding, as most secular proponents of these values would admit (the feminist course I took basically treated the collapse and current impasse of feminism).

The other problem involves the lack of dynamic zeal on the part of many Anglicans; whereas Anglicans are "allowed" to be academic in a way that evangelicals are not, they lack the evangelical zeal that is necessary for establishing the dynamic, thriving life of the Christian academic. Put another way, Anglicans have all the necessary ingredients for making Christian academics - they have all the riches of the bible and a biblically informed dialogue with the past - but no one exhorts and urges them to combine these ingredients. As an Anglican, I glean truth from the rich Anglican liturgy, but usually rely on extra-Anglican sources to enhance my zeal.

Currently, my pseudonym reflects my occupation; Koheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, means "the gatherer." Acting out of a biblically informed worldview, I seek to salvage fragments of truth from the ruins of the world. Sometimes I find these fragments in the medieval and early modern period. Sometimes I find them in Romantic poems and Victorian novels. Sometimes I find them in contemporary videos and songs. Sometimes I find them in highly institutionalised churches. Sometimes I find them in informal gatherings "where two or three are gathered together" in Christ's name. As I search, I seek to bring what I find under the judgement of Christ; when he condemns, I condemn, but, when he praises, I am thrilled by an Edenic moment in which God, perceiving the prelapsarian world buried deep beneath the crimes of this groaning world, says, "It is good."