The Imago Dei Initiative Blog

I put a version of this statement before Claude: "Explain why the Episcopal Church must respond to a generation of young people with limited reading habits, shortened attention spans, little Christian literacy, weak research skills, and discomfort with silence."

This is its response:

From Claude, 4/3/2026

The Episcopal Church faces a genuinely serious pastoral and institutional challenge here — one that cuts to the heart of what Anglican Christianity has always been and how it communicates itself. Let me lay out why each of these factors matters specifically for the Episcopal tradition.

The Episcopal Church's Particular Vulnerability --

The Episcopal Church is, by its nature, a deeply literary and textual tradition. Its entire spiritual architecture rests on:

The Book of Common Prayer — dense, beautiful, archaic prose demanding sustained attention

Scripture read in long lectionary cycles

Sermons as a primary mode of formation

Silence as spiritual discipline (the Daily Office, contemplative prayer, the pregnant pauses in liturgy)

Theological reasoning as the pathway to faith, not emotional catharsis alone

This means the challenges you've named don't merely inconvenience the Episcopal Church — they strike at the foundations of how it transmits faith across generations.

Why Each Challenge Demands a Response --

A generation socialized not to read threatens the Prayer Book tradition at its root. The BCP is not a supplement to Episcopal worship — it is Episcopal worship. A person who cannot or will not read at length cannot access the primary instrument of Anglican formation. The Church cannot simply swap in a screen and call it equivalent; the contemplative, linear, cumulative nature of reading the Prayer Book shapes the mind in ways that scrolling cannot replicate.

Shortened attention spans and diminished capacity for sustained focus strike against the liturgical rhythm itself. The Episcopal service was designed for a people who could hold a thought, follow an argument, and sit with unresolved tension. If the neural architecture for sustained attention is genuinely being altered by technology — and there is strong evidence it is — then the Church faces not merely a preference problem but a formation problem. You cannot simply make liturgy shorter; you lose the spiritual logic that makes it transformative.

Little knowledge of Christianity removes what was once assumed. For most of Anglican history, the catechism was a review, not an introduction. Clergy could preach assuming a shared vocabulary — sin, grace, covenant, resurrection. That assumed vocabulary is now gone. The Church must now do what it hasn't had to do since the early centuries: evangelize from zero, explaining not just what Christians believe but what religion itself is and why it might matter.

Inability to research effectively is perhaps the most surprising challenge, because this generation has more information available than any before it. But access to information is not the same as the capacity for inquiry. The Episcopal tradition has always honored the questioning mind — it is a church that welcomes doubt as a pathway to faith. But productive doubt requires knowing how to sit with a hard question, follow a thread, weigh sources, and tolerate not knowing. Algorithmic information delivery trains people toward the opposite: quick resolution, confirmation, and the collapse of genuine inquiry.

Fear of silence may be the deepest crisis of all for Anglicanism specifically. Silence is not incidental to Episcopal worship — it is sacramental. The pauses in the liturgy, the Daily Office's quiet, the contemplative tradition running from the Desert Fathers through the Anglican mystics, the very structure of Compline — all depend on a person being able to inhabit silence without panic or flight. A generation that experiences silence as threatening has been cut off from one of the Church's primary means of encounter with God.

Why the Church Cannot Simply Adapt Its Way Out --

There is a temptation to respond to these challenges with accommodation — shorter services, more video, less silence, contemporary music, simplified language. Some of this is pastorally wise. But the Episcopal Church must be careful not to dissolve the very thing it is trying to offer.

This generation does not need the Church to become more like the digital environment that is already harming them. What they may desperately need — even if they don't know how to want it — is exactly the counter-formation the Episcopal tradition offers: the discipline of reading, the practice of sustained attention, the tolerance of silence, the slow movement through a liturgical year that refuses to be rushed.

The Church's task, then, is not simply to meet young people where they are, but to lovingly and intelligently build the bridge between where they are and what they need — and then walk across it with them.

That requires:

Patient catechesis that doesn't assume prior knowledge but doesn't condescend either

Scaffolded engagement with the Prayer Book — introducing it gradually, explaining its logic, making its beauty accessible

Intentional formation in silence — teaching people how to be still, which is itself a radical countercultural act

Honest conversation about what technology is doing to human cognition and why the Church's ancient practices are, in fact, a form of healing

Robust adult formation that builds the intellectual and spiritual muscles this generation was never given the chance to develop

The Theological Stakes --

Ultimately, this is not just a marketing or demographic problem. It is a theological emergency. The Episcopal Church believes that the fullness of Christian life involves the whole person — mind, body, spirit — formed over time through word, sacrament, community, and prayer. A generation that cannot read, cannot attend, cannot research, and cannot endure silence is a generation that has been, in a profound sense, deformed — not by moral failure, but by the environment in which they were raised.

A scruffy college student was driving from St. Louis to Chicago. Not too far out of St. Louis, he was car-jacked, beaten up, and literally dumped by the side of the road.

A non-denominational pastor was driving by and saw the kid sprawled on the curb and thought, "Youth today - drunk, strung-out. That's what I mean - we've got to get back to traditional values!", and drove on.

A Main-Line Protestant cleric came by a few minutes later, and saw the kid stirring, trying to get up. He thought, "I have to testify at the City Council meeting and demand that they pass the law protecting -- cause of the day -- and besides, he looks like he'll be alright," and sped away to the important, vital meeting.

A Muslim, an illegal alien who works at the 7-11, came by on his bike and stopped. He helped the beaten and battered student onto the back rack of the bike, and started peddling, while he clung tight to him. He went a mile or so to the nearest urgent care center, waited and even paid for the student to be taken care of. The kid had no wallet, no money, no id. He took him to the McDonalds and bought him some food to eat. He took him and put him up in the Hotel 6 for the night until his parents could come and get him the next day.

The student never saw the stranger again, and when his parents picked him up, bruised and sore, he had a story to tell.

"Relevant works well when the world is your friend."

A line I heard recently on a video "podcast." The Episcopal priest was explaining to the Evangelical Free Church podcaster why his church continues to grow by about 10% year over year. 'Yeah, we're non-relavent."

This is something I've been thinking about for several years, going back beyond when I was the Bishop's Missioner for a project to understand the confluence of rising generations, changing culture, and Christian faith development.

I have no desire to present to the greater culture something that they find "relevant." Our church has been trying to do this for a few decades, with little success. Rather, I would like to present this ancient Faith in ways that "resonate" with younger people's spiritual/religions or existisitential what-does-all-of-this-mean longings.

In the place and time we live, the greater majority of younger people are far beyond anything that smacks of an engrained "culture Christianity." They know little or nothing - not their fault at their point of inquiry, in that point of inner stirring for something more. When they do decide to seek after something "spiritual" or even "religious," they are for the most part a blank slate (aside from the influence of current media, which is lame at best and mostly awful).

So, what they tend to seek is something different from the prevailing culture ("not relevant"), something grounded, something that endures, something that continues in its connectedness to deep resonence, something that allows them to wrestle honestly with the great questions of life and meaning and purpose. They seek it in something that isn't afraid to be who they are and have no qualms about proclaiming what they believe. Something that engages them honestly, respectfully, forthrightly.

We like to consider and proclaim "American Exceptionalism." It is often expressed in our modern day to justify all manner of things within our own country and to the community of nations we are a part of.

Consider:

"For four hundred years, the words of Matthew's gospel, directed toward Jesus' listeners as a part of the Sermon on the Mount, have been adopted by many people in the United States to support the belief that God has looked with particular favor on the people who originally colonized and now live in the central part of North America. An early example was its use in a sermon by John Winthrop as he headed to American in 1630 to serve as first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Subsequent generations of political leaders, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barak Obama, have called upon such imagery... with the image of a torch of freedom being lit by the founders of the United States. After all, torches as signals are lit on hills, on locations where they can be seen by all."

Consider, too, the torch atop the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

We need to remember...

"The sermon that John Winthrop wrote on his voyage to American was not centered on Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism or a desire to hold up the new dwellers in America as better than other people. Rather, his reminder to his fellow travelers was that the eyes of the world would be upon them to see if they lived up to the model of Christian charity that his sermon laid before them. More than one, he reminded his listens of the golden rule of Matthew 7:12, that they do unto others as they would wish done to them. He reminded them that if they were to seek greatness for themselves, God would force them to pay a price. Instead, they were to follow the council of the prophet Micah to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.

"Being a city on a hill was therefore a responsibility, not a right. As Winthrop stated at the end of his sermon, if their hearts turn away and they do not obey, if they are seduced by their own pleasures and profits, they perish out of the good land toward which they journeyed. Christian nationalism, which indeed seduces people away from justice and mercy and humility, will eventually lead to destruction. The call of the church in the twenty-first century is to proclaim in fresh ways what it truly means to be a light to the world and a city on a hill so that all people will be valued, honored, and respected." (The Crisis of Christian Nationalism: Report from the House of Bishops Theology Committee [The Episcopal Church in the United States of America]; New York, Church Publishing, pp. 16, 31-32)

This is part of the "Third Way" presented to us by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. It isn't sociopolitically liberal or conservative, Libertarian, anarchic, or Marxist. It is other. That "other" has been usurped within the greater Christian witness in the United States by political ideology (we let it be so), and the Church must reclaim its distinctive way of understanding the social good, the politically excellent, and what enables the flourishing of the citizenry.

If we, as the Church, want to offer for the consideration of the rest of our society an alternative to the corrosive and destructive morass we are now headlong falling into, we must offer an actual alternative, with intention, and consistently demonstrated against unreasonable opposition or irrational accusation.

We must proclaim even against those other forms of distorted religious expression that will, as the House of Bishops report suggests, lead to our ultimate destruction.

Budde, gave the sermon at the ecumenical National Prayer Service in her (and our) National Cathedral. The new administration and wives, present. Listen for yourself.

I think this is a profound example of the ecclesial speaking a different kind of truth to the political. Isn't that the best role of the Church in the political realm – holding the political to account and to their better selves, even in the face of the very human want for power, money, fame, and all those temporal tendencies of our human nature? (Likewise, the government holding accountable the church when it fails, at times horribly.) The geographical locations of the National Cathedral and the U.S. Capital buildings are purposeful.

A good read in these days…

A quote from the article in Mockingbird, "The rules of social convention ensure that we behave in a reasonable, courteous manner most of the time. But certain situations bring our baser instincts to the fore, and we discover we were not actually seeking the common good, but our own — that is, if we are even capable of that degree of self-reflection. This present moment in American history, like so many before it, is an hour of revelation, a moment of truth in which our real nature is displayed."

In these trying days, for our seemingly fragile democracy, a prayer for our country:

"O Lord our Governor, bless the leaders of our land, that we may be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations on the earth. Lord, keep this nation under your care.

"To the President and members of the Cabinet, to Governors of States, Mayers of Cities, and to all in administrative authority, grant wisdom and grace in the exercise of their duties. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

"To Senator and Representatives, and those who make our laws in States, Cities, and Towns, give courage, wisdom, and foresight to provide for the needs of all our people, and to fulfill our obligations in the community of nations. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

"To the Judges and officers of our Courts give understanding and integrity, that human rights may be safeguarded and justice served. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

"And finally, teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name. For yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are the exalted as head above all. Amen."

"And finally, teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their follow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name."

Writing on the English Reformation period: "The enormous convulsion in English society, political and cultural life that came to be know as 'the Reformation' was a long collective argument about what was truly involved in the imitation of Christ; about what people needed to do, or avoid doing, in order to achieve salvation.”*

Reading this, I can’t help but think that most all of our inter-religious Christian conflict stems from honest people trying to figure out “what was truly involved in the imitation of Christ” gone too far. Our all-to-human hubris ends up living in denial of the very image that Christ set for his followers to exemplify.