Events, however, were to take me off in another direction. As a result of some personal issues, we ended up leaving the Baptist church and finding a home in our local Anglican church. It wasn’t a move made lightly, but it was a necessary one.
To be honest, I didn’t know that much about Anglicanism. But what I did know, I particular the breadth of church experience that was held together under it’s roof, led me to think that this would be a good home, given my (then) current position. In fact, the church that we joined wasn’t that different from that Baptist one that we’d left (which, in hindsight, may not have been a good thing). Obviously it had many of the Anglican trimmings, but at it’s heart it shared a similar conservative evangelical world-view that made it relatively easy to fit in. So we settled down to become part of this new community.
And become part of that community we did. In fact, what we found there was the strongest sense of community that we had ever experienced within church. Not necessarily within the broader congregation, but we very quickly became part of a homegroup that, for a number of years, really became church for us. For what we found here was a group of people who had come from a variety of different backgrounds, who brought with them a variety of different experiences, but who - for a time - found themselves in a very similar place. That group, maybe 10 in number, became a real haven for all involved. For three or four years we were on a journey together – we were questioning together, searching together, wondering together, growing together. That group was one where we were all able to open ourselves up, in an environment that was full of love and compassion, that didn’t judge, that accepted who we were and where we'd been. As a result we were able to grow and step out on new paths, seeking out new horizons, knowing that there was support all around. Looking back, it was a very special time – one that we probably only appreciated the significance of in hindsight, but one that had (I think) a profound influence on all those involved.
Yet within that group were probably the seeds of its demise. As I’ve already alluded to, that group became – for most of those involved – our truest experience of church. While the homegroup was part of this church, and we were all members of that church, one of the things that probably united as a group was a certain disaffection with the underlying evangelical ethos that church. With the strength of community that built up within that group, we were in some senses marginalising ourselves from that broader church community.
That wasn’t originally the case, as the sense of dynamism that came from our little community was directed back into the church. Again (as with my experience in the Baptist church) we were trying to instigate change from the inside. We were trying to be an agitating voice of change that (we believed) would be able to open up that church to the broader sense of spirituality that we were discovering. And in so doing we would challenge the underlying conservative evangelical ethos of that church. For a while it seemed that we were succeeding. We instigated a Justice and Peace group. We introduced a more reflective worship experience. We were getting more involved in the broader community. And it seemed we had the support of the church in doing this.
Over time, however, the underlying tensions between the direction that the group was taking, and the general direction that the rest of the church was heading in, started to become more significant. Not long after we had joined the church, the original Vicar left. The new vicar was of a much more charismatic inclination, and was initially supportive of what we were doing. However, over time these tensions became more obvious. It became clear that there were two different directions, and that the direction that our little homegroup was moving in was not one that the bulk of the church was really interested in.
And then two things happened, although I can’t be sure of the sequence. Perhaps it all kind of happened together. Firstly, one by one we were loosing members of the homegroup. Not because of the group itself, but because people were either moving away themselves (in some cases as a direct result of the growth and discovery that they had found within that group), or finding their own personal tension with the church too much. New people came in, but the sense of community, the sense of commonality and shared discoveries was dissipating. Secondly, the seas of my own personal faith journey were becoming more and more choppy. I was increasingly finding that all those questions I now felt able to ask were not getting the answers I thought they needed. I was increasingly feeling more and more uncertain of things, and finding that the number of things I actually believed were getting smaller and smaller. The Post Evangelical had opened up things massively for me, but I was finding it hard to bring things back together in a way that made any sense. I think that this was compounded by being part of a church which was increasingly unable to accommodate the kind of questioning and searching that I was doing. The homegroup had been my source of sustenance during that time, but as that started to fade in its significance, the lack of empathy with the church of which we were a part became more and more profound. Every Sunday I would come back wound up by something or other, and every week I would feel more and more on the edge of things. Eventually, I got so close to the edge that I jumped.
To those who didn’t know me too well, it would have seemed a very sudden move. I was still quite heavily involved in things, and had a reasonably high-profile. But I wasn’t prepared to take the time to slowly bow out, so it all happened a bit suddenly and probably over-dramatically. I’d signaled my leaving in an e-mail to the vicar, in which I outlined my reasons for leaving. This included a long list of the kinds of questions that I was wrestling with and was unable to answer. After a few days, I picked up that the message that was going around was that “Ian has lost his faith”, and that this was why I had left. In a probably over-dramatic flourish, I took it upon myself to circulate my original e-mail to everybody I knew who might be remotely interested, to put my side of the story, and to let them know that I hadn’t lost my faith, I was just trying to re-assess it. Thinking back, I think that the vicar’s assessment might have been closer to the truth than I was prepared to admit at the time. I don’t actually think I had lost my faith, but it might well have been true to say that I was loosing it. I wasn’t ready at that time to let go so totally, but deep down I might have been laying the ground for that.
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