One of the problems with covering the same religion-beat topics for multiple decades (in other words, I am old) is that you tend to see many “new” news stories as pieces of puzzles that are actually quite old.
Consider, for example, the Religion News Service feature that was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).
The headline on that RNS piece stated: “A 300-year-old church hopes to connect with spiritual but not religious neighbors.” Here is the overture from this story by religion-beat veteran Bob Smietana:
For three centuries, Trinity Episcopal Church has tried to meet the spiritual needs of the small community of Southport, Connecticut, about an hour and a half outside of New York.
As more and more of the church’s neighbors ditch organized religion but not faith, leaders at Trinity hope a new initiative will help them find meaning and purpose in life even if they never attend a Sunday service.
The church recently launched the Trinity Spiritual Center, which offers lectures, classes on meditation and contemplation, and a sense of community during a trying time, said the Rev. Margaret Hodgkins, the rector of Trinity Church.
We will come back to some of the specifics of this piece — details that link it to several trends that are (#SIGH) decades old in the aging, shrinking world of mainline Protestantism and, to a lesser extent, parts of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, liberal Judaism and other established religious “brands.”
The Big Idea in this RNS piece is that an Episcopal parish that has some resources to spend has decided to help spiritual seekers find their own paths to the top of Mt. Eternity without proclaiming any of those narrow, tacky doctrines linked to 2,000 years of Christian faith and practice. You know, all that stuff about the Resurrection of Jesus, eternal salvation or moral theology (warning: veiled reference to the “tmatt trio”).
In other words, the goal appears to be a sort-of parish in honor of St. Sheila, the patron saint of “Sheilaism.”