What can the Anglican Tradition offer Blue Collar Americans?

I come from a colorful history. My name was bequeathed to me by Scots-Irish Highlander turned Presbyterian ancestors; the rest of my family was Irish, Spanish, and French Catholic immigrants. My great grandparents were a curious mix of a Castilian lady, a Methodist circuit rider, a few Trotskyist activists, and a Texas outlaw. My Baptist upbringing mingled with my Catholic grandparents and somehow turned me into an Anglican.

I suppose I fell into the Anglican tradition a bit by accident; disillusioned with religion as I had encountered it but longing for a church community, I happened into a rural, Episcopal Church with lovely stained glass windows and a liturgy that spoke to my soul. And I stayed.

As the years have gone by, I have become more aware of the role the Episcopal church has played in U.S. history and how it has related to social class. In a book we are reading in the diocese during Lent, People of the Way, Dwight Zscheile reflects; “The Anglican Church in America went from being the officially established church to the church of the establishment as it remained favored by many of the socioeconomic elite. The resurgent Baptists and Methodists succeeded in luring away many of the lower classes through their revivalistic preaching and more open, egalitarian approach to church leadership. As long as the Episcopal Church tended to uphold the status quo of a stratified economic system and a rationalistic faith, it failed to attract and retain wider swaths of the American populace.” This is historically true, though I would suggest from experience that many Episcopal churches have and continue to appeal to rural and urban working class people, even if the wider culture of the church may favor a more educated clientele.

This statement, and my own history, has prompted me to ask the question: what does the Anglican tradition have to offer my people—particularly to working class people in the U.S.? I can only answer this in an anecdotal way and in light of my own history and experience. But I think it is a worthy question to ask. 

1.                   An incarnational theology and ethics. The Anglican tradition at its best is obsessed with the incarnation. It can offer an earthy spirituality, deeply connected to the natural world with a deep acknowledgement of the grittiness of life. We can find God in ordinary things and in the ordinary stuff of our lives. We can find mystery in our lived experiences and we can find Christ in ourselves and those around us. For people who live rooted and grounded in “ordinary life” and in the gritty “real world”, this offers a space to find Christ in everyday life. 

2.                   A Eucharistic faith. The Eucharist is foundational to the Anglican tradition. In the Eucharist, we take the stuff of everyday life and celebrate the incarnation, remembering death and hoping for new life. We acknowledge, too, the depth of suffering in the body of Christ in the world. The Eucharist is a place where we can bring the depths of our own personal and collective suffering and remember a Christ in solidarity with us. It is a place we can bring our hope for healing and wholeness and life. For a people who live in close contact with the pain of a divided, unequal, and exploited world, the Eucharist offers a place of solidarity.     

3.                   A community focused ethos. Most Protestant traditions are deeply individualistic, focused on individual salvation and personal holiness. The Anglican tradition acknowledges our need for community—and for working class people, community is central in their lives. A community focused ethos and theology allows the patterns that are already present in blue collar communities to be celebrated. It offers the possibility of developing local theologies, where a community comes together and articulates their faith and lived experiences in light of the Biblical tradition.

4.                   An open spirituality. My early encounter with faith, not unlike a majority of working class Americans, was often with a faith that was harsh and judgmental. Recent studies have shown that it is the working class that is leaving the church in droves. This is partly because working class people are less and less “respectable” by evangelical standards. As economic pressures grow, more and more working class people remain unmarried, become single parents, or live less and less stable lives. Unable to meet the standards required by most churches that cater to the working class, they are going to church less and less, though they continue to identify as people of faith. The Anglican tradition can offer a place of healing, a place for people to be as they are, and a place for people to discover God apart from a strict system of behavioral rules.

Redneck Stereotypes and Social Justice

“Wendell Berry points out that even among the advocates of political correctness or multiculturalism, negative stereotypes of rural and working-class whites remain fashionable.” (From Redneck Liberation, David Fillingim)

I have been disturbed for quite some time how liberal advocates of social change are perfectly comfortable with using stereotypes for people from the communities I come from. Having grown up rural and working class, I have found myself deeply uncomfortable at many a social justice meeting. During the recent election, discussions on gun violence, and irritation at the apparent backwardness of the Republican party (the party that most appeals to working class whites), a day rarely goes by that I do not block a Facebook mime quoting some liberal talk show host that mocks the people I grew up with.

Working class, rural people are characterized as ignorant, stupid, gun toting bigots with poor hygiene and even worse sensibilities. Their opinions (or stereotypes of their opinions) are mocked as so backwards as to be laughable. Because rural, working class people do not often have college educations, they are assumed to be uneducated and uninformed.     

I am not defending the opinions of Fox News, but because this network tends to appeal to a working class demographic, I am frustrated by how criticism of Fox quickly degenerates into satire of a whole group of people. Or how gun control advocates portray the average NRA member as a backwards redneck who is too stupid to understand with the constitution really meant. When I hear and see these stereotypes, I hear educated elitism, not real social critique.

Now, I understand that this is rarely the intention. People advocating for gun control are concerned, even heartbroken, over the terrible rise of gun violence in this country. Fox News talk hosts and Tea Party politicians make outrageous, racist statements about immigrant groups, people of color, LBGT people, and liberals in general. That should be critiqued. We need a genuine concern for social and racial justice.

What concerns me is that people who glibly speak these “redneck stereotypes” often do not give a thought to the lives and realities of the U.S. rural, working class. When liberal talk show hosts mock redneck gun owners, do they know what it is like to live in areas where police are rarely available, wild animals attack your pets and livestock, hunting is a way of life, and people are feeling that they have no control over their own lives? When liberals mock the supposed redneck fear of the government, are they aware of how excessive government regulations have destroyed rural economies, small farms, little “mom and pop” shops, and rural industry? Do they have any idea what it is to barely scrape by day after day, live in a community where the only industry that sustained the town is now gone, where your kids are ending up couch surfing or living on the street? Do we think about how humiliating it is for a quarter of residents in an area to stand in line for food stamps, be treated like an inferior by a government official, and how that eats away at a person’s self-respect? There is real fear and real poverty and real struggle here. In the town my dad works in, the poverty rate is 36%. People may disagree on how to address these realities (and rural, working class people disagree among themselves), but let’s not mock them.

I also have to say that these stereotypes are patently untrue. Most rural, working class people—my family, my friends, the people I grew up with—are people with a deep wisdom, a strong dose of common sense, and deep loyalty to community and land. All of us young urban professionals looking for community and trying to figure out how it works? Go ask a redneck.

I guess I am just asking that we think about what is being said before we glibly repeat or share stereotypes of my people. Yes, be concerned about the rise in violence. Yes, advocate for social justice. Yes, critique party platforms you disagree with. But don’t hit my people while they are already down and desperate. Maybe we can talk about justice for them too.  

Encountering Mystery

As I readjust to urban living, I try to remember to take time to get out of the city and into the wild things, as a way to feed my soul. A few weeks ago, I took a drive up through the Skagit Valley, north of Seattle and into some of the richest farmland in the country. Late in the afternoon, I stopped at a little preserve to watch the immense flocks of snow geese that were wintering in the valley. 

As I walked through the preserve, with a vast field of geese on one side and a creek on the other, just as the sun was setting, I felt myself ushered into the presence of mystery. I wanted to take a picture or a video of what I was experiencing, but I realized that nothing, absolutely nothing—not even my words—could capture the mystery of life that was unfolding around me. The sound of the rustling grass and the constant honking of a hundred geese and the wind reverberating in the valley. The bald eagle perched above us, ever watchful, and the hawk swooping through the grass. The wind in my hair, the thick mud under my feet, and the brilliant colors of the setting sun. The vast dome of cloud swept sky above and around me. And still no words were sufficient.

I wonder if, in the end, all our theologizing and all our church liturgies are just that—pale attempts to capture the ineffable mystery of the human encounter with God, with the divine. No church building, no liturgical celebration, no library of theology will ever be able to fully capture the Great Mystery. God will never fit into our boxes or our theories or our ideas.  

And yet, while I could never capture what I experienced in the wild places that day, I still hold on to the pictures and the memory and the inadequate words. Because they remind me of the mystery. In the end, in our theology and our worship services, perhaps that is what we are doing. We are reminding ourselves of the Great Mystery, straining to catch a glimpse of it.