for "Koinonea" August 09 The Besetting Sin

THE BESETTING SIN

Study of the Enneagram indicates that each of us has a “besetting sin,” a sort of innate fall-back position we cling to by habit or reflex. We come by it naturally, or have chosen it so early in life that we don’t remember the choice. It seems to work for us. We’re quite capable of committing all the other sins; it’s just that this one is our favorite. It is part of who we are. We don’t usually consider it to be a sin. In fact, we tend to value it as normal, and assume others must feel the same way about it, or would if they were as well-informed as we are. Of course, in fact, they have their own, which may be different, and they hold to theirs just as strongly. Unfortunately, the besetting sin is still a sin, and it harms us, because it limits our field of choices. It forces us to look at life through its prism alone, and therefore to see only its spectrum of colors. We see our world through our sin-colored glasses.

I am of the opinion that Christian denominations (and I would extend this observation to other religious groupings as well), also have a besetting sin that not only forms, but limits them. These arise out of the origins and formative years of the group, and they may be either baggage brought from some former entity, or they may be a reaction against what they have left behind or what has stood in opposition to them. To know the besetting sin, one has to know the history of the denomination. For example, the Roman Catholic Church is all that is left of the western half of the Roman Empire. As such, it has inherited the Imperial legal system and structure, with Pope as Emperor, right down to the tiny left-over scrap of being also a head of state. Consequently, the Catholic Church has historically been compelled to define, in legal terms, absolutely everything to the most minute detail. There can be no mystery, and certainly no ambiguity. The Church must be poised to go to court over every minutia of doctrine, at any time, and it must speak with unequivocal authority on anything. Their besetting sin, therefore, in my opinion, is authoritarian legalism.

But how about us Episcopalians? What is our crutch, our fall-back position? What piece of our identity, rooted in our origins, not only defines us in our own minds, but also inhibits us and holds us back? I would submit that it may be Anglo-philia—our inordinate, unreasoning fondness for all things English. Like most colonials, we go to such extremes that we are sometimes more English than the English. Many of our church buildings look as if they had been plucked whole from the English countryside. Our worship vestments are not just churchy, they are English Churchy. If we had an ethnic event, such as the Greek Orthodox sometimes have, ours would be High Tea—or “Pub Night,” as my congregation in Huntington used to have. We set great store in being part of the Anglican Communion, more so, it seems, than much of the Anglican Communion sets in having us. For many of our bishops, the Lambeth Conference is like a pilgrimage to holy Mecca, and that tea with the Queen (note “the” queen, not “their” queen) is a peak experience for a lifetime.

So what is wrong with all this harmless amusement? Nothing, of course, as long as it remains that; it can be benign and healthy as long as we retain our senses of humor and proportion, which this article hopes to encourage. If it becomes a box for us to take refuge and confine ourselves in, not so much. We have not been an Anglo church here in the U. S. for more than a generation, and as participation in our General Convention will attest, we are no longer a national church, either. If we expect non-Anglos of whatever type to conform to our preference for Englishness, we do them and ourselves a wrong.

There is more that goes with Anglo-philia, too, that is less benign, and we see it in our church culture as well, to our harm: classism, cultural elitism, excessive nationalism, and some of our racism have their roots in English tradition. Those jokes about Episcopalians “hating tacky worse than sin,” and for whom “sin is not knowing which fork to use at dinner,” harken to our early, Tory days in America. We’ve been working for some time to eradicate these negative influences. My hope is that simply raising to our awareness some of their origin will help us to accomplish that.