faith journey: from Episcopal, to Baptist to Anglican to Roman Catholic

Before I share this blog post, I will say that this particular  piece is the most difficult piece I have ever written, not because I didn't have fond memories of my upbringing and faith experience but due to the possibility of upsetting people.  No matter how I word this, there may be disagreement because I cannot share without sharing both  the good and the bad, but I will do the best I can to be kind and Christ-like.  As a dear Orthodox priest Father Mark Grant said, "it is impossible to cook an omelet without scrambling the eggs." Due to this dilemma, I confidentially shared this piece with a small number of ordained and vowed Christians who serve in the ministry from the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, all who had a range of opinions and critiques of  this post, so I knew this would not be easy.  

I am personally sharing the issues I experienced in the Episcopal Church USA from the 1970s and 1980s that were also occurring not just regionally but internationally in various parts of the Anglican Communion.  Starting since  two decades, modern innovations related to sexuality and gender issues in parts of the Anglican Communion have led to tens of thousands leaving the more progressive jurisdictions  to the creation of the Anglican Realignment Movement (GAFCON and others), the Anglican Continuum, and the Anglican Ordinariate within the Roman Catholic Church (a historic return to the submission of Rome prior to the 1500s), and other Anglican Churches/groups, all outside the Episcopal Church USA and outside the progressive regions of Anglicanism.  All of these  restorative movements are trying to recreate or continue a more orthodox expression of Anglicanism to various degrees worldwide.  I thank and praise God for so many that have nearly laid down their lives to restore holiness to Anglicanism.  I also acknowledge that there are godly people and pairhes still in the Episcopal Church USA striving to be faithful and encouraging others to do so. 

My final spiritual home in the Anglican Ordinariate within the Roman Catholic Church was due to a number of reasons which I will share throughout the blog. Essentially, I finally conformed my beliefs  to what the Church Fathers and Church Councils said about the Bible for the first 1000 years, not what I personally still want to believe.  The final move was about surrendering.  Thank the Lord my husband is more than supportive of this.  He understands this entire life and faith journey better than anyone else.

              

                Fond Memories of My Childhood Episcopal Church Experience

At the age of three in 1974, our family moved to Austin, TX.  The first thing my parents did was join a wonderful Episcopal Church in which I spent my entire childhood as an only child. My parents were diligent about bringing me to church every Sunday and making sure I "robed" as an altar server/acolyte.  My mother grew up Methodist, a denomination with historic connections to the Church of England (Anglican). My dad was a cradle Episcopalian/Anglican who was spiritually formed by the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. 

                                                                       

At the age of five, I was accidently burned from the flames of a candle. My injuries were so severe that I spent three months in hospital rehabilitation and salt baths.  I was thankful that my dad caught the fire in time and rolled me on the ground to extinguish the flames. 

My parents stayed by me and loved me through that difficult time.  After three days, the doctors were not certain that I would survive, but by the grace of God, I survived and even thrived.  I remember that our dear Episcopal priest visited me regularly at the hospital, and my best friend Holly kept me company as I healed and recovered at home.  My Episcopal Church family prayed over me regularly and supported my parents in a number of ways for which I will always be grateful.  I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at the age of nine although I didn't fully understand what confirmation meant.  Confirmation meant totally surrendering to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and reaffirming my Baptism although I didn't understand this at the time.  I thought confirmation was something everyone did at a certain age.  

          

In the late 1970s, girls started serving at the altar (see picture) in Episcopal churches across the nation. This was happening in other parts of the Anglican Communion all over the world.    The late 1970s was also a time where changes in the liturgy. music, ordination, and gender roles were starting to occur.  Much more seriously, innovations in the areas of sexual morality, redefining marriage, and views on abortion teachings on abortion were developing in the 1980s.  The Episcopal Church USA became the primary gateway for many liberal innovations into much of the Protestant World within the United States.  This same trend was happening within other jurisdictions of Anglicanism worldwide.

In 1983, at the age of twelve, I loved serving at the altar with a new godly Episcopal priest until I graduated from high school in 1990. That priest expended much time and energy at the national level trying to protect our parish and diocese from some of the innovations I mentioned above.  Girls serving at the altar tended to lead us in different directions. Some sought ordination. Others simply wanted to be near the presence of the Lord. Thankfully, for me, altar service lead to loving Jesus and the Eucharist Feast.

                                           

                                                                   

Me as an acolyte/altar server in 1980.

Throughout my childhood, I picked up on certain doctrines about salvation, baptism, and Communion.  I was taught that salvation was ongoing and that someone could fall from grace if they gravely turned away from God and never repented. Although I didn't know what sins of grave matter were, I heard occasional references to the Seven Deadly Sins.  I was also taught that water baptism was required for salvation and that the elements of Communion somehow changed at the altar, but I wasn't sure how this happened.  I didn't understand that one's heart needed to be prepared to receive Communion, that sins should be confessed and fully repented before receiving the Eucharist. General words of confession appeared to be less and less evident within the 1979 Prayer Book.

I didn't know at the time how serving at the altar would have such a great impact on my Christian faith. It instilled a steady attraction to the altar and mostly to Jesus Christ.  I cannot thank my parents enough for taking me to the acolyte room at least twice a month and Church every Sunday because being an acolyte profoundly shaped my faith.

After ten years of altar service, I earned this custom-made James Avery cross (see beleow). It is now on a rosary that I use regularly to pray with as an Ordinariate Catholic.  The history of tactile prayer actually extends back into ancient Judaism and ancient Christianity although other religions and even paganism have long-used tactile prayers. http://stillstoneandmoss.com/page.php?page=PrayerRopesArticleByAlexanderRoman
                                                       

          

Before I tell about this next portion, there are some former and still current godly Episcopalians from my childhood Church that have orthodox beliefs about marriage and sexuality, but I am sharing the overall arching trends in the Episcopal Church USA.  Starting in my teen years (1983-1990) in the Episcopal Church diocesan-wide, I experienced anywhere from neutral to liberal opinions on the issue of sexual morality, even from some adults. This was the trend in other Episcopal dioceses )although not all) as well nationwide.  Throughout my active church involvement, I never opened a Bible.  Between not opening Bibles and the neutral to liberal changes on sexual morality, this did not fare well with a large national percentage of Episcopal Youth well into their adult years.  Thankfully, parts of the Prayer Book retained Scripture which I memorized and have never forgotten.  This played a huge part in my later faith journey.  

In 1990, I moved into the freshman dormitory at Baylor University.  I was soon approached by Evangelical Protestants who lead me to a radical conversion experience.  I had never seen or heard of Billy Graham or his style, but this all woke me up to God's Word and reading the Bible for the first time.  Reading the Bible led me to understand that if I truly loved Jesus, I would obey His commandments.  I knew from that point on that I also wanted this for my future family, so I prayed for a godly man who wanted the same thing. I finally understood that I couldn't live a secular lifestyle and profess Christ with my lips at the same time, so I gave my life to Christ and became a Baptist through Believer's Baptism at the age of 19.   

          

I didn't understand that I was leaving behind the ancient faith of Christianity… the altar, and the Eucharist, but I tried to live for Jesus, and I developed a personal walk with Christ through repentance which was strongly encouraged in the Baptist Church. 

Although I joined the Baptist Church in 1991, I married my husband in my childhood Episcopal Church in 1994. Our children were baptized in that Episcopal parish in 2001. Our dear godly orthodox Episcopal priest did this for us because he knew we would raise our children in a Christian home.  

For me, my love affair with the Episcopal Church died the day Gene Robinson was consecrated the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.   He was a partnered gay man who had left his wife and children and was hailed as a hero for doing so. After experiencing changing teachings on sexual morality in my teen years, the minute I witnessed Gene Robinson consecration on TV as I held Sam at three-years-old, I knew that I couldn't raise my children in the Episcopal Church USA, so we left for good at that point along with tens of thousands of Episcopalians and  my parents soon after as well.

         

Even through all of this, I remain grateful for my childhood Episcopal parish which was one of the less progressive parishes in the diocese because there I first gained a hunger to better know the Lord, and this was strengthened at Baylor University. I thank God for the godly people who were living for Christ and standing against these liberal innovations within the Episcopal Church USA. I also thank my parents for sending me to Baylor and raising me in the Episcopal Church because they both experiences helped me in my spiritual walk in different ways. The most important thing the Episcopal Church taught me is that all Christians who profess Christ, do their best to live for Him, and are baptized in the Trinitarian formula are brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the spirit of Vatican II in the Roman Catholic Church, something I will address in a later blog post.

Wedding Day

I married Grant in 1994 at my childhood Episcopal Church

                                  

Sam being baptized at my childhood Episcopal 

Church at 1.5 years of age

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Years in the Baptist Church until 2012

After our journey completely ended in the Episcopal Church in 2003, my husband and I started our family in a Baptist Church in Beaumont, Texas.  I ate up learning God's Word and hearing straightforward sermons.   I also loved listening to Billy Graham sermons and his conviction to live a godly lifestyle.  And that is precisely what Grant and I intended to do, raise our children in the Baptist Church so there was no confusion about morals, especially about sexual morality and marriage.                                                   

                                                                                          Grant and                                                                                                                           Janie, Baptist Church

                                                                                                              There were many good things about the Baptist Church: the encouragement to live holy lives, to read God's Word, to serve, to go on the foreign mission field, and to evangelize.  The first thing I noticed when we came to the Baptist Church from the Episcopal/Anglican Church were huge differences in doctrine: how we are saved, how we are baptized, is the Eucharist Real Presence or symbolic, what happens directly after we die, emphasis on certain sins and not on others, and many other MAJOR doctrinal differences between the Anglican/Episcopal tradition and the Baptist tradition totally unrelated to the progressive morality in the Episcopal Church.  

I also noticed that there was not an altar with the Eucharist in the Baptist Church which became more and more significant for me as time went on. 

Before I had children in the Baptist Church, young moms were talking about what type of artificial contraception they were using and who was getting introfertilization or tubal-ligations.  I did not understand that artificial contraception was considered immoral by all Protestants and Catholics until 1930 or even later. The Episcopal Church USA and many parts of the Anglican Communion opened the gateway for much of Protestantism to accept artificial contraception as the norm starting in the 1970s.

In 2003, our youngest child was diagnosed with Autism.  He went through years of intensive therapies, tutors, and special treatment.  Praise God he is attending college in the fall of 2019 which I will talk more about later.  Back to the Baptist Church.....

When our children were all little, I went through a mini faith-crisis because our children were not baptized young.  The Baptist Church taught that water Baptism was done at the age of reason when someone "accepted Jesus into their heart as personal Lord and Savior." The Baptist Church also taught that water baptism was not required for salvation while the Episcopal Church taught water baptism was necessary for salvation, and it needed to be done at infancy, preferably the eighth day of life as circumcision (Colossians 2:11-14) was done on the 8th day in ancient Judaism as baptism is the new circumcision. I had my children baptized anyway in my childhood Episcopal Church, all three of them at ages 3--1/2, 2, and 1.  I had a sense that they were safe until they could claim their Christian faith on their own  when they were ready, especially since Sam had been sickly as a young child.  All three children made the decision to get baptized and follow Christ on their own later, even our Sam with his Autism at age 12.

                               

                                         Janie and Sam at Believer's Baptisms

About the time our youngest child Sam decided to be baptized in the Baptist Church, I started having odd neurological problems.  The doctors discovered that I had neurological symptoms for years prior, but the symptoms became quite noticeable in 2012 and difficult to manage. After six months of doctors' visits and a trip to Houston, TX, I was diagnosed with Early Onset Parkinson's Disease.   At that time, I finally could go no longer without the Eucharist and the altar in the Church, especially after a new Parkinson's diagnosis.

Our family then found a local Anglican Church in an African-Anglican Reformed missionary diocese outside of the Episcopal Church USA which was very conservative morally and high Church in worship which we loved. The Anglo-Catholic priest was very attentive to the needs of the people.  He also prayed over my Parkinson's regularly.  This Anglican Church was the restored Episcopal/Anglican Church of my upbringing (still with many theological beliefs but not a large range of moral beliefs all contained in one Church) which we all fell in love with, so all five of us were confirmed in 2013.  Our family started serving in various Church capacities within a year.  My husband and Sam became altar servers while I became the Children's Directress.   At this time, I was studying deep into the Early Christian Church and Church Fathers.  It was this time that I rediscovered the long history between the Anglican/English Church and the Roman Catholic Church which stretched back to the second century.  http://anglicansonline.org/resources/essays/whalon/AngRC-histEng.html

As I mentioned in the introduction, Anglicanism is a smaller version of Christianity because the beliefs range from Anglo-Catholicism to Calvinism, to Pentecostalism, to Armenianism all in one Church body because Anglicanism is the via media or midway between Catholicism and Protestantism. Significant reforms happened during the English Reformation and then the final break from Rome during the 1500s.  I will speak more about this in a later post.  Even though there was a wide range of beliefs even in the conservative end of Anglicanism,  I told myself,  "God would have to carry me out for us to ever leave Anglicanism."  Well, that happened.

In 2016, it was time for me to have Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery after this five-year return to Anglicanism, Within two weeks of my neurosurgery, I made a return visit to our Anglican Church afterwards. Out of respect, I cannot give too many details, but essentially while I was in neurosurgery, the Anglican parish abruptly split over significant theological disagreements and Church rebellion.  Within a short time, a good part of our faith community was shattered all over the city of San Antonio.  Our family stayed in the diocese but did not feel spiritually safe enough to stay in the same church after the split.  Our family relocated in the same  missionary diocese to a new Anglican-Catholic Church plant with few people and a solid Anglican-Catholic priest in same African-reformed missionary diocese, all with godly leadership.  It was at that time that I spiritually shut down and just tried to make the best of the circumstances after losing our Anglican Church home. Little healing was occurring. After a year of serving in the Church plant with small growth, our family finally surrendered and "Went to Rome" through the Anglican Ordinariate.  https://ordinariate.net.  I guess you could say that I finally "reconciled with Peter" which I will talk more about under the section "The Primacy of Peter."

I finally asked the Lord again, Where does the Bible come from? How did it get here? Who canonized it? Do the Canonizers and their successors still have the authority over the Bible? and most importantly, did Jesus Christ Himself give the 7 Early Church Councils and Early Church Fathers and their successors the authority to collectively establish theological and moral doctrine and interpret the Bible for the Christian faith and the Church?   Again, I finally conformed my beliefs  to what the Church Fathers and Church councils said about the Bible for the first 1000 years, not what I personally wanted to believe.

After my first council with the Ordinariate Catholic priest, he knew I was ready for confirmation.  I had been studying the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church because I had been teaching Church history and catechism in the Anglican Church.  There are centuries of history between these two Church bodies as I stated above, well before the English, Counter, and Protestant Reformations starting in in the 1500s. It's a little different for Anglicans to be confirmed into the Ordinariate because they can be received year-round on a case-by-case basis if they take RCIA catechism classes afterwards.  Grant and Sam were not ready for confirmation yet, but I was, and my husband fully supported and encouraged me get confirmed so my soul could heal and be restored.  My first confession involved confessing every remembered sin I had ever committed since the age of reason.  Not only did this require an hour-long confession, it required returning  every week for three months because I continued to remember new unconfessed sins that I had committed over a 40-year period.  After three months of this, I decided I could never hold unforgiveness against  anyone ever again.  If the Lord could forgive all of my sins that were too numerous to count, there is no way I should not forgive others.  At that point, I just wanted the Lord to remember me in His kingdom as the thief on the cross did.  I was finally able to forgive the rebellious people that were largely responsible for the split in our Anglican parish and many others because of the cleansing and forgiveness process I experienced. The Lord spiritually healed me through the Sacraments and the beauty of the Ordinariate, Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, TX.

Please join me tomorrow as I will talk about the links to Early Church resources and apologetics, the basic timeline of the formation of major Christian bodies, and the basic outline of the entire blog.