A Schism in the Heart

I have not, over the course of my life, spent much time dwelling on the Reformation. 

Perhaps you haven’t either: in which case, please know that I’m referencing the Protestant Reformation, which eventually resulted in what we now know as Protestantism.  This movement, what the Reformers desired to accomplish, and the eventual split that grew from it, profoundly impacted Christianity: it shapes, in subtle and surprisingly nuanced the ways, the way that both Protestants and Catholics now think about and understand faith.

I, of course, knew none of this growing up.

Raised Southern Baptist evangelical, I was never taught much if anything in the way of church history.  My knowledge stopped with Billy Graham.   And even if I had learned church history, I suspect I would have viewed much of it as not particularly germane.  I had professed my faith; I was saved by Christ; I attended the church I felt called to attend; that was that.

But God has a funny way of opening the doors of our hearts to the unexpected.

My departing from the Southern Baptist denomination has over the years led me to a Methodist congregation and then a Lutheran one.  That changed my understanding of the Protestant milieu, and opened my eyes beyond (what I now realize was) the very particular, very distinct context of evangelicalism in which I was raised.  I started to learn about church history over those decades; I discovered the beauty of liturgy; I heard from Protestant authors about the profound impacts of the Reformation on the way we practice faith today in a way that made it clear to me the legacy is far more broad and far more complex than I had ever imagined even within my own tradition.

And then, during the pandemic, God decided to introduce me to the Catholic church.

I was surrounded by Catholics; I regularly visited a local adoration chapel; and it was the Catholic faith and the Catholics around me who lifted and carried me through a particularly painful period in my life.  The experience was so intense that my husband and I attended a few RCIA courses; we faltered only when when we began to seriously consider—as the RCIA director aptly put it—the vast theological differences between our traditions.

Now, for the time being, we attend a “where God needs us to be currently” church.  We like it there well enough, and maybe it will be where we decide to stay.   I’m not sure. I feel yet unsettled, restless.  I wonder about the future, and I grieve for something I’m not sure I can express in words. The night we abandoned our RCIA venture, I came home and spent an entire night crying in frustration.

I know what it is I am seeking.  And when I think of that, what I’m really after, I think of the warmth of the congregation in my small evangelical church growing up, the way it really felt like the kind of community that God wanted us to be, how we cared and stewarded each other. I long for the creativity and scope of ministry I found in the Methodist and Lutheran churches, the thousands of unorthodox ways to “be the body” to particular people in particular need at particular moments—the warmth, acceptance, and grace that felt so refreshing to me after a long period of wondering why serving Christ in so many places seemed to mean “serving one country” or “serving a political party.”  I want the intellectual tradition and the beauty and meaning of the Mass and the liturgy in the Catholic church, as well as the love and grace of so many Catholics I know. I want it all!

I can think of what I don’t want, too. To feel isolated and alone in a body that I’m doing my best to be a part of.  To have politics or political issues placed before me as a criteria for faith or political issues used as a rubric for salvation.  To agree lockstep to tradition-specific theological or doctrinal commitments before God that I am profoundly uncertain I believe. 

I always feel this longing most keenly during Holy Week.

And sometimes I wonder if this apparent schism in my heart isn’t just a testament to what is: the church is God’s hands and feet on earth, the expression of His kingdom, and also deeply divided and fractured.  The church too lives in the tension between the fullness of redemption and the now: imperfect and yet made holy.  We can’t, just yet, have it all in one place.

Meanwhile, I’m grateful that we have a church body locally that welcomes us.  Since I haven’t committed to becoming a member, I’ve not been asked to express commitment to all of their doctrinal bits and pieces.  They grant us communion freely, and for that I’m grateful.  We worship there, and I wait and wonder, and take comfort that we are not alone walking through this tension. 

We’re living ecumenically, I tell myself.  I wait for God to move or provide more guidance.  In the interim, we turn our eyes to Christ and hold the truth in our heart: already, and not yet, all at once.

Maybe one day. Maybe one day…