It has honestly taken me almost a year to fully comprehend how disillusioned and annoyed I've been feeling with the church lately.

So much of what I was passionate about in seminary seems meaningless now, in a world full of fascism and hate and division.
My faith has deepened significantly, but not in the way I expected: a) through being with my Muslim friends...

Like my seminary, which was interdenominational, being close to people of another faith has strengthened my sense that I am a Christian and an Anglican through and through. But it's made me less concerned with...well, honestly, gatekeeping.
And b) the community I serve now.

The community I serve is small, and the majority of our people are middle to lower-middle class, with quite a few on permanent disability. We have multiple members who probably wouldn't last in other communities because they have personality disorders.

Our history is as a community that welcomed and affirmed gay people and their ministries openly, before it was trendy to do so. We also now have a small but really dedicated contingent of young exvangelical queer kids who literally found us by googling "gay friendly church."

Serving in a place that had the guts to rent out their rectory to young spiritual seekers to live in community, the guts to pay me a salary AND RAISE IT EVERY YEAR, the guts to welcome all who come (while not condoning abusive behaviour)...
That has changed my attitude a lot.

I've been changed by the rector's passionate insistence that only gender-inclusive language be used in Bible readings.
I've been changed by the modeling of community that holds the most frustratingly broken and beautiful people in its arms with love.

I've especially been changed by the people who have come to live at Hineni House who have never been instructed in any religious tradition, who are wide open to everything faith has to offer and therefore have to be nurtured very carefully to keep them safe from spiritual abuse.

It really makes me not care so much about protecting dogma, or prayerbook arguments, or what makes someone a "real" Christian or a "real" Anglican or what makes a sacrament "truly" efficacious.
If you care, that's totally fine.
But I don't.
Because I don't think the world does.

And at the risk of sounding a bit self-righteous, I don't think Jesus cared nearly as much as we would have wanted him to either.
Sorry, rant over.
I'm just really frustrated with the church for doing the shit that people always do: quibble over inanity while people suffer.