Regarding the Creedal Faith I learned that the Virgin Birth and the Ascension were myths, (They're not all that important anyway!), that the Resurrection was a "spiritual" or "mystical" event, (Some nonsense about it being "true" but not necessarily "factual" as I recall.), and that while Hell might exist, we were not required to believe that anyone was there, or would ever be there (Not full blown Universalism perhaps, but pretty close!). Now in fairness I must add that we still believed in the Atonement back then, and thus, as I recall, there was quite sound teaching on the Cross!

At the same time, it is a truism that once we have crossed the threshold and stopped believing in some things that we have heretofore held sacred, to then stop believing in other things only gets easier. It is called the slippery slope. And it seems to me that we Episcopalians have been on it for a very long time!

I remember that toward the end of our Senior year, The Rev. Dr. John R. W. Stott came to preach to us. Dr. Stott told us that while he was sure that we had all received a very fine theological education, blah, blah, blah, we had better have a "gospel to preach" by the time we graduated, or it would have all been for nothing. I remember that at the time I understood precisely what he meant, and I remember thinking, much to my dismay, that I in fact no longer believed much of what had brought me to seminary to begin with, and that I was not very certain at all anymore, what the gospel was.

And thus during the next ten years or so, following graduation and ordination, I did my dead level best to proclaim "Higher Criticism", for you see, it had become the only "gospel" of which I was certain. For example I remember how zealously and confidently I would explain the Documentary Theory, or the "Synoptic Problem" or about Trito-Isaiah, to a rapt and attentive Sunday School class, or how I would opine that one's interpretation of the Parable of the Sower from Mark's Gospel, depended entirely upon which redaction one meant, for of course one was a parable and one was an allegory you know!

In the pulpit, though always energetic and animated, I found myself struggling increasingly to make the Gospel "relevant" to my congregations, as I was taught to do. This was especially true at Easter. For example there was the year, when I found myself babbling on about how there were no bathrooms in Heaven, nor video cameras in the first century! And if that weren't bad enough there was the year that I was finally reduced to merely repeating the Easter Acclamation, "Alleluia, Christ is Risen!" over and over again almost like a mantra, in hopes, I suppose, that if I just said it enough I would believe it.

Fortunately for me, having arrived at seminary as a cradle Episcopalian, albeit with strong roots in Scripture, I have in the last decade or so been able to regain my zeal for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, all belief restored and intact! And in point of fact I am likely to report to others that I am in recovery from my seminary education, now in the 23rd year of my Priesthood!

Now please understand. My seminary was not a bad place to be. In many ways it was a very good place to be, and certainly at the time I valued it greatly, and was proud to be one of its graduates. It simply did not engender in me the faith necessary to proclaim the Gospel with boldness, and in fact had the opposite effect. I suspect that the same was true of others.

And while I am certain that my own inadequacies and imperfections have had a lot to do with my struggles, and while I have not the scholarship to challenge the Bible scholars or theologians, I cannot help but notice that the crisis that we Episcopalians face today is rooted in the same sort of tendencies that I encountered in seminary all those many years ago and which rendered me useless in parish and pulpit, to wit: a kind of nonchalance regarding Christian Doctrine, and a marked lack of reverence for, or knowledge of, the actual content of the Bible.

This is why I have never bought the notion that our ongoing crisis was about sex. It has never been about sex. Not for one second. Our ongoing crisis is about faith, and/or the lack thereof. Faith in the Bible. Faith in the doctrines of the Church. Faith in Jesus the Son of God. By very definition, faith requires that we believe in the implausible, the impossible, and perhaps most importantly, the offensive, for example, the Cross. That's what faith means, believing in that for which others will think you a fool.

Today, we are a Church which is divided not pro gay/anti gay, but rather between those who believe the plain doctrines of the Faith and the plain words of Scripture, and those who have abandoned them, via the Slippery Slope Express. It's not really all that complicated, but it does help us to understand why unity, in our case at least, is not a possibility, for we simply do not believe in the same things.

--The Rev. Jamie Flowers is Rector of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Louisiana