This article first appeared in the May 2025 edition of
This Month at St. Paul’s.
Click here to read the full newsletter.
As a priest in an institutional church with a checkered 230+ year history, I’m not unacquainted with conversations with otherwise faithful people who have lost their faith in organized religion. History certainly bears witness to the damage that has been done in God’s name by the institutional Church. Yet the Easter Vigil’s Collect-“O God of unchangeable power and eternal light… let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up,”(BCP p.291) invites us to reclaim the Church’s original vocation: not as a fortress of perfection, but as a restored community through which God’s mercy reconciles a fragmented world.
Nearly 40% of Americans now identify as “spiritual but not religious,” curating personalized faiths that mirror our culture’s obsession with self-informed choices. But this DIY spirituality often leaves us isolated, echoing what sociologists call our “age of liquid modernity” – where relationships, beliefs, and even identities are in a constant state of flux. The consequences are stark: rising loneliness, political tribalism, and a gnawing sense of existential drift. When faith becomes a solo project, we lose the grace of being known- and challenged- by others who bear Christ’s image differently than we do.
The 50-day Easter season refutes quick fixes. Beginning with Easter Sunday’s shocking news of resurrection, Eastertide becomes a marathon of communal practice: shared meals, collective prayer, and stories of a resurrected Christ who returns repeatedly to flawed disciples. The Easter Vigil Collect’s plea to “carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation” reminds us God’s renewal unfolds not in grand gestures but in stubborn, daily gatherings. Here, the “things cast down”- addictions, prejudices, despair- are raised up through mutual witness to the mercy of God at work in a community committed to self-giving, not self-help.
The early Church thrived not because it was harmonious, but because it dared to unite Pharisees and tax collectors, day-laborers and aristocrats. Today, this means building up parishes where people who’d never agree on a cable news channel or what to wear to a PRIDE parade still find themselves elbow-to-elbow at the communion rail. It’s gloriously awkward. It’s occasionally exhausting. But as the Collect insists, it’s how “things which had grown old are being made new.”
Critics aren’t wrong to distrust institutions. The Church has weaponized theology, enabled abuse, and traded humility for power. Yet Jesus didn’t entrust his mission to solo practitioners but to a ragtag group he called “ekklesia” -literally, “the gathered.” Our task isn’t to idolize the institution but to let it become a crucible where seemingly unlike-hearted people are transformed into like-hearted witnesses.
This Eastertide, let’s reject both religious tribalism and isolated spirituality. Let’s commit to return to the table, not just for Easter Sunday, but for every Sunday- not because the Church is perfect, but because it’s the chosen, broken vessel through which God still whispers: “See, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). The world won’t believe in resurrection because we preach it flawlessly, but because they see addicts and Pharisees, socialites and outcasts, activists and authorities sharing bread and daring to call each other “family.” That’s the Resurrection at work, and it’s better witnessed together.
– Andrew
View profile for The Rev’d Andrew Cannan
The Rev’d Andrew Cannan
Rector
Andrew appreciates the diversity of the journeys that bring people to find a home at St. Paul’s. He was baptized a Methodist, majored in religious studies at a Baptist university, married a Presbyterian, received a Master of Divinity as a Devil (the blue, basketball-crazed variety), and was ordained in a congregationalist church prior to finding his way as an Episcopal priest. “I was drawn to this strange Church that accepted the messiness of life and embraced it with grace and dignity. That sounded like a place where I could learn to live with God. That and I was always wanted to dress like Johny Cash.” In their downtime, Andrew and his wife, Ashley, enjoy East Carolina evenings in the backyard with their sons. On days off, he likely won’t be found fishing a remote section of the Eastern Pamlico that he is reluctant to disclose.
View profile
for The Rev’d Andrew Cannan
The Rev’d Andrew Cannan
The Rev’d Andrew Cannan
Rector
Andrew appreciates the diversity of the journeys that bring people to find a home at St. Paul’s. He was baptized a Methodist, majored in religious studies at a Baptist university, married a Presbyterian, received a Master of Divinity as a Devil (the blue, basketball-crazed variety), and was ordained in a congregationalist church prior to finding his way as an Episcopal priest. “I was drawn to this strange Church that accepted the messiness of life and embraced it with grace and dignity. That sounded like a place where I could learn to live with God. That and I was always wanted to dress like Johny Cash.” In their downtime, Andrew and his wife, Ashley, enjoy East Carolina evenings in the backyard with their sons. On days off, he likely won’t be found fishing a remote section of the Eastern Pamlico that he is reluctant to disclose.
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