An Agnostic Goes to Anglican Church

I'd mentioned last week that I wrote a proposal to study religious rhetoric, and chose the Anglican Church as my site. I did a bit of reading about Anglicans before my first foray into their sanctuary, but I was quite unprepared with quite how much ritual and ceremony took place during High Mass.

I haven't seen that much ritual since my cousin Mario's Greek Orthodox wedding (he's Filipino-Italian-French Canadian, she's Greek). Mario's side is, I think, Anglican, but we had to keep an eye on the bride's side of the church to make sure we stood up and sat down at the right times. It was like a sports stadium wave, but in church -- the Greek side would stand up, and we'd follow... up, down, up down. Must've been hilarious to watch from the back of the church. Maybe if I were up at the front, I wouldn't be able to stay solemn and reverential.

When I told my Auntie Susan about my project, she was predictably ecstatic. After all, she's very devout. She's never been married, but I would say she's married to the church. As far as I know, Anglicans don't have nuns, but if they did, she would be one. If she's not at home, she's at church. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not knocking her devotion, or devotion to religion in general. It would take a very hardened person to not acknowledge how much good the churches do in communities. (Although you could argue they also did a lot of damage to the aboriginal community in the country's early days.) Most of the organizations I've volunteered for were linked to a church.

So, I knew I wouldn't get zapped upon entry into St. James -- I'm a self-proclaimed agnostic, but if God were at St. James on Sunday morning, He might say, "Hey, haven't I seen you around before?", not "Where in My Name have you been?"

Aside from weddings and baby dedications and funerals, I think the last time I showed up in a church -- any church -- was maybe when I stayed with this evangelical Christian family in Bundaberg, Australia. They had two girls and were a pretty conservative bunch, from what I can recall. But I'll tell you one thing: I'll take the classical churches -- Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox Greek, what-have-you -- over evangelical Christian any day of the week. I'm a modernist generally, but something about evangelical Christianity gives me the creeps.

Back to St. James...

Music for High Mass
Mass setting
Opening Hymn
Gradual Hymn
Offertory Hymn
Communion Hymn
Closing Hymn
Postlude

Anyway, so it's 10:30, and I'm standing at the steps of the church. I see a bodyguard, but no aunt. He's a big beefy guy with a name tag, and he greets me as I head in the door, pretending like I was just like any other churchgoer to St. James. My aunt was nowhere in sight, so I stood around in the foyer for a while before someone inevitably invited me in. The church is old, and I like it -- the first thing that hit me was the incense. It was still a bit smoky near the front, and the smoke and the scent hung in the air, the scent of the ages.

I was there at the tail end of Family Mass, before High Mass. Everyone disappeared downstairs, where they were serving refreshments in between services. The basement of the church is filled with people, a motley crew of white-haired little old ladies, street people -- some of whom are probably homeless and want some coffee and somewhere to sit down -- and everybody in between. The location of St. James, the oldest church in the diocese of New Westminster, is in Vancouver's gritty, grotty Downtown Eastside. Site of the first clinical injection site in North America. The cesspit of the city. You get the idea. Why else would this church need a bouncer? But, the church's location is one of the reasons why I chose it -- because it is smack-dab in the middle of the most secular area in the city, made all the more desperate-looking by the smattering of gospel missions and church soup kitchens. The guy occupying the pew in front of me had dreadlocks that reeked so badly I had to move across the aisle to avoid being downwind from him. The hooker that hobbled in on stiletto heels and fishnet stockings was high as a kite -- her singing more like screeching/wailing, piercing the air over and above the minister chanting his part of the prayer on a microphone. Eventually she was removed. I wondered if it was like this every week.

Do the other people in the church gaze upon her and think to themselves:
"God have mercy on your soul" or
"I'm so glad I didn't turn out that way" or
"This woman shouldn't have been let in" or... what?

It's at these times I would like to be able to read people's minds.

St. James wasn't all little old ladies and bums, though, there were people there of all shapes and sizes, ages, and attire. Sitting near the back, I was quite fascinated with the variety within the congregation. And, no matter who they were, they gave a half-kneel and bow as they went past the centre aisle. I grew up in a modern church with very little ritual or ceremony, and whether or not this part of religion makes a difference to the faith of the religious individual, it was interesting to observe. It brings to mind a lot of questions about the function of ritual in a secular life, too. I'm thinking of politeness rituals, gestures of respect, things you're taught in childhood. Do any of us really think about why we're doing it, or has the ritual become so ingrained into our psyches that nothing short of a lobotomy will get them back out again? As I sat in Anglican Church on a Sunday morning, a thousand paper topics raced through my brain, not just about religious rhetoric but prejudice, modernism, class consciousness, etc. I think if I am ever stuck for inspiration for an anthropological paper, I gotta go back to church. Even if it means dragging my sorry carcass out of bed early on a Sunday morning.