So begins Jon Meacham’s Top of the Week column in the current Newsweek. He is referring to the outbreak of threats and intimidation of members of Congress in light of the passage of Health Care Reform and the arrest in Michigan of a particularly violent group of militiamen. These things come and go it seems. We have had such periods before. I still remember the tension in Nashville the day after Martin Luther King was shot as hundreds of university students marched down Broadway. It is easy to overestimate the importance of events we have lived through ourselves. But Meacham may be on to something. It is no secret that things seem out of control: not everyone losing a home is guilty of buying more than they could afford or using all their equity on bigger boats, fancier cars and lavish vacations. Government seems to want more while providing less and you could make an argument for the opposition that the winners are always the folks with the loudest voices or the deepest pockets.

Those thoughts caused me to wonder (in my “stream of consciousness” fashion) if Christian people have anything to offer to a discouraged and coarsening society. We in the Episcopal Church on the surface don’t seem ones to talk or lecture. Our fights are about positions sincerely held . . . but then most fights are. While we are largely out of the headlines for the moment, within the next six months most of the battles over property will be settled (we’ll win almost all if not all, but sincere people will shed real tears in the process). We’ll also consecrate a lesbian bishop in Los Angeles, so stay tuned to your local news channel!

I would like to invite you, however, to become acquainted with our past. The Anglican Church, then merely the Church of England, took its form during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The mid- 16th century was a tumultuous time. Religious wars, and executions, were breaking out all over Europe and the name of God was invoked to justify terrible things. The monarch sought the church to be the church of the nation: both catholic and protestant, innovative and traditional, biblical and spiritual. In some ways it was a fool’s errand and never fully successful but comprehensiveness has been our aspiration from the beginning. One prayer book will be used, Elizabeth decreed, “but I will not peer into a man’s heart to discover what he means by those words.”

It’s not easy to be fanatical about moderation and acceptance, but perhaps those are the kind of fanatics we need right now! Perhaps our vocation to a splintered, nervous community is to become conscious of our heritage, practicing the virtue of welcoming and blessing all. It is authentic to whom we are, it is desperately needed . . . and it is holy. I invite you to become active purveyors of comprehensiveness.