The Church is like Downton Abbey…

Beloved readers, you are my confessor today as I admit to you my weakness for English Drama Period Pieces. Yes, I am smitten with Downton Abbey. I know the dialog is not true to the time period and yes, I know it is terribly classist and maybe the plot lines are starting to run a wee bit thin. I know all that and yet, the story intrigues me.

In case you don’t know the show, let me tell you a little bit. It is the early days of the 20th Century in England. World War I has split the world in two and life at this English estate is different.

As one character states, “I feel a shaking of the ground I stand on. The nature of life is not permanence but flux. Things are changing.”

Things are indeed changing. Poor Lord Grantham. He wants to run the estate as he always has without having to worry or ever talk about money ( talking about money is so middle class) but when the money runs out and he is bailed out by his middle class cousin who is heir to the estate and also husband to the Lord’s daughter, values begin to change how the estate is run.

This is not easy. There is great conflict in the family as the world is changing and estate after estate all around Downton is closing down. Lord Grantham of course wants things to remain exactly the same, but Matthew the once reticent heir to the estate has his own ideas and the two are clashing with one another over the best future for the estate. Lord Grantham can’t see his place in the world and the changes are more than he can bear. His very personhood feels threatened.

With more than a little bit of irony, Lord Grantham finds reconciliation to these new ideas through conversation with his son in law the radical socialist Irish man who reminds him that, “Every man or woman who marries into this house, every child born into it, has to put their gifts at the family's disposal.”

The young Irish man then goes on to remind Lord Grantham of his value to the estate, his role and the importance of what he holds.

This story is not just a good piece of narrative drama. It is the story that is being told to us in Exodus these last several weeks as seismic shifts have taken place in the tribe of Israelites that have set themselves off on a journey of freedom and many are beginning to regret and blame the change and journey that God has invited them to embark on.

It is the same story, you see. Moses is the reticent heir, the elders that complain remind me of Lord Grantham, no longer certain of their place in this new world. And what of that radical Irish man—where is he in the Exodus story? Well of course that’s God.

I’ll take this a step further. This story of change is not just confined to Downton Abbey or the Bible. This story is OUR story of life right now. The church itself is the grand estate in a world where grand estates are dying. Like Downton Abbey, we are seeing vast changes in our world.

And the question is how to best be the vital thriving estate shifting practices that need to be changed while holding onto the very best of the tradition?

Like the loss of land, estate taxes and the disappearance of domestic servants in the great estates, churches themselves are changing. As church choirs disappear across the country and the average size of a mainline protestant church is around 45-50 on a Sunday, there is no doubt: if we are to thrive, then we need to manage our affairs a bit differently while staying true to our identity.

I wonder if we are listening to our reticent heirs at all; those that might have once been here, those that are here now with their children or coming to church from time to time—Easter, Christmas etc. It is easy for us to scoff at our heirs, as they are not the same kind of people we are, after all they are ONLY here a little bit, why aren’t they more invested?

What do the reticent heirs have to say to us? What might they want to do to see our estate thrive?

Admittedly, every good simile or metaphor has a breaking point, a place of not like this. Of course, the danger of seeing the church as Downton is that it keeps us locked in a mindset of church as building or estate rather than church as people everywhere working to transform the world. That’s the breaking point and the danger of this comparison.

However, what is true is that churches are no longer the dominant source of community that they once were in our culture and much needs to be thought about and considered for our future thriving in the Episcopal Church, if there is to be a future. To go on as if nothing was different nothing has changed will surely see us ending up like so many of the estates of Great Britain, emptied and bulldozed or now museums for tourists to peruse.

Is this to be our future?

I suppose, like Downton, we’ll have to wait a season or two to know the answer to these questions.

George