
While attending church not long ago, I listened to a retired, genuinely earnest preacher make a curious point.
First, he referenced the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who stressed the importance of asking questions. With this in mind, the preacher then went on to boldly assert that all declarative sentences (i.e., those that don’t pose questions) presume perfect knowledge and thus rob us of any sense of mystery (“epistemic closure?”).
Later in the sermon, he reminisced about the Episcopal church in the early days of his ministry, back in the 60s. He talked about how it had been a thriving enterprise back then and how much it had meant to him.
He then offered this sad refrain. The average attendance, he said, on any given Sunday in the Episcopal church today, is only about 40 worshippers. He expressed sadness at this, noting how tragic it is.
But then came the coup de grâce: “How have things come to this?” he asked, altogether innocently.