New Blog: religiouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com

I’ve decided that 2012 is a year of re-alignment. Missouri has ditched the Big 12 for the SEC, and I have moved my membership to the Episcopal Church. My last time in the United Methodist church as a United Methodist was on the last Sunday of Lent this year. I was visiting some friends in another city, and went to their church with them. It felt a lot like the church where I grew up. It was a downtown church. It had a sort of pleasant, familiar smell that I’ve got come to associate with sanctuaries. The hymnal was there, the bulletin was very much like what I’d grown up with, even the pews were uncomfortable in a comforting and familiar way. And the service, which did all the things that annoy me about Methodist services, was a fine and familiar specimen of the breed. It was what it was, to the glory of God. But it’s not who I am anymore. Two weeks later, I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at the Great Vigil of Easter.

I think it’s sort of fitting that my last entry on this blog was that Methodist Fight Song. “They pray the most, they preach the best, they labor most for endless rest.” That will always be part of me. “A Methodist, it is my name, I hope to live and die the same!” Well, I don’t bear the name anymore, but the songs, the sermons, and the doctrines are in my bones. So maybe I’m not leaving the UMC so much as infiltrating the Episcopal Church.

I like to think of it has having dual-citizenship in the two traditions, but moving my primary residence. As such, I’m retiring this blog. But being newly resolved to blog regularly (it has to work one of these times), I’ve started up a new blog: religiouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com. Hope to see you over there.

“And when the happy day shall come,
And all the Christians are brought home,
My soul will feast in endless rest
With all the shouting Methodist.”

Keep shoutin’, Methodists. Be nicer to your ordination candidates and young clergy, but keep shouting.