GRAPHIC: http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/934/
©Jon Birch

Coming out of the Christian Closet

By Becky Garrison

As part of my ongoing pilgrimage to chat up the
themes I raise in my book Jesus Died for This?, I’ve begun to connect with an increasing number
of folks who seem to be searching for a connection outside of themselves though
they often wouldn’t call themselves emergent, misisonal, organic, holy hipster,
or even Christian.

 Thanks
to my conversations with Karen Ward (www.episcopalvillage.org), Kurt Neilson (www.seekhere.org) and other like-minded souls, I’ve been exploring
my connection to Celtic Christianity and Anglicanism. On his blog, The Website
of the Unknowing, Carl McColman reflects how I have begun to
describe myself as an ‘Apophatic Anglican’. The
following excerpt from that piece helps to explain what I mean by this: 

“During a panel discussion at Journey Imperfect Faith Community , a
number of us were asked to explore the faith label we use to classify ourselves.
I said I was an Apophatic Anglican, which I described as follows: “The more I continue to enter the cloud of the unknowing, the more I realize
just much I cannot know a God that is outside the time/space continuum But
something happens when two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus.
And the Anglican part is because I enter into the mysteries through the
Anglican ritual. And Anglicanism is one of those traditions, where I can
actually leave my brain intact. I don’t have to park my brain at the door when
I come in to partake of the mysteries. I was asked to further describe
“apophatic” as the tradition of negative theology by which you define God by
what you do not know. (And BTW-and it’s not apathetic but apophatic. 🙂

“The more I continue to enter the cloud of the unknowing, the more I realize
just much I cannot know a God that is outside the time/space continuum But
something happens when two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus.
And the Anglican part is because I enter into the mysteries through the
Anglican ritual. And Anglicanism is one of those traditions, where I can
actually leave my brain intact. I don’t have to park my brain at the door when
I come in to partake of the mysteries. I was asked to further describe
“apophatic” as the tradition of negative theology by which you define God by
what you do not know. (And BTW-and it’s not apathetic but apophatic. 🙂

GRAPHIC: http://www.nakedpastor.com/2008/11/13/cartoon-inclement-weather/ ©Naked Pastor

So what do you think? “What does
it mean to live out a faith where we live out the teachings of Christ while
walking in the cloud of the unknowing?”