Stephanie Buck
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weat gathered behind my knees and pooled in my elbow creases while I slumped in my favorite blue chair, writing the email I’d been dreading the whole summer. Since childhood, I’d believed church leaders had access to a greater understanding of what is true and good and holy. Their advice was to be sought in difficult situations and they were to be revered. Always. Yet there I was, drafting an email I feared would unleash the full fury of the Anglican clergy.
family since birth. At age twelve, while touring a European cathedral with my family, I felt so overwhelmed by the beauty of the place that I fell to my knees at the altar as a sense of warmth and what I assumed had to be the Holy Spirit filled me. That feeling of love, combined with messages about forgiveness, justice, caring for the poor and oppressed, and promises of hope and renewal defined church for me, drawing me back after the inevitable rebellious phases.
It was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend in the first year of the pandemic. I thought the holiday would give me at least two or three days, and that my email would fall to the bottom of an overflowing queue. The pastors were notorious for leaving emails unanswered for weeks, or even months. In the past, I had found this endearing, if annoying, but this time I was desperate for it to work to my advantage. Maybe I could leave quietly, perhaps unnoticed, sharing my decision with them while escaping any conflict.
Throughout my young adulthood, church was where I found community and connected with a sense of purpose. I left my home in the Chicago suburbs to attend college in Texas, moved to Washington, D.C. (the first time), attended grad school in London, and then settled back in D.C. Even with so much transition, being a church person meant I never worried about finding friends. I had also shaped my life around church teachings, believing they were right and true.
I wrote the first draft to the head pastor, edited it, walked away, came back, hyperventilated, and made more edits. I felt guilty for what I was about to do, and guilty for putting it off this long. Over the years, church had been a constant in my life, not just because I attended one every Sunday with my
The Anglican church I joined in D.C. valued science and reason, made space for a variety of political viewpoints and didn’t make me feel like an outcast for being a Democrat and career-motivated woman with a master’s degree. I had felt so grateful to find it. And sure, as any thoughtful person might, I occasionally questioned the existence of God and some of the teachings of the church, but I understood
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