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A SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Marvin Bowers
Lent, 1997
Last Christmas my wife Bonnie gave me a copy of Jimmy Carter's
autobiography, Living Faith. In the book, Mr Carter writes about the role that
his faith in Jesus Christ has played in his life, both his personal life and his
public life. As I read the book I thought, we should all write a book like this.
Writing such an autobiography would be a wonderful way to examine our lives,
not just in a moral sense, but in a broader spiritual sense. As Lent approached
I began to invite members of my parish, St Paul's Episcopal Church, Healdsburg,
to consider making a commitment to write such a spiritual autobiography during
the six weeks of Lent. I proposed that we write the following six parts during
the six weeks:
1. The Faith of My Parents' Families; 2. The Faith of My
Childhood and Adolescence; 3. The Faith of My Young Adult Years; 4. My Present
Faith; 5. Faith for the Coming Years; and 6. Faith to the Grave and Beyond.
For me and for a good number of other people in the parish, this has turned
out to be a very rewarding exercise. Many people have said that, in preparing
to write, they have had conversations about the faith with their parents and with
brothers and sisters that they would never have had if they had not made this
commitment. Others have said that writing a spiritual autobiography has helped
them see the presence of God in aspects or turning points of their lives in which
they had not seen him before. I decided to read the six parts of my own
spiritual autobiography in place of the sermon at the Eucharist on the six
Sundays of Lent. This has opened doors to conversations about personal and
spiritual matters with friends and parishioners that might otherwise have
remained closed. When I began to write, I decided that whatever came out, I
would make a specific intention of giving a copy of my spiritual autobiography
to each of my children: Sarah, Mary, Madeleine, Arthur and Clare; and to my
brother Bill and my sister Mary Ann.
1. The Faith of My Parents' Families

My parents grew up in families that were conventionally religious for their

time, place and economic class. They were sharecroppers in Oklahoma. Both of
my grandfathers died in the 1920's when they both still )lad young children, but
their names give evidence of the piety of rural, Protestant America: John Wesley
Bowers and Noah Shadrack Croy. My mother says that during her childhood in
Kellyville, Oklahoma, her father and his twin brother spent much of the time
living and working on a farm some distance from town and were home on
weekends or when work was slow. Her father rarely attended church and her
mother only occasionally, but she and her two sisters and three brothers
attended Sunday school regularly. Mother was baptized as a teenager in Polecat
Creek following a revival meeting. Both families were basically Methodist but
would attend other churches and Sunday schools. Mom says that all the funerals
were in the Christian Church because they had a big, handsome building. My
parents met at the Kellyville Methodist Church when my father came to help an
ailing older brother on his rented farm near Kellyville.
Apparently Dad's
brother, my Uncle Slim, had a chronic ailment--drinking too much.
After
courting for a couple of years, my parents were married in the Pentecostal
Church because they had a minister at that time (1935) and the Methodist church
did not. Mom says that the minister was a farmer as well as a preacher, and in
1

talking to my parents before they married he urged them to be good to each

other and pay attention to each other. She thinks it was on his mind a lot
because his wife left him not long after he had conducted my parents' wedding
service.
My maternal grandmother, whom I knew best because she lived in Napa where
I grew up , was active and in good health until the day she died when I was in
my twenties.
She was called Bigmama by all her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. She was a happy woman. My mother says a difference between
Dad's family and her family is that the Bowers were rather austere and not much
given to light-hearted amusement.
On the other hand, the Crays, and
particularly Bigmama, liked to make things special. Even though they were poor,
Mom says that Bigmama would almost always bring home a little something, a
ribbon or a button or a comb, whenever she went to town. Bigmama told me
several times that she had read the Bible cover to cover three times. A verse
she liked to quote, for some reason, was, Why even the hairs of your head are
numbered.
By contrast, my childhood memories of Grandma Bowers are that she was
formal and serious. She lived in Kellyville in a small house just around the
corner from the Methodist church. Every summer, as long as she lived, which
was until I was a teenager, we would drive to Oklahoma, usually in June or July,
and spend one week.
These trips "back home" are an important childhood
memory. My father clearly made these trips out of a sense of duty. Grandma
Bowers lived with my parents for the first twelve years of their marriage.
During these years my parents' first child was born and died shortly after birth,
and my sister, brother and I were born at two-year intervals. When, at the end
of the Second World War, my parents decided to visit Napa, California, where
Bigmama lived with her second husband, Grandad Don, Grandma Bowers declined
to come along . When the visit turned into a move, my father , with no help from
his five brothers, bought the house around the corner from the Methodist church
for his mother. He did this because for whatever reason, the only daughter-inlaw Grandma Bowers liked (maybe the only one who would put up with her) was
my mother . My dad asked her to come to California and continue to live with us.
She visited Napa once and hated it. Too many bars. Stores open on Sunday.
And apparently she didn't think much of the Napa Methodist church either. So,
when she wouldn't come to California to live with us, and was unwilling or
uninvited to live with any of the other sons and their wives, Dad felt obligated
to get her a place. When Grandma Bowers died, my dad sold the little house to
the Methodist church and when they have a resident or visiting preacher,
Grandma's house is the parsonage. I'm sure that pleases her.
My father's father was said to be a hard-working , serious, proud man who
for whatever reasons would stay for only a year or two on any one farm, even
though he was liked by the owner and by his neighbors. Something in him
apparently did not or could not stay too long . He would move, sometimes no
farther than the next county and start all over again. He died of appendicitis
when my father was twelve years old and my father told me several times that
from that day on he felt he had to take care of his mother. My father once
described to me the sound of the hammering in the barn as the neighbor men
made his father's coffin, while at the same time the women cleaned and dressed
his father's body. My father's older brother Joe, about whom I will say more
2

below, told me that when he was sixteen or seventeen years old hiS father gave
him a whipping and because of it he left home. He went on to say, with tears
in his eyes, that he and his father were reconciled as they worked side by side
on a railroad construction crew some three or four years later. Shortly after
that Mr Bowers died. About four years ago I visited Mr Bowers' grave in a small
rural cemetery in southern Oklahoma. The marker has his name, John Wesley
Bowers; the dates of his birth and death; and the words "Dear Dad."
Two of my dad's five brothers became Methodist preachers. The summer
trips to Oklahoma usually included Sunday visits to these two men, Uncle Bill and
Uncle Joe. We would attend the church where they were preaching and then
have the customary Sunday dinner (fried chicken) in the parsonage. These were
usually the only excursions away from Kellyville and nearby Sapulpa, which is
where most of the other relatives on both sides of the family lived. Uncles Joe
and Bill moved every two or three years as was the practice then with Methodist
preachers.
They said they lived in almost every town in Oklahoma at one time
or another. I looked up to Uncle Joe and Uncle Bill and have no doubt that at
least part of my call to the ministry was influenced by the example of my
preacher uncles.
(Although this is jumping ahead somewhat to my own adolescence, I had a
brief exchange with Uncle Joe about the Episcopal Church at one of these Sunday
dinners. I was maybe fifteen years old and was thinking very seriously about
becoming an Episcopalian although I had not talked to anyone in my family about
it. Uncle Joe was at that time the District Superintendent of the Tulsa District
of the Oklahoma Conference of the Methodist Church. That morning we had heard
him preach at the Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa, a church which
probably seats nearly a thousand people. I asked him , during lunch, what he
thought about the Episcopal Church. He said that he didn't know much but what
he did know he didn't like.
What is it you don't like about the Episcopal
Church? I asked him. Well, Pink, they're just too formal. Of course, that's
exactly what was attracting me to the Episcopal Church. It's also worth noting
that what Uncle Joe had worn that morning in the great pulpit of the Boston
Avenue Church was striped pants and a cutaway coat, about as formal as you
could get in an Oklahoma Methodist church. Years later, not long before his
death, Uncle Joe attended a service at St Paul's and heard me preach for the
first and only time. After the service he gave me about the best compliment he
could. Well, Pink, he said, that was a nice service. You may be an Episcopalian,
but you do preach like a Methodist.)
In talking to my mother recently, specifically in preparation for writing this
chapter of my spiritual autobiography, she said, Well, of the six Bowers boys, two
of 'em were preachers, and two of 'em were drunkards. I had never heard my
mother or anyone else actually say the part about the drunkards out loud. Mom
having said it, I thought, of course, that's why, when we went back home every
summer, Uncle Slim and Uncle Lee were always around the house, even on
weekdays, and that's why their wives, Aunt Bertha and Aunt Florence, always
seemed to have to be doing everything.
My father told me that when he was a young married man, he had a VISIOn of
Jesus who appeared to him when he was out working in a field of corn. Jesus
told him to be a good man, not to drink too much, not to be too wild, to settle
3

down and be a good husband and father.

his best to do that.

He told me that he had always tried

So, even though there were pentecostal and revivalist elements in the religion
of my parents' families (along with indifference and backsliding) the dominant
influence, and the one that seems to have taken hold in the lives of my mother
and father, was what used to be called holiness, and now would probably be
called goodness and sincerity. That is, the real business of being a Christian
is to lead a good life and to be honest and sincere in your relationship with God
and with others, especially your family and close friends. The main reason for
going to church is that it's supposed to help you, as an individual, to be good,
and the church as an institution is supposed to make the community a better
place. Even though Jesus is supposed to be your personal savior, and nobody
would argue with that, if you're saved but don't lead a good life then your
salvation doesn't amount to much.
The following anecdote illustrates how deep and lasting an influence this faith
has had on the lives of my parents and of their children. Shortly after my
father's death in 1989, my brother Bill came to California on a business trip and
drove up to Napa from San Francisco in a rented car. As he approached the
town he drove past the cemetery where our father is buried. Bill told me that,
to his own surprise, as he drove by our father's grave, alone in the car, he said
out loud, "Dad, it's Bill, I'm being a good boy." This from a man who at the time
was in his late forties and the CEO of middle-sized insurance company, a
successful, high-powered guy. But, when it comes right down to it, if you're a
Bowers, no matter what else you do, you're supposed to be good.
2. The Faith of My Childhood and Adolescence
I can hear someone (my brother Bill) saying, What childhood?
What
adolescence? One time when we were teenagers and Bill was exasperated at me
for being so serious about something or other, he said, You were about a
hundred years old the day you were born. Why can't you just be normal for
once in your life? Whether I grabbed hold of the Christian faith or the Christian
faith grabbed hold of me is an open psychological question, but at a very early
age it became clear to me and to everyone else in my family and circle of friends
in school and church, both adults and other children, that religion was my thing.
The words religion and faith are not synonyms. And it is probably true that I
was attracted more to religion than to faith as a child and adolescent, and that
at the age of fifty-two I am still quite religious and am only in the process of
becoming filled with faith.
Anyhow, I was born on November 11, 1944, in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, the youngest
of three children. We moved to Napa, California, in 1946 and that is where I
lived until I left home for college and seminary. My family attended the First
Methodist Church regularly. My mom taught Sunday school, my dad ushered and
served on various councils and committees. I liked going to church better than
Sunday school because there was too much goofing off in Sunday school. For
years we sat in the same pew in the balcony. I was baptized when I was nine
years old by Dr Warren A Bonner. By the time I was ten or twelve years old I
was telling myself and anyone else who would listen that I was going to be a
minister.
I wrote my vocation notebook for ninth grade social studies at
4

Ridgeview Junior High School on being a Methodist minister.

The Reverend Andrew Juvinal carne to Napa Methodist when I was in junior
high and made a profound and lasting impression on me. He was very much
committed to the social gospel: civil rights, workers' rights, non-violence. His
sermons turned Jesus' teachings into a practical political platform and I agreed
with every word he said. When a number of families left the church over some
of these issues, especially over Mr Juvinal's early support of the civil rights
movement, I was very proud of my parents for staying and supporting him.
At horne we said grace at meals, my father would come into our rooms and
bless us before he went to bed at night, and there was always the sense (as I
noted in Part One) that we should be good. To a large extent being good meant
doing what Jesus would want you to do, which often carne down to doing what
Dad and Morn would want you to do.
I do have an early childhood memory (maybe I'm six or seven years old) of
hearing my father's voice corning from his bedroom. For some reason I stopped
to listen and realized that he was not talking to my morn. He was praying. I
was very impressed. I guess what impressed me was that he was praying when
no one was watching, so that meant there really was a God, because Dad would
not talk to him like that when no one was watching if he wasn't really there.
I said above that the faith of my parents' families was conventional for their
time, place and economic class. I would also say that my own childhood faith was
the conventional faith of a working class, Okies-in-California, Protestant
household in the 1950's. And, as I said above, it was my thing. My sister was
a cheerleader, my brother was a basketball player, and I was religious.
Other than having staked out religion as my turf and being occasionally
obnoxious about it, I had a pretty ordinary childhood and a pretty ordinary
childhood faith. When I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, that is, entering
into a late bloomer's adolescence, I began to feel and think something that I
would later accept as a longing for ritual and antiquity. To some extent this
longing was fueled by a growing interest in English literature, but more than
that, it was just something inside me.
When I became president of MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) I started
organizing worship services with candles, hymns, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's
Prayer and other formal prayers out of a service book. This instead of holding
hands in a circle, closing our eyes and singing Kurn By Ya. About this time I
made an appointment with Mr Juvinal and asked him why we never used the
longer , more formal order of service for Holy Communion that I had discovered
in the back of the Hymnal. He said, Oh, no one ever uses that service. It's too
formal. It's only in there because it's the service that John Wesley used out of
the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. So, I got myself a copy
of the Book of Common Prayer.
I loved it.
Somewhere along the line I
discovered the doctrines of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Communion
and the doctrine of apostolic succession in the ordination of bishops, priests and
deacons, and that was it. Even though I had never set foot in an Episcopal
church, or, for that matter, in any church other than a Methodist church, I knew
I was going to become an Episcopalian.
5

When I was a sophomore or junior in high school I looked up the phone

number of the Episcopal church, which I had never attended and the location of
which I did not know, and asked to speak to the minister. It was my first
conversation with Father Tom Turnbull who would, in due time, present me for
confirmation, officiate at our wedding, present me for ordination, baptize all of
our children, and at whose funeral I would be privileged to preach. I told Fr
Tom my name, my age, that I wanted to become an Episcopalian, and that I
intended to become an Episcopal priest. Whatever he thought as he listened to
this recitation, he was attentive and appeared to take me seriously and so I was
off.
I can't remember the date when I first attended a service at St Mary's, Napa,
but it was shortly after the above-mentioned telephone conversation. It was the
7:30 am service: low mass, with no hymns and no sermon. I felt I had come
home to the home I had never been to. This in spite of the fact that I loved to
sing hymns and loved to listen to good preaching. The power of the ancient
ritual, the sacrifice of the altar, took hold of my soul and it has never let go.
Probably the first overt sign to my parents that something was up was when
I took down the reproduction of Sallman's "Head of Christ" that was on the wall
over my bed, and replaced it with a crucifix. When I told my parents that I
intended to become a member of the Episcopal Church, I think that they were
actually relieved that I wasn't going to become a Roman Catholic. But it was
perplexing for them , especially for my dad. In his mind, as in the minds of many
American Protestants, ritual and ceremony and formality were and are equated
with coldness, insincerity , and even hypocrisy. Fortunately, when my parents
met Fr Tom they both liked him personally and that made things easier. I was
confirmed in January, 1962, my senior year in high school.
In addition to and along with my attraction to, one might even say adolescent
infatuation with, ritual, I had a growing awareness of Sin, with a capital S .
Although my personal and family life were pleasant and remarkably free of any
serious conflict, pain, or personal wrongdoing, I came to know deep within myself
that there was something deeply and desperately wrong, not just with me, but
with everybody and ever-ything. This awareness was fostered and focused in
part by reading the simple, very traditional books on Christian doctrine and
morality that I found in the parish library at St Mary's Church. It was also
fostered by reading poetry and fiction on my own and in my high school English
classes: Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"; William Golding's "Lord of the
Flies"; later and far more powerfully, "Hamlet" and "King Lear." Somehow the
good-hearted , right-thinking Jesus of my Methodist childhood did not address or
even know about this deep, dark, broken part of the human condition. The
Christ of the crucifix, the altar, and the mass did know about it and he and he
alone had the power to face it and defeat it.
I ended Part One by saying that being good was a dominant part of the faith
of my parents' families. What I came to know with absolute certainly as an
adolescent was that, important as being good is, it will not save you. What will
save you is the Body and Blood of Christ, sacrificed once and for all on the
cross, and which I knew and still know with absolute certainly that I receive
under the appearance of bread and wine in the blessed sacrament of the altar .

3. The Faith of My Young Adult Years

The faith of my young adult years was a combination of the faith of my
parents (personal goodness), the faith of the Reverend Andy Juvinal (the social
gospel), and the faith of Fr Tom Turnbull (High Church Episcopalianism). I
graduated from Napa High in 1962 but did not leave home. Like many of my
classmates, I went from Napa High across the lawn to Napa JC, continued to live
at home, and really experienced very little change in my personal life.
During the two years at Napa JC I became increasingly involved in the life of
St Mary's Church. I was an acolyte, I worked with the High School Episcopal
Young Churchmen, and I applied for and was accepted as a postulant for Holy
Orders in the Diocese of Northern California.
I also met Bonnie Kreutzer.
Bonnie's brother Larry and I were physics lab partners in our freshman year
and through that improbable connection we became close friends. I met Bonnie
through my friendship with her brother and we started dating when she was a
senior at Napa High and I was a sophomore at the JC. During adolescence I had
friends who were girls, but never any girlfriends. Being very moralistic about
sex and drinking was not something that was likely to make me a real hot date.
But something happened to me when I was with Bonnie. I wanted to be with her,
really with her, preferably alone with her. For someone who liked being in
groups and liked being the center of attention in groups, wanting to be alone
with this one, very special girl was a big change. My brother Bill said, This is
the first normal thing you've ever done. Don't blow it.
I would say that falling in love with Bonnie was the beginning of my adult
life. We both moved to Santa Barbara to attend UCSB in the fall of 1964, Bonnie
as a freshman and I as a junior. Our romance was strongly influenced by our
faith, and our moral and spiritual values. We attended church together and did
our best to follow traditional moral standards in our relationship with each other
at a time and in a place where not many of our undergrad friends were making
a similar effort. We were married at St Mary's, Napa in June 1966, when I had
graduated and Bonnie had completed her sophomore year.
We spent the first three years of our married life in New York City. I was
a seminarian at the General Theological Seminary and Bonnie studied French and
art at NYU and later at Hunter College. After living at UCSB in an atmosphere
that was generally indifferent and sometimes openly hostile to Christian faith and
morality, being in a traditional, high church Episcopal seminary was like being
in heaven. I loved seminary . I really did. I loved the academic work, the
Anglophile ethos, and especially I loved chapel. Formal liturgical worship two or
three times a day with 150 other seminarians and priests was one of the most
blessed experiences of my life.
In 1969 I graduated, returned to California, was ordained, and assigned to St
Luke's , Calistoga. We started our family and Bonnie continued to attend school.
I loved being a parish priest from day one. I also loved being a husband and
a father. In 1972 I was appointed to St Paul's , Healdsburg. Bonnie continued
to attend Sonoma State, eventually earning degrees in both French and art. And
we ended up having five kids.
There were

some

ups

and

downs.
7

My

middle

year in

seminary

was

characterized by some depression and anger.

The first couple of years in
Healdsburg had some fairly typical, fairly unpleasant, conflict between certain
members of the parish and a young priest with strong convictions about how
things ought to be done. But on the whole, my faith was the (here's that word
again) conventional faith of a "General Man." The phrase "General Man" meant
someone who had graduated from General Seminary, was theologically sound,
liturgically correct, morally above reproach, knew how to and did in fact say his
prayers, would take good care of his parish as pastor and leader, and always
dressed in black.
The first attack on this faith came in the mid eighties. Things in the parish
and at home all appeared to be going reasonably well. But the Episcopal Church
outside Healdsburg was doing and saying things that felt like a personal attack
on my faith. Just to recite the list of things that felt like personal attacks: the
ordination of women; divorce in general and the divorce of clergy in particular;
sexual immorality, both heterosexual and homosexual, tolerated and justified in
our parishes and seminaries. Worst of all, other priests and bishops, some of
whom were my friends, far from sharing my pain about these things, were
providing spiritual and theological justifications for them. Every time I went to
a clergy conference or continuing education event or read a church magazine or
journal I was more than likely to become angry at the Episcopal Church. This
continued unW the feeling of anger was right there below the surface almost all
the time.
I have been blessed with good friends all my life. One day during this time
when I felt that my faith was under attack by the leaders of my own church I
went for a walk with a friend , Bob Scavullo, and as we walked along I told him
that I was so angry with the Episcopal Church and so ashamed to be a priest of
the Episcopal Church that if I could find some way financially to support my wife
and children I would quit the priesthood immediately. Bob had heard most of
this before, but this time he said, Marvin, I'd hate to see you give up the
pries thood because I think you're a good priest, but I also think it's a terrible
thing to stay in the priesthood for no other reason than that financially you
can't afford to quit. So, if you really feel you have to quit, I'll give you a job
making as much as you're making as the Rector of St Paul's. I believed then
and believe now that he meant it. So, I went home and prayed. God said to me ,
Who the hell do you think you are? I gave you a wonderful childhood and
family , I gave you a vocation that you are able to respond to and that you
enjoy, I gave you a wonderful wife and children. All I ask of you is that you
try to be faithful, and all you can do is get mad and feel sorry for yourself.
I will always be grateful to Bob Scavullo for offering me a job. By not taking
that job I got my vocation back, and I found out that the only one who was
attacking my faith was me.
No sooner had I learned that my faith was being attacked by my own anger
and self-pity and not by leaders of the Episcopal Church, than I began to feel
the same thing again only this time the perceived attacker was my own family.
Conflict with Bonnie and our children got worse and worse and came to a crisis
in the summer of 1991 when Bonnie and I separated. Once again I was at the
point of losing not only my vocation but my marriage and family. It was not my
faith , but the faith that saved me: The faith that God is God; the faith that
Christ died once and for all to save us; the faith that moved friends to pray for,
8

love and support Bonnie and me; the faith that brought Bill Matz up to Fallen
Leaf Lake to tell me that I should wait for Bonnie to join me; the faith that made
Bonnie and me and the kids keep trying.
If you had asked me a little less than six years ago if today I would be
happily married to my first and only love, if today I would have a pretty darn
good relationship with all five of my children, and if today I would be serving
as a priest in the Episcopal Church, I would have said, No.
God , in his
partit;ular mercy and goodness to me, made all of these things possible, both to
begin with and at this moment. And also I know that had I, in my sinfulness,
thrown all of these things away, God would be God, his love for me and for you
would be unchanged, and the assurance of salvation in the name of Jesus Christ
would b e my only ho pe and yours as well.
4. My Present Faith
Th-:! word faith is used in the Bible and in theological and spiritual writing
in at least three ways. Faith can mean belief, as in the creeds and the doctrines
of the church; faith can mean loyalty , as in being faithful t o a person , community
or principle, particularly in the face of hardship or persecution; and faith c an
mean trust, as in a relationship of intimacy with another person or with God
himself.
My present faith in terms of belief hasn't changed in any significant way
since I was sixteen or seventeen years old. I believe there is one God , Father,
Son and Holy Spirit; I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was fully
human and full y divine; I believe that his sacrificial death on the cross is the
one and only atonement for the sins of the world; I believe that the crucified
and risen Christ will come again in glory to judge and living and the dead. I
have devoted a good part of my formal education and of my personal reading and
study since ending my formal schooling to a deeper understanding of these
orthodox Christian beliefs and to a greater ability in teaching them to others, but
my basic beliefs have not changed.
There have been times when it would have been quite unremarkable for a
fifty -tw o y~ar ol d man to say that his basic beliefs hadn't changed sinc e he was
a teenager. I hope such times will come again. Now , however , such a statement
could well be understood to mean that, for whatever reasons, I am unwilling to
question or examine my belief or that I am simply not very bright. Being open
t o c hange and even actively seeking change in one's beliefs is presently assumed
to be a sign of intelligence, while holding one's beliefs unchanged for decades
is assumed to be a sign of ignorance or even of bigotr y . While I am not hostile
to the beliefs held by other religions or philosophies, I have relatively little
interes t in them, and, insofar as they are incompatible with the beliefs of
orthodox Christianity I consider them to be more or less wrong.
All Christian churches believe in the basic doctrines of the Trinity , the
Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Final Judgment.
However , there are a
variety of theological points of view. My theological point of view is moderate
Thomism. St Thomas Aquinas lived in the 13th century.
(I often say , not
entirely as a wisecrack , that I think everything has been going down hill since
the 13th century. ) Thomas taught that faith and reason are not in conflict, but
9

rather complement and support each other. By the light of reason, all human
beings, including non-Christians, can come to know the great truths of ethical
monotheism: the truth that God exists, that God is eternal, that God is the
creator of everything, that God governs all things, and that God is good. On the
other hand, the particular and distinctive truths of Christianity can be known
only by faith, which, like love, is an act of the will. The Christian truths known
by faith are not contrary to reason, but reveal aspects of God's nature and of
his plan of salvation that are beyond the grasp of reason alone. Thus, reason
can bring one to the threshold of salvation, but faith alone opens the door.
Thomas also emphasized natural law. All aspects of nature: physical, spiritual
and moral, are governed by a law that is inherent in creation, changeless for the
duration of creation, and discernable to human beings through observation and
reason. All human laws, mores and customs are to be judged as valid or invalid
to the degree that they do or do not accord with the universal natural law. This
is a very different approach to morality from situation ethics or contextual ethics
in which the individual makes ethical decisions based on their probable outcome
in an y given situation or context. My approach to morality, both in my own life
and in preaching to and providing counsel for others, is very much based on
natural la w and very skeptical of situation ethics. My views on abortion, sexual
morality , war, economic justice, marriage and family , and any other important
moral issues, are determined by the application of universal, changeless
principles of natural law to specific situations, rather than by the analysis of
specific situations and the seeking of an appropriate ethical outcome. While this
may seem like a rather obscure distinction, it accounts for the fact that my moral
views and teaching are often quite different from those of many mainstream
Christian clergy and laity in America today. For example, I am opposed to war
and to abortion based on the same principles of natural law.
One additional comment about faith as belief.
I disagree with the often
expressed opinion that we need more emphasis on feeling and experience in
religion and not so much emphasis on thinking and doctrine. In historical f act,
American Christianity has always favored emotion and feeling and shied away
from theology and doctrine. This is one reason why we have ended up with such
a vast array of movements, cults and sects and why many individuals go from
one group to another seeking emotional gratification with little regard for
doctrine or morality.
My past and present faith in terms of loyalty has, as mentioned above in Part
been tested both in my church life and in my marriage and family life.
All kinds of things can cause us to be disloyal: fear of persecution, personal
desires for freedom and independence, greed and longing for all kinds of
personal gratification. However, the most difficult issues around faith as loyalty
arise when a serious Christian feels he has conflicting loyalties. Such conflicts
can be very private and personal, as, for example, when one feels torn between
loyalty to spouse and loyalty to children; or it can be very public, as when one
feels a conflict between loyalty to one's church and loyalty to one's nation. The
New Testament Letter to the Hebrews is primarily a call to loyalty to Christ and
the church at all costs in the face of persecution from the synagogue, the
Empire, and even from friends and family. I wish that I could say that I have
been loyal to Christ and the church above all things and been willing to suffer
whatever consequences such loyalty might bring in this life, but I cannot. Far
Thr~~,

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too often, I have been and continue to be disloyal to Christ because I simply
want to avoid conflict at home, in the parish, or in the denomination; because I
am more concerned about the opinions and approval of others than about the
honor and judgment of Christ.
Important as belief and loyalty are, they are not the heart of the matter. The
heart of the matter is that I have faith in Jesus. I truly trust Jesus, because
I know he loves me. How do I know Jesus loves me? Well, Jesus loves me, this
I know, for the Bible tells me so ... and my mom and dad told me so , and my
Sunday school teachers told me so, and many of you have told me so. But most
important, Jesus himself told me and keeps on telling me so. When I participate
in the Eucharist the real presence of Christ is not just a doctrine. Jesus Christ
is here telling me and showing me that he loves me.
When I sing hymns,
especially hymns I have known and sung since my childhood, the blessed
assurance that Jesus is mine is not just words on a page or even words coming
out of my mouth. He is mine, and I am his, and I am as sure of that as I am of
anything. Jesus is the protective older brother of my childhood, he is the
crucified hero of my adolescence, he is the demanding master of my days as a
seminarian and the early years of my priesthood, he is the heart-broken
redeemer of my many failures, he is the cause and celebrant of all that is best
in me, he is my all in all . Jesus teaches me, scolds me, makes fun of me, gets
really mad at me, consoles me, gives me the chance to do things I really want to
do , insists that I do things that I don't want to do , embarrasses me, makes me
proud , gets me into trouble, gets me out of trouble, helps me, leaves me utterly
helpless , enlightens me, confounds me, loves me. ... This is the heart of the
matter: Jesus loves me. this I know ....
5. Faith for the ComL11g Years
In Part Four I said that my faith in terms of belief has not changed since I
was a teenager . I expect and hope that my belief in the doctrines of orthodox
Christianity will not change in the years to come. I hope to live the rest of my
life and to die, as the beautiful prayer in the Prayer Book says, "in the
communion of the Catholic Church; in the confidence of a certain faith; in the
comfort of a reasonable, religious , and holy hope . ... " This is a happy time for
me. Perhaps this happiness can infuse my beliefs and make them more attractive
to those around me, in my family, in my parish, and in my circle of friends. I
especially hope that I will be able to share the faith in an attractive way with
my adult children and with their children. If God grants that this may happen
in any way, I would consider it one of the greatest joys and blessings of my life.
I have been a priest for 27 years. If I retire after 40 years of service I will
be 65 and the year will be 2010. During the 13 or so years between now and the
probable date of my retirement I hope that my faith, understood as personal and
priestly loyalty to Jesus Christ and the church, will become stronger and deeper.
As I noted. or rather confessed, above in Part Four, I have often been afraid to
suffer the rejection and disapproval of others for the sake of loyalty to Christ.
What I'm talking about are situations that arise in which the moral and spiritual
values of Christianity are being challenged or denied, and I know that if I speak
up forthrightly for the truth of the faith from the pulpit, at a vestry meeting,
or in a personal conversation, that it will c ause conflict, I will lose friends,
people may leave the parish, and my position as rector may be threatened . I
11

recall talking to a retired priest, now deceased, who told me that he became more
and more timid and complacent during the last five or ten years before
retirement. He began to coast and to avoid conflict, even conflict for the sake
of the gospel, at all costs. The priest who told me this was deeply sorry and
felt that he had done an injustice to his people and to himself. He told me that
he wished that someone had confronted him and challenged him to renew his
commitment. He said that the reason no one did so was that his family, friends
and parishioners liked him , felt sorry for him,. and were embarrassed for him.
Well, whoever you are who hear or read these words, if you love me rather than
merely like me, never let me become a timid time-server . If, sometime during th~
next c ouple of decades you realize that I am coasting, that my loyalty to Christ
has been displaced by an anxious need to please men and hold on to a secure
job at all c osts . then please, for Christ's sake and for my sake, reprimand me.
Tell me to go away and meditate on the duty laid on me when I was ordained.
"Have alway s therefore printed in your remembranc e," Bishop Ed ward McNair
solemnly read to me as I knelt before him on the day of my ordination to the
priesthood, "how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the
sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his
blood. The Church and Congregation whom you must serve, is his Spouse, and
his Body. And if it shall happen that the same Churc h, or any Member thereof,
do take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the
greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue.
Wherefore c onsider with yourselves the end of the Ministry towards the children
of God . towards the Spouse and Body of Christ; and see that ye never cease
your labour, your care and diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you,
according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed
to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to
t hat ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among
you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life." Obviously, I cannot
continue to heed such a charge without the love and loyalty of family and
Christian friends .
So, I hope that my faith as belief in the basic doctrines of Christianity will
remain unchanged in the years to come; I hope that my faith as loyalty to Christ
and the church above all things will become stronger in the years to come; and ,
finally and of most important, I hope that in the years to come my faith in terms
of trust in Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior will change many times and in
way s that I cannot now even imagine. The onl y way that this could not happen
would be if I were simply to stop reading the Bible, stop praying, stop receiving
the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Body , or to continue to do these things,
but to do them with indifference and inattention. The reason that my personal
relationship with the crucified and risen Christ must and will continue to change
as long as I live is that he is a living Person , not a metaphysical idea or a moral
ideal, and I, too, am a living person.
True doctrine and moral loyalty
circumscribe clearly the kinds of changes in our relationship that can and cannot
take place.
Christ never acts contrary to his true nature revealed in the
doctrines of the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Final Judgment; Christ never
acts contrary to the moral order of the universe that he, with the Father and
the Holy Spirit, created out of nothing.
And it is exactly because of the
constancy and changelessness of the identity and character of Christ that I, and
you, can trust him to change his relationship with us in ways that will only and
always change us for the better.

12

Even though I have just said that I hope my personal relationship with Jesus
will change in ways that I cannot now even imagine, let me try. I can imagine
that in the years to come I might relax a bit more around Jesus. I cannot and
never want to be casual with my Lord. I think that I will always prefer formal
written or memorized prayer to extemporaneous prayer, in private and in small
groups, as well as in corporate worship. But maybe Jesus will coax me into a
relationship that is respectful and courteous without being reserved . I don't
want to have any emotional reservations with him, and yet I know that I do have
such reservations, and I would like for that to change. I can imagine that in the
years to come I might become a bit less defensive about my relationship with
Jesus and about Jesus himself. I confess that there is a part of me that assumes
that others are never going to be as respectful of Jesus and of Christianity as
I think they ought to be. I feel that I have to defend and protect Jesus and
the faith. The idea that Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, needs Marvin
Bowers to defend and protect him is, of course, complete nonsense. Not only
does Jesus not need me to protect him, it is also the case that statements or
questions that I may interpret as attacks on Jesus may in fact be honest
expressions of searching and questioning by someone whom Jesus is longing to
draw closer to himself. My defensiveness just gets in the way. I can imagine
that in the years to come Jesus might show me how to love both him and others
more truly. I cannot read St Paul's inspired description of love in 1 Corinthians
13 without a profound sense of how little progress I have made in loving others,
in spite of the fact that Jesus loves me so much. St Paul wrote, "Love is patient
and kind ; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does
not insist on its own way ; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at
wrong , but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things." I know that Jesus loves me in that way.
His love for me is the indestructible foundation of our relationship. I do not
love him and others in that way, or anywhere near it. In the years to come, I
would like for that to change.
I trus t J esus to make these changes when and as I consent to them . The
question is , will I consent? Will I, in the years to come, fight the good fight and
keep the faith? Probably so, fighting and hanging in there are what I do best,
both by temperament and by training.
Will I consent to relax and be less
reserved with Jesus and everyone else? Will I consent to be less defensive and
more attractive about and with Jesus and the faith? And, the biggest question
of all, will I consent more truly to love God and my neighbor? Time will tell.
6. Faith to the Grave and Beyond
I said above in Part Five that I hope to die in the communion of the Catholic
church. I would also like not to die "suddenly and unprepared," as the Great
Litany in the Prayer Book prays. I hope that as I approach the grave and gate
of death that I will have some time--a few weeks or months--to prepare myself
spiritually, to make a last confession and receive absolution, to make amends to
those I have offended, and to receive Holy Communion in the last days or even
hours before dying. That is, I would like to die consciously and well, and to
make my death a profession of faith and a wholesome example to others.
One of the distinctive aspects of the English Reformation is that while the
English reformers abolished the elaborate system of indulgences associated with
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prayers and masses for the souls in purgatory, it retained a doctrine of an

intermediate state of the soul between the death of the individual and the
general resurrection and final judgment on the last and great day. Most of the
continental reformers, both Lutheran and Calvinist, completely rejected the idea
of any moral or spiritual change for the soul after death, and insisted that the
eternal fate of the individual is sealed at the moment of death. Thus, most
Protestant churches do not pray for the dead , nor do they ask for the prayers
of the saints. Episcopalians do pray for the dead and do ask for the prayers
of the saints. As the Prayer Book Catechism teaches, "We pray for (the dead),
because we still hold them in our love, and because we trust that in God's
presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they
see him as he is," and "the communion of saints is the whole family of God, the
living and the dead ... bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise."
Another way of talking about our faith in the communion of the saints, living and
dead, is to say that the church is now divided into two parts, the church
militant here on earth, that is, the church of those of us who are still on our
earthly pilgrimage; and the church expectant in glory, that is, the church of
those who have died in the faith of Christ and who continue to grow in his
knowledge and love. Even though temporarily divided by death, the church
militant and the church expectant support ~ach other through a shared life of
prayer. On the last and great day the church militant and the church expectant
will be united completely as the church triumphant. The church triumphant will
in turn be united with Christ at the consummation of the heavenly marriage in
the new J~rusalem where we will praise God , Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and
rejoice around his throne , sharing in the heavenly banquet for ever and ever.
This is all very real to me. I do not consider myself to be a particularly
otherworldly or spiritual person. I have never had an out-of-body experience.
I have never had a vision of Jesus or any of the saints or any of my own
beloved departed.
I simply believe, and believe very strongly, in the
resurrection to eternal life. I believe it is intensely personal. Every individual
is distinct and identifiable as a person. All that is best about this life: loving ,
playing, eating and drinking, singing and dancing , seeing and being seen with
clarity, knowing and being known with intimacy, these will all reach their
perfection and fulfillment in eternal life with God (which is heaven) or will be
utterly lost in eternal death without God (which is hell). I cannot imagine
believing in , or even being interested in, a religion that did not focus primary
attention on the eternal things beyond this life. As St Paul wrote in one of his
letters, "If our hope is for this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."
Frankly, even the idea of longevity seems to me to be vastly overrated. The
Psalmist says that the days of our years are threescore years and ten (70); and
if by reason of strength they be fourscore years (80) , yet is their strength labor
and sorrow. I couldn't agree more.
This is not to say that I do not enjoy this life, because I do enjoy it; nor is
it to say that if I were to die right now that I would experience the beatific
vision immediately. While I have no doubt about my ultimate salvation, I know
that the process of my sanctification is unfinished. If I were to die now 1 or any
time soon , I know I would need more growth in holiness. Growth in holiness,
which is really the only growth that counts, is often painful. Related to this, I
believe that we are set free completely 1 and once and for all from the curse of
original sin by the death of Christ on the cross, but I also believe that all the

14

actual sins we have committed will be punished either in this life or in the next.
This is not because God is vengeful, but because there is a moral order to the
universe and the working out of that moral order in each individual is a part of
each individual's sanctifi..cation. God is gracious and his punishment of our sins
is to purify and make us whole, not to harm us or humiliate us. In the words
of the Apostle Paul, "Whom the Lord loves, he chastens."
I do have a mental image of what the last and great day will be like for me.
This personal mental image is a collage of Adam and Eve standing before each
other naked and unashamed before the Fall; of Christ, the new Adam, stretching
out his loving arms on the hard wood of the cross; and the risen Christ showing
his wounds to Thomas after Thomas has refused to believe. So, I imagine that
after all is said and done, in this life and in the life to come, there will be a
moment in which I will stand before Christ. In this moment I will be absolutely
clear about who I am and there will be absolutely no doubt that the one before
me is Christ. We are both completely naked. Christ is stretching out his arms
to me.
His five wounds are clearly visible and he is radiantly handsome.
Nothing is said, but I know that he is inviting me to step forward into his
embrace. Nothing is required of me but to step forward into his arms of love.
Everything in my life, before and after my earthly death, leads up to this
moment, and everything for all eternity leads on ward one way or the other from
this moment. While there is no conceivable reason in heaven or on earth why I
should not step forward , I cannot honestly say that I know I will. But I hope
I will.

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