After 20 years in the Episcopal Church with involvement at local and national levels, I'm about ready to call it quits. For the past few months, I've been attending a church of another denomination. I haven't yet joined, but I may sometime this year. I am writing this article because recent articles and letters on the subject of leaving the Episcopal Church don't seem to reflect accurately the frustrations many of us feel.

What initially prompted me to look elsewhere were frustrations at the local level. Because there are no other Episcopal churches within 25 miles of where I live, I couldn't choose another Episcopal parish. While I feel equally frustrated with the national church, I could have lived with those frustrations if I had found a satisfying parish experience.

My loyalty to the Episcopal Church as a denomination, however, has been waning for the past two years. The church at large has done or said nothing to engage my loyalty to remain in a difficult or frustrating local situation.

First, I want to say I am happy we have women as priests and I celebrate their ministry. I am happy with the 1979 prayer book and enjoy its contemporary language. I have never regarded myself as a "traditionalist" or "fundamentalist." While I don't believe practicing homosexuals should be ordained or that homosexual unions should be blessed, I could live with that debate if necessary. What bothers me are other, larger matters.

I have trouble living with and in a church that seems to stand for nothing except "diversity" and "tolerance." I don't think "diversity" is a foundation for unity. I cannot count the number of times I have heard church leaders intone that "our unity is in our diversity" or encourage us to "celebrate our diversity." Diversity does not make a church. Jesus Christ, alone, creates a church.

You cannot feel close to someone simply because you are different. I am not criticizing diversity of external human characteristics such as race, gender, educational background, or socio-economic achievement. That kind of diversity should be encouraged. What I am criticizing is diversity of theology that accepts any sloppy human opinion as "valid" and worthy of respect.

Years ago I recall reading a passage from Paul Tillich's theology in which he said a church needs a common core of belief. Its members can differ about some of its implications or applications, but common beliefs are necessary to bind the members together as a community of faith.

This "common core of belief" is what is lacking in Episcopal churches. We try to weasle around this shortcoming by arguing that our unity is not in our doctrine, but in our worship, prayer book, or "diversity." But I've never heard anyone even attempt to argue that there is a common understanding about what it means to be an Episcopalian.

All it means to be an Episcopalian is the decision to call yourself an Episcopalian. You don't have to go to church, give, believe, or do anything. And that is what more and more of us find disheartening and discouraging.

The second source of frustration is a corollary of the first. Because the church has no unifying beliefs, it misses the mark on the most central aspect of Christian theology: Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior. We have replaced "following Jesus" with phrases like "living your baptismal covenant." Some diocesan conventions have defeated resolutions that acknowledged Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The Christian faith has been watered down so much that it has become what Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined as "cheap grace":

"The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices," he says in The Cost of Discipleship. "Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury from which she showers blessings with generous hands without asking questions or fixing limits ... Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth."

Third, I don't think some priests and bishops understand why people come to church. If we only wanted to engage in community service, we would join the Kiwanis or Rotary Club. If we simply wanted to enjoy ourselves and make new friends, we would join the Masonic Lodge, Junior League or a country club. If we simply wanted to involve ourselves in religious discussion and debate, we would take a religion class at a university. But no, the reason we go to church is because we want to know God and learn how to love and serve God.

One of the reasons I gave up on my local church is that I no longer enjoyed going to church. Instead of feeling inspired and encouraged in my faith, I left each Sunday feeling weary and frustrated. I was burned out. I had directed adult education for two years, chaired the EMC campaign, been an alternate deputy to General Convention, and delegate to two diocesan conventions.

However, I was tired of having to fight battles, defend my beliefs, and feel like I was doing all of the giving and very little receiving. Nobody enjoys going to church to "dialogue" or "celebrate diversity" on whatever issue happens to be trendy at the moment. My local church was not a "community of faith" for me, and so I have left to try to find one elsewhere.

H. Richard Niebuhr makes a statement in his classic book The Social Sources of Denominationalism that reminds me of today's Episcopal Church:

"Denominational Christianity, that is a Christianity that surrenders its leadership to the social forces of national and economic life, offers no hope to the divided world. Lacking an integrating ethics, lacking a universal appeal, it continues to follow the fortunes of the world, gaining petty victories in a war it has long lost."

Every theologian I have ever read, every great thinker and saint in Christian history, recognizes Jesus Christ as the author, founder and sustainer of our faith. In him, "We live, move and have our being." Yet in the Episcopal Church I have sometimes been criticized for talking about Jesus too much.

Talking about Jesus, in Episcopal churches, makes one sound like a fundamentalist, and heaven forbid that any Episcopalian should sound like a fundamentalist. Episcopalians seem to have tolerance for everyone except the fundamentalists who are their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Don't ask Episcopalians to be concerned about fundamentals because they are too busy with superfluities. And that, in a nutshell, is why many of us are no longer around.

The author is a prominent lay person who wishes to remain anonymous.