Contributors Eugene Schlesinger

Eugene Schlesinger

Eugene Schlesinger is a Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University, where he teaches pastoral liturgy and sacramental theology in the Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries. The author of Missa Est! A Missional Liturgical Ecclesiology (Fortress Press, 2017), he understands his vocation to be an Episcopalian who does Catholic theology. He is a systematic theologian by training and works primarily at the intersection of ecclesiology and sacramental theology. Since discovering Augustine of Hippo (who helped him overcome a nasty bout of Calvinism), much of his intellectual energy has been devoted to recovering the relevance of a theology of sacrifice for understanding “God, the universe, and everything,” which will be the subject matter of his next book (currently in progress). He is a committed Thomist insofar as he believes that understanding is good, and that being is intelligible, and he strives to belong to what Bernard Lonergan described as a “perhaps not numerous center.”

Through a circuitous route, Gene has “come home” to the Anglican fold. Raised Catholic by Yankee parents in the Protestant South, he experienced an evangelical conversion in a Baptist setting, and began a sojourn among them. His undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina Greensboro enriched what would otherwise be a bare Protestantism with essential texts and figures from throughout the Christian tradition. After M.Div. studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological seminary, Gene spent the next five years in pastoral ministry, most of it in church plant contexts.

Near the end of seminary, he experienced a sacramental and liturgical reawakening when he discovered Orthodoxy (both Eastern and Radical). Ever the eclecticist, he turned to John Calvin to help him reconcile these sacramental tendencies with his otherwise Evangelical outlook. After some flirtation with Presbyterianism, Gene found what he was looking for in the Anglican tradition. During doctoral studies at Marquette University, he learned and appropriated Catholic theology in a variety of forms (especially patristic and contemporary instantiations), and is happy to belong to a tradition where all of his Evangelical and Catholic commitments are at home.

Gene peaked early, marrying his wife, Loren in 2002. Together they have two daughters, Joann, and Evelyn, whom they homeschool. The family loves camping, games (the nerdy variety), cooking (including forays into making cheese and mead), reading, and (to Gene’s chagrin) show tunes. Newly transplanted to Sunny California after six years in the Upper Midwest, he is shepherding his family through snow-withdrawal.

‘Expansive Language’ Should be Disruptive

Eugene Schlesinger

September 17, 2018

Liturgy, The Episcopal Church

As the Episcopal Church considers the use of expansive language in liturgical revision, we would do well to remember a few factors.

‘Given to the Glory of God’: Dedicatory Plaques and the Communion of Saints

Eugene Schlesinger

July 24, 2018

Commentary, Ecclesiology, The Episcopal Church

We have all received the faith from those who’ve gone before, and we are all charged with the sacred trust of passing it along, entire and intact, to those who will come after us.

Samuel Seabury, Hamilton, and the ‘Wrong Side’ of History

Eugene Schlesinger

May 23, 2018

Commentary, The Episcopal Church

Was Samuel Seabury on the right side of history?

Beware Answered Prayer

Eugene Schlesinger

April 5, 2018

Commentary, Movies, Reviews & Culture, The Episcopal Church, TV

Are we sure we want God to respond?

Post-evangelicals and the Episcopal Church

Eugene Schlesinger

March 1, 2018

Commentary, The Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church has the opportunity to embody a different way. We are a Christian church, founded upon the gospel of Jesus. We need not give in to the politics of fear and exclusion, whether they come in the garb of the right or of the left.

An apology for ‘Happy Holidays’

Eugene Schlesinger

January 18, 2018

Commentary, Humor

I wonder if the broader “Happy Holidays” might be the more accurate and even more Christian greeting.

How the ACNA helped me become an Episcopalian

Eugene Schlesinger

November 15, 2017

My theological vocation has demanded that if I am to be an Anglican in the United States, I need to be an Episcopalian.

The baptismal covenant, the norm of adult baptism, and mission

Eugene Schlesinger

September 7, 2017

Commentary, Liturgy

One key area of the 1979 prayer book that still requires implementation is the revised baptismal liturgy.