Strength for the Journey

A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community

By Diana Butler Bass

Foreword by Phyllis Tickle

Diana Butler Bass calls herself a "stayer".  There has never been a time when she didn't go to church. She spent her childhood in the Methodist Church and in her teens she turned to evangelical Christianity.  In 1977 Diana enrolled at Westmont College, an evangelical school in Santa Barbara. There she met a group of young Episcopalians, who were called the "Anglican Mafia" by the rest of the student body.

 In the summer of 1980, while on a visit to England with one of the Westmont Anglicans, Diana attended a Eucharist in Westminster Abby. About that experience she writes;  “I felt like crying but I do not remember if I did or not. I do remember that I was stunned. Completely and utterly.  I stumbled forward to the altar, knelt on a worn pillow and received the food and drink of God. Until that moment, I never knew that I had been spiritually starving for years.” The following September she stepped inside an Episcopal Church for the first time and, like many of us, she found a home.

This book is her story. In it we see her grow and change, embracing the sacramental theology of Anglicanism and struggling with her growing love for a liberal liturgical tradition that was despised by most of her evangelical friends.  Along the way, she also tells the story of the struggles faced by the Episcopal Church during the last two decades.

During her 22 years as an Episcopalian, Diane has been a member of 8 congregations.  The stories of these churches are intimately tied to her own.  She describes the changes that happen, as establishment churches become what she calls "intentional communities" committed to being the Body of Christ in the world.