About the Episcopal Church
21 June 2008 - 19 סיון 5768 by Huw
I wrote this essay for the website of St Andrew’s Parish. It may need some ghastly re-writes after this summer, but I think it’s very honest as of this posting. It is also biased, I think: it is my own inclusive views of ECUSA and Anglicanism. It is also why I choose to be Anglican.
The Episcopal Church is an American manifestation of the Anglican tradition and the local branch of the Anglican Communion. We were founded in the thirteen original American colonies as the local Church of England parishes by clergy and lay people who came to these shores, along with other immigrants, seeking various lives and ministries in “the New World”. The first uses of the prayer book on this continent were in 1578 (in Canada), 1579 on the California Coast and in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. After the beginning of the United States, American members of the English Church sought to establish their own church governance and so began The Episcopal Church.
Today our two-million member family extends from Caribbean Islands to the Alaskan Coast and from parts of Central America to the Hawaiian Islands, Guam and beyond. We are part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, a fellowship of independent churches that all acknowledge the English Church as their mother in the faith while developing local flavour, traditions and governance.
Worship
The Episcopal Church is focused on worship and it is through our worship that you will find out what we believe. “The Law of prayer is the law of creed” as one of the saints has said (Lex orandi lex credendi). This teaching means different things to different Christian denominations. For Anglicans and Episcopalians, it means that rather than a check list of doctrines, it is the doing of our worship that shows who we are.
The traditional source of our worship is the Book of Common Prayer. First drafted by the English Reformation in the 16th Century, this text has come to each of the local churches of the Anglican Communion and has been adapted by local forms, translated into local language (usually in a traditional form and a modern form), filled with local music and traditions and moulded into a local liturgy. But in all its local manifestations you can still see the work of those 16th Century saints who brought the English Church through turbulent political and theological waters under the protection of prayer. You may read the American Book of Common Prayer online.
Governance
“Episcopal” refers to having bishops - not being “governed” by them as some say. Our Church is governed by the Holy Spirit, acting in and through the voice of all members of the Church: Laity, Bishops, Priests and Deacons. While each group (or “order”) has specific duties, all are responsible for the governance of the church. Each parish is governed by a vestry of, mostly, lay people and the priest. This structure is mirrored on the other two levels of structure: the Bishop of the Diocese and her Standing Committee, and, at the national level, the Presiding Bishop and the Executive Council. Once every three years the entire church meets in General Convention, again, laity take an active role. Our Bishops - indeed all the clergy - are elected by action of all the people of the Church as they were through the history of the early Church.
For more information on the Episcopal Church - including information on our beliefs, our traditions and our structure - visit this online Visitors’ Center or the website of the national offices, The Episcopal Church Center in New York City. There is also more about our history in the Wiki. There is a national newspaper, Episcopal Life, a news service and several websites where discussion, fellowship and debate happen. This recent article (25 May 2008), by an Episcopal Priest, may also be of interest to you.
Invitation
Episcopalians and Anglicans world-wide are an open church - “a big tent” - seeking to work our our salvation with God. We struggle with our faith, with what it means and with how to live it in the world. We are conservatives and liberals, traditionalists and progressives, praying, serving and seeking communion together. We do not always agree, as you may read in the papers. We are not perfect as you will see with your own eyes. We are not “the True Church™” nor have we ever claimed to be so. We are a community of faithful people seeking to follow the calling of God in the way of Jesus. We are thankful to be part of such a diverse and growing family.
We welcome you to join us.
This is a great essay that I think everyone should read. I think the problem with the Communion is that they are trying to be too much like Rome and less like Anglicanism. That is the view from outside anyway. The Anglican Church is a group of churches of like mind not at all like Rome. So they should stop trying to be like Rome and be more like they were.
I think part of the problem is that some Anglican churches are, in fact, governed by Rome-like hierarchies. Various churches in the “global south” are nothing more than Roman Style Episcopal Autocracies, sometimes benevolent, sometimes not. They wish to shape the communion in their own image. We’ve already seen some run-ins between these Monarchs and their new American Minions (although the money, of course, flows in the other direction).
“We are conservatives and liberals, traditionalists and progressives, praying, serving and seeking communion together. We do not always agree, as you may read in the papers.”
I think this is a nice idea on paper, but can it work in the real world? Can conservatives and liberals or what have you worship under the same roof for an extended period of time without parting ways? Are there any more conservatives left in the denomination? Doesn’t the nature of conservative thought frown upon the inclusivity the EC is striving for? Don’t get me wrong, I think the Anglican Communion’s attempt to be the roomiest church in Christendom is a noble cause and provides a spirituality in tune with the finer aspects of post-modernism, but can it be done?
Not getting you wrong at all. But “Doesn’t the nature of conservative thought frown upon the inclusivity the EC is striving for?”
In some cases. as does the nature of some liberal thought!
But no, not always. And yes there are some conservatives still left (and a couple of ‘em even float around these pages!)
As Huw knows, it has been a [i]very[/i] long time since I was an Episcopalian (though I was an Episcopalian for even longer than that). But I feel constrained to comment on this, anyway:
“Doesn’t the nature of conservative thought frown upon the inclusivity the EC is striving for?”
That depends. It depends on what one means by “conservative” and what one means by “inclusivity.”
Sometimes “conservative” means adhering strictly to the social conventions of the dominant culture (or the dominant culture of one’s youth or one’s parents’ generation, or the culture one imagines was dominant at some time in the past). This sort of conservatism (call it “social conservatism”) has no specifically theological content, and has far less to do with Christian orthodoxy than many soi-disant “conservatives” may tell you. An Orthodox, Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Jew, Mormon, or Muslim (or even atheist) may be this sort of conservative without compromising any of his or her theological commitments.
Then there is political conservatism of various stripes (neo-, paleo-, etc.). This, too, is largely independent of any particular theological stance.
Finally, there is a specifically theological conservatism, which is the result of a commitment to a more or less specific understanding of Christian orthodoxy. In the Anglican context this has (at least) two forms, Anglo-Catholic conservatism and evangelical conservatism. What is often missed about this is that there is no necessary relationship between theological conservatism and either the social conservatism or the political conservatism noted above. One may be an orthodox evangelical and a socialist at once; or an orthodox Anglo-Catholic and a libertarian on “social” issues at one and the same time.
What one may [i]not[/i] do while remaining a theological conservative is to pretend that the teachings of the historic orthodox Christian faith can change with the times. And this is where the meaning of “inclusivity” bears on the question. If “inclusivity” means preaching the Gospel to all people, whatever their life situation or their “lifestyle,” and if it means welcoming all people into the Church where they may take up their Crosses and follow Jesus, no theological conservative will (or should, anyway) “frown on it.” If, however, it means that Christian orthodoxy has been reduced to one option among many, and that both orthodox and heterodox may authoritatively preach and teach from the Church’s pulpit, then a genuine theological conservative will not only frown, but outright scowl, on such a situation.
When I was an Episcopalian, lo those many years ago, I was a member of the premier Anglo-Catholic parish on the West Coast: a bastion of theological conservatism if ever there was one. Perhaps 60-75% of the membership was gay, and some of the members were unmarried couples living together (including one single mother raising an out-of-wedlock child). My wife and I, as a middle-class married couple living in the suburbs with a couple of kids, were the real “alternative-lifestyle” folks in that context! It was as “inclusive” an Episcopal parish as you could think of.
But the priests did not teach from the pulpit that traditional Christian morality was wrong; quite the contrary. What they did teach, from the pulpit and by example, was that each Christian has his or her own struggle with sin, the flesh, and the devil, and that we are not to judge our brothers. How my gay friends in that parish reconciled their sexuality with the teaching of the Church was not my business; it was between the individual, his father confessor, and God. There was no slot in that matrix for me and my opinions, my approval, or my disapproval.
Somehow the Church of the Advent managed to be “inclusive” without compromising orthodoxy. If the Episcopal Church wishes to be “inclusive” of a wide variety of [i]persons[/i], a true conservative need not frown. If, however, the Church is “inclusive” of doctrinal and moral heterodoxy, that is another matter (and altogether frown-worthy).
Chris - I’m writing a post about what the RCs said recently about communion and divorce… and coincidentally your comment feeds well into my post albeit from a contrary position.
“One may be an orthodox evangelical and a socialist at once; or an orthodox Anglo-Catholic and a libertarian on “social” issues at one and the same time.”
The first I can easily understand. Actually, I find the mixture of evangelicalism with conservative economics to be quite baffling, especially when one reads the OT prophets. I’m having a harder time comprehending how orthodox anglo-catholic and social libertarian can go together, though. It seems that a conservative theological stance would necessarily lead to a conservative moral stance as well, unless one can separate the purely theological teachings of the church (which do not change for the orthodox anglo-catholic libertarian) from the church’s moral teachings (which apparently can change). Of course, all of this would become more comprehensible if libertarian social values were not preached from the pulpit or if the Church’s teachings on social values are not as “crystal clear” as many conservatives make them out to be.