What is the Episcopal Church?
The Episcopal Church is the American branch of the Anglican
Communion. The Anglican Communion is an inheritor of 2000
years of catholic and apostolic tradition dating from Christ
himself, rooted in the Church of England. When the Church of
England spread throughout the British Empire, sister
churches sprang up. These churches, while autonomous in
their governance, are bound together by tradition,
Scripture, and the inheritance they have received from the
Church of England. They together make up the Anglican
Communion, a body headed spiritually by the Archbishop of
Canterbury and having some 80 million members, making it the
second largest Christian body in the world.
The Episcopal Church came into existence as an independent
denomination after the American Revolution. Today it has between two
and three million members in the United States, Mexico, and Central
America, all of which are under jurisdiction of the Presiding Bishop
of the Episcopal Church, Edmond Browning.
Bishops in the American Episcopal Church are elected by
individual dioceses and are consecrated into the Apostolic
Succession, considered to witness to an unbroken line of Church
leadership beginning with the Apostles themselves. For more than two
decades the American Episcopal Church has ordained women to the
priesthood. In 1988 the Diocese of Massachusetts elected the first
Anglican woman bishop, Barbara Harris.
Although it subscribes to the historic Creeds (the
Nicene Creed and the
Apostles' Creed),
considers the Bible to be divinely inspired, and holds the Eucharist
or Lord's Supper to be the central act of Christian worship, the
Episcopal Church grants great latitude in interpretation of
doctrine. It tends to stress less the confession of particular
beliefs than the use of the Book of Common Prayer in
public worship. This book, first published in the sixteenth century,
even in its revisions, stands today as a major source of unity for
Anglicans around the world.
The Church of England has always valued the life of the mind and
dialogue with fields of secular study. Isaac Newton was an Anglican
clergyman and theologian as were several of the founders of the
Royal Society, the earliest institution organized for the promotion
of science. The Episcopal Church maintains this tradition, routinely
requiring its clergy to hold university as well as seminary degrees
and supporting many university chaplains. |
