A People Called Episcopalians: A Brief Introduction to Our Way of Life (Revised Edition)
48
A People Called Episcopalians: A Brief Introduction to Our Way of Life (Revised Edition)
48Paperback(Revised)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
What are we as Episcopalians? This concise booklet explores five main areas of Episcopal life: identity, authority, spirituality, temperament, and polity. A great introduction to the Episcopal way of thinking in readable prose for any newcomer or seeker in the Episcopal Church who may wonder what makes Episcopalians different than Roman Catholics or other protestants.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819231888 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2014 |
| Edition description: | Revised |
| Pages: | 48 |
| Sales rank: | 1,021,089 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A People Called Episcopalians
A Brief Introduction to Our Way of Life
By John H. Westerhoff, Sharon Ely Pearson
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2014 John H. Westerhoff with Sharon Ely PearsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-3188-8
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Almighty Father, whose blessed Son before his passion prayed for his disciples that they might be one, as you and he are one: Grant that your Church, being bound together in love and obedience to you, may be united in one body by the one Spirit, that the world may believe in him whom you have sent, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Collect for the Unity of the Church (BCP, P. 255)
Episcopalians pray this prayer for the unity of the Church so that we all may be one. The Episcopal Church is one of many Christian traditions, each of which maintains its particular and distinct identity as they each strive to best live into their baptism and grow in their relationship to God. Each denomination and branch of the Christian family tree recognizes the unique contribution the other can make to the whole.
Today Episcopalians come from an increasing diverse collection of Christians from varied backgrounds (70 percent come to us from other traditions) who gather around shared convictions about prayer, liturgy, church government, and—most importantly—the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. We're a place that welcomes random questions and eccentric personalities. We're a peculiar people whose spiritual arc bends more towards boundless hope and a reasonable faith than hardened surety and entrenched absolutism.
For four hundred years, Episcopalians have found comfort, nurture, fellowship, and encouragement in our faith communities. And we believe the Almighty is not finished with us yet. We believe—now more than ever—that we provide a uniquely fulfilling and vital role in the panoply of modern Christian experiences. If we Episcopalians are to participate fully in the vision of Church union, we will need to become more conscious of what it means to be Episcopal Christians.
What follows is intended to address the foundational issue of who is the Episcopal Church and what are the convictions that hold us together as Episcopalians, offering a stimulus for conversation among us. These brief essays, while not intending to be authoritative, can become a resource for study and reflection between and among those who are Episcopalians and those who are inquiring about becoming part of this family of faith that we call the Episcopal Church.
CHAPTER 2EPISCOPAL
Identity
Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Collect for Proper 8 (BCP, P. 230)
The Episcopal tradition, like every other Christian tradition, is founded on the affirmation that Jesus Christ is Lord. That affirmation is essential to the foundation of the unity of the Church. As Episcopalians, we believe that Christ's transcendent presence in the Holy Spirit has continually formed, reformed, informed, and transformed who we are as one branch of the tree, which is the Christian church.
The Episcopal Church is a descendant of the Church of England, which was itself founded in 597 as a mission outpost of the Roman Catholic Church, through St. Augustine of Canterbury at the direction of Pope St. Gregory the Great. A variety of factors led to the parting of the ways between England and Rome some five hundred years ago, and it's one that we're still working to heal. Many of the rituals, traditions, and ways of believing in Christ have been passed down to us through the Roman Catholic strand of our heritage.
When King Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church by the Act of Supremacy in 1534, it became necessary to revise the Church's worship to reflect the change. Henry told Archbishop Thomas Cranmer that he wanted all liturgical books revised and written "in our native English tongue." "The Book of Common Prayer" was established in 1548 as the official worship book for the Church. This, and all subsequent editions and adaptations, including the one used by Episcopalians is often referred to simply as "the BCP."
As such, our Episcopal tradition represents the continuous tradition of the one, holy catholic, and apostolic church. The Episcopal Church has consistently been labeled a "middle road"—a "via media"—between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Originally and officially it is known as the Protestant (meaning not Roman Catholic or Orthodox) Episcopal (paradoxically meaning not Protestant) Church.
Our primary identity is as a community of practice. That is, we are bound together by our liturgy rather than doctrinal emphasis, or social organization. Orthodoxy for us is right worship and not right belief. Our life of prayer shapes our beliefs and behaviors.
In other branches of Christianity, the decisions of councils, the writings of particular theologians, catechisms, confessional doctrinal statements, the decisions of bishops, particular interpretations of Scripture, and polity have significance unknown to Episcopalians. To know what Episcopalians believe about issues of faith and life, all one needs to do is turn to the Book of Common Prayer and engage in the process of discovering the wealth of tradition and liturgy. We shape our understanding of faith and life through participation in our liturgies, and we reform our understandings and ways of life by reforming our liturgies. We are constantly seeking to hear the Spirit moving among us as changes in the historical development of our understandings of Christian belief and practice are seen through additional liturgical resources and revisions to the Book of Common Prayer.
Within the Episcopal Church, our styles of worship in different congregations may be quite diverse, but our substance and content are consistent. You may encounter the terms High Church and Low Church, although they are somewhat less common than when they were in style in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These reflect to some extent how the clergy are vested and whether incense is used (or not). Other terms used are "Anglo-Catholic" and "Evangelical." These concern more than just worship style, although the differing emphasis of each tradition is reflected in worship. While many churches fall somewhere in between all of these descriptors, in most cases it is a question of style and emphasis, rather than content. The Gospel is ultimately the Gospel.
No matter its style in the Episcopal Church, liturgy is the "work of the people." Episcopal liturgy is communal worship connected to our daily life and work as ministry. We bring the reverence and rootedness of an ancient liturgical tradition alongside a clear devotion to the Bible. Although we have ordained ministers (including the bishops that give us our name—Episcopal), we also value the shared ministry of all believers.
People join the Episcopal Church for many reasons. For some, it has been the church of their family for generations. For others it may be because of our views on Holy Communion, women's ordination, and human rights. Some love the music; others love the liturgy. There is an atmosphere of open curiosity, allowing people to ask and answer questions, striving to let the Holy Spirit work among us.
CHAPTER 3EPISCOPAL
Authority
Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Collect for Proper 17 (BCP, P. 233)
The word "authority" in the Episcopal sense refers to the author or source for our life of faith. Clearly God as revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit is our ultimate, supreme, and sole authority. We are called upon to know the mind of the triune God fully so that we might do the will of God perfectly.
However, the question is, how do we come to know the mind of this triune God? The answer is to be found in our understanding of authority and how it functions. Without this common authority and agreement upon how it is used, there is no way to maintain a common life, especially when persons and groups arrive at different conclusions.
Our understanding of authority is deeply rooted in our history. During the time of the English Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Church of England became a political identity, which is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church in England. At the time there were two divergent understandings of authority within the Christian church. Roman Catholic Christians maintained a dual authority for discerning the mind of God, namely Scripture and tradition, with the emphasis being placed on tradition (the authoritative teachings of the church, which resulted from the bishops' interpretations of the Holy Scriptures). Protestant Christians, on the other hand, contended that the Scriptures alone were the authority of the church and that the meaning of the Scriptures was to be determined without recourse to any established tradition. Indeed, tradition was to play no role in determining the mind and will of God. Only what was contained in the Scriptures was to have any authority.
Rather than take sides, the Church of England (whose members are called anglicans) asserted that the Scriptures contain all that is needed to be known for salvation. (The "Articles of Religion" were written in 1571.) Therefore, one need not believe anything that is not in the Scriptures; one might, however, believe anything that is not incompatible with the Scriptures. For example, Anglicans may believe (as Roman Catholics do) in the assumption of Mary, a doctrine not denied in the Scriptures; yet Anglicans do not have to believe in this doctrine (as Protestants do not), for it is not a doctrine contained in the Scriptures. Another way of stating this middle-way position is to say that revelation as contained in the Scriptures about God and God's will is essential to our salvation, but revelation in the Scriptures is not the source of all our knowledge about God and God's will.
Churches that trace their origin to the Church of England have often revised and produce prayer books of their own to reflect their own national circumstances and languages. The Episcopal Church separated from the Church of England at the time of the American Revolution and published its first Book of Common Prayer, based on both the English and Scottish prayer books. Further revisions to the American book were made in 1892, 1928, and most extensively in 1979.
Episcopalians will say our theology is like a three-legged stool, needing each leg in order to be balanced. This comes from Richard Hooker, an Anglican theologian who, in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Book Two, 1534), advocated for a diffuse authority composed of three interrelated, dependent, authoritative sources: Scripture, tradition, and reason. This understanding has become the hallmark of our unique Episcopal (and Anglican) understanding of authority.
Hooker argued that while the Scriptures are to be our primary source of authority, they are not to be isolated from reason and tradition. Why? Because God communicated his revelation as contained in the Scriptures in a manner sensitive to the specific needs of a specific group in a specific time in history and, therefore, intended that they be interpreted to make sense to a different people in a different time. God's revelation was, therefore, to be both inside and outside of the Scriptures, guarded and guided by the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are intended, Hooker asserted, to be a living word and not a collection of dead letters. That is, the Scriptures (and tradition) are not self-explanatory but require the use of reason to determine their meaning. Reason, of course, is not autonomous or individualistic. Nor are there three different authorities. Rather, there is a single authority composed of three intersecting sources: the Scriptures being the normative authoritative source; reason and tradition being necessary interpretive authoritative sources.
The implications of this understanding are profound. While maintaining that the Scriptures provide us with a unifying plumb line, Episcopalians are willing to live with diverse and changing interpretations, rather than infallible certainty and binding prescriptions for all times.
The Holy Scriptures
As The Outline of the Faith (also know as the Catechism) in the Book of Common Prayer (p. 845-862) explains it, the Holy Scriptures are called the Word of God "because God still speaks to us through the Bible." God inspired people to write and continues to speak to us through what they wrote. Thus the biases, preferences, and prejudices of these authors, as well as their cultural understandings, are to some degree present in the Bible we have today. This does not make the Bible any less "true" but it does help us better to understand the human side of the work by which it came to be. We understand their meaning through the aid of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in their true interpretation.
Revelation is God's self-disclosure to persons and communities. The Scriptures are a record of that revelation. That is, they contain God's revelation, but they are not to be confused with the revelation itself.
As the Scriptures were written and edited over a long period of time, their writers and editors were in conversation with earlier, spoken traditions and written documents, quoting them, allegorizing them, correcting them, harmonizing them, interpreting and reinterpreting them, as well as adding new material. There is no doubt that these holy men and women, moved by God, participated in bringing these great writings to us. So Episcopalians tend to see the Bible's origins less as a divine product with divine authorship and more as a response to the presence and action of God.
The Scriptures, as the Church finally established them as canon—its measuring rod or standard for the Christian life of faith—were understood as living, fluid records of the community's experience of God over time and therefore carried more meanings than their immediate and plain literal sense. These writings are literary, historical documents in need of critical examination and interpretation. As might be expected, controversies over interpretation developed even as they were being written (and continue to this day). For the first 1,500 years of the church's history, the primary authority became the tradition, that is, the authorized interpretations of the Church, rather than the literal words of specific texts. The real issue for the church now is not whether the Scriptures have authority (of course, they do) but how they are read and heard within the Church.
Episcopalians are exposed to considerable portions of Scripture during worship. The Lectionary, a selection of Scripture readings appointed for Sunday worship (the Daily Office also has a lectionary for corporate or private worship) spreads out the readings over a three-year cycle. Each Sunday we hear a portion of Scripture from the Old Testament, Psalter (Psalms), New Testament, and Gospels.
As a Church that adheres to a history of scriptural tradition, Episcopalians have never held to a doctrine of biblical supremacy (no other source of knowledge has value), literal interpretation (everything is literally true), or verbal inerrancy (God wrote each and every word). Rather, we have always supported all forms of biblical scholarship and accepted diverse opinions. While holding the Scriptures in high regard, we do not describe them as having ultimate authority in all matters. For example, we allow science to inform us as to how the world was created. The creation stories answer why and by whom. Nor do we assert that everything found within them is binding on us. For example, we do not follow Old Testament dietary laws. Further, Episcopalians do not believe that the Scriptures provide specific, final judgments on every moral and theological issue or questions. One example is that the writers were unaware of the possibility of genetics and they misunderstood how babies were conceived.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A People Called Episcopalians by John H. Westerhoff, Sharon Ely Pearson. Copyright © 2014 John H. Westerhoff with Sharon Ely Pearson. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Episcopal Identity 3
3 Episcopal Authority 7
4 Episcopal Spirituality 15
5 Episcopal Temperament 21
6 Episcopal Polity 21
7 Conclusion 37
Glossary 39