The Episcopal Church is part of Christ's one, holy, catholic*, and apostolic church. It is an independent Christian body, self-governing under God, with a constitution and elected leadership. While independent, the Episcopal Church seeks to be loyal and obedient to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the universal church.
Questions on the Way, Beverly D. Tucker and William H. Swatos, Jr.)
The above quotation is an elaborate way of saying that we are a community of Christian faith. As St Paul stated in his First Letter to the Corinthians (12:12-27), we are members of the body of Christ, we are a people who live in the world yet are set apart from it by our faith, that we are part of a universal fellowship of believers and we follow the traditions taught by the apostles. We hold that our priests can trace their consecration back through time to the original ordination of the apostles by Christ Himself.
What is it that is so attractive about 'common life'?
We are shaped by three watch words: Grace, Blessing and Reconciliation
We are a family bound not by our ability to agree but by our ability to love
We have a beautiful liturgy (service and prayer)
We encourage respect for the dignity of the person through blessings, not curses
We are a Church engaged in communion with God
We are a people of God gathered together to carry out a mission
Our belief is shaped half education and half mission
A More In-depth Look
We are a liturgical church. That means that our services of worship have a certain method or order to them. No matter that the service is contemporary or traditional, it follows the ancient patterns passed down to Christians since the time of Christ. Many can even be traced to the ancient Hebrews.
Liturgy is a term from two Greek words meaning "people" and "work". The way we worship God is the work of the Christian people. To many of us, this term takes us beyond Sunday services and into a way of life. If liturgy is the use of "outward and visible realities used to express the inward and spiritual realities of God's presence in our lives" (Glossary of Liturgical Terms), then liturgy is an approach to life. When we embark on any task or project, we find ourselves not only asking for God's help but also offering our best efforts toward the execution of the task. For what we do outwardly is a manifestation of what we inwardly give to the work.
Episcopal Traditions and Roots
The Church practices the Via Media or Middle Way. You may know this as Aristotle's Golden Mean, avoiding extremes to search for virtue. It does not refer to compromises or hedging bets. It may be familiar to some of you as a reference to Isaiah 35:8-12.
Our history is enriched with Celtic, Catholic, and Protestant traditions. We are both Catholic and Protestant. We are also Celtic in our search for God in all things and our profound respect for all life as well as in some of our 'mystic' or spiritual practices. Our Church is Catholic because we believe ourselves to be a part of the direct succession passed from Christ to his disciples as well as because our ways of worship {the weekly celebration of Communion, and the consecration of our ministers (priests, deacons, and bishops)} are from the same tradition as that of the Roman Catholic Church. We are Protestant because in that we do not own obedience to the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and are not restricted by dogma or official interpretations of 'correct' belief by a centralized office.
A Bit of History
The Church of England declared its independence from Rome in 1534 when Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, stating that the monarch, not the Pope, was the head of the church. Not until 1570 did the Roman Catholic Church separate itself from the Church of England (The Anglican Church). The American Revolution caused Anglicans in this country to form their own church. The Protestant Episcopal Church was officially united in 1789.
*Catholic means "proclaims the whole faith to all people, to the end of time" (Book of Common Prayer, page 854). This faith is applicable to all people in all places at all times (See Matthew 28:19). No denomination or "church" can claim it holds exclusive rights to the descriptive "catholic". We must recognize that any specific branch of Christianity is only a part of "the one holy, catholic church".
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