Episcopal Identity, Part 3: Shared Story
FROM THE RECTOR
Two weeks ago, I described how the intentionality of Episcopal worship brought me into this church. Last week, I wrote about the ways in which our focus on the liturgy as something that unites individuals across their theological differences has led me to an ever deeper sense that I belong in the Episcopal Church. This week, I will finish this exploration of our Episcopal identity by describing the principal reason I remain committed to our church and, more broadly, to the Anglican tradition, and that reason is our particular way of belonging to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
Before describing why that matters to me personally, I want to start by asking the question, “What is Anglicanism?” Below, I will attempt an answer from an historical perspective, but I want to begin with a contemporary approach. There are two main ways of identifying as Anglican—through relationships and through heritage. The Anglican Communion is a global affiliation of forty-two constituent churches known as “provinces” plus an additional five national or local churches known as “extra provincials.” These provinces include churches like the Church of England, the Anglican Church of Korea, and the Episcopal Church, and the extra provincals are in places like the Falkland Islands.
Primarily, Anglican churches around the world are united because they share a special relationship with each other through the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although not a “pope” or a leader with any strict authority over the individual provinces, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as an historic, spiritual, and ceremonial authority recognized among Anglicans around the world as primus inter pares or “first among equals,” is an instrument of unity that helps hold us together. When the Archbishop of Canterbury recognizes a church as one with whom we share Communion and authority, that church is identified as a province in the Anglican Communion.
There are other instruments of communion that help hold us together—the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting, and the Anglican Consultative Council—but the main reason that we, as Episcopalians, are part of the Anglican Communion is because we share Communion with all the other churches with whom the Archbishop of Canterbury is willing to share Communion. That means that every time we come together for Eucharist we are doing something that we share fully and fundamentally with all other Anglicans around the world.
There are other churches that identify as Anglican not because of an ongoing relationship with Canterbury but because their heritage comes from the Church of England. Often these groups have split away from another recognized province in the Anglican Communion over doctrinal differences, but their worship, structure, and history connect them to the same Anglican roots from which we have grown even if we are unable or unwilling to share Communion with each other. At some point in the future, I hope that God will heal such schism and bring us back together in common prayer.
Historically, the same theological forces that shaped the Church of England during the Reformation continue to shape the various provinces of the Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church. We recognize the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be God’s Word and to contain all things necessary to salvation. We affirm the validity of four orders of ministry—laity, deacons, priests, and bishops. We celebrate the two principal sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. And we confess the faith expressed in the Apostolic and Nicene Creeds.
Those four doctrinal elements, known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, an expression of ecumenical beliefs adopted in the late nineteenth century, unite many Christians around the world, but, as Anglicans, our interpretation and application of them is distinct. In the English Reformation, we established not only a commitment to worship in the vernacular but also a commitment to unity through common prayer. We sought ways to maintain our connection with the historic, catholic (i.e. universal) church, but we recognized that authority needs to be manifest in both national and local levels.
Those peculiar commitments have helped Anglicanism become a global phenomenon with strong international connections despite many different inculturations. As British colonialism gave way to independent countries, the distinct national expressions of Anglicanism in each area became their own independent churches, beginning with the United States and the Episcopal Church. In effect, if you were to worship in an Anglican church in Kenya, you would recognize many of the elements in our liturgy, yet the experience would be distinctly Kenyan.
Similarly, our historic emphasis on shared liturgy as something that can unite Christians across theological differences, as enshrined in the Elizabethan Settlement of the sixteenth century, has allowed Anglicans around the world to remain committed to the bonds between us even when doctrinal disputes have threatened to pull us apart. Over the years, as individual provinces have developed contemporary liturgies considerably different from those of the Church of England, ordained women to the priesthood and the episcopate, and supported the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the life of the church, our ability to stay in communion with each other has been threatened, yet the Holy Spirit has helped us find ways to recognize that what makes us Anglican and, thus, unites us is bigger than those forces that seek to divide us.
Essentially, this is why I remain an enthusiastic and hopeful participant in the Episcopal Church. As individuals, as a congregation, as a diocese, and as an Anglican province, we are a part of a faith that is ancient, global, universal, and shared, yet our identity as part of a much bigger whole does not threaten or swallow up who we are as individuals, as a parish family, as a diocese, or as a distinct Anglican province. Our global relationships shape our understanding of the faith, yet our particular understanding is not sacrificed in the interest of uniformity. Because of our catholic history and our Reformation identity, our way of being the church values each one of us, but it also values the whole.
We are part of a global church, which is made up of people with divergent opinions about important things, yet we share with each other those things that are of ultimate value, refusing to let our differences overshadow them. In effect, and with God’s help, we embody the reign of God as the Body of Christ more clearly than any other expression of Christianity I know. We are one body with many members, the apostle Paul writes, and that is marvelously true in who we are as Episcopalians.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner