Read complete books and articles on: Episcopal Church

Episcopal Church - Anglican church of the United States. Its separate existence as an American ecclesiastical body with its own episcopate began in 1789.

Doctrine and Organization

Episcopal Church - Anglican church of the United States. Its separate existence as an American ecclesiastical body with its own episcopate began in 1789.

Doctrine and Organization

The Episcopal Church maintains that the Holy Scriptures are the ultimate rule of faith. Its symbols of doctrine are the Apostles' and the Nicene Creed and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, with certain modifications to fit American conditions. The ministry is of three orders: deacons, priests, and bishops. The system of organization includes the parish, the diocese, the province, and the General Convention. The General Convention, the highest ecclesiastical authority in the church, consists of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies and meets in session every three years. The ecclesiastical head of the church is the presiding bishop, elected by the General Convention. The National Council, set up in 1919, is delegated by the General Convention to administer all the organized missionary, educational, and social work. The church has almost 2.5 million members in the United States (1999).

History

Anglicanism in America

Anglican Church services in America were first held in 1607 in Jamestown, Va. Except in Maryland and Virginia, there were few clergymen of the Established Church in the colonies. The New England Puritans, although they had not actually seceded from the Church of England, proscribed all that was Anglican. However, in 1686, when the colonial charter of Massachusetts was revoked, Church of England clergymen were appointed in that colony. In 1689, King's Chapel, Boston, was opened, and Trinity Church in New York City was consecrated. Anglicans were active in establishing institutions of higher learning in the colonies. In 1693, James Blair, an Anglican missionary to colonial Virginia, secured the charter for the College of William and Mary. King's College (now Columbia Univ.) was founded in 1754.

An American Church

During the American Revolution the personal loyalties of the church's clergy and laity were seriously split, and American independence brought about the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. After the Revolution the first objective of American Anglicans was to organize a native episcopacy and a national church. The new ecclesiastical body was called the Protestant Episcopal Church, a name approved in 1789 by the first General Convention of the denomination, which also adopted a constitution and a revised version of the Book of Common Prayer. Dr. Samuel Seabury of Connecticut was consecrated bishop in 1784 by bishops of Scotland, and William White of Pennsylvania and Samuel Provoost of New York were consecrated bishops in England in 1787. In 1817, General Theological Seminary was organized, and in 1820 the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was established.

Episcopal churches were founded by settlers in the newly opened regions of the West. During the Civil War the church was necessarily disunited, but at the General Conference of 1865 there was a full reunion. In 1873 a group of clergy and laity withdrew from the main body, in disagreement over certain sacramental and ritualistic practices, and formed the Reformed Episcopal Church.

In recent decades the church (renamed the Episcopal Church in 1967) has been deeply involved in the ecumenical movement and in focusing the attention of Christians on social issues. Decisions in favor of prayer book revision and the ordination of women were made by the General Convention in 1976. In 1989, Barbara Harris of the Massachusetts diocese was consecrated as the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion, and in 1993 Mary McLeod became bishop of Vermont, the first woman in the United States to head a diocese of the church. The growing role of women in the church and differences over social issues, including the church's stand on homosexuality, caused divisiveness in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1999, the Episcopal Church joined with several others in establishing full communion with the country's largest Lutheran denomination. The election by the church in 2003 of its first openly homosexual bishop threatened to split both the church and the Anglican Communion.

Bibliography

See R. B. Mullin, Episcopal Vision/American Reality (1986); R. W. Prichard, History of the Episcopal Church (1991).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Episcopal Church

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Episcopalians » Read Now
by David Hein, Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr. 366 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
2.

For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians » Read Now
by Allen C. Guelzo. 404 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...ISBN 0-271-01002-9 alk. paper . -- ISBN 0-271-01003-7 pbk. 1. Reformed Episcopal Church -- History. 2. Reformed Episcopal Church -- Relations. 3. Episcopal Church --...
3.

Standing against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America » Read Now
by Diana Hochstedt Butler. 274 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Standing Against the Whirlwind is a history of the Evangelical party in the Episcopal Church in nineteenth-century America. A surprising revisionist account of the church's first century, it reveals the extent to which evangelical Episcopalians helped to shape the piety, identity, theology, and...
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Standing Against the Whirlwind is a history of the Evangelical party in the Episcopal Church in nineteenth-century America. A surprising revisionist account of the church's first century, it reveals the extent to which evangelical Episcopalians helped to shape the piety, identity, theology, and mission of the church. Using the life and career of one of the party's greatest leaders, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, the second bishop of Ohio, Diana Butler blends institutional history with biography to explore the vicissitudes and tribulations of evangelicals in a church that often seemed inhospitable to their version of the Gospel. This gracefully written narrative history of a neglected movement sheds light on evangelical religion within a particular denomination and broadens the interpretation of nineteenth-century American evangelicalism as a whole. In addition, it elucidates such wider cultural and religious issues as the meaning of millennialism and the nature of the crisis over slavery.
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4.

Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Church, in Journal of Psychology and Theology » Read Now
by Gray Temple. 10 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Psychology, Entire Library
5.

The Protestant Episcopal Church, Black Nationalists, and Expansion of the West African Missionary Field, 1851-1871, in Church history » Read Now
by J. R. Oldfield. 15 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...The Protestant Episcopal Church, Black Nationalists, and Expansion...the experience of the Protestant Episcopal church is at all typical, however, these...African mission...
6.

Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa » Read Now
by James T. Campbell. 424 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

This is a study of the transplantation of a creed devised by and for African Americans--the African Methodist Episcopal Church--that was appropriated and transformed in a variety of South African contexts. Focusing on a transatlantic institution like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the book...
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This is a study of the transplantation of a creed devised by and for African Americans--the African Methodist Episcopal Church--that was appropriated and transformed in a variety of South African contexts. Focusing on a transatlantic institution like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the book studies the complex human and intellectual traffic that has bound African American and South African experience. It explores the development and growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church both in South Africa and America, and the interaction between the two churches. This is a highly innovative work of comparative and religious history. Its linking of the United States and African black religious experiences is unique and makes it appealing to readers interested in religious history and black experience in both the United States and South Africa.
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7.

Christ Church, Philadelphia: The Nation's Church in a Changing City (Chap. Eight "Establishing the Protestant Episcopal Church") » Read Now
by Deborah Mathias Gough. 426 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...Establishing the Protestant Episcopal Church 151 CHAPTER...Philadelphia 1860, with Center City Episcopal churches 245 Map 4...Philadelphia, 1914, with Center City...
8.

Episcopalians: The Leftward Center, in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life » Read Now
by William Murchison. 2 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...Murchison The modern Episcopal Church is the oddest of churches: scrupulous...womens ordination (a practice the Episcopal Church adopted only twenty-one years...that "core...
9.

Three Hundred Years of the Episcopal Church in America (1906) » Read Now
by George Hodges. 154 pgs.

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...Three Hundred Years of the Episcopal Church in America By GEORGE...Three Hundred Years of the Episcopal Church in America Contents...essay, to tell the story of the...
10.

The Uneasy Center: Reformed Christianity in Antebellum America ("The Founding of a Protestant Episcopal Church" begins on p. 148) » Read Now
by Paul K. Conkin. 330 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...75 The Methodist Episcopal Church, 77 The Methodist...The Founding of a Protestant Episcopal Church, 148 Episcopal...exceptional case of the Protestant Episcopal church...
11.

Religion in the Development of American Culture, 1765-1840 ("The Episcopalians" begins on p. 67) » Read Now
by William Warren Sweet. 338 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

...England, however, where the Episcopal Church was bitterly opposed and where...A History of the American Episcopal Church , New York and Milwaukee...organization of the...
12.

World Religions in America: An Introduction ("Episcopal Virginia and the South" begins on p. 30) » Read Now
by Jacob Neusner. 274 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
13.

Confederates against the Confederacy: Essays on Leadership and Loyalty (Chap. 5 "The Contributions of the Southern Episcopal Church to Confederate Unity and Morale") » Read Now
by Jon L. Wakelyn. 191 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Far from being a monolith with unanimous leadership loyalty to the cause of a separate nation, the Confederacy was in reality deeply divided over how to achieve independence. Many supposedly loyal leaders, civilian as well as elected officials, opposed governmental policies on the national and state...
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Far from being a monolith with unanimous leadership loyalty to the cause of a separate nation, the Confederacy was in reality deeply divided over how to achieve independence. Many supposedly loyal leaders, civilian as well as elected officials, opposed governmental policies on the national and state levels, and their actions ultimately influenced non-support for military policies. Congressional differences over arming the slaves and bureaucratic squabbles over how to conduct the war disrupted the government and Cabinet of President Jefferson Davis. Rumors of such irreconcilable differences spread throughout the South, contributing to an overall decline in morale and support for the war effort and causing the Confederacy to come apart from within.
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14.

Socialism and Christianity in Early 20th Century America (Chap. 8 "Millionaire Socialist and Omnist Episcopalian: J. G. Phelps Stokes's Political and Spiritual Search for the "All"") » Read Now
by Jacob H. Dorn. 258 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

Despite an anti-religious reputation and the anti-religious worldview of many members, the American Socialist movement held a primarily religious and moral attraction for a small but highly articulate group of American Christians of diverse religious tradition. This study explores the dramatic and...
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Despite an anti-religious reputation and the anti-religious worldview of many members, the American Socialist movement held a primarily religious and moral attraction for a small but highly articulate group of American Christians of diverse religious tradition. This study explores the dramatic and at times dangerous lives of individuals who found in the vibrant, growing socialist movement before World War I the grounds for hope that the biblical ideals of human worth and economic justice would at last be fulfilled. Its subjects are male and female, black and white, native- and foreign-born, clergy and lay people, and products of Christian traditions ranging from African-American Baptist to Episcopalian. Readers will find, not Milquetoasts standing hesitantly on the sidelines, but Christians with an unequivocal commitment to the complete socialist program who made major contributions to socialist work, as authors, political candidates, and party leaders.
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15.

The Close: A Young Woman's First Year at Seminary » Read Now
by Chloe Breyer. 270 pgs.

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The Close is an enthralling account of one young woman's spiritual journey. Raised in a liberal, secular home, Chloe Breyer, responding to an inner call to a spiritual vocation, began her training at New York's General Theological Seminary in 1997. She describes her intense immersion in daily...
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The Close is an enthralling account of one young woman's spiritual journey. Raised in a liberal, secular home, Chloe Breyer, responding to an inner call to a spiritual vocation, began her training at New York's General Theological Seminary in 1997. She describes her intense immersion in daily prayer, the rigors and rewards of the academic program, and the challenging tension between secular and spiritual that marks her training. She illuminates the unique experience of a young person of faith preparing to live and hoping to thrive in a secular modern world.
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