Welcome
to the Episcopal Church
OUR HISTORY
The Episcopal Church (TEC) is one of the national churches which make up the world-wide
Anglican Communion, a family of churches associated with spiritual leadership of the
Archbishop of Canterbury and a branch of Christ's one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
The Anglican Communion is made up of seventy-six million Christians in 164 countries and is
the world's second largest body of Christians. If you are curious about the origins of the
Episcopal Church and how it got to America, read on!
In The Beginning
The Episcopal Church derived its existence from the Church of England which began as the
Church in England, the branch of the Catholic Church in the British Isles.
It is difficult to say exactly when Christianity was introduced to Britain. According to
legend, St. Joseph of Arimathea (who paid for Jesus's burial) first brought the Gospel to
the British Isles and established a Christian community at Glastonbury in the first
century A.D. It is more likely, however, that Christianity was introduced by the Romans.
By 300 A.D. the Church in Britain was well developed and dioceses were established around
the major cities such as London, York and Lincoln. St. Alban, the first Christian martyred
on British soil, suffered death around 305 A.D.
The Roman presence in Britain came to an end in 401 as Rome's empire began to collapse
under the pressure of barbarian invasions. This left the Christian population open to
invasion by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who were pagan. The Christian population was
steadily pushed into Scotland and Wales. England ceased to even be nominally Christian.
"The Church of England"
Upon learning that the population of England was not Christian, Pope Gregory the Great
(540-604) sent monks under the leadership of Augustine (d. 604) to convert Britain to
Christianity in 596 A.D. Augustine was later named Archbishop of Canterbury. (The present
Archbishop of Canterbury is St. Augustine's 104th successor.)
But missionaries also came to England from another direction. The Irish or Celtic Church,
founded by St. Patrick, also sent missionaries like St. Adrian (d. 651) and St. Columba
(d. 597).
This meant that there were two sources of English Christianity, the Roman and the Celtic.
In 664 these two forms of Christianity combined at the Council of Whitby to form what was
called "the Church of England". While considering itself to be part of the Catholic Church,
the Church of England also saw itself as having a degree of independence from the papacy.
The Magna Carta, signed by King John in 1215, declared, for example, that "the Church of
England is beholden to no one outside this realm".
"Henry the Eighth" and "All That"
There is a popular impression that Henry VIII "invented" the Church of England in order
to get a divorce. This impression is mistaken. By the time that Henry broke with Rome in
1534 there had been a continuously existing Church in England for almost a thousand years.
Furthermore, Henry's breach with Rome came at the end of a long period during which papal
authority was steadily limited in England. The English Parliament began formally limiting
papal power in the 1300s. In 1351 Parliament passed the Statutes of Provisors which meant
that no one could be appointed to an office in the Church of England without the English
monarch's consent. In 1353 Parliament passed the First Statute of Praemunire which limited
legal appeals to the pope's court; civil and ecclesiastical appeals which were once made in
the pope's court would now have to be made to the English crown. Those appealing to Rome
could now be tried for treason.
Henry VIII's breach with Rome must be placed in its historical context, a context which is
much wider than Henry's desire for a new wife. This context had at least three aspects.
One aspect was growing nationalism in England--increasingly the papacy was seen as an
interfering foreign power. A second aspect was growing English resentment of the papacy's
financial and political interference in England's affairs. A third aspect of this context
was the events which were shaking Europe.
The Reformation of the Church of England
By the time of Henry VIII's break with Rome, the Reformation, (begun by Martin Luther in Germany
in 1517) had been in progress for seventeen years. Whole areas had broken with Rome to become
what we know today as Protestant churches. Luther had launched a fundamental critique of papal
authority and a call to more securely ground the Church's teaching, worship, and government on
Scripture. (It was not, however, Luther's intention to create a new church--he wanted to reform
the old one.)
Interestingly, Henry VIII rejected most of Luther's ideas and even wrote a treatise defending
the system of seven sacraments against Luther's attacks. For this effort the pope awarded him
the title "Defender of the Faith". Henry's break with Rome had little immediate consequence
for the worship and theology of the Church of England. He aimed not at a reformation of the
Church (as did Luther) but at a "Catholicism without the pope". Henry's commitment to
traditional Catholicism can be seen in the Six Articles of 1539 which, among other things,
upheld the doctrine of transubstantiation and the necessity of sacramental confession (both
denied by the Protestants).
The Reformation of the Church of England did not really begin until the reign of Henry's son,
Edward VI who became king in 1547. The architect of reform in England was Thomas Cranmer,
whom Henry appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1532. Cranmer moved the Church of England
in a more "Protestant" direction. He produced the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549 which
was the first complete book of Christian liturgy in the English language. He produced a second
Book of Common Prayer, even more "Protestant", in 1552.
Edward VI was sickly and was succeeded by his half-sister Mary in 1553. Mary restored papal
authority in England and brought all attempts at reform to an end. Under her reign many of
the leaders of the English reformation (including Cranmer) were executed. After Henry's break
with Rome, the attempts at reform under Edward VI, and Mary's return to Rome, England was in
religious chaos.
From Chaos to Equilibrium
In 1558 Mary was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth. During Elizabeth's reign the
Church of England moved from chaos to equilibrium, a religious and political state of affairs
called the Elizabethan Settlement. The primary theological apologist (defender) of the
Anglican "middle way was Richard Hooker (1554-1600). Elizabeth rejected both papal authority
and the more radical forms of Protestantism (called Puritanism in England). In 1559 Parliament
authorized a third Book of Common Prayer which marked a return to the more "catholic" worship
of the 1549 Prayer Book. In 1563 the Thirty-nine Articles were promulgated establishing the
doctrinal foundations of the Church of England in contradistinction to the Roman Catholic
Church and the more radical Protestant churches. These articles (doctrinal theses) can be
found in the back of the present Book of Common Prayer (1979) on p. 867.
The Church of England produced a fourth Book of Common Prayer in 1662; it remains in official
use today.
From Canterbury to Philadelphia
Just as the Church of England was the product of the missionary work of the Roman and Celtic
Churches, the Episcopal Church in America is the product of the missionary work of the Church
of England. The first permanent English settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia in
1607 and was supplied with an Anglican priest. The direct successor of this congregation still
exists today as the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Through the work of Anglican missionary societies like the Society for the Propagation of
Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), Church
of England parishes were established in all thirteen colonies by the time of the Revolutionary
War.
At the end of the Revolutionary War Church of England parishes in America had no bishops
and few clergy (since many clergy remained loyal to England and left during or after the war).
Samuel Seabury became the first American to be consecrated a bishop; in 1783 he was consecrated
as bishop of Connecticut by Scottish bishops in Aberdeen. He was followed in 1787 by Samuel
Provoost, who was consecrated bishop of New York, and William White, who was consecrated
bishop of Philadelphia. Both were consecrated by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and
two other English bishops. These consecrations were significant in that the apostolic
succession passed to America and the American church was then able to consecrate its own
bishops. (By tradition, three bishops in the historic succession are required to consecrate
a new bishop.)
The Episcopal Church in America was officially formed in 1789 at the first General Convention
in Philadelphia. This General Convention adopted a constitution for the Church, authorized the
first American Book of Common Prayer, and established an official name -- The Protestant
Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
Today the Episcopal Church has approximately 7,500 parishes and missions and about 2,500,000
members in the United States.
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