Thanksgiving ... for The Episcopal Church

John Shelby Spong.  During my theologically formative years, it was the name which inevitably came to mind when The Episcopal Church was mentioned.  For many of us on this side of the Atlantic, 'TEC' almost became short-hand for Spong's vapid theological liberalism.

Yes, not exactly what makes for a happy Thanksgiving.

Some experience of TEC over the years, however, brought me to realise that it was a much richer expression of Anglicanism than the meagre fare presented by Spong.  So, from the other side of the Atlantic on this Thanksgiving Day, let me give three reasons to give thanks for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Firstly, it historically demonstrated how Anglicanism could flourish in a radically different political, and social context to that of the United Kingdom.  Wordsworth celebrates this in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, in 'American Episcopacy':

Patriots informed with Apostolic light 
Were they, who, when their Country had been freed, 
Bowing with reverence to the ancient creed, 
Fixed on the frame of England's Church their sight, 
And strove in filial love to reunite 
What force had severed.

For all my fondness for The Ecclesiastical Sonnets, however, we do have to at least partially qualify Wordsworth's words.  While US Episcopalians "fixed on the frame of England's Church", a polity defined by popular government, a republican constitution, and the separation of church and state, appeared - to say the least - unlikely territory for Anglicanism.  The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America demonstrated otherwise.  Here is Hobart, speaking of that Church's "general character":

We notice also the conformity of our ecclesiastical to our civil constitutions, in the division of power in the exercise of legislation; the Bishops of the Church constituting one house, in General Convention, and the Clerical and Lay Deputies another, with co-ordinate and equal powers. All the advantages of deliberation, of experience, and of security to individual rights, of which by this arrangement, our civil constitutions boast, are secured in the organization of our Church ...

Apart then from the divine institution of the ministry, we have cause of boast respecting the ORDER of our Church, that it exercises the powers of government agreeably to the principles of right and justice, and of those forms of civil polity, on which experience has impressed the stamp of wisdom.

In the young Republic, and well into the 20th century, PECUSA witnessed to how Anglicanism could flourish in a democratic culture.  This historic vocation suggests the continued significance of US Episcopalianism for wider Anglicanism.  There is a need for an Anglican witness to be sustained in the dynamic, diverse society of the Great Republic, in which cultural trends first emerge which often sooner or later appear in other societies.

Secondly, US Episcopalianism - despite the radically different political, social and cultural context - sustained a very traditional Anglican commitment to culture, civil society, and political institutions. From James Fenimore Cooper to Frances Perkins, from George Freeman Bragg to Ralph Adams Cram, Episcopalians - to use words from Ron Dart, referring to a different context indeed - "entered the public square with a flair and gusto that cannot be denied". As late as 1981, The New York Times could report:

While only two of every 100 Americans are Episcopalians, one of every seven members of the 97th Congress belongs to the church. Similarly, two of the 14 Cabinet members are Episcopalians.

John Hughes said of the traditional Anglican approach to establishment that its "'integral humanism' provides a way of understanding our relation to culture and society".  Thus, he said, "the establishment of the Church of England ... [is] a contemporary version of the integral humanism that shaped the whole of Christendom".  In the United States, without establishment, the witness of Episcopalians showed how this "integral humanism" could yet find meaningful expression.  Through a traditional Anglican commitment to culture, civil society, and political institutions, lived out in a republican culture and polity, Episcopalians witnessed to an integral humanism - as Hughes summarises its theological centre - "flowing from and to him, who is the Alpha and Omega of all things".

Thirdly, when I now hear The Episcopal Church being mentioned, particular places and communities come to mind.  Choral Evensong at Washington National Cathedral; an evening Mass at St Paul's K Street; Rite I Choral Morning Prayer at the Church of the Incarnation, NYC; lunchtime Low Mass at the Church of the Advent, Boston; Parish Eucharist at Trinity Church, Boston, St Christopher's, Chatham, Cape Cod, and at St Margaret's, Belfast, Maine.  I recall the warmth and vibrancy of these communities, noticeable to a passing visitor.  Above all, I remember the quite vivid sense that these communities could be home.

To borrow a phrase from Roger Scruton, such communities - despite the cultural differences - were 'our Church'.  I am struggling to give this greater definition.  Of course, shared liturgical texts, the appearance of parish churches, our ecclesiastical polity, all this contributed to the sense of 'our Church'. These, however, are the fruit of something else.  It has something to do with shared origin, of being shaped by a common ecclesial way of life and its particular roots.  In the words of Hobart:

The particular Origin of our Church - or the particular Christian communion from which she received that apostolic faith, order, and worship, which constitute her a legitimate member of the body of Christ - and that communion, we are proud to boast, is the Church of England.

That sense of 'our Church' derived from an experience which was organic, not abstract or propositional.  Something of this is caught by Wordsworth's 'American Episcopate' when it goes on to refer to "a wide-spreading family", a family brought into being by a 'particular origin', by the wisdom, beauty and concord found in the Anglican way.

Roots, fruit, family - words associated with Thanksgiving. It seems appropriate, then, to end with the collect for Thanksgiving Day from the PECUSA BCP 1928, giving thanks for that portion of "a wide-spreading family" which took root in the Great Republic across the ocean.

MOST merciful Father, who hast blessed the labours of the husbandman in the returns of the fruits of the earth; We give thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness to us, that our land may still yield her increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen