Session 2 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 2 

Who are we?  How did we get to be who we are? 

Our Name: The Episcopal Church

We have other names: The Episcopal Church in the USA.  The Protestant Episcopal in the USA and we have a legal name: Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Are we Catholic?  Are we Protestant?

The common street language use of the word Catholic really means Roman Catholic.  But we are catholic in the sense that we use the Creed of the undivided church, the Nicene Creed and we say, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”  The word catholic comes from the Greek words “kata holos” meaning “on the whole.”  In the Apostles Creed (an ancient creed and used at baptism) we say, “I believe in the holy catholic church.”  So we believe in one church even though we know that in historical disagreements we have come to meet in separate churches or communions.

We are Protestant in the sense that we are not Roman Catholic.  The Reformation had its own unique pattern when Roman Catholic Christians in England in various ways expressed their disagreements with certain practices that arose in the Roman Catholic Church.  English Roman Catholics were influenced by Reformation movements that included the use of native language for the prayers instead of Latin.  Mutual disagreement and mutual reaction and retaliation between the Papacy and the English Crown along with a body of clergy in England who were influenced by the Reformation led to the gradual separation between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, but the separation was not fully finalized until 1896 when a Papal document declared that Anglican ordinations were not valid (canonically proper according to how the papacy defined validity).  We are Protestant in that we embraced a tradition that affirmed a greater role for the Bible, we believe prayer should be in the common language of the people who gather to pray, we allow clergy to marry and we believe that the Pope could serve as a “first among equals of all bishops” but not as an infallible spokesperson for the entire church.  As we shall see, we believe that God’s Spirit is active in our age too and can lead us to see the wisdom to change some ancient practices that seem to be unreasonable and promote ancient bias against people who dearly love God and want to follow Christ and have the full rights of all of the Church’s sacraments.

The Episcopal Church: What does our name tell us about ourselves?

Episcopal comes from the Greek word episkopos   ἐπίσκοπος.   It literally means “over seer” and from Latin we have the word supervisor(not a word that we use in the church).  The English word for episkopos is bishop.  So Episcopal means, “having bishops.”  This tells us something about our polity or church structures.  Other churches have bishops too:  the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the various Orthodox churches and there are similarities and differences in how bishops are appointed/elected/function and are defined in the various Christian bodies.

In the Episcopal Church in the United States we have a bishop in each diocese.  A diocese is a geographical area where a bishop has over sight.  The State of California has six Episcopal Dioceses and St. Mary's-in-the-Valley is located in the Diocese of San Diego.  And our bishop is The Right Reverend Susan Snook.

Exercise:

Ponder the difference stated above between catholic and Roman Catholic.  Is it scandalous that people who follow Christ are divided into so many different “churches” even while we say there is “one holy catholic church?”    Could we also understand the division into different churches as having diversity so that we can appeal to many more people?  If we had a “one size fits all” approach, would not lots of people feel left out and not part of the body of Christ?  Diversity allows us checks and balances since structural unity can be like a heavy handed “Empire.”  Diversity helps us to expand our hearts to appreciate differences.

Father Phil

Session 3 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 3 

The Episcopal Church:   Who are we?     

We are a particular Christian family among other Christian families.  Since our family identity has come from Roman Catholic, Protestant and “pre-Roman Catholic” church traditions some of our theologians have called us the via media, meaning the Middle Way.  In some ways our identity is “mongrel” in that we have incorporated aspects of so many eras of church traditions into our identity.

Since we do not view ourselves in a chauvinistic way as the best or as an exclusive Christian family, we often find that we are a church where compromise is experienced.  A Protestant marries a Roman Catholic and the couple might find The Episcopal Church to be a place where something of both traditions can be experienced.  People who eschew non-democratic Roman Catholic hierarchy find the Episcopal Church more graceful in combining connection with ancient tradition and liturgy with more modern values in assessing the meaning of person-hood and participation in church governance.  Persons who have experienced narrow fundamentalism in Protestant churches find The Episcopal Church a welcome relief because of our willingness to embrace modern science and rigorous thinking into our faith life. 

The above characteristics can be also a liability.  Since we are accepting of other people’s faith, we don’t tend to be active evangelists about our own faith community.  We assume that most highly educated people want to be their own agents of faith community choice without being button holed by someone who is pushing one’s own faith community.  We are welcoming of others who want to be with us but we perhaps rely upon the serendipity of situations for people to find us.  The Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church in our past have been very active colonial missionary churches and we do have active evangelism in our church history. It does remain that Episcopal parishes today tend to be the place where already convinced followers of Christ meet rather than places where people find out about Jesus Christ for the first time in their lives.

Exercise:

How did you come into the Episcopal Church?  Did you have a relationship with Christ before you came to the Episcopal Church?   How does the above description of the Episcopal fit your own description of your participation in The Episcopal Church?  If the above is true how can we promote “serendipity” of situations for other people who perhaps need to find us as their faith community of support?

 

Father Phil

Session 4 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 4 

The Episcopal Church:   Our chief heirloom     

We said that The Episcopal Church is a Christian family among other Christian families.  Along with a name, a family has features that provide unique identity.  The Roman Catholic Church has canon law, the papacy, and a theological architect like St. Thomas Aquinas as part of their heritage.  The Lutherans have Martin Luther’s prolific theological writings and the Presbyterians have the writings of John Calvin as chief heirlooms of their community identity.  What do Episcopalians have?  If we have a theological architect, it is Richard Hooker, but he does not have the exact corresponding stature in the Anglican tradition as do Aquinas, Luther and Calvin for their respective traditions.  So, what is our chief heirloom?  We would have to say it is The Book of Common Prayer.

In the mid-16^th century the Enlightenment was happening, feudal structures disappearing as well as the following: the rise of nation-state identities, spreading education/literacy, the printing press and the rediscovery of the “individual.”  Before this the individual was hidden in paternalistic structures and feudal figure heads decided for everyone in society.  In the church, clergy decided or mediated in the worship leadership in Latin prayers on behalf of lay people.  The Reformation was as much due to social changes in Europe and England as to any religious movement.  The social changes provide the conditions for the religious Reformation to take place.  The Enlightenment required that individuals become more active with their intellect in their faith and worship practices.  If a spectator laity watched the clergy perform the worship on their behalf in Latin, an uncommon language how could lay people fully participate in their faith except as dependent children?

Growing nationalism, King Henry VIII’s conflict with the Pope over an annulment and meddling in international affairs, a body of clergy influenced by the Reformation on the Continent, all gave rise to the conditions that brought into being the Book of Common Prayer.  When King Henry VIII, declared himself as one who would reform the Church in England as a non-papal catholic Church, he appointed Thomas Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Cranmer had been influenced by Reformers on the Continent.

A way to challenge papal authority on the Continent was to translate Scripture into the vernacular languages and not rely on St. Jerome’s Vulgate Latin version.  So what was the “common” language of the English people?  English, of course.  Cranmer penned the first Book of Common Prayer and brought the liturgy out of the exclusive grip of the clergy, the educated and the religious monastic and he made it accessible to the hearing of the average person in England.  Cranmer used various existing liturgies, reform liturgies in the Roman and Reformation traditions to create in his Tudor English what became a standard for English style. In the time of Henry VIII the Coverdale Bible in English had been placed in parish churches to be read by literate lay persons.

Cranmer collapsed the seven monastic prayer offices into Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and this was an effort to end the division between two kinds of Christians, ordained/monastic and lay Christians.

The Book of Common Prayer, consistent with its origin of being in the common language of the people who pray, has undergone various revisions and has been translated into languages other than English.  The Episcopal Church has used five versions of The Book of Common Prayer; the pre-American Revolution church used the 1662 version before gaining their own American version in 1789.  There have been three subsequent revisions, 1892, 1928 and 1979 as well as trial and supplemental liturgies approved for use.

The Book of Common Prayer is indeed the chief heirloom of the Episcopal Church, even while we with all Christians acknowledge the Bible as the “official text book” of the church.

Exercise:

Compare your own experience of public worship.  Some other Protestant Churches have Orders of Service but give much more flexibility in choice to their clergy.  Other churches have much more “extemporaneous” prayers rather than shared “common” prayer in a textual form.  In our corporate prayer, we are all equal; no one “prays better” than another, since we are offering the prayers together.  Take a look sometime at the entire Book of Common Prayer. 

Father Phil

Session 5 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 5 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

With just a cursory glance at the index in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) one can note a unifying theme, the theme of Time.  One can find a calendar of seasons and days and reference to time of day, e.g. morning noon, and evening.  The Psalmist wrote, “Our time is in God’s hand.”  The BCP is a prayer strategy for us to remember that our time is in God’s hand.  The BCP can and is used both for corporate prayer and private devotions.  It belongs to everyone and even when we pray the prayers in private we are expressing our corporate agreement.  Some people object to the reading of “written prayers” as not being spontaneously heartfelt and therefore “vain repetition.”  It is not up to anyone to judge anyone about how our hearts are engaged with the prayers that we share together.  A prayer such as the “Our Father” could be judged as vain repetition by the same criterion.  Use of the BCP is not intended to discourage extemporaneous and privately composed prayer.  The BCP provides an order for people to join together to pray.

First, the BCP is a companion to the Bible.  In fact one could say that the BCP is the words of the Bible rearranged into an organized prayer format.  Since the BCP includes a lectionary (appointed lessons from the Bible), the use of the BCP requires a commitment to reading the Bible.

The BCP is a prayer strategy to invoke the presence of God on the times of our lives.  A way to understand the prayer strategy of the BCP is to see how the prayers therein conform to the different ways in which human beings experience time.  There is the experience of cyclical time with light and darkness being the most evident sign of a natural clock.  The daily offices of the BCP, such as Morning and Evening Prayer conform to this notion of cyclical time.  Changes in weather and length of daylight mark the seasons of our calendar of months.  The BCP includes a calendar of seasons, special feast days, holy days and fast days.  Each day is the same for having a morning and a night, but every child knows that some days like birthdays and Christmas are tinged with such social and cultural meaning as to create an entirely different experience and mood of time.  I would call this the experience of "special time."  There is still a further experience of time that I would call crisis time, or “rite of passage time” or “eventful time” using the Greek notion of time referred to as kairos.  The BCP has the prayer forms for what we call the sacraments which conform to this other human experience or mood of time.

In the next sessions we are going to look at these human experiences of time and how the BCP provides a mode of prayer to conform to these human experiences of time.  

My contention will be this:  These prayers not designed to force us into conformity church rules; they are gifts to help us be honest in becoming fully human in very practical and anthropologically sound ways.

Exercise:

Look at the index in the BCP. ( Book of Common Prayer online)  Notice all of the references to time.  Reflect upon your own experience of time.  Why does time seem to go slow when one is young and fast when one is old?  Why the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun?”  What is it that causes the experience of time to seem fast or slow, or boring, or timeless, or déjà vu or sublime?

Father Phil

Session 6 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 6 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 2

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.  Prayer is not so much to “convince” God to be involved in our lives as much as it is a practice to attune ourselves to live in the state being aware of how God is always already involved in our lives.  The BCP provides a strategy for praying at regular intervals as a habit.  One of the results of the Reformation was to bring an end between two “kinds” of Christians, the ordained and monastic “heroic” Christians who were called to a higher calling of poverty, chastity and obedience, and “regular” Christians, the laity who were called to keep the Ten Commandments.  Reformation Christianity was a call for everyone to be “equally Christian” in their practice.  So in the Church of England, poverty, chastity and obedience became the call of fewer people as the call to pray in one’s own language was made the requirement of all baptized persons.  To do this the strategy of prayer had to be made accessible to all baptized persons.  The monastic communities had a daily habit of prayer, spiritual reading and work.  Following the Psalmist’s promise, “Seven times a day, I will praise thee…O Lord,” the monastic community had the habit of seven prayer hours during the day.  Of course, non-monastic lay people could not drop everything seven times a day to pray.  Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote the first  Book of Common Pryaer, collapsed the pre-noon prayer hours into one Morning Prayer and the post-noon prayer hours into one Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer.  This was a call to all baptized persons to elevate their lives of prayer as there was to be an end to these two classes of Christians.  All Christians were called to the vocation of prayer as the regular and ordinary habit of life.   The prayers were no longer locked in the monastery in a Latin breviary for the “professional people of prayer who used Latin.”  The Book of Common Prayer was in fact a kind of democratization of Christian citizenry by requiring all Christians to be involved in the official prayers of the Church.  Since prayer was in the common language of the people it could be done with understanding by all English speakers.  Morning and Evening Prayer in the parish church at the center of the village was to be the new norm for prayer even as monastic institutions were closing down.

As we see now in America our life style leaves us long distances from the parish church and secular life does not cater to a “stop everything and pray” habit.  One of the ways that we can incorporate Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer into our habit of life is through the online Morning and Evening Prayer sites.  These sites include the appointed lessons from the Bible for Morning and Evening Prayer.  If one does this one is praying through the Psalms on a regular basis as well as reading a majority of the Bible in a two year cycle.  Two such sites are: http://www.missionstclare.com/english/  and http://dailyoffice.org/ .  For your convenience, the St. John the Divine Facebook page links these two site each morning along with the popular Daily Meditation from Forward Day by Day. http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-John-the-Divine-Episcopal-Church-Morgan-Hill-CA/147286963103    Obviously where there is community of people who can join for prayer, it is preferable to join others in prayer for Morning and Evening Prayer but these online sites provide “virtual” prayer together.  Online Prayer is really another manifestation of the “commonization”  that began with the Book of Common Prayer.  

The philosophy of the Book of Common Prayer is that prayer should be common or accessible for people to pray.  The church will always be looking for ways to make prayer common or accessible to people to encourage prayer as the regular strategy of life.

Exercise:

Look in the Prayer Book at the Daily Prayers.  You can find them at this site online: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/bcp.htm Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Noonday Prayer. Compline.  Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families.  Order of Worship for Evening.  You will notice that there is Rite One which is the older English style, and Rite Two which is the less ornate modern English style.  Try the Daily Devotions Prayers with your children or at dinner time.  Go to one of the online sites and acquire the daily habit of Morning and Evening Prayer.  No excuse: It is very accessible, which is the true meaning of common.  No fumbling through the Bible looking for readings.

Father Phil

Session 7 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 7 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 3

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.  It provides for the experience of what can be called “special time.”   Special time is how a community celebrates its identity through the remembrance of an initiating event.  Unique events don’t recur; they happen and they make an impact and the memory coupled with the imagination is exerted to retain something of the impact and power of the event.  Too theoretical?  What about celebration of birthdays, anniversaries or commemoration of telling events?  Why do we do it?  We can’t make a birth happen again a year later, or we don’t get remarried on our anniversaries but how is it that the memorial traces of an event are retained within a community of celebrants?  Why does it happen?  Why do we want to do it?  Special time happens within the life of a community.  Special time happened in the originating events and persons of the community that we call the church and in those events and persons we are given our community identity and story.  We are imprinted with the story and we become co-celebrants of the events of the story.

The BCP  is a prayer record, a perpetuation of prayer, a book to teach prayer based the values of our community that arose in the originating persons and events of our Christian identity.  We mark special time broadly with seasons that frame the broad curriculum of our annual cycle to inculcate the values of our faith community.  The seasons give us teaching topics that receive their value from the events in the life of Jesus Christ and the community. Events on the calendar derived from the life of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and events in the lives of the saints of the church.   The Book of Common Prayer provides a format for us to anchor our identity upon the originating events of our community.

The BCP deals with special time by providing prayer texts and ceremonial prescriptions/suggestions for Church Seasons, Major Feast Days of our Lord, Holy Days, Fast Days, Holy Days, Days of remembering heroes who became remembered because of exemplary living.

In our lives time gets differentiated in how it is valued or remembered.  I do not commemorate brushing my teeth at 10:30 p.m. on July 12, 1980, but on September 11, my memory can be jolted by the fact of the event that is forever associated with that day in our country.  Special time is about differentiated time marked by liturgy and by the power of remembrance.  Even though we may believe that God is omnipresent, somehow that presence becomes more memorial in the unique occasions when God’s presence became a happening that changed life in a way that gave birth to new community meaning.  The BCP through the liturgies of Special Time express our hope to access the power of these originating people and events.

Exercise:

Think about why as a child your birthday or Christmas was different.  Why was there such anticipation for the day and a sort of pinch myself with excitement over these special days?  How is it that your family and community were able to create such powerful awe-struck events for you?  Now think about the originating events of the church.  How is it that the liturgy of the church is both a result of those events but also a means of propelling the memory of the event into the future?  One can be cynical about all manner of sentimentality but one must acknowledge the rather profound power of the memory and its durability as we use the BCP as a sort of musical score to experience something of the mind of the composer of the great events of our faith.

Father Phil

Session 8 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 8 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 4: The Sacraments

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.  Another human experience of time might be what is called eventful time or life crisis time or “rite of passage” time.  I believe that the BCP provides a prayer format to deal with this nuance or mood in our experience of time.  Arnold van Gennep developed a theory of a rite of passage.  For so many years developmental psychology limited a majority of its effort to child psychological development until scholars began to acknowledge that psychological development occurs over one’s lifetime.  A rite of passage involves the way in which a culture facilitates or initiates members into distinct status change as a person gets older.  The BCP in its presentation of how time is experienced presents a corresponding liturgical format for rite of passage time, eventful time or crisis time.  In short, the presentation of the liturgy in the BCP of the seven sacraments represents the church’s efforts to invoke God’s presence in our lives as we age.  The sacraments are an honest confession that we age together within a community.  I believe most people and some clergy treat the sacraments as compartmentalized religious acts that one does to “obey” the church.  My contention is that the sacraments are the honest attempt of the church to be “inter-generationally” supportive of one another as we age in community and as we invoke God’s presence within the life experiences that come to us at various ages.

I have tried and probably failed to teach the anthropological soundness of the sacraments.  Meanwhile outside of the church, first word, first step, first day at school, driver’s license, graduation from high school, graduation from college, first major job in a career, marriage, birth of a child, empty nest, male pattern baldness, gray hair, menopause, retirement, assisted living, skilled nursing; these rites seem to be the telling rites of passage and the church has failed, I have failed, to show how the sacraments are so interwoven with our lives as to be unavoidable.  And if we live sacramentally, we live our lives as if God and the community of faith care about our lives and we prayerfully alone and together invoke the presence of God as we live into authentic tasks and crises that define the human adventure.

What I will endeavor to show in the next sessions is how the sacraments provide a structure of support and initiation in living with authenticity into the crises that confront us in life.  Sacraments are not magical ceremonies that end after the ceremonies; the ceremony is but the gateway into the duration of the life crisis that is expressed in the sacramental liturgy.  The sacraments have undergone changes in the history of how the church has prayed together because the effort to care for the people who come to pray has influenced our church to have the sacraments be a pastoral support for those who are aging together in different ways in the church.

Exercise:

Think about your secular rites of passage.  Think about your experience of the sacraments in the church.  Baptism.  Eucharist.  Confirmation.  Reconciliation. Prayer for the Sick.  Holy Matrimony.  Ordination.  How have you availed yourself of the sacraments?  Have the sacraments been a support for your life of faith within the church and outside of the church?  Are we embarrassed to make a confession or ask for a prayer when we are sick?  Ordination, does that mean the clergy do all of the “real” ministry of the church?

Father Phil