#the episcopal church

[scobbe]

For all my fellow fans of gender-subverting medieval monks, today in the church calendar we commemorate Smaragdus/Euphrosyne:

“Euphrosyne was born in the fifth century, the beloved only child of a couple in Alexandria. She had a warm and loving family life, but her mother died when she was still a young girl. Her father, Paphnutius, instructed her in the Christian faith, and often used to take her to visit the monasteries outside of the city.

As she grew to adulthood, her father arranged what he thought was an excellent future for her—marriage to a wealthy and handsome young man from a prominent family. But Euphrosyne would have none of it. She and her father quarreled, and she ran away from home in anger without even saying goodbye. She cut her hair, changed her clothing for men’s attire, and adopted the name of Smaragdus.

Smaragdus entered a monastic community outside of Alexandria, where he made great progress in prayer and in wisdom. Many years later, Paphnutius came to that same monastery, seeking consolation in his bereavement over the daughter he had lost, whom he believed to be dead. The abbot of the monastery (perhaps perceiving the situation more clearly than he had ever admitted) sent Paphnutius to Smaragdus for spiritual direction and guidance. Paphnutius was then instructed in the spiritual life by Smaragdus for years, coming weekly to the monastery for his wisdom and advice, but during all that time he failed to recognize his own child.

It was only as Smaragdus was ill and near to death that Paphnutius’ eyes were finally opened, and he recognized that the beloved daughter he had mourned as dead and the monk who had guided him through his grief were in fact the same person. He nursed Smaragdus lovingly during his final illness, and then became a monk himself, occupying the same cell that his child had lived in for the rest of his life.

Merciful God, who looks not with outward eyes but discerns the heart of each: we confess that those whom we love the most are often strangers to us. Give to all parents and children, we pray, the grace to see one another as they truly are and as you have called them to be. All this we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our only mediator and advocate. Amen"

Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2022

[aprillikesthings]

Starting this fall I'm doing a four-year long class called Education for Ministry, which despite the name is not about becoming a minister. It *is* some of the same material covered in first-year seminary, but it's aimed at "laypeople" (aka not clergy) and isn't graded or anything. It's also run by an Episcopal seminary but it's not restricted to us--my group has a Methodist in it, and I think one other person who is "mainline" but not Episcopal.

Anyway. It involves a ton of reading from multiple books per week, and then getting together in a group (mine is on zoom, most are in person) once a week to talk about the reading and respond to conversation prompts.

And I need to decide (soon) if I want to use paper books vs ebooks. And whether I want to take notes on the texts via sticky notes or a notebook or in the books; or typing them up. (The notes won't be the kind used for studying for exams; we're encouraged to note when the text makes us Amazed, Bothered, Confused, or Delighted.)

And here's my eternal conundrum:

I know damn well I am more likely to do all the readings if I do them via ebook. I know I'm more likely to keep notes via typing (including highlighting/notes in the ebooks!). Mostly because that means I can do them at work, between phone calls.

But I really really love the aesthetic of paper books, dammit!

Also....wait now that I'm thinking about this. I'm doing it on zoom. It'll be a huge pain in the ass to try to look at the ebooks (which would require me to have amazon's in-browser reader open, I don't have a kindle and it's too small on my phone) while in discussions.

Also if I try one way and it isn't working I can just switch to a different way.

See this is why I write out things like this. I always somehow end up making the decision as I write/type.

Anyway I've managed to keep a paper planner/journal for most of the last three and a half years (no, really) in part by making the aesthetics cater to my very specific tastes (erasable gel pens with small nibs in a rainbow of colors, erasable highlighters with same, fuck-tons of washi tape and stickers, fancy notebook paper). So I might be okay re: EfM.

The first year has the most reading because we do the entire old testament. Second year is new testament, third year is church history, fourth year is theology and learning about other faiths. All four years are in the same group. I can (if I want) drop out and join back up next year, or drop my group and join another one at any point, because the material is standardized. So that's cool. The program is fifty years old now, which is amazing; but also it means they've had a lot of time to figure out how best to do this sort of thing.

ANYWAY there's a couple times per year everyone (no matter which year they're in) reads the same book, and this year one of them is James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and Beyond A Binary God: A Theology for Trans Allies by Tara Soughers.

My other books this year (other than a study bible--and I already own a doorstopper of an NRSV Oxford Study Bible, with all the maps and translation notes and footnotes on cultural stuff, though I'll have access to one online as well) are A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (third edition) and The Hebrew Bible: Feminist and Intersectional Perspectives.

I'm nerdy enough that all those book titles are making me just :D :D :D

ANYWAY if you really want to nerd out on this shit for some reason, most of last year's manual/guide is here, in pdf form

(I was side-eyeing the trans theology book a tad because it's written by a cis woman with a trans kid, but in reviews people point out it's entirely aimed at allies, not transgender people. Because while there are absolutely transgender people in our churches!, they've often already figured this shit out, and it's The Rest of Us who need to get with the program, so to speak. I just hope I'm not The Token Gay (who knows a ton of trans people) but knowing the Episcopal church...probably not gonna be the only queer lol.)

[banji-effect]

Call For A Ceasefire Now

In this moment of violence and destruction, we urge you to lift your voices and strongly urge the President and your representatives in Congress call for a humanitarian truce, as voted for by the United Nations General Assembly. Desperately needed humanitarian aid must reach the people of Gaza so that more life is not lost.  We also urge all of you to pray. We pray for God’s comfort and mercy to reach all those who are afraid, who suffer and are in pain, who grieve, and those who have been cut off from loved ones. 

[possil]

THE CHURCH THAT DIED

The church must ‘change or die’, or so say progressive Christians. The core of their argument is that if the church resists the demands of the modern world it will be doomed to irrelevance. This might have some force if the evidence bore it out. However, those denominations which have gone the furthest with the progressive programme have seen a fatal decline in numbers of worshippers and clergy,…

[scobbe]

Things I didn’t expect to hear yelled out at my diocese annual lay formation event:

“Didn’t Paul write 2 Pickles?”

“I just want to have sex with someone once more in my life!”

“Next time bring Green Day!”

[sare-liz]

Step Beyond the Unthinkable

What is this road I’m on? Where is it going? Am I going the right way? Why am I here, again?

Hello, friends, and welcome back. I’m the Rev. Sare Liz Anuszkiewicz and this is the Sunday Sermon. If you’re looking for the bits of the bible I’ve referenced in this sermon, you can find the link right here. For the nerds in the know, this is Advent 2, Year C, and here’s the sermon I preached on Sunday, December 4, 2022.  The audio-only version can be found here. The full text version is…

[onomatopoeia-core]

i'm not even sure that i believe in God, but i started going to this episcopal church recently bc there were just so many older gay people there and i felt like i needed that in my life and there was a gay priest. people were actually so chill about me being trans, which shocked me, but i figured there were just humoring me - but this past sunday the priest did a sermon on the story in acts about the Ethiopian eunuch. and like, i've heard a thousand sermons on this passage bc its like the first missionary story and people use it a lot to justify their colonization blah blah blah but like everyone glossed over the eunuch thing.

but the (straight) priest talked about how eunuch is a kind of stand in word for gender non-conforming person and actually literally said from the pulpit that we should be welcoming and accepting of all trans people and not ask them to change and !?!?!?! like i never expected to hear that preached in my lifetime, especially in fucking kentucky.

the world can seem so dark and being trans is fucking hard and you just come to expect so little from people ESPECIALLY chrisitans and i'm just so pleasantly surprised. it's just kind of amazing to see chrsitians live up to this loving their neighbor shit they are always talking about

[aprillikesthings]

LOL today in "things I literally already knew" XD

Okay so the number one result was not a shock at ALL, but I'm honestly surprised that Roman Catholicism is that far down the list!

And being baptized Lutheran apparently stuck around a little.

That said there were a few questions where I was like "eh, this isn't worth arguing about imho" (like the number of sacraments), but even then my "any of these answers is Fine??" is sort of an Anglican/Episcopalian way of looking at things!

Like, even the opening bit about comparing confessions made me laugh a little because my denomination isn't a "confessional" church

[wgm-beautiful-world]

Saint John's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, SCOTLAND

[aprillikesthings]

There is something deeply funny to me about the fact that, of people who pray the rosary (at least in the United States); the Catholics tend to be super conservative, and the Episcopalians/Anglicans tend to be gay.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, early 1920s. It is the burial site of, among others, Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

Photo: NY Historical Society/Getty Images/NY Daily News

[aprillikesthings]

If I can hop on, with the disclaimer that I started attending an Episcopal church four and change years ago and am very much still kind of a noob lol

The nerdier (affectionate) Episcopalians talk about this a bunch—like, wtf DOES define us?

And part of it is “via media,” aka our attempt at always being a middle way between extremes

And part of it is the “three legged stool” of scripture, tradition, and reason

But the biggest thing (imho) is the Book of Common Prayer.

And yes, nearly every church in the Anglican Communion has a different one, but they have a lot in common.

But while we argue constantly about what belongs in the BCP or doesn’t—the idea of the BCP, that worship/prayer shapes our belief, that on any given Sunday every church in a given part of our Communion is using the same opening prayer and readings—that is what unites us.

I could pop into any Episcopal church in the United States and know approximately what’s going to happen. If the bulletin says “Eucharistic prayer C” I know what the priest is going to say and what my responses are.

I’ve gone on about this before, but I also think that’s why a disproportionate number of adults who become Anglican/Episcopalian have autism or ADHD. The routine and predictability of the liturgy are a huge draw for us.

why do anglicans still exist like their entire church is built on the fact that some guy wanted a male heir. or do anglicans believe that this isn't rly why their church came about

Okay, I do love clowning on my Anglican friends, but there are a few angles (da dum tss) that we can look at in terms of why the Anglican Church is a distinctive tradition.

Theologically, the Anglican Church might have started off as "Catholic without the Pope," so to speak; the Anglican Church was essentially Gallican in nature, meaning that the head of the church wasn't the seniormost bishop, but the head of the state. But even if it started off simply being in schism with the Roman Church, it didn't take very long before Reformed theology started entering the Church through the efforts of Anne Bolelyn, Thomas Cromwell, and especially Edward VI. There were preceding documents, but the Thirty-Nine articles passed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 helped to solidify a distinctively Anglican identity.

But it's a little more than that, too, because in addition to this Protestantization of the Anglican Church, there have also been movements within to.... "Latinize" might be the wrong word, but to bring back some traditional Catholic elements. We see this, for example, in the Oxford movement of the 1830s; many of its members would end up converting to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, but those who remained behind started the Anglo-Catholic movement which still has a strong presence. (My girlfriend goes to an Anglo-Catholic parish, and our city has at least three other ones).

This kind of dual accommodation of Reformed and Catholic theological ideas has created a unique situation for the Anglican Church; Bishop J. Neil Alexander tries to articulate this by distinguishing the Anglican Church as a "pragmatic church," in contradistinction with "confessional churches" (Catholic & Lutheran, which focus on creeds and councils) and "experiential churches" (Baptist and other groups whose memberships require a born-again moment):

What, then, does it mean to be pragmatic? It means that within the generous capacity of the Episcopal [American Anglican] Church, we do not always agree on matters of biblical interpretation or theological definition. It means that we have all gotten here by way of hundreds of different and often unique experiences of God's presence in our lives. It means that those things which other churches depend to hold themselves together will never be a central feature of our common life. We find our life together driven by our willingness to stand together at the table of God's gracious hospitality. […] That, I believe, is the pragmatism at the heart of what it means to be an Episcopalian. We are a variegated tapestry of theology and experience, and we are all the richer for it. But no level of theological agreement or experiential commonality will ever be the basis on which Episcopalians will live together well. What is possible is that we will be pragmatic —we will keep our differences in perspective— and we will recognize that ultimately nothing will divide those who are willing to stand together before God's altar to sing, to pray, and to receive the gift of God's eternity.

Now, this is a very fascinating situation, because it means that the Anglican Church has a lot of diversity in religious thought and doctrinal opinion. On an official level, that means you will have bishops aligning with different theological orientations working side by side — and, in theory, the office of Archbishop of Canterbury is supposed to alternate between Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical holders. On a more personal level, I have found that the Episcopal clergy who I interact with have varying spiritualities and theologies; one priest I know has Catholic sympathies that are so strong that he was referred to as "the Papist" in seminary, while another clergymember I know doesn't think Confession is necessary and is ambivalent about her parish's practice of Eucharistic Adoration. And they work at the same church.

Liturgically, they are also distinctive. The current bedrock of Anglican prayer is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is clearly inspired by Benedictine spirituality, but with continuing liturgical revision and innovation that kind of fits with the 'pragmatic church' mindset explained above. Some Anglican parishes even preserve pre-Tridentine traditions (remember, they split before the Council of Trent), like the Sarum Use.

The Anglican Church has had a developing liturgical patrimony for the past five centuries; one of the reasons why the Catholic Church created the Anglican Ordinariate was because it recognized that fact, and wanted former members of the Anglican Church to be able to preserve their traditions even after re-entering communion with Rome.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, like, the Anglican Church may have started off as a more-or-less Catholic particular church that was in schism with Rome, a schism orchestrated by a king who wanted fuller control over the Church in his country, the Anglican Church has had five centuries of development. And, as much as I like to clown on my Anglican friends, I can definitely see why the Anglican communion has a deep appeal.

[citrussunrises]

Ok folks raised or in the church, reblog this with your most insane church lore, drama, or scandal.

I'll go first. My church started out as a New England commune. They all shared one lawnmower.

[toriforthepeople]

my church celebrated Pride Eucharist and ended with Seasons of Love 🥹🥹🥹

[gwydionmisha]

Judge awards a Black church $1M over BLM banner burned by Proud Boys during protest

[realbeefman]

i know chase obviously wins the religious trauma competition but can we please talk about how foreman was not only raised by a deeply religious father, but was most likely raised BAPTIST. no wonder he’s so repressed. the baptist experience is like. you’re in church every sunday listening to a man scream about how love is something that should hurt. you believe in a good, loving god - but to believe, you have to accept that true love is painful. that to be a good person, you must suffer. to love is to endure it, to work mercilessly. you’re not worthy of the love of The Almighty, and you never will be, and that sense of unworthiness is fundamental to having faith. when you sin, you don’t just hurt Him, you hurt everyone around you. you make the world worse because you have dared commit the sin of existence — to be human is to be sinful. to be loved is to feel unworthy and pathetic and hopeless. like YEAH no wonder foreman self isolates and is emotionally closed off. he was taught from BIRTH that he is fundamentally unworthy of love, and that in accepting love, he is also accepting that he truly is worthless.