The
Anglican Communion
is an inheritor of 2000 years of catholic and apostolic tradition dating
from Christ himself, rooted in the
Church of England. The Anglican Communion came into being as an
independent Apostolic Church when Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 16th
century for both political and theological reasons.
Henry maintained the liturgical and theological heart of the
early Christian Church. He
developed what has been called the “middle way” between Roman
Catholicism and the Protestant tradition that sprang up during this
period.
When the Church of England
spread throughout the British Empire, sister churches sprang up. These
churches, while autonomous in their governance, are bound together by
tradition, Scripture, and the inheritance they have received from the
Church of England. They together make up the Anglican Communion, a body
headed spiritually by the Archbishop of Canterbury and having some 80
million members, making it the second largest Christian body in the
Western world.
The Episcopal Church came into
existence as an independent denomination after the American Revolution.
Today it has between two and three million members in the United States,
Mexico, and Central America, all of which are under jurisdiction of the
Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefforts Schori.
Bishops in the American
Episcopal Church are elected by individual dioceses and are consecrated
into the Apostolic Succession, considered to witness to an unbroken line
of Church leadership beginning with the Apostles themselves. For more
than two decades the American Episcopal Church has ordained women to the
priesthood. In 1988 the
Diocese of Massachusetts elected the first Anglican woman bishop,
Barbara Harris.
Although it subscribes to
the historic Creeds (the
Nicene Creed
and the
Apostles' Creed), considers the Bible to be divinely inspired, and
holds the Eucharist or Lord's Supper to be the central act of Christian
worship, the Episcopal Church grants great latitude in interpretation of
doctrine. It tends to stress less the confession of particular beliefs
than the use of the
Book of Common Prayer
in public worship. This book, first published in the sixteenth century,
even in its revisions, stands today as a major source of unity for
Anglicans around the world.
Adapted: the article by The Reverend Scott
I. Paradise