THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH is the
American branch of the Anglican
Communion.
The Anglican Communion
is an inheritor of 2000 years of catholic
and apostolic tradition dating from
Christ himself, rooted in the Church of
England. 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,
Frank Tracy Griswold III.
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.
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.
The Church of England has always
valued the life of the mind and dialogue
with fields of secular study. Isaac
Newton was an Anglican clergyman and
theologian as were several of the
founders of the Royal Society, the
earliest institution organized for the
promotion of science. The Episcopal
Church maintains this tradition,
routinely requiring its clergy to hold
university as well as seminary degrees
and supporting many university chaplains.
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