Subject: Re: The Episcopalian 'Religion'
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 05:03:47 GMT
From:  (D. Stephen Heersink)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.episcopal

Rowland Croucher <> writes about the "watered-down" religion known as Episcopalian, or Anglican. There's truth to the proposition: Many Episcopalians are not really Christians, but theists who see Christ as a good teacher, and therefore don't mind the appellation. The number of people fitting this description has increased so much that the Episcopal Church in the U.S. lost 1/6 of its membership in the last decade!

On the other hand, the fact that Anglicans are not "doctrinaire" or "confessional" is also one of its strengths. Believers are not fed this or that person's thought or beliefs, but must encounter the risen Christ each in his or her own existential way. That's not to say that Anglicans don't believe in common tenets, rather it's that they don't have a Luther, Calvin, Falwell, or some other oracle.

Instead, the true oracle in the Episcopal Church is the Church itself. The Church is ontological, and its apostolic ministry divinely instituted. Of these two points there is no dispute. And this is exactly how it was in the apostolic age, well before the Bible fell into every sages' hands. In this apostolic sensibility, the Episcopal Church is most like the early Church, safeguarded by episcopal collegiality, the Scriptures that issued forth from their work.

This existential approach is very uncomfortable to dogmatists. These individuals will never feel comfortable with the "law of freedom" Anglicans require. And for those who still retain the ancient faith, the "theists" are just something the Church has to put up with.

D. Stephen Heersink
San Francisco

"In things necessary, unity;
in things doubtful, liberty;
in all things, charity."

--Augustine of Hippo