The Diocesan Dialogue
Current Issue
October 2007

Bishop's Reflections

Recently I was asked to participate in a national survey on the "Identity of the Episcopal Church."

It was sponsored and conducted by responsible people, so I agreed to do it, even though I was doubtful that a Question/Answer survey would reveal much about the breadth, depth and complexity of our church.

'Coding' responses in a survey does not allow for much in the way of nuance.

As it turned out the interviewer did seem uncertain as to how to record or categorize my answers. There were many pauses along the way.

I had said in our initial conversation that ours was a church whose members lived with a variety of tensions that shape a dynamic, living faith.

Long silence.

Then he said, "Well, let's just proceed with the questions."

It was later, in my own reflections on the subject that I began to 'unpack' the comment I had made about how living in certain tensions shapes a vital, dynamic faith.

What are these tensions?

How do they shape us?

Several things came to mind, many of which are characteristics of other Anglican churches:

• The Church of England emerged from the reformation and its aftermath with catholic and protestant features; it retained holy orders, but with the central authority the monarch rather than a pope. Since the United States had no king, authority was vested in a democratically elected conciliar body—the General Convention.
• Our worship patterns are given in the Book of Common Prayer, though it has been locally adapted many times over.
• We count Scripture, Tradition and Reason as the 'three-legged stool' of authority on theological matters. Since spirituality is unmediated, and is not the same as reason, Experience is often added as well.
• Formative elements in our church are the integration of devotion, theological reflection, social action and community.
• The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral names the four things essential to Anglican/ Episcopal churches: Scripture, the two dominical sacraments, the Apostles and Nicene creeds, and the historic episcopacy.

Other things may be said of our church: that we are Christ-centered and Trinitarian; that we interface well with the disciplines of science and history; that the beauty of our liturgy and music are prominent features of our evangelism; that we are inclusive communities, respecting "the dignity of every human being;" that we follow church seasons and a lectionary; that we are conservative and liberal, and so on.

In all of this, it is difficult to find a central or single thing that forms our identity, but it is not difficult to see that the dynamics between and within all of this does invite a certain willingness for tension, uncertainty, patience and even conflict over issues as they hit the ground.

In addition, faith evolves in personal ways, and the church is always local.

General and abstract images give us sketch points, but cannot capture the particularities in our identity as Christians or as churches; time and place are critical here.

I was drawn to this church because of its richly textured features, and its roominess.

To me this is its identity!

Faithfully,
The Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish

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