Welcome to the Episcopal Church!
The Episcopal Church strives to live by the message of Christ, in which there are no outcasts and all are welcome. Walking a middle way between Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions, we are a sacramental and worship-oriented church that promotes thoughtful debate about what God is calling us to do and be, as followers of Christ.
Exploring this section may answer some of your questions - or raise additional ones! Visit a church, or three, to find out more. The best way to learn about the Episcopal Church is to become a part of it!
The Story of Jesus, in Brief
The religion of “Christianity” is established on the life, work, death, and resurrection of a man named “Jesus of Nazareth,” as the story is told in four books of the Christian Bible, known as the “Gospels” (which means “Good News”).
According to the Bible, Jesus was a Jew who lived about two thousand years ago in the region of Israel, and who spent some three years of his adult life traveling around, teaching, preaching, and performing miracles of healing and feeding with his twelve disciples.
Although he became popular with multitudes of people around him, he also made the Jewish leaders of his day angry by the things he was preaching and doing. Jesus became so popular, in fact, and the leaders were so upset by his activities, that finally, he was betrayed by one of his own disciples to the authorities, and the Roman government put him to death by nailing him to a wooden cross outside of Jerusalem.
The story might have ended there, except that three days after he had died and been buried, he came back to his disciples, resurrected—fully and physically alive. For another forty days, Scripture says, he spent time with his disciples and commissioned them to continue in his teaching and miracles, and spreading the good news of his life, work, and resurrection to others. Finally, according to the Bible, he returned to Heaven—body and all—to be with God, where, Christians believe, he lives on and continues to be present with us forever.
Q: What is the great importance of Jesus' suffering and death?
A: By his obedience, even to suffering and death, Jesus made the offering which we could not make; in him we are freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God.
from "An Outline of the Faith," Book of Common Prayer, 1979.
What do Christians Believe…?…about God, Jesus, and the questions of life and death?
Over time, Christians have come to this understanding about God, about Jesus, and about who we are in relation to God, based on the example and commandments of Jesus’ life, teaching, and resurrection:
Creation is Good
God has made all that there is, and all that God has made is good, including us.
We Are Chosen
God has chosen us (initially meaning the people of Israel, but now all who believe in God) as a special people, and has promised to love, care for, and be faithful to us forever.
We Turn Away From God
Because we are human, however, throughout history and again and again, we have not kept our promises to God, nor followed the ways that God has called us to follow—we make mistakes, and worst, we choose (either by action or inaction) to harm others, the creation, and ourselves, and thereby turn away from God.
God did not Abandon us
Yet God has never given up on us. God has sent us prophets, teachers, and others to call us back to God from the selfish and harmful things we do.
God Sent us Jesus Christ
Ultimately, Christians believe, in order to save us from the consequences of our own actions, God sent us Jesus Christ, God’s Son. In Jesus, God became a human being, born of a human woman, to live with us, to share our weakness, to suffer as we suffer, and to die as we die, in order to show us directly how God loves us and wants us to live with one another.
Jesus was Raised from Death to Life
We believe that as a fully human person, Jesus died on the cross at Jerusalem, just as all humans die, yet death could not keep him, and so he was raised from the dead to life again. We celebrate this miraculous truth on Easter, and in fact, on every Sunday.
God won the Final Victory Over Death
Through the miracle of Jesus’ Resurrection, God has won the ultimate victory, once and for all, in the human reality of life and death: Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we understand that although we, too, will ultimately face death as Jesus did, God will not abandon us, either, and we, too, will have new life. All that we are, which is so precious to God, will be brought to new and unending life.
In Jesus, we see God
Christians believe that Jesus is the complete revelation of God to us, and as such, Jesus, although fully human with us, is also fully God—fully divine. His two natures, both human and divine, make it possible for us to be related to God in a way that was not possible before. Through Jesus Christ, we are adopted as children of God.
We are the Body of Christ
As Christians, we believe that together we form the Body of Christ: Our love of God and of one another binds us together and makes us One. Our principal mission is to carry on the work and life of Jesus Christ, to spread the good news about God’s victory over death, to lift up the poor and heal the sick, and to work to heal the divisions among people, so that we can live together in the fullness of the example of Jesus Christ. Together, we continue to be Jesus’ human presence in the world.
Christ will Come Again
Jesus promised his disciples, before he was taken away to his Father, that he would come to us again. Christians live in hope, waiting for Christ's coming again, when he will sit in judgment over the living and the dead, and his reign will never end.
"O God, through your Son you have bestowed upon your people the brightness of your light: Sanctify this new fire, and grant that in this Paschal feast we may so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."
from the Lighting of the Paschal Candle, the Great Vigil of Easter, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 285
How did we Become the Church? Some basic Church history
The Early Church
After the resurrection, Scripture tells us, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to be with the disciples. When that happened, the Church was born. The Disciples began to gather more followers for Jesus, and continued to teach them. The more people learned about Jesus life, death, and resurrection, the more excited they became about changing their lives to be closer to Jesus and his followers’ example.
They sold their possessions and gave the money to the poor. They prayed and celebrated the resurrection every Sunday. They traveled throughout the region and one person in particular, whose name was Paul, felt that he was sent my God to bring this good news not just the Jewish people, but to all people he could find.
The Church grew, in spite of tremendous persecution, first from the Jewish communities to whom they were preaching about Jesus, but then from the Romans. The Roman Empire was threatened by the Christians’ refusal to worship the Emperor, as well as by the “unnatural” ways in which they loved their enemies and did good to their persecutors. Many, many Christians were executed for their beliefs, and many of the “Saints” whose lives we celebrate still today were among them.
The Orders of Clergy: Deacons, Bishops, and Priests
As the communities grew, the disciples of Jesus (known by this point as “Apostles,” from the Greek word for “one who is sent”) could not manage to lead all the new churches and still keep up the work of caring for the poor and disenfranchised, so they appointed help. First, they chose “deacons” (from the Greek meaning “servant”) to carry on the work of feeding and caring. Next, they appointed “overseers,” whom we call bishops, to watch over the churches. As the Apostles died and the churches grew, the bishops appointed “priests” to help them. Thus the main “orders” of the clergy were founded: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
Over the first three centuries of the history of the Church, the Bishops established the fundamental doctrines and practices that still today govern the life of churches all over the world.
Different Kinds of Church
Through the first centuries of Christianity, the Church was a sort of loose association of worshipping communities, most of which met in people’s houses. This Church was referred to as “catholic,” which really means “universal.” “Catholic” technically means, “All the Baptized Members of Jesus Christ.” As Christianity spread, the bishops worked hard to standardize their beliefs and practices to make sure that everyone had the same story, even if their experiences of God were richly diverse. By the fourth century, the fundamental doctrines of the Church had been formalized into the Nicene Creed. There continued to be tension, however, across the Church concerning all sorts of matters, including worship and technicalities of theology. The geography and diversity of the Church grew until it finally split into two parts in the 11th Century between two cities: The Roman Catholic Church, based in Rome, Italy, and the Eastern Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey. Each part claimed to be the “true church.”
In Western Europe in the 16th Century, tensions in the Roman Catholic Church had grown again to the point that another “schism” (or split) took place, led by Martin Luther and is commonly referred to in Western history as the “Reformation.” The “Lutheran Church,” which grew out of Luther’s ideas, was the first of the so-called “Protestant” Churches (because of their “protest” of Rome). From that point on, the Church has continued to fracture into more and more denominations, depending largely on the way their governing bodies make decisions (called “polity”), their arguments about aspects of Christianity (at what age Christians should be baptized, for instance), or their styles of worship.
What Makes us Christian?
In spite of two thousand years of growth and change, there are still some hallmarks that distinguish Christianity from all other, similar or not-so-similar, religious sects. While the range of beliefs among Christians can be quite wide, the following represent what is commonly shared.
The Goodness of Creation, Made by God
Most Christians believe that the physical universe, including humanity itself, is fundamentally good, even though human beings cause it harm through their negligence and self-interest. Other Christians hold that while humanity may be flawed, God's love and grace provides a way to perfection and goodness through the teachings and saving presence of Jesus Christ.
The Bible as the Word of God
Christians believe that the Bible is “the Word of God,” and as such, “contains all things necessary to salvation.” While there have been countless books about Christianity written since the Bible, and while many of the other doctrines essential to Christianity have been worked out in them, the Bible is sufficient to knowing God through Jesus Christ and to benefiting from the saving act of the Resurrection. Christians may disagree regularly, however, on how to interpret or apply what the Bible says.
The Trinity: One God in Three Persons
Christians believe in one God, whom we understand to exist in three “persons,” traditionally referred to as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The three “persons” of the Trinity are God, who created all things, Jesus Christ, his fully human—and at the same time, fully divine—son, and the Holy Spirit of God who gives life to all things and moves through all living things. Contemporary language now acknowledges other images of the Trinity, such as “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier,” but the Trinity remains: One God in three persons.
The Incarnation: God Became Human
Christians believe that Jesus Christ was, at the same time, completely human and completely God, all in one person. This idea was articulated and adopted to address variants to Christian theology (known as “heresies”), which arise from time to time throughout history. One heresy has claimed that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross because he wasn’t really human. An opposing heresy claims that he was really just an important guy with some great ideas, and that he wasn’t really God.
The Crucifixion and Resurrection
Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth died completely on the cross, that he was buried in a tomb, and that on the third day, he was raised physically again to life to return to his disciples.
Baptism
Baptism is the sacrament whereby people become Christians, and thereby members of the Church. At Baptism, the new Christian (or in the case of a child, the parents or guardians) professes belief in Jesus, renounces evil before the Church, and then is immersed in (or sprinkled with) water three times—in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Baptism represents our participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and assures us of our salvation through belief in him.
Eucharist
All baptized Christians participate in the Eucharist (from the Greek, meaning “Thanksgiving”) or as it is also called “Holy Communion,” “the Lord’s Supper,” or “The Mass.” The Eucharist was instituted, according to the Bible, by Jesus himself on the night of his arrest, before he was crucified. During the Eucharist, bread and wine are blessed as symbols of Christ’s body and blood. The bread is broken and shared, and then the cup of wine is passed among the worshipers as a sign of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and resurrection. The Eucharist is a continual remembrance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection until he comes again.
Working for the Reconciliation of the World to God through Jesus Christ
All Christians share in the God’s work of reconciling the world to God’s self. In other words, Christians believe that in Jesus Christ, all divisions among people, all injury, all wrong, and all sinfulness can be healed, and it is every Christian’s responsibility and ministry to work for that healing. Christians believe that there will come a day when the world will be completely at peace, sharing in God’s love, and living as one Body.
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. Acts 8:34-38
The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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