Conservatives and liberals have responded quickly to last month’s tumultuous Episcopal Convention. With the world’s Anglican primates set to meet in September, the long Episcopal war over liberals’ homosexual agenda seems likely to end in denominational splintering | Edward E. Plowman
Over time, church denominations come and go, but one, now known as The Episcopal Church (TEC)—formerly part of the Church of England, and then the Episcopal Church, USA—has had a special spot in American history.
Its first congregation: Jamestown, Va., 1607. Its prominent members: George Washington and one-fourth of all U.S. presidents, as well as many of the country's most notable and influential citizens. Its social prestige: high.
And now, in the aftermath of last month's triennial Episcopal Convention in Columbus, Ohio, (see "Nothing resolved," July 1/8), denominational unity that has been cracking for years now seems shattered. Among the post-convention moves by theological conservatives:
The Anglican Communion at a glance
A body of Christians with a storied past faces a stormy present | Edward E. Plowman
Beginnings: The Church of England (COE) arose from a break with Rome under Henry VIII in the 1500s; the Protestant Reformation in that same era had an effect on it. (Anglicans adopted the "Thirty-Nine Articles," their defining doctrinal summary, in 1563.)
As the British Empire expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries, the church went with it. At first, the COE appointed bishops to lead the churches that were springing up in the various lands. Over time, those churches, as the nations they were in, became independent and self-governing. Yet they continued to look to the COE as "the mother church."
Seeking ways to express their unity in communion with one another, all the bishops began meeting together with their counterparts in a "Lambeth Conference" every 10 years (beginning in the 1860s). Thus was born the Anglican Communion, with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams, right)—head of the COE—as the titular head.
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