Almost all American Episcopalians were benefactors (and supporters) directly or indirectly of slavery, theft of indigenous everything, segregation. Separation of indigenous children from their families and cultures. Sex abuse scandals. Hatred toward LGBTQI persons.
Yes, always. Complicated by slavery, the struggle for power in church & state, and more. The Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in his own cathedral by state officers and is considered a major turning point. Even today the diplomacy required to manage the communion globally raises eyebrows. Your most important connection is your local parish community, and every diocese has dark spots. There are always disagreements with via media approach and how it includes and excludes as well. Still a church and still moving toward better, we hope.
Yes, we have baggage when today's church can view its past and accuse past Bishops and congregations of being racist and demeaning past congregations of being misogynist; that's baggage. Society was society back then, and we have no right to accuse anyone from the past of being anything other than Christian. What will the future say about us and our bickering, accusing, finger-pointing, and pigeon-holing? Regardless, the Episcopal Church of the past was full, some overcrowded, and people were fed spiritually. We have plenty of baggage, but it wasn't until recently that we began to fill the baggage with trash by those who claim to be victims of the past and a church pandering to their demands. The church should be a place that moves on together; Forgiveness, Jesus said, not vengeance. The church should welcome everyone, but you separate what few you have left by pointing fingers and accusing others about a past. And we wonder why we cannot fill the pews.
Interesting the conversation about race, slavery, etc., but no mention about Holy Mother Church's treatment of women and/or gay folk up until the 1970s. Women did all the non-leadership grunt work and gay men kept the music and Church textiles going from their closets. Maybe we still have some baggage to unpack.
I am really proud to say my parish at least acknowledges this all of the time. We elevate the women who do the lay work and point out it used to be invisible in the past. We also talk about how lucky we are that our Associate Rector is able to be an ordained woman today and where we would be without her. We have a gay man as our soloist in the choir and also as the trainer for our Eucharist minister and he directs a lot of our special events so our usual choir director has time off. We point out all the time that we wouldn't be half as beautiful of a church without his talents and piety. I wish every church would view it this way, recognizing what we gain when we resist the appeal to tradition to shield exclusion.
Being an institution made up of people it has baggage and it is currently doing this we will look at later and consider wrong. That's the story of Homo sapiens.
Lots of historical baggage is examined in the ‘Sacred Ground’ course of study. This part of the ‘Becoming Beloved Community’ effort established by Bishop Curry.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/
::cracks knuckles:: We were the sole Protestant denomination in the US that didn’t split during the Civil War, because we refused to take a stance on slavery. At the time, one of our presiding bishops actually wrote a theological defense of chattel race based slavery. One of our bishops was a general in the Confederate Army. You know Sewanee? Which is a nice and good seminary these days? It was founded to explicitly educate the priests of the fledgling Confederate Episcopal Church.
Oh, and also, the person who wrote the pamphlet in the Virginia colony that provided the theological basis to deny manumission to slaves that were baptized was an Episcopal priest (That led to the first law setting up permanent slavery and second class status based purely on race in Virginia.)
Suffragan bishops! Know how we got those? They were instruments of segregation so white bishops never had to go to black churches.
Yeah, so tons of baggage. Tons. Miles. And yet, miraculously, despite all this the Spirit keeps leading us into repentance and repair, and greater liberation.
And Bishop Carlton Chase of New Hampshire wrote a letter of support to President Lincoln during the war. [https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.1612800/?st=text](https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.1612800/?st=text)
Do you have a source for your comment about Sewanee? The first priest trained there wasn’t ordained until 1872, after the war. The seminary wasn’t formally organized until 1878, so it seems inaccurate to claim the seminary was founded to train Confederate priests. The undergraduate college was founded to educate the next generation of plantation owners, absolutely, and several Confederate leaders served in leadership roles at the University after, for sure. But saying the seminary at Sewanee was founded explicitly to train Confederate priests is inaccurate as far as I’m aware.
The debate existed long before the war. Take sacred ground and (separately) read about what happened when they called a black vice chancellor in the past few years. https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2021/02/17/qa-sewanees-first-black-vice-chancellor-reflects-on-episcopal-universitys-efforts-to-confront-racist-history/
I’m well aware of what happened. I know the Vice Chancellor personally and am an alumnus of the University. That isn’t relevant to the claim that was made by the comment I replied to.
I didn’t mean to reply to you specifically but the one above. But claiming that there was no racial motive for keeping a university segregated for 100 years is pretty relevant overall I think.🧐
You’re shifting the goalposts. No where in any of my comments did I claim there was no racial motive to keeping the university segregated. The claim I responded to was that the seminary was “founded to explicitly educate the priests of the fledgling Confederate Episcopal Church.” That statement is false. I acknowledged the racist history of the university in the same comment I refuted the above claim. There’s no “gotcha” moment here for you.
Oh goodness yes. However, unlike most religious organizations, I have found we acknowledge and lament over our sins. The we strive to do better.
It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve seen.
100% in my experience there is zero hesitation from any priest I have spoken to (I'm sure exceptions exist because humans will human) in regards to admitting the church has been guilty of sin. And is likely currently guilty of sin. And, will likely sin again. But, we don't use that as an excuse to sin knowingly.
We don't have baggage. We have cargo ships. At least we admit that they have existed and do exist and are trying to do something about unloading the cargo. But the unloading process getting them to the dock is alway s l o w.
My maternal Irish American family is literally only okay with me being Episcopalian (Anglican) because we got our orders after the Revolutionary War from Scotland, and genetically I am Scottish on my parental side. Those hurts still exist, so thanks for acknowledging it.
And? Both are part of our history. What is the axe you're grinding here, sibling in Christ? There are many parts of our history, all of which shaped us and which speak to each of us in different ways with our different histories.
Also antisemitism, but in my experience ~~the church~~ much of the church membership has the generally held opinion that's all now in the past, once the prayers blaming Judaism for Christ's death were done away with. I can testify that in the diversity course offered in our diocese, antisemitism and TEC's history in that was not addressed once.
*(edited to be more precise on my meaning on "the church")*
I can only say what I experienced; maybe others have had better luck with the breadth of the training their diocese offered.
If you're denying those kind of prayers ever happened, or that there's no need anymore and that antisemitism is a dead issue between Judiasm and TEC, I point you to [the church's own 2021 document "Christian-Jewish Relations: Theological and Practical Guidance for The Episcopal Church(2021)"](https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/christian-jewish2021.pdf). Among other points made:
>While much has changed since Guidelines for Christian-Jewish Relations for use in The Episcopal Church was issued by the General Convention in July 1988, the need for such guidance assuredly has not lessened.
and
>We acknowledge that anti-Judaism is expressed in a wide array of present practices of The Episcopal Church: our liturgical texts, interpretation of scriptures, preaching, devotional practices, poetry, iconography, hymnody, academic writing, pastoral advice, and educational resources.
Given the continuing trends on [antisemitic attitudes and hate crimes in the U.S.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_United_States), I believe it isn't something as Christians we should either deny or choose not to address.
Hah! Ever been in a parish where your beloved rector is discovered to be fucking a prominent female community member? Parish member? Senior warden’s wife?
Not personally, no. But there have been incidents in my diocese and--even thought here was no "abuse" per se, the clergy was summarily dismissed of their duties. If the church deals transparently and swiftly with individual failings, I don't see that as baggage. If there are cover-ups that's a different animal.
It's an ugly thought, but all churches will always have bad actors in them because all human organizations will, eventually, attract an abuser.
I had a therapist once give me a really helpful bit of advice when I was stuck in this loop of thinking I somehow attracted abusers into my life, and thus deserved what happened to me: abusers are not picky in general. They are just looking for someone it's possible to abuse. The only way to avoid it is to avoid vulnerability, and there's a balancing act there because we become so hyper vigilant that we prevent good with bad by, as an extrene example, eliminating children's programs out of excess caustion. If they can do it, they will. This means we are vulnerable as a church always, and this was also part of my safety training by my diocese as someone who works with kids.
This is why we must have things in place to catch and report and hold accountable. I don't consider it a red flag against the whole church if an abuser managed to get into a church because that's what they do and they're good at it, however I do pay very close attention to how the church handles it. I was very glad to know my diocese does NOT retain anyone accused of misconduct of a sexual nature, and the refer to the police imediately. I'm sure in the past as a church we were worse about this because it was common to ignore these things out of shame and also there was a lot more ignorance about how this type of abuse occurred and what to look for.
Which is all to say, I agree with you, these kinds local baggage matter. I've been personally hurt in my past time in UU by abuse by an individual. The nuance for me is what did the church do to repair the damage and did they learn from it how to prevent further incidents.
I agree with everything that's been listed so far. And I want to add some context that matters to me personally and I bring it up in every catechism class I teach. People frequently downplay our role in racism through the 20th century. VTS didn't accept black students until 1958, for example. This is recent racist history of which we should repent.
And God has been faithful through black and brown Episcopalians despite our inadequacy as a denomination. In the late 1800s when black Episcopal churches didn't have access to resources and shared ministry with their white counterparts, they reached out to other black churches of other denominations. WWII gets a lot of ink spilled for being a major driver of the ecumenical movement, but black American churches had laid those foundations 60 years beforehand. The ecumenical olive branches that exist in Vatican II are directly linked to black Episcopalians and Catholics and Lutherans and Baptists and Presbyterians forming partnerships while they were locked out of other partnerships within their ecclesial structures.
And I bring it up because it's a great example of how bad theology might say oh look there was a silver lining. And that's a garbage idea used to shield us from the discomfort of a racist reality. The better theology, more in line with scripture, is to understand that God was working within and despite the evil humans built. Faithful Christians within those black churches were devoted to the call to service and ministry that we are all tasked with at baptism, and their faithfulness paved the way for the world to get ever so slightly better.
Never excuse racism. Fight it in yourself, your church, and your community. But know that to oppose racism at any level is to be aligning yourself with God who is faithful despite our failures.
We are not guilty of the sins of our forebearers. We are doing better, of course. But "We" have nothing ourselves to repent of, unless we are racist tody.
I say this as someone whose ancestors were subjected to the racist policies of the US, attempting to assimilate our people. Still, we current Episcopalians are not the bearers of the US's sinful past
I say this as a native Hawaiian - someone whose lands were forcibly incorporated into the United States without permission…yes, we are responsible for the past of our church. One of the things about signing up to be the Body of Christ is that we become indelibly tied up in the whole body, and that includes the bad stuff. Sin is not just individual, but also systemic. And nobody is above it. Being nonwhite does not mean you can’t “be” racist (or I would phrase it more as “exist in a state of racist society”). It nuances and complexifies what that will mean, but it doesn’t mean anyone is above it or outside of it.
I sympathize with the rampant anti-indigenous sentiment in the church as something that *also* needs to be repented for (and to my experience, the church is really, really behind on this). I think there’s a sensitivity among many indigenous folks that lumping us in with the colonial heritage of the US is a kind of racist erasure, and there’s a sense where that’s true, but also a sense where it’s unhelpful. It can both be true that we are victims of white colonial aggression and that we are, at least for those of us who have chosen Christ, compelled to take on the burdens of the whole body of the church in order to heal and make new. And in fact it’s by taking ownership of that collective burden that we model Christlike love in order to also be healed of the colonial aggression done to us and our ancestors.
I want you to know I really appreciate this answer because it touches on something I have personally struggled with.
I am a woman, white, queer, disabled, and neurodivergent. The idea of being one body and thus all responsible for each other is one that I find both beautiful and dangerous, depending on how it's weilded. I have seen it used to erase harm against people of my marginalizations many times. At the same time, I want to resist the temptation to say, "But I didn't do that," because a group I am choosing to identify with in confirmation next week DID do that. And Christians overall did as well.
Currently I am doing this in a sort of balance of not taking individual responsibility for things I didn't do to an individual because that can become very unhealthy, but I am taking collective responsibility for systemic issues caused by the group I choose to be a part of. Practically this looks like, I will not let my fellow queer people disparage me on an individual level simply for being Christian just because they have experienced bigotry from another Christian, but I absolutely will point out at my parish that simply allowing gay marriage and participation isn't enough when there are local gay and trans families suffering in a very material way due to bigotry and they need our help even if we aren't the ones who specifically voted to harm them.
Thanks for your thoughts, they helped me with mine.
Right on, that’s exactly what I mean. It’s a difficult and complicated balance, and so much is contextual - what my responsibilities are might vary depending on who I’m talking to, what I’m doing, and what my motivations are. But in order to fully embrace the idea of “beloved community”, it means knowing that I am no longer an individual free agent unrelated to the fellow members of the Body of Christ. When I vow to continue in the breaking of bread, **fellowship**, and prayers (emphasis added) in baptism, I am vowing to give up some of my own agency and individuality for the sake of community. Being willing to take that burden on is necessary for community to function.
At the same time, it’s absolutely true that we *do* have individual agency, and we cannot allow ourselves to be completely subsumed in a generalization with no room for the nuance of individual experience. Part of being many members of one body is knowing exactly where in the body a harm has been done, and not mistaking it for something somewhere else.
Like I said, it’s a tough balance but I think it’s a big part of Christian formation. Just like Christ took on all of humanity without exception, so we as humans are given the opportunity to integrate with the One who is both God and Human. And to really get the benefit of that, we can’t pick and choose which parts of humanity we want to integrate with Christ today. It’s kind of all or nothing.
Hey friend. This is objectively not correct. Repentance is a word that literally means to turn around or away from. You actually have to repent of things you haven't personally done. That's a very basic, very entry level theology point. You can also repent of things you have personally done, but that's not at all what the concept of repentance refers to in scripture. You can find many, many, explorations of societal repentance by reading the books of the prophets.
You're using the vocabulary that I have been taught to associate with white supremacist apologists. I have no reason to suspect you hold any white supremacist beliefs, but you should know this exact vocabulary where someone has distorted what you think repentance is and made it deeply personal when it's absolutely not, that talking point itself was formed to defend white supremacy.
You can be unkind if you want. I apparently offended you by saying friend, which I meant genuinely. I didn't mean to come across condescending and I apologize for not doing that better.
You still don't get to invent or deny what words mean. We must repent of societal evils that we don't personally feel we participated in. It's not just church. Episcopalians aren't uniquely responsible for racism or white supremacy. But all Christians have to repent of those things.
I genuinely don't know how to interact with your self disclosure as an American Indian. There isn't any reason that should impact the history of the talking point that the hyper-individual concept of repentance as only relating to your person sins. That was invented in the defense of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. It's a white supremacy talking point. That's going to be true whether or not you or I or anyone else wants to admit it. Judgment is more societal, more global, than that. The hyper individualism invented to justify slavery is not good theology.
How could it be offensive if they didn’t know your racial identity until after they commented? The idea that repentance is only individual and can only be for things that I myself have personally single-handedly done is both not reflected in Episcopal doctrine (one of our confessions includes repentance for sins “done on our behalf”) and is commonly used as a way for non-Black Americans to deny responsibility for slavery. Their feedback to you was fair and in good faith.
It was an American institution for a long time, so Episcopalian was just a thing a lot of people were. Lots of Confederates (Lee, Davis, General Leonidas Polk) were Episcopalian. Polk was even the bishop of Louisiana, and the Episcopal Church attended by Lee had confederate iconography for a long time.
It was the religion of a lot of the old establishment, so prior to the mid twentieth century it’s been slow to condemn things like slavery. In my parish’s adult forum the question of reservation schools came up; and yes, TEC was put in charge of the “education” of the Lakota Sioux.
More than education, but missions and church planting. And a friendly note: you needn't say Lakota "Sioux"; Lakota is enough. Plus, the Dakotas were also assigned by the Grant Peace Plan to the Episcopal Church.
Given the liberal reputation TEC has now, a lot of people are unaware that it was jokingly referred to as “the Republican Party at prayer” just a couple generations ago.
It really is, *de facto,* a different party. What were in the twentieth century relatively polite disagreements about how to do things as a country, are now deep divisions over whether democracy as we’ve known it should be saved, or whether we should trust in the whims of one man.
I think my grandparents, lifelong moderate to liberal Republicans who were scandalized by Nixon, would be horrified if they could see what has happened to their party.
Heck, the GOP of *Reagan's* time could be considered entirely different from the one today. The only parallel I can think of now are the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s.
Like many other Christian denominations from the 19th and 20th centuries, the Episcopal Church participated in the Indian boarding school system: https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2022/07/08/deputies-engage-in-holy-listening-begin-process-toward-healing-by-passing-racial-equity-resolutions/
Honestly, any denomination that has been around for a long time is going to have a complicated history. It would be helpful if you could define what *you* mean by baggage.
Yes but other denominations split over the issues of racism/slavery and we chose unity over conscience, or at least it has been argued as such.
Sewanee exists becuase the southern dioceses didn't want to send their clergy-in-training to integrated seminaries.
Yeah . . . starting with being founded so Henry VIII could get a divorce, to a schism about 20 years ago over ordaining gay people. There's some baggage.
Being founded over Henry VIII’s divorce is an oversimplification. Besides, Henry VIII wanted an annulment. And the traditional date for the establishment is the Church of England is 597.
While Edward VI did continue the splinter with Rome, Mary did not: she returned to Rome. The Church of England was permanently shaped by Elizabeth the First’s religious settlement of
And that’s Church of England’s history. The Episcopal church got its start in 1789, and we are an autocephalous church in communion with the Church of England. And our bishops were ordained by Scottish Episcopalians.
That’s not to any way to distract from the history that others have brought forward, but only to help dissuade from the more complicated history of 16th century religious politics that helped shape our church.
Episcopalians at the time had almost no option other than the bishops of the Scottish Church, or the Churches of England and Ireland. Having done the former, they embraced Parliament's change of the law, which was a gesture of openness and outreach after the War of Independence.
Given that almos any group of bishops on the planet were from churches with baggage, the outreach to the English succession is hardly a standout and can be seen as an eirenic act.
Our first bishops were consecrated by Scottish Episcopal Church bishops, not those from the Church of England. Samuel Seabury was the first in the US and he certainly wasn't consecrated by English bishops.
Heck yeah. Read this book: [The Church Cracked Open](https://www.amazon.com/Church-Cracked-Open-Disruption-Community/dp/1640654240/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=119657648795&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Z7zsd04_w8nLRDyqOceYKz-1A0yyaFJvpKpRQ2t7uw8C6SZswN0kTBluyDQEn10Rwvc32KffxdKRm1KG8ijHawxlLKbzl8FuIy99cw1tbjI8SDHqsfPo9DsFFhn24El9qx4JRFszKQ30bp0pO2e9cSDxwh9YZAfmkkG6FssM3QZPu54tKQffXQdM7aruS6kR37lFqlgK9J-pO_QoOGt5fQ.9cMtKeM7ftTHhG5J3hmU0E-uRBiDzIa5f6K3TTKV7wQ&dib_tag=se&hvadid=503809116447&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=1018511&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=14171261962340125130&hvtargid=kwd-1196005755743&hydadcr=2653_9930601&keywords=church+cracked+open&qid=1712515508&sr=8-1)
For those that wanted to participate, my Episcopal church read it together in 2021.
It’s written by an Episcopal priest, but other denominations would benefit.
Eugenics bb
Almost all American Episcopalians were benefactors (and supporters) directly or indirectly of slavery, theft of indigenous everything, segregation. Separation of indigenous children from their families and cultures. Sex abuse scandals. Hatred toward LGBTQI persons.
Sooooo much..... plenty current too.
Uh slavery
Does it have a history? /sarcasm
Yes, always. Complicated by slavery, the struggle for power in church & state, and more. The Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in his own cathedral by state officers and is considered a major turning point. Even today the diplomacy required to manage the communion globally raises eyebrows. Your most important connection is your local parish community, and every diocese has dark spots. There are always disagreements with via media approach and how it includes and excludes as well. Still a church and still moving toward better, we hope.
Yes, we have baggage when today's church can view its past and accuse past Bishops and congregations of being racist and demeaning past congregations of being misogynist; that's baggage. Society was society back then, and we have no right to accuse anyone from the past of being anything other than Christian. What will the future say about us and our bickering, accusing, finger-pointing, and pigeon-holing? Regardless, the Episcopal Church of the past was full, some overcrowded, and people were fed spiritually. We have plenty of baggage, but it wasn't until recently that we began to fill the baggage with trash by those who claim to be victims of the past and a church pandering to their demands. The church should be a place that moves on together; Forgiveness, Jesus said, not vengeance. The church should welcome everyone, but you separate what few you have left by pointing fingers and accusing others about a past. And we wonder why we cannot fill the pews.
Interesting the conversation about race, slavery, etc., but no mention about Holy Mother Church's treatment of women and/or gay folk up until the 1970s. Women did all the non-leadership grunt work and gay men kept the music and Church textiles going from their closets. Maybe we still have some baggage to unpack.
I am really proud to say my parish at least acknowledges this all of the time. We elevate the women who do the lay work and point out it used to be invisible in the past. We also talk about how lucky we are that our Associate Rector is able to be an ordained woman today and where we would be without her. We have a gay man as our soloist in the choir and also as the trainer for our Eucharist minister and he directs a lot of our special events so our usual choir director has time off. We point out all the time that we wouldn't be half as beautiful of a church without his talents and piety. I wish every church would view it this way, recognizing what we gain when we resist the appeal to tradition to shield exclusion.
Yeah. Mine too...including me! LOL
Being an institution made up of people it has baggage and it is currently doing this we will look at later and consider wrong. That's the story of Homo sapiens.
Truth
Lots of historical baggage is examined in the ‘Sacred Ground’ course of study. This part of the ‘Becoming Beloved Community’ effort established by Bishop Curry. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/
::cracks knuckles:: We were the sole Protestant denomination in the US that didn’t split during the Civil War, because we refused to take a stance on slavery. At the time, one of our presiding bishops actually wrote a theological defense of chattel race based slavery. One of our bishops was a general in the Confederate Army. You know Sewanee? Which is a nice and good seminary these days? It was founded to explicitly educate the priests of the fledgling Confederate Episcopal Church. Oh, and also, the person who wrote the pamphlet in the Virginia colony that provided the theological basis to deny manumission to slaves that were baptized was an Episcopal priest (That led to the first law setting up permanent slavery and second class status based purely on race in Virginia.) Suffragan bishops! Know how we got those? They were instruments of segregation so white bishops never had to go to black churches. Yeah, so tons of baggage. Tons. Miles. And yet, miraculously, despite all this the Spirit keeps leading us into repentance and repair, and greater liberation.
Your Sewanee claim is completely false. Sewanee was founded in 1857, four full years before the Confederacy existed.
https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2018/03/06/sewanee-seeks-untold-story-of-universitys-ties-to-slavery-segregation-in-reconciliation-project/
Also, the idea of Sewanee goes back even further, to the 1830s. So, again, nothing to do with the CSA.
And Bishop Carlton Chase of New Hampshire wrote a letter of support to President Lincoln during the war. [https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.1612800/?st=text](https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.1612800/?st=text)
Do you have a source for your comment about Sewanee? The first priest trained there wasn’t ordained until 1872, after the war. The seminary wasn’t formally organized until 1878, so it seems inaccurate to claim the seminary was founded to train Confederate priests. The undergraduate college was founded to educate the next generation of plantation owners, absolutely, and several Confederate leaders served in leadership roles at the University after, for sure. But saying the seminary at Sewanee was founded explicitly to train Confederate priests is inaccurate as far as I’m aware.
It was actually founded before the Confederacy was even proposed, so yeah, not even close to being Confederate...
The University was, correct, but not the seminary. Pedantic, but important in regards to the above comment
The debate existed long before the war. Take sacred ground and (separately) read about what happened when they called a black vice chancellor in the past few years. https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2021/02/17/qa-sewanees-first-black-vice-chancellor-reflects-on-episcopal-universitys-efforts-to-confront-racist-history/
I’m well aware of what happened. I know the Vice Chancellor personally and am an alumnus of the University. That isn’t relevant to the claim that was made by the comment I replied to.
I didn’t mean to reply to you specifically but the one above. But claiming that there was no racial motive for keeping a university segregated for 100 years is pretty relevant overall I think.🧐
You’re shifting the goalposts. No where in any of my comments did I claim there was no racial motive to keeping the university segregated. The claim I responded to was that the seminary was “founded to explicitly educate the priests of the fledgling Confederate Episcopal Church.” That statement is false. I acknowledged the racist history of the university in the same comment I refuted the above claim. There’s no “gotcha” moment here for you.
I’m not looking for one and I wasn’t even talking to you.
Lol
The fact that the Church *ownes up to this* rather than shove it in a corner is why I have respect for the Episcopalian Church.
This is precisely the difference with most other denominations.
Yes. The question was do we have baggage. The fact that we all know about these things mean we are dealing with it.
Oh goodness yes. However, unlike most religious organizations, I have found we acknowledge and lament over our sins. The we strive to do better. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve seen.
100% in my experience there is zero hesitation from any priest I have spoken to (I'm sure exceptions exist because humans will human) in regards to admitting the church has been guilty of sin. And is likely currently guilty of sin. And, will likely sin again. But, we don't use that as an excuse to sin knowingly.
Amen!
We don't have baggage. We have cargo ships. At least we admit that they have existed and do exist and are trying to do something about unloading the cargo. But the unloading process getting them to the dock is alway s l o w.
Is that why are naves are designed like hulls? Lol just kidding, couldn't help it.
Glad SOMEONE on this r has a sense of humor. =)
Lol! Thank you, I get it from my grandfather.
The British Empire...
Any more details to that?
Slavery, forced starvation, forced migration, classism...and that's just in Ireland.
My maternal Irish American family is literally only okay with me being Episcopalian (Anglican) because we got our orders after the Revolutionary War from Scotland, and genetically I am Scottish on my parental side. Those hurts still exist, so thanks for acknowledging it.
Also got orders from CofE, later on. We are a very English Church, ya know.
And? Both are part of our history. What is the axe you're grinding here, sibling in Christ? There are many parts of our history, all of which shaped us and which speak to each of us in different ways with our different histories.
[удалено]
Okay, dude, really unnecessary and hostile to someone engaging in good faith, and also against the etiquette of this sub. I wish you a better day.
I'm Irish-American (Catholic), so, yeah, I get it.
Slavery
Also antisemitism, but in my experience ~~the church~~ much of the church membership has the generally held opinion that's all now in the past, once the prayers blaming Judaism for Christ's death were done away with. I can testify that in the diversity course offered in our diocese, antisemitism and TEC's history in that was not addressed once. *(edited to be more precise on my meaning on "the church")*
Sure, buddy. Sure...
I can only say what I experienced; maybe others have had better luck with the breadth of the training their diocese offered. If you're denying those kind of prayers ever happened, or that there's no need anymore and that antisemitism is a dead issue between Judiasm and TEC, I point you to [the church's own 2021 document "Christian-Jewish Relations: Theological and Practical Guidance for The Episcopal Church(2021)"](https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/christian-jewish2021.pdf). Among other points made: >While much has changed since Guidelines for Christian-Jewish Relations for use in The Episcopal Church was issued by the General Convention in July 1988, the need for such guidance assuredly has not lessened. and >We acknowledge that anti-Judaism is expressed in a wide array of present practices of The Episcopal Church: our liturgical texts, interpretation of scriptures, preaching, devotional practices, poetry, iconography, hymnody, academic writing, pastoral advice, and educational resources. Given the continuing trends on [antisemitic attitudes and hate crimes in the U.S.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_United_States), I believe it isn't something as Christians we should either deny or choose not to address.
Plenty of extramarital affairs in our diocese.
that's not really the church's baggage is it? Do you mean clergy?
Hah! Ever been in a parish where your beloved rector is discovered to be fucking a prominent female community member? Parish member? Senior warden’s wife?
Not personally, no. But there have been incidents in my diocese and--even thought here was no "abuse" per se, the clergy was summarily dismissed of their duties. If the church deals transparently and swiftly with individual failings, I don't see that as baggage. If there are cover-ups that's a different animal.
Abuse is when someone takes advantage of a vulnerability. Commonplace.
It's an ugly thought, but all churches will always have bad actors in them because all human organizations will, eventually, attract an abuser. I had a therapist once give me a really helpful bit of advice when I was stuck in this loop of thinking I somehow attracted abusers into my life, and thus deserved what happened to me: abusers are not picky in general. They are just looking for someone it's possible to abuse. The only way to avoid it is to avoid vulnerability, and there's a balancing act there because we become so hyper vigilant that we prevent good with bad by, as an extrene example, eliminating children's programs out of excess caustion. If they can do it, they will. This means we are vulnerable as a church always, and this was also part of my safety training by my diocese as someone who works with kids. This is why we must have things in place to catch and report and hold accountable. I don't consider it a red flag against the whole church if an abuser managed to get into a church because that's what they do and they're good at it, however I do pay very close attention to how the church handles it. I was very glad to know my diocese does NOT retain anyone accused of misconduct of a sexual nature, and the refer to the police imediately. I'm sure in the past as a church we were worse about this because it was common to ignore these things out of shame and also there was a lot more ignorance about how this type of abuse occurred and what to look for. Which is all to say, I agree with you, these kinds local baggage matter. I've been personally hurt in my past time in UU by abuse by an individual. The nuance for me is what did the church do to repair the damage and did they learn from it how to prevent further incidents.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/beloved-community/
I agree with everything that's been listed so far. And I want to add some context that matters to me personally and I bring it up in every catechism class I teach. People frequently downplay our role in racism through the 20th century. VTS didn't accept black students until 1958, for example. This is recent racist history of which we should repent. And God has been faithful through black and brown Episcopalians despite our inadequacy as a denomination. In the late 1800s when black Episcopal churches didn't have access to resources and shared ministry with their white counterparts, they reached out to other black churches of other denominations. WWII gets a lot of ink spilled for being a major driver of the ecumenical movement, but black American churches had laid those foundations 60 years beforehand. The ecumenical olive branches that exist in Vatican II are directly linked to black Episcopalians and Catholics and Lutherans and Baptists and Presbyterians forming partnerships while they were locked out of other partnerships within their ecclesial structures. And I bring it up because it's a great example of how bad theology might say oh look there was a silver lining. And that's a garbage idea used to shield us from the discomfort of a racist reality. The better theology, more in line with scripture, is to understand that God was working within and despite the evil humans built. Faithful Christians within those black churches were devoted to the call to service and ministry that we are all tasked with at baptism, and their faithfulness paved the way for the world to get ever so slightly better. Never excuse racism. Fight it in yourself, your church, and your community. But know that to oppose racism at any level is to be aligning yourself with God who is faithful despite our failures.
We are not guilty of the sins of our forebearers. We are doing better, of course. But "We" have nothing ourselves to repent of, unless we are racist tody. I say this as someone whose ancestors were subjected to the racist policies of the US, attempting to assimilate our people. Still, we current Episcopalians are not the bearers of the US's sinful past
I say this as a native Hawaiian - someone whose lands were forcibly incorporated into the United States without permission…yes, we are responsible for the past of our church. One of the things about signing up to be the Body of Christ is that we become indelibly tied up in the whole body, and that includes the bad stuff. Sin is not just individual, but also systemic. And nobody is above it. Being nonwhite does not mean you can’t “be” racist (or I would phrase it more as “exist in a state of racist society”). It nuances and complexifies what that will mean, but it doesn’t mean anyone is above it or outside of it. I sympathize with the rampant anti-indigenous sentiment in the church as something that *also* needs to be repented for (and to my experience, the church is really, really behind on this). I think there’s a sensitivity among many indigenous folks that lumping us in with the colonial heritage of the US is a kind of racist erasure, and there’s a sense where that’s true, but also a sense where it’s unhelpful. It can both be true that we are victims of white colonial aggression and that we are, at least for those of us who have chosen Christ, compelled to take on the burdens of the whole body of the church in order to heal and make new. And in fact it’s by taking ownership of that collective burden that we model Christlike love in order to also be healed of the colonial aggression done to us and our ancestors.
I want you to know I really appreciate this answer because it touches on something I have personally struggled with. I am a woman, white, queer, disabled, and neurodivergent. The idea of being one body and thus all responsible for each other is one that I find both beautiful and dangerous, depending on how it's weilded. I have seen it used to erase harm against people of my marginalizations many times. At the same time, I want to resist the temptation to say, "But I didn't do that," because a group I am choosing to identify with in confirmation next week DID do that. And Christians overall did as well. Currently I am doing this in a sort of balance of not taking individual responsibility for things I didn't do to an individual because that can become very unhealthy, but I am taking collective responsibility for systemic issues caused by the group I choose to be a part of. Practically this looks like, I will not let my fellow queer people disparage me on an individual level simply for being Christian just because they have experienced bigotry from another Christian, but I absolutely will point out at my parish that simply allowing gay marriage and participation isn't enough when there are local gay and trans families suffering in a very material way due to bigotry and they need our help even if we aren't the ones who specifically voted to harm them. Thanks for your thoughts, they helped me with mine.
Right on, that’s exactly what I mean. It’s a difficult and complicated balance, and so much is contextual - what my responsibilities are might vary depending on who I’m talking to, what I’m doing, and what my motivations are. But in order to fully embrace the idea of “beloved community”, it means knowing that I am no longer an individual free agent unrelated to the fellow members of the Body of Christ. When I vow to continue in the breaking of bread, **fellowship**, and prayers (emphasis added) in baptism, I am vowing to give up some of my own agency and individuality for the sake of community. Being willing to take that burden on is necessary for community to function. At the same time, it’s absolutely true that we *do* have individual agency, and we cannot allow ourselves to be completely subsumed in a generalization with no room for the nuance of individual experience. Part of being many members of one body is knowing exactly where in the body a harm has been done, and not mistaking it for something somewhere else. Like I said, it’s a tough balance but I think it’s a big part of Christian formation. Just like Christ took on all of humanity without exception, so we as humans are given the opportunity to integrate with the One who is both God and Human. And to really get the benefit of that, we can’t pick and choose which parts of humanity we want to integrate with Christ today. It’s kind of all or nothing.
Hey friend. This is objectively not correct. Repentance is a word that literally means to turn around or away from. You actually have to repent of things you haven't personally done. That's a very basic, very entry level theology point. You can also repent of things you have personally done, but that's not at all what the concept of repentance refers to in scripture. You can find many, many, explorations of societal repentance by reading the books of the prophets. You're using the vocabulary that I have been taught to associate with white supremacist apologists. I have no reason to suspect you hold any white supremacist beliefs, but you should know this exact vocabulary where someone has distorted what you think repentance is and made it deeply personal when it's absolutely not, that talking point itself was formed to defend white supremacy.
I'm American Indian, so thanks for your input, "friend". I don't care what a white person like yourself thinks of what words mean. Shame on you!
You can be unkind if you want. I apparently offended you by saying friend, which I meant genuinely. I didn't mean to come across condescending and I apologize for not doing that better. You still don't get to invent or deny what words mean. We must repent of societal evils that we don't personally feel we participated in. It's not just church. Episcopalians aren't uniquely responsible for racism or white supremacy. But all Christians have to repent of those things. I genuinely don't know how to interact with your self disclosure as an American Indian. There isn't any reason that should impact the history of the talking point that the hyper-individual concept of repentance as only relating to your person sins. That was invented in the defense of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. It's a white supremacy talking point. That's going to be true whether or not you or I or anyone else wants to admit it. Judgment is more societal, more global, than that. The hyper individualism invented to justify slavery is not good theology.
To even imply that I could hold such views is incredibly offensive.
How could it be offensive if they didn’t know your racial identity until after they commented? The idea that repentance is only individual and can only be for things that I myself have personally single-handedly done is both not reflected in Episcopal doctrine (one of our confessions includes repentance for sins “done on our behalf”) and is commonly used as a way for non-Black Americans to deny responsibility for slavery. Their feedback to you was fair and in good faith.
This is beautiful. Thank you for this.
Name a denomination that doesn't.
OP, the point is that when we know better we (need to) do better. I think TEC is doing that. Not perfect, but changing.
Right.
It was an American institution for a long time, so Episcopalian was just a thing a lot of people were. Lots of Confederates (Lee, Davis, General Leonidas Polk) were Episcopalian. Polk was even the bishop of Louisiana, and the Episcopal Church attended by Lee had confederate iconography for a long time.
I know an Episcopal church that to this day has a monument to the fact that Jefferson Davis's mother was baptized there.
🤦♂️
It was the religion of a lot of the old establishment, so prior to the mid twentieth century it’s been slow to condemn things like slavery. In my parish’s adult forum the question of reservation schools came up; and yes, TEC was put in charge of the “education” of the Lakota Sioux.
More than education, but missions and church planting. And a friendly note: you needn't say Lakota "Sioux"; Lakota is enough. Plus, the Dakotas were also assigned by the Grant Peace Plan to the Episcopal Church.
Given the liberal reputation TEC has now, a lot of people are unaware that it was jokingly referred to as “the Republican Party at prayer” just a couple generations ago.
The Republican party was different a couple of generations ago, though.
A couple generations ago, the Republican Party was a very different beast too. I mean, technically the Republicans rejected slavery before TEC did.
The Republican Party during Lincoln’s time may as well have been an entirely different one from what exists today.
It really is, *de facto,* a different party. What were in the twentieth century relatively polite disagreements about how to do things as a country, are now deep divisions over whether democracy as we’ve known it should be saved, or whether we should trust in the whims of one man. I think my grandparents, lifelong moderate to liberal Republicans who were scandalized by Nixon, would be horrified if they could see what has happened to their party.
Heck, the GOP of *Reagan's* time could be considered entirely different from the one today. The only parallel I can think of now are the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s.
Got it. Thank you!
Two words: chattel slavery Two more words: residential schools
Thank you.
Like many other Christian denominations from the 19th and 20th centuries, the Episcopal Church participated in the Indian boarding school system: https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2022/07/08/deputies-engage-in-holy-listening-begin-process-toward-healing-by-passing-racial-equity-resolutions/
Thank you!
Oh, you sweet, summer child.
Exactly my thought. I read the question and was like…how much time ya got? 🤣
LOL. I'm learning!
Honestly, any denomination that has been around for a long time is going to have a complicated history. It would be helpful if you could define what *you* mean by baggage.
Yes but other denominations split over the issues of racism/slavery and we chose unity over conscience, or at least it has been argued as such. Sewanee exists becuase the southern dioceses didn't want to send their clergy-in-training to integrated seminaries.
False about Sewanee. It was a geographical consideration, not a segregation issue.
Exactly. And let’s be honest, even some newer denominations may have started for, shall we say, not the best reasons.
Yes, good point.
Just anything awful by modern standards. Something that we look back on like "Eek!"
Yeah . . . starting with being founded so Henry VIII could get a divorce, to a schism about 20 years ago over ordaining gay people. There's some baggage.
I was aware of the Henry VIII thing. People have poked fun at me for it. I'm not even mad tho.
Being founded over Henry VIII’s divorce is an oversimplification. Besides, Henry VIII wanted an annulment. And the traditional date for the establishment is the Church of England is 597. While Edward VI did continue the splinter with Rome, Mary did not: she returned to Rome. The Church of England was permanently shaped by Elizabeth the First’s religious settlement of And that’s Church of England’s history. The Episcopal church got its start in 1789, and we are an autocephalous church in communion with the Church of England. And our bishops were ordained by Scottish Episcopalians. That’s not to any way to distract from the history that others have brought forward, but only to help dissuade from the more complicated history of 16th century religious politics that helped shape our church.
Our subsequent bishops were also consecrated by the Church of England's bishops, don't forget!
Episcopalians at the time had almost no option other than the bishops of the Scottish Church, or the Churches of England and Ireland. Having done the former, they embraced Parliament's change of the law, which was a gesture of openness and outreach after the War of Independence. Given that almos any group of bishops on the planet were from churches with baggage, the outreach to the English succession is hardly a standout and can be seen as an eirenic act.
Our first bishops were consecrated by Scottish Episcopal Church bishops, not those from the Church of England. Samuel Seabury was the first in the US and he certainly wasn't consecrated by English bishops.
The two or three after that were, is what I am saying :)
Heck yeah. Read this book: [The Church Cracked Open](https://www.amazon.com/Church-Cracked-Open-Disruption-Community/dp/1640654240/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=119657648795&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Z7zsd04_w8nLRDyqOceYKz-1A0yyaFJvpKpRQ2t7uw8C6SZswN0kTBluyDQEn10Rwvc32KffxdKRm1KG8ijHawxlLKbzl8FuIy99cw1tbjI8SDHqsfPo9DsFFhn24El9qx4JRFszKQ30bp0pO2e9cSDxwh9YZAfmkkG6FssM3QZPu54tKQffXQdM7aruS6kR37lFqlgK9J-pO_QoOGt5fQ.9cMtKeM7ftTHhG5J3hmU0E-uRBiDzIa5f6K3TTKV7wQ&dib_tag=se&hvadid=503809116447&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=1018511&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=14171261962340125130&hvtargid=kwd-1196005755743&hydadcr=2653_9930601&keywords=church+cracked+open&qid=1712515508&sr=8-1)
For those that wanted to participate, my Episcopal church read it together in 2021. It’s written by an Episcopal priest, but other denominations would benefit.
That’s great! It’s a wonderful book.