My apologies for having been away for a few days. It's been a pretty wild period.
I'd be happy to share with y'all what I think are the good things about the Episcopal church, and, maybe even some of the things that I don't like about it.
I see that most of our catechism has already been posted, which is cool, but I don't think it really captures who we are. There's so much to say that I hardly know where to start, so some specific kinds of questions might help. (I have another hellish week coming up, so I can't promise to answer them all within a day, though.)
One question I recall was about our relationship to Roman Catholicism. We are similar in a lot of ways to the RC church, but different in some meaningful ways, too. We have the same orders of ministers (laity, bishops, priests, and deacons) and the same seven sacraments. Our Eucharistic theology is pretty much the same, but our ecclesiologies are very different.
I like to say (and I hope I'm not mis-stating things) that the biggest difference between our two denominations is that in the RC church power begins with one person and "trickles down" while in the Episcopal church, power begins with the laity and is gradually conferred to the leadership. If you want to be a priest, a bishop can't just decide to do it, two different committees with lots of lay people on them have to approve of it. If you're elected a bishop, it isn't a choice made by the Pope, but you are elected by the lay people and the clergy of the diocese that you may serve. Because our church had to re-organize itself after the American Revolution (we were all Anglicans before, but they were pretty angry at us!) we became much more democratic, in keeping with the spirit of this country.
While I don't have too much confidence in most political processes, personally, I still find that this way of starting with the laity usually means we're a lot more responsive to the work of the Spirit than a "top-down" kind of power structure.
On the down side of all this is the "clericalism" that still afflicts us. It's worse in some parts of the country, and in some parishes, but for the most part, people still think of clergy as "higher" callings than other callings. I think that's horribly wrong, and the whole "Father this" and "Mother that" (yes, we ordain women as priests) is a big mistake. Ordination, in my opinion, specializes, narrows a person's ministry, doesn't make it higher. Just different. We all have gifts for ministry. Setting clergy up as higher than others is a recipe for stagnation.
Well, there are a couple of things to begin with. I'm open to other questions, and I'll get to 'em as fast as I can!
Jeff K