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The Episcopal Church has frequently been influenced by changes in the social and political world around it. Those influences have not always been tested against the Gospel and the teachings of the church.

In the early days of the foundation of the country, there were debates about the ethics of slavery in the country both within and outside the church. There were those who were concerned that if slaves were Christianized, they would expect to be treated as fellow Christians (Hein, 28 and 29). Because of that there were hesitations about bringing enslaved people into the church. With this opportunity to bring the Good News to people within their community, some in the church chose not to because of the economic impact it would have had. Others in the church wanted to use the Christianization of enslaved people as an instrument of control. There were two arguments here: 1. That the newly baptized slaves were children of God, but that being a child of God doesn’t impact their station here on earth or 2. That one of the requirements for baptism of an enslaved person was the acceptance of their master’s authority over their lives (Hein, 28). In the early days of the country’s founding, in order to build an economic base, it was argued that slavery was necessary. In this case, the church worked to ignore the unethical practice of slavery or to find ways to justify it to maintain the status quo and to support the economic growth made possible by slavery.

The church was also complicit in the mistreatment of the Native American population. The government’s actions were part of its policy of Manifest Destiny. The church often wasn’t willing to speak against these atrocities and bought into the societal idea that Native Americans needed to be “civilized” and to embrace the culture and religion of white people. Like the interactions with black people, the church was willing to use religion as a way to support the economic advancement of one group at the expense of others. While bishops such as Bishop Henry Whipple advocated for the rights and protections of some Native American groups, that advocacy was born of a paternalism felt by the larger society (Hein, 100). They felt Native Americans needed to be helped, but not strictly because of the desire to care for other of God’s children, but because Native Americans needed to throw off their cultures and “become white” in order to advance in the world. This was another case of the church being unable or unwilling to examine why their culture was “better” and why a gospel of love needed to be shared by force and violence.

The previous examples were stories of the Episcopal Church following societal beliefs and the status quo at the expense of marginalized communities. Much of that harm came from an unwillingness to hear the voices outside the dominant culture and being willing to be impacted by those voices. Later societal influences would work to open the church’s doors to those who had been frequently left on the margins.

One way the church listened to the voices of the marginalized was relating to the Civil Rights Movement. In the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education, more voices were raised against segregation in society as well as within the church. Priests and laity within the church heard the church’s support of desegregation and equal rights and began to work toward those causes (Hein, 125). With the creation of the General Convention Special Program, the national church sought to empower black people in urban centers. However, even with this effort, habits from the past came into play. Power was removed from Tollie Caution and the Black Ministries office in favor of the largely white bishops. Also, instead of involving people on the ground who were best able to identify partners for allocating the funding, a top down approach was implemented (Hein, 136). A continuation of the paternalistic overtones of the church were evident. But reaction to that paternalism encouraged black Episcopalians to organize and advocate for themselves through organizations like the Union of Black Episcopalians as well as encourage the creation of worship and religious educational materials from the Black experience such as Lift Every Voice and Sing and the Free to Choose. Paternalism and a desire to maintain the status quo contributed to the start-stop of the church’s wrestling with inequality within society and the church, but the work has continued (Hein, 151). This can be seen more recently in the church’s examination of their history related to slavery in this country and work at racial reconciliation (Racial Reconciliation).

The church’s wrestling with the Women’s Movement also shaped how the church saw itself and its leadership. The Women’s Movement forced society to ask itself why women were relegated to certain spheres in society. Those questions were expanded to looking at the prescribed roles of women in the church. Those societal questions were part of the spark for the church to look at itself. While the church would probably have gotten there under its own steam, the irregular ordination of the Philadelphia 11 brought the question to a crisis point. Three years later women’s ordination was officially allowed in the Episcopal Church which has led to female bishops and a female presiding bishop (Hein, 141-142).

It has been its unwillingness to maintain the status quo that has been the biggest challenge for the church. Support of the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s ordination, and later the ordination and consecration of openly gay clergy members impacted the unity of the church causing various groups to break away from the Episcopal Church as well as to strain relations within the Anglican Communion (Hein, 147-148). But some might argue that as the church was willing to break with the status quo and be influenced by society at large that it began moving into a new era of living out the Gospel.

References

Adebonojo, Mary. (1980). Free to choose: Youth program resource from the Black experience. Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press.

Boyer, Horace Clarence. (1993). Lift every voice and sing II: An African American hymnal. New York, N.Y.: Church Hymnal.

Hein, David, & Shattuck, Gardiner H. (2004). The Episcopalians (Denominations in America, no. 11). Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, The Episcopal Church. (n.d.). Racial Reconciliation. https://episcopalchurch.org/racial-reconciliation