Welcome to the Episcopal Church by Christopher L. Webber

Author:Christopher L. Webber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Church Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

1. Robert Bellah, ed., Habits of the Heart: Individualism in American Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), p. 221.

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Spirituality

THE SOURCES

No one knows when Christianity first came to the British Isles, but there is a legend that Joseph of Arimathea, who gave the tomb for Jesus’ burial, came to Britain after the Resurrection, bringing the cup that was used at the Last Supper, and that he built a church at Glastonbury, in southwestern England. If so, there may have been a church in England before there was one in Rome. Whether or not that is true, it is clear that Christianity came to England at a very early date since three British bishops attended a synod in France in A.D. 314 and other British bishops attended the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. But pagan Germanic tribes called Angles and Saxons invaded Britain in the sixth century and pushed the British church into Wales and Ireland. Before long, however, this early British or Celtic church pushed back with amazing energy, sending missionaries into Scotland and the north of England, then into the Low Countries and Germany, and finally as far east as the Ukraine and as far south as Italy. Nonetheless, it was the Roman Church, moving north, which began the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons in the year A.D. 597, when Pope Gregory sent a man called Augustine, who began his work by founding a church in southeastern England at Canterbury. That Roman mission from the south finally met the Celtic Church from the north, and at a synod in Whitby in the year A.D. 664 that was called to resolve the differences between them, the Celtic Church agreed to adopt the Roman pattern of Christianity.

Nonetheless, the Celtic approach left its mark on the church in England. The Celtic Church was much more loosely organized than the Roman Church; it had monastic communities as centers of teaching and mission rather than territorial dioceses centered on a bishop. In the Celtic system, the abbot ruled the monastery and the surrounding area as father of a family, while the Roman bishop directed the administration of the diocese as an overseer. The Celtic Church also made few distinctions between roles for men and roles for women; women were ordained to the priesthood and consecrated as bishops in Ireland as early as the seventh century. Celtic Christianity also was closer to nature and thought more intuitively about the faith. It was, as we have learned to say, more “right brained” in its approach. The great hymn known as “St. Patricks Breastplate” and attributed to St. Patrick reflects that way of thinking. It feels the presence of God in nature, in “the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old, eternal rocks.”1 And it feels Christ’s presence in human life: “Christ within me... Christ beside me... Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.” The familiar children’s hymn that begins, “All

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