Recently, two items came across my reading that, while were related, reflected opposing realities. The first is from the book “”The Anglican Tradition : A Handbook of Sources”. It is an except from The Chicago Quadrilateral, which was a resolution from a meeting in Chicago, 1886, by the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The second is a letter to the editor by Rev. Sara Fisher, an Episcopal priest, as publishe in The Oregonian on May 3, 2011. Below are the relevant quotations. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
The Chicago Quadrilateral
General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America,
A Communion of Communions (1886).
A Communion of Communions (1886).
Whereas, many of the faithful in Christ Jesus among us are praying with renewed and increasing earnestness that some measures may be adopted at this time for the re-union of the sundered parts of Christendom … we Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Council assembled as Bishops in the Church of God, do hereby solemnly declare to all whom it may concern, and especially to our fellow Christians of the different Communions in this land, who, in their several spheres, have contended for the religion of Christ:
1. Our earnest desire that the Saviour’s prayer, ‘That we all may be one’, may, in its deepest and truest sense, be speedily fulfilled;
2. That we believe that all who have been duly baptized with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the Holy Catholic Church;
3. That in all things of human ordering or human choice, relating to modes of worship and discipline, or to traditional customs, this Church is ready in the spirit of love and humility to forgo all preferences of her own;
4. That this Church does not seek to absorb other Communions, but rather, co-operating with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order, to discountenance schism, to heal the wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian graces and the visible manifestation of Christ to the world;
...
Furthermore, Deeply grieved by the sad divisions which affect the Christian Church in our own land, we hereby declare our desire and readiness, so soon as there shall be any authorized response to this Declaration, to enter into brotherly conference with all or any Christian Bodies seeking the restoration of the organic unity of the Church, with a view to the earnest study of the conditions under which so priceless a blessing might happily be brought to pass.[1]
In response to Steve Duin's May 1 column, "Culture, Christianity and Q": It will be interesting to see which group has more resistance to the Q movement: spiritual-but-not-religious Christo-phobic Portlanders, or mainline denominational groups. Some of these won't even use the word "Christian" to describe themselves, for fear of being mistaken for a conservative evangelical.
As the pastor of an Episcopal church, I know whereof I speak. We are proud of our denominational identity as sacramental, incarnational, progressive and justice-oriented. But despite our talk of tolerance and inclusivity, many of our members exhibit an abiding prejudice against evangelicals, "conservative" or not. Yet imagine what good we could accomplish if we all moved beyond ideology toward the gritty edges of real life, where the guy we claim to follow hung out.
I am excited by the work being done and the work being dreamed of by people of faith in our city. This Christian looks forward to working alongside them.
REV. SARA FISCHER
Southeast Portland
Fischer is rector of St. David of Wales Episcopal church.
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