Welcome to the Episcopal Church [Paperback]

However, the Episcopal Faith (within the larger Anglican Communion) demonstrates a way that a faith can be practiced communally while still helping people. The other beauty of the book is that it is honest with the humanity and the shortcomings of the Episcopal Church.

Ultimately, it did not just give me faith in the Episcopal Church (I am seriously and prayerfully considering practicing my faith in the Episcopal Church), but let me see the essential unity of the entire Christian Church (believing basically the same thing). The Body of Christ does exist on earth, even if it needs to recover from illnesses from time to time. I would like to just send a thank you Christopher L. Webber, you truly have fulfilled your faith's obligation to ministry.

The Episcopal Church is the official version of the Anglican Church (Church of England) in the United States. For historical reasons, after the American Revolution the Church of England in America could no longer remain the Church of England -- the tendency toward national autonomy among Anglican church structures generally holds true as a pattern today. Webber's book does not go into the complexities of general church history -- the history of the church prior to the Reformation is a shared history, and can be learned elsewhere. The Church of England proper grew out of the Reformation, and the American pattern of the church derives from this. Webber continues his history by looking at colonial period, the revolutionary period, the growth period in the early nineteenth century, and the continuing developments in the church up to the present.

Webber's chapter on worship looks not just at the traditional liturgy (often considered the centre of the worship life), but also the architecture, music, and various other aspects. The Episcopal church is one of sacramental life with a Eucharistic centre (although this has not always been true in performance), and the Book of Common Prayer is more formative of the community than any set of dogmas or doctrines. Webber makes a claim for the Episcopal church which is generally true for most churches -- worship defines community, it defines the church.

The lionshare of the book is concerned with what one might call 'faith matters'. There are chapters on the Bible, church teaching (partly tradition, partly catechism), general spirituality, ecclesiology and evangelism. At each point, the Book of Common Prayer and the liturgy of worship come into play as informative and linked to the topics. The Anglican triad of Scripture, Reason and Tradition, in a flexible relationship with each other, none of the three completely dominant, pervades these chapters.

Each chapter ends with a series of questions for further thought and discussion, which makes this a useful text for use in small groups and classrooms as well as personal instruction. There is a useful guide at the end of the book for further reading in the topics of Anglicanism, church history, worship, and others.

There is a foreword by Frank Griswold, the current presiding bishop for the Episcopal church, who sees this book as part of the welcome that Episcopalians typically hope to extend to all newcomers and visitors to the church. This book is welcome indeed.

Webber's insights into the crisis of the Reformation are helpful. He expresses far more succinctly - yet no less compellingly - some of the main problems with the Reformation view of the Bible and church authority, mainly that people turned away from a centralized authority that prescribed Christian life in black and white terms to a textual authority written thousands of years ago that usually didn't prescribe such simple rules to follow.

The Anglican - and therefore Episcopal - way of overcoming this was by using three things in determining its doctrine: scripture, tradition and reason. Although the latter of the three is far more subjective than the other two, this is what gives Anglicanism its double-edged sword: a larger community that is open to discussion about many issues yet remains a community nonetheless (well, at least in theory).

Webber's short take on Episcopal - Anglicanism in the United States - history is equally fascinating. It is interesting to read how much American isolationism/independence played into the views that people had of the Church in America; despite all of this, however, the Episcopal church grew.

The other sections of the book deal with other areas of history as well as more basic, overarching principles such as the use of the Book of Common Prayer and the structure of the Episcopal church as itself and as a part of the larger Anglican communion. It is interesting to note that the Episcopal church was the first large church to ordain a African-American to the priesthood; the Episcopal church was also the first large church to ordain women to the priesthood. It would seem that being "progressive" (a term I don't like, but that most people understand) is well-rooted in the Episcopal church's past.

This book is brief, but it is well written and has several recommendations for further reading in the back of the book. Although a little more detail would have been nice, as would have been a bit more attention to current issues of crisis and division within the church, I imagine that some of that can be found in other works. Overall, this is a great introduction.