A Wee Insight from a Bonnie Land
by John S. Spong

The Episcopal Church of Scotland is unique in the Anglican Communion. The established church of Scotland is not the Anglican, but the Presbyterian tradition. Elizabeth II is an Anglican and the head of the Church of England when she is in England. But when she is in Scotland, she is a Presbyterian and the head of the Church of Scotland. So the Episcopal Church is the name of the Anglican non-established presence in Scotland.

Most people are not aware that the Episcopal Church in the United States took its name from the Scottish Episcopal Church. Our ancestors in faith were not eager to be identified with things English following the war fought for American independence. Most of the Anglican clergy in the colonies had been Tories in that war. They were missionaries assigned to the new world for a term of duty, but their loyalties were significantly rooted in their homeland. So these Anglican clergy greeted the victory by the patriots with despair and returned to England in great numbers. That identification of England with our Church did not make our Church very popular in the fiercely independent new nation. The Anglican mission to the new world had been under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. But he now withdrew all of his previous support by recalling those missionary priests under his authority and cutting off all financial sources. If Anglican worship was to continue in the new United States, it would have to find a way to consecrate its own bishops, to become indigenous in this new world and to become fully independent of England. It was a critical moment in the history of our faith community.

The patriots who wanted to continue Anglican worship in their newly independent country finally got themselves together and chose a man named Samuel Seabury to be the first American Anglican bishop. The only problem was that Anglican tradition required that person to be consecrated by a minimum of three duly authorized Anglican bishops. There were no other bishops in America, so Dr. Seabury went to England to seek Episcopal ordination from the Church of England. He was not well received in the motherland. The English were also still smarting from the war and the loss of their colonies. Their feelings were raw, and they were not eager to assist the upstart Americans in any way. So the Bishop of London declined to provide ordination for Bishop-elect Seabury. Other English bishops followed London's lead.

Undeterred by this rejection Bishop-elect Seabury journeyed to Scotland and laid his case before the small, disestablished Episcopal Church of Scotland. He received a warm reception. The Scots also had no great love of England and relished this opportunity to irritate their English tormentors. It is, to this day, a favorite indoor Scottish pastime. They also found much in common with this new American Anglican Church. It too would not be established. It too would be a small part of the pluralistic religious world of its nation, and it would have to make its way without State support. A genuine affinity began to develop between the two churches. So it was that from the Scottish Episcopal Church the first American Episcopal bishop was given his apostolic ordination. In a sign of both gratitude and growing identity the Anglican Church in America adopted the name of the Scottish Episcopal Church as its own name. That is why in this country we are the Episcopal Church rather than the Anglican Church. The Episcopal Church in the United States also modeled its first prayer book quite deliberately after the prayer book of the Scottish Episcopal Church. The two have tended to walk in tandem from that day to this. History turns on such small episodes.

I go into this history because, while on my sabbatical study leave, I spent some time writing and doing research at the University of Edinburgh. When the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Richard Holloway, learned of my presence, he invited me to attend and to address the General Synod of his Church, meeting in Oban very near Iona. I thus had the opportunity to attend and participate in my second General Convention of the summer, something I could not believe I was doing. Yet I found the experience fascinating. In my address I brought the greetings of the American Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Newark to my Scottish hosts. I rehearsed our common bonds in history and once again thanked them for their 18th century hospitality to Bishop Seabury. I touched on the themes that consume our energy as a Church in the United States and then I watched the Scottish Church do its work. It was enlightening to see another national Church deal with the same issues that our Church has debated for most of the recent decades. They were talking about the full inclusion of women and homosexual people in the Church's life. They were struggling with how to get out from under the pressures of institutional maintenance so that they could engage the world in significant mission. They were engaged with proposals to revise their present prayer book and with ways to reconstitute the Episcopacy to make it more effective in the post-modern world. The Primus has already proposed that Anglican bishops come to the Lambeth Conference in the summer of 1998 to hurl their miters into the Thames River as a sign of their willingness to rethink the role of the bishop as a sign of a servant ministry rather than as a crowned "prince of the church." It is a theme with which I deeply resonate. The Episcopal Church of Scotland seeks to bear its witness amid tensions between its urban areas and its rural areas. It has deep divisions between its conservative members and its liberal members. It boasts a Primus who is probably the best known and most controversial clergyperson in Scotland. He is the author of a number of books that are both provocative and challenging. He is about two years away from his retirement. It was quite instructive for me to observe these dynamics as they affected the debate of the Scottish Synod. It caused me to think deeply about my life and the life of the Church itself.

The Church is a strange institution. It inspires and it depresses. It is an intensely human institution, but it points to an intensely real realm which is transcendent and holy. It states its ideals powerfully, but it exhibits a curious and constantly disappointing pettiness. It was born in a dazzling revolutionary new spiritual awakening, but it spends most of its life resisting those who see God differently or who offer new models of thought for a new age. It proclaims that God so loved the world which presumably includes all people, but it expends its energy trying to limit the Church's exposure to those who appear to be different in culture, values and way of life. It claims to serve the Prince of Peace, but its passions have fueled the cruellest wars and the most violent inquisitions in western history.

In the service of the Church's version of truth Christian leaders throughout history have been known to lie, cheat, twist truth, blackmail, murder and steal. The assassination of the character of a religious opponent is almost standard operating procedure. One can become religiously disillusioned quickly if one's gaze never rises above the institutional expressions of Christianity. When one judges a faith community by attending the meeting of its national decision-making body, one is tempted to move in exactly that direction.

But this past summer as a member first of our General Convention and second as a guest of the General Synod of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, that was not my primary experience. I rather saw people in both settings torn between their security-producing ways of the past and a dawning new insight that could not be denied. I saw people recognizing that the definition of God by which they lived was no longer adequate and slowly but surely opening themselves to new possibilities. I saw people willing to set their prejudices against women and homosexual people aside as they embraced new data that rendered their prejudices no longer operative. I saw people living in this world, but in touch with the world to which all life seems ultimately to point. I saw the Church at work - warts, blemishes and all, but moving, ever moving to a new place where it has never lived before. Both the Synod and the General Convention renewed my desire to be part of this institution, to be rooted in its past, as well as being compelled by its future.

While the Scottish Church met in Oban to deliberate, one of the issues that lay just beneath the surface was that there was no bishop in the Diocese of Brechin. Two election conventions had failed to elect any one of the nominees put forward. They were concerned about this. The divisions in the Diocese of Brechin between those compelled by the future and those rooted in the past had kept anyone from achieving a majority. However, a week later a successful election was held. The newly chosen bishop was a very attractive outspoken liberal, dedicated to the Church's involvement with the affairs of the world. The liberals clearly won, you say. Well, not quite. The new bishop has a name that roots him in the past. Perhaps that was what gave the conservatives solace. If you are ever in the Diocese of Brechin in Scotland, your bishop will be The Rt. Rev. Neville Chamberlain.