…the first in a series of articles about
what is happening in the Episcopal
Church
“Oh, to be in England now that spring is here.”
We had the great good fortune to spend Holy Week
in England and experienced a wonderful selection
of pageantry, diversity and style in the worship
experience. We know we have different
philosophical and theological views in the
American Episcopal Church, but we are not alone in
encompassing a wide range of religious expression.
On Maundy Thursday we attended a Choral
Evensong in York at “The Minster.” The centuries
old service was as stunningly beautiful as each of
faces of the young singers. Friday noon we arrived
in the town of Thirsk and happened upon an
ecumenical group carrying a large cross and
accompanied by the tolling of a bass drum moving
from church to church for the Good Friday
Readings and hymns. The hymns were
accompanied by a brass band. We joined the parade
(which at one point had to skirt around a family of
newly hatched ducklings) and found ourselves
enthralled by the village tradition which ended with
a treat—great platters of hot cross buns. It is
noteworthy that Thirsk is the fictional Darrowby in
James Herriot’s stories.
On Easter Sunday we attended church at Ripon
Cathedral. The liturgy and hymns were exactly what
we could have heard at home. The cathedral was
full. There were lots of young families and the
woman beside me told me how enthusiastic they are
about the new dean. Ripon is one of only three
English cathedrals that is also a parish church. A
lovely man named Nigel talked to us at coffee time
about how the church had come back from the edge
of financial ruin and was now fiscally healthy. He
told us that some planned roof repairs would be
financed by the “Lottery.” That would be an
advantage of not having the separation between
church and state!
While our experiences all fell into what one might
classify as mainstream, a look at the The Guardian
of April 9 revealed that we were getting only part of
the picture. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu,
used his sermon to call upon kidnappers to release
a British journalist captured in Gaza. He also
baptized twenty adults by total immersion in a tank
in the city center. Meanwhile the Rt. Rev. Michael
Nazir-Ali, the conservative evangelical Bishop of
Rochester, “continued his contrarian stance by
praising the Iranian president’s better understanding
of moral and spiritual values than the British
government.” He said Mohmoud Ahmadinejad
contrasted favorably with British “free-floating”
attitudes.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams,
did not skirt away from politics either and he ended
his Easter message with, “When in our world we are
faced with the terrible deadlocks of mutual hatred
and suspicion, with rival stories of suffering and
atrocity, we have to pray for this resurrection
message to be heard.”
On the front of the bulletin in Ripon it states
“Children are welcome in this Cathedral. Please let
them worship God in their own way.”
It would seem that we are all children of God.