Rector's Letter

Dear People of Wick and Thurso,

What does it mean to be an Episcopalian? Recently I've been working with a parishioner through a wonderful and inspiring collection of leaflets called simply "Anglican" (it hails from the southern hemisphere).

I quote from the note on the back of the folder:

To be Anglican is to be Christian according to a unique tradition - the tradition of the English speaking people. It is to belong to a Church which has existed from the very beginnings of Christianity. It is to share the same heritage with Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Columba of Iona, Aidan of Lindisfarne, Julian of Norwich, John Wycliffe, Queen Elizabeth I, William Wilberforce, Clive Staples Lewis, and seventy million contemporaries living all over the world.

To be Episcopalian is also to be inclusive (even while we have to admit that it was not ever thus). This inclusiveness, shown in our reluctance to draw boundaries and define who is or isn't a true believer, remains one of our most attractive, as well as one of our most exasperating, qualities. Those who like to deal in certainties scold us for being muddle-headed and inconsistent, while, on the other hand, those who have been wounded by the harshness of the teaching in some other Christian groups find our openness a source of hope and healing.

Another aspect of this inclusiveness is the willingness to take the best of the culture around us and put it to Christian use. Cædmon's Hymn, written in the seventh century, uses the imagery and rhythms of pre-Christian poetry to sing in praise of God and his creation. John Donne, again, uses the sonnet form, traditionally used for love-poetry of a very different sort, to express passionately his intense longing for God: "Batter my heart, three-person'd God…"

Retaining not only the best of the culture around us, but also the best of our tradition, is another tendency. In the bewildering period when churchgoers perhaps took bets as they trudged to church on whether the liturgy would be in English or Latin, in England Thomas Cranmer set out to retain the best of the old translated into English, while including the new (some of it even written by him).

But even then there was a reluctance to draw boundary lines: the Book of Common Prayer (albeit not the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book) contains this paragraph in the prefatory article Concerning the Service of the Church: "Though it be appointed, that all things shall be read and sung in the Church in the English Tongue, to the end that the congregation may be thereby edified; yet it is not meant, but that when men say Morning and Evening Prayer privately, they may say the same in any language that they themselves do understand." So the parish clergy, accustomed as they would have been to praying the Divine Office in Latin, could continue to do so at home, and also any of us, praying and reading the Scriptures by ourselves, may do so in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Gaelic, or any other tongue, with no one able or empowered to forbid us.

There are many other ways in which Episcopalians/Anglicans are subtly "different" in how we express our faith. Nicholas Ferrar, whose feast-day falls in December and whose community came under the patronage of the unfortunate King Charles I, whose feast we observed last month, went to Little Gidding with his family in 1625 to live a life of prayer and of study, as well as of caring for the people around them, of ministering to their needs, physical, intellectual and spiritual. The community was destroyed nine years after his death by the Puritans, who were suspicious of what they saw as Romish practice, and to complete their work, they destroyed all of Nicholas's manuscripts. (Burning of books, as an attempt to destroy the thought contained therein, has a long pedigree, and has never been set aside despite its manifest lack of success.)

This "difference" can never be a source for pride: I confess to cringing inwardly when I hear, for example, anyone extolling the "glories of our liturgy" because that sentiment reeks strongly of being vainglorious to me, especially as I suspect that for many people the "glories" can be pretty abstruse - have we ever wondered, for example, what a visitor would make of us calling ourselves "miserable offenders"? Certainly, we are blessed with beautiful liturgy (sometimes), but this is a gift for us to share, not an investment to hoard and boast of.

No, this "difference" can never be a source of pride, but it is, and should remain, a source of hope and creativity, both for lifelong Episcopalians and for those who come to us seeking space to think, freedom from dogmatism, and a safe place in which to thrive.

With my love and prayers,

Revd Wendy.