The perfect book for inquirers and new members, as well as current Church members who may be unfamiliar with some of the Church s history, beliefs, and practices. This new introduction to the history, polity, spirituality, worship, and outreach of the Episcopal Church is written in an easy-to-read conversational tone, and includes study questions at the end of each chapter, making it an excellent resource for adult parish study and inquirers' classes."

In 2012, the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina declared its independence from the Episcopal Church. It was the fifth of the 111 dioceses of the Church to do so since 2007. A History of the Episcopal Church Schism in South Carolina is the sweeping story of how one diocese moved from the mainstream of the Episcopal Church to separate from the church. It examines the underlying issues, the immediate causes, and the initiating events as well as the nature and results of the schism. The book traces the escalating conflict between the diocese and the church that led up to the schism. It also examines the legal war between the two post-schism dioceses, the majority in the independent Diocese of South Carolina and the minority in the Episcopal Church in South Carolina. This is the first scholarly history of a diocesan schism from the Episcopal Church. It is extensively researched from original and secondary sources and documented in over 2,000 notes citing nearly 900 works. This story stands as a cautionary tale of what happens in a major Christian denomination when majority and minority factions increasingly differentiate themselves and what impact that can have for both parties.

Tells the story of how the Episcopal Church gained influence over Alabama’s cultural, political, and economic arenas despite being a denominational minority in the state The consensus of southern historians is that, since the Second Great Awakening, evangelicalism has dominated the South. This is certainly true when one considers the extent to which southern culture is dominated by evangelical rhetoric and ideas. However, in Alabama one non-evangelical group has played a significant role in shaping the state’s history. J. Barry Vaughn explains that, although the Episcopal Church has always been a small fraction (around 1 percent) of Alabama’s population, an inordinately high proportion, close to 10 percent, of Alabama’s significant leaders have belonged to this denomination. Many of these leaders came to the Episcopal Church from other denominations because they were attracted to the church’s wide degree of doctrinal latitude and laissez-faire attitude toward human frailty. Vaughn argues that the church was able to attract many of the state’s governors, congressmen, and legislators by positioning itself as the church of conservative political elites in the state--the planters before the Civil War, the “Bourbons” after the Civil War, and the “Big Mules” during industrialization. He begins this narrative by explaining how Anglicanism came to Alabama and then highlights how Episcopal bishops and congregation members alike took active roles in key historic movements including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement. Bishops, Bourbons, and Big Mules closes with Vaughn’s own predictions about the fate of the Episcopal Church in twenty-first-century Alabama.

A readable and accurate account of the beginnings of the Anglican Church in America at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, to the establishment of the Protestant Church in America after the War of Independence to the present day. All who are insterested in Americn church history and in the influence of the Espicopal Church on American history will find Holmes' book most enlightening.

"A collection of essays tracing the history of the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, with emphasis on the greater Philadelphia area. Includes discussions of the diversity of practice and belief within the church, and between the church and the wider national culture"--Provided by publisher.

This study is a sequel to A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821–1980 (1992). It is a narrative shaped by contexts—context of the Episcopal Church and its Christian witness through the episcopacies of Diocesan Bishops George Daniel Browne, Edward Wea Neufville II, and Jonathan B. B. Hart; the context of a modernizing Liberia plunged into unprecedented political violence by a military coup d’etat in 1980 and a devastating civil war that ensued and consumed the country for some 14 years; and the context of shifting external ties with the American Church, the Liberian Episcopal community in the United States, and the Church of the Anglican Province of West Africa. D. Elwood Dunn also examines what the church’s contemporary history uncovers about Liberia’s social history in its juxtaposition of national identity issues with religious syncretism (a mixture of African traditional religions, Islam, some elements of Christianity, and basic human secularism), while suggesting challenges for the Episcopal Church’s Christian witness going forward. All of this is done in four concise chapters successively addressing the episcopate of Bishop Browne, a critical interregnum period between Browne and his successor, Bishop Neufville, the episcopate of Neufville, and initiating the episcopate of incumbent Bishop Hart. This is followed by a general conclusion and assessment of the church’s work. The study ends with an epilogue on the Episcopal Church that was, the Church that is, and the Church of the future.

In this simple yet comprehensive account, William Sydnor provides essential materials for persons who are beginning to discover the Episcopal Church. Topics covered include the church’s symbols, customs, and practices, as well as its history, creeds, sacraments, and mission. The book also includes a leader’s guide in the appendix to assist in conducting confirmation instruction.

This is a study of the transplantation of a creed devised by and for African Americans--the African Methodist Episcopal Church--that was appropriated and transformed in a variety of South African contexts. Focusing on a transatlantic institution like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the book studies the complex human and intellectual traffic that has bound African American and South African experience. It explores the development and growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church both in South Africa and America, and the interaction between the two churches. This is a highly innovative work of comparative and religious history. Its linking of the United States and African black religious experiences is unique and makes it appealing to readers interested in religious history and black experience in both the United States and South Africa.

For most people in England today, the church is simply the empty building at the end of the road, visited for the first time, if at all, when dead. It offers its sacraments to a population that lives without rites of passage, and which regards the National Health Service rather than the National Church as its true spiritual guardian. Here, Scruton argues that the Anglican Church is the forlorn trustee of an architectural and artistic inheritance that remains one of the treasures of European civilization. He contends that it is a still point in the centre of English culture and that its defining texts, the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are the sources from which much of our national identity derives. At once an elegy to a vanishing world and a clarion call to recognize Anglicanism's continuing relevance, Our Church is a graceful and persuasive book.