Dear DOD,
Please explain who Episcopal saints are and why they may not be the same as the Catholic saints.
Regards,
Dawn Arnold
Dear Dawn,
What a rich question.
Saints, in our Episcopal Church, trickle down to us from the history of our Anglican Communion. At the beginning of the English reformation, King Henry VIII intended the Anglican Church to be the Catholic Church in England. Therefore, the Roman Catholic calendar of Saints was imported into that of the emerging Church of England. The English reformers, however, simplified the calendar, eliminating those that were not rooted in scripture or history and reducing the number of feasts to 93. (A fun fact is that the three most popular church patron saints in Great Britain are Saint Mary, Saint Nicholas, and Saint Paul.)
After the American revolution, when the emerging Episcopal Church published its first edition of its Book of Common Prayer, the number of feasts was again reduced, to 25, nearly all rooted in the New Testament.
The Oxford movement in the late 19th century began to stir interest again in Catholic practices, including the commemoration of a broader group of saints. The low church element in the Episcopal Church resisted a revision of the calendar of saints until 1958. The Lambeth Conference of 1958, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, gathered Bishops from all across the Anglican Communion, from Canada to Australia, to South India, to Jerusalem, etc.
Article 79 from this conference outlined qualifications for being memorialized in church calendars:
Heroes of the Christian Church in the Anglican Communion
The Conference is of the opinion that the following principles should guide the selection of saints and heroes for commemoration:
• In the case of scriptural saints, care should be taken to commemorate men or women in terms which are in strict accord with the facts made known in Holy Scripture.
• In the case of other names, the Calendar should be limited to those whose historical character and devotion are beyond doubt.
• In the choice of new names, economy should be observed and controversial names should not be inserted until they can be seen in the perspective of history.
• The addition of a new name should normally result from a wide-spread desire expressed in the region concerned over a reasonable period of time.
In 1964 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church authorized, for trial use, the first edition of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a comprehensive calendar of the church year which included 105 additional commemorations. The General Convention of our Church, which meets every three years, has continued to revise the calendar, adding and subtracting names and events. Attention has been given to include women, people of color, and even lay heroes of our tradition. Our list of “saints” now includes C.S. Lewis, Thurgood Marshall, Oscar Romero, and Florence Nightingale, to name a few.
Hope this helps,
Dear Old Dad (DOD)
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