Reading the Bible in a year!
Resources
The Episcopal Lingo, Part 4: The Ministers
The series will explore words used in the Episcopal Church that are arcane, unusual or have changed over time. This week’s word is basic – the minister.
The Colonial Minister was a man in the middle. As a branch of Church of England, the Virginia church was governed from London. The church required that all priests be educated and ordained in England. However in practice they were hired by colonial vestries unlike their English counterpart. The parish vestries defied the governor in two primary ways — through control of the recruitment or selection of clergy and through refusal to present for induction
Even so clerical appointments were part of extensive clientage or patronage relationships. Local landowners and gentry by mid-century possessed over half of the “advowsons” (legal right to appoint) in the church since in many cases they owned the land where the church was built. Ministers were also challenged by the increasing of dissenters and those caught up in the Great Awakening by 1740.
Continued below…
Christ centered, Biblically based, spirit filled and a place of simple hospitality, we have shared our communal life with our church,our community, and those in need. Your presence enriches us.
September 2 -11:00am Holy Eucharist, Rite II
September 2 -12:00pm Coffee Hour and Mission Trip Display
The Mission Team Returns, Aug 28
After 1,000 people served on Staten Island, August 25, 2012
Want to send a special message to the Mission Team ? Click here. You may want to welcome them back to Port Royal. View all messages to date
How can you keep up with the Mission Team on Staten Island ?
Go to http://www.churchsp.org/statenisland2012
This is a community site within our own website. The team will have a chance to make posts, add pictures, etc. The team will be pressed for time so we don’t know how it will work.
If you have a login to the site you can post comments and interact. If you don’t click the create new account button at the top of this page and follow the prompts:
We hope to have them provide a display of their experiences on Sunday, Sept 2 at Coffee hour.
"History of Christianity" debuts September 9
This year the overall theme of Adult Education is “Struggles of Faith” . You can study faith through understanding and challenge’s of one’s own faith. However, during this year, we look at how others have done it and how they have been challenged. How has faith been revealed and reshaped throughout our history ? Hopefully it will provide a greater depth of your own faith by studying the diversity of the Christian experience.
The fall for 12 Sundays we will watch an intriguing DVD series Christianity the First 3,000 years, based on book of the same name by Diarmaid McCulloch.
This series sheds the idea that Christianity is a pure western faith. Indeed he shows the story in Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople and places to the east to show the diversity and constant reinvention of the Christian faith. At one time there were distinct Latin, Byzantium and Orthodox Christian faiths with different traditions and in some cases different leaders. Christianity has survived persecution, splits, wars of religion, mockery and hatred. This is less a study of Jesus and Gospels and Christian theology and more of understanding how worship has changed through different movements of the Church.
We will start Christian education at 9:45am on Sundays to allow for 30 minutes of video and 30 minutes of discussion.
Here is a 1:30 minute video featuring the author describing his book:
Colonial ministers are easily distinguished from their current counterparts. They were all male. There was no Diocese or support from an church agency. There was no staff aside from the churchwarden. The minister was also automatically a farmer. He was assigned the income from a "glebe," or parcel of land that they could farm. In counties with good soil for growing tobacco, the income from the glebe was relatively high – and those parishes were able to attract the best-quality ministers.
Early on, there was a severe shortage of priests in Virginia early on—only 28 priests served a population of 140,000 in 1724. Virginia parishes almost doubled in number between 1725 and 1775 (from fifty-one to ninety-five). Even so, in no single year during the period were fewer that 76 percent of the parishes supplied with a minister. However by the Revolution that percentage had improved to 100% Diversity in ethnic origins and birthplace characterizes Virginia’s eighteenth-century parsons
What accounts for the change ? As time went on more priests came not from England but were home grown in the colonies. In Virginia as in the British Isles, the ministry functioned also as a path of upward mobility for young men from society’s middling. Another path was coming from abroad before deciding to go in the ministry They made decisions for ordination in the context of their Virginia experiences. Others came from other counties such as Scotland
Mastery of classical languages was at the heart of education for priests. Indeed the reason for setting up a college in Virginia "want of able & faithfull ministers" While the majority of Virginia’s parsons attended college, some did not. Presumably they satisfied the loophole in the requirements for ordination ("he is able to yield an account of his faith in Latin, according to the Articles of Religion"). There were no seminaries as we have now . The minimum age to be a priest was 24.
Once they achieved position it was not bad job. Vestries did not subject their ministers to annual reviews. They did not renegotiate contracts with parsons. Apart from stipulating in some cases an initial probationary term for clergy not known to them previously, vestries behaved as if the parson they hired was theirs for life This tenure record is all the more noteworthy when considered in the light of clergy mortality. The mean age at death for parsons was fifty-seven years. Over a third were dead before they reached age fifty.
Socially it was a was of moving up in life. All Anglican parsons were gentlemen by profession. Some were gentlemen by birth. Many augmented their gentle status through marriage. Many were of modest background so it was a way of climbing the social ladder.
What was their call ? In their ordination vows, Anglican clergy pledged to teach nothing but what is proven by scripture; to preach and administer the sacraments faithfully; to combat error and heresy; to be diligent in study and prayer; to foster quietness, peace, and love among the people in their charge; "to frame and fashion your own selves, and your families, according to the doctrine of Christ; and to make both your selves and them, as much as in you lieth, wholesom examples and Patterns to the flock of Christ."
The clergy dressed the part with more rigid dress codes than today. The priest had to dress the role as the "model" or "pattern" of the Christian life. For clergy holding academic degrees, the usual "decent and comely Ap¬parel" were "Gowns with standing Collars and Sleeves strait at the Hands, or wide sleeves, as is used m the Universities, with Hoods or Tippets [scarves] of Silk or Sarcenet [a fine soft silk or cotton fabric], and square Caps.