ABOUT THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Calvary Episcopal Church has been offering spiritual, pastoral, and liturgical leadership since its founding on June 29, 1857.

The Episcopal Church is the American branch of the Anglican Communion, rooted in the Church of England, whose spiritual head is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The ministry is composed of three orders: deacons, priests, and bishops.

The system of organization includes the parish, the diocese, the province, and the General Convention. The General Convention, the highest ecclesiastical authority in the church, consists of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies and meets in session every three years.

The ecclesiastical head of the Episcopal Church is the presiding bishop, elected by the General Convention. The National Council, set up in 1919, is delegated by the General Convention to administer all the organized missionary, educational, and social work.

The Anglican Communion has some 80 million members and stands as the second largest Christian body in the world. Although these churches are autonomous in their governance, they are bound together by tradition, Scripture, and the traditions they garnered from the Church of England.

The Episcopal Church evolved as an independent denomination after the American Revolution. In the United States, its membership is 2.5 million members and falls under the jurisdiction of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori (photo left).

Bishops in the American Episcopal Church are elected by individual dioceses and are consecrated into the Apostolic Succession, considered to witness to an unbroken line of Church leadership beginning with the Apostles themselves.

For more than two decades the American Episcopal Church has ordained women to the priesthood and, in 1988, the Diocese of Massachusetts elected the first Anglican woman bishop, Barbara Harris.

The Episcopal Church uses the Book of Common Prayer as the centerpiece of public worship subscribes to the historic Creeds (the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed), considers the Bible to be divinely inspired holds the Holy Eucharist to be the central act of Christian worship grants broad freedom in the interpretation of doctrine.

More on Episcopal Church history from the Learning Network.

Find out more about the history of Calvary Episcopal Church.

Calvary Episcopal Church
Corner of Holten and Cherry Streets
P.O. Box 393
Danvers, MA 01923-0693
Tel. 978.774-1150
Email: info@calvaryepiscopal-danvers.org