An Outsider Visits an Episcopal Church

and Matt this is the 10-minute Bible our I am at some busy intersection near downtown Las Vegas Nevada in community where you don't really picture churches I mean Las Vegas is about other stuff right but this church is almost as old as the town its Christ Church Episcopal and the guy who's in charge here is a man named Reverend Barry Vaughn and he's been willing to sit down with me and process through the history of this church the theology of this church and the bigger picture of the Episcopal Church in general so let's go inside and check it out Barry Vaughn hi hi I'm Matt Whitman man decides to meet you nice to meet you honey pies Church Reverend Vaughn Barry do you mind just showing someone who knows nothing about this around and yeah I literally poke at things and ask questions come on in cool Christ Church is the oldest church in Las Vegas we were founded in 1907 okay and the building you're seeing though was built around 1960 obviously Spanish mission style indigenous to the southwest the Episcopal Church generally strives for good values in terms of arts architecture music so a space like this I mean it all means something right what is a what is having a courtyard like this mean what does it communicate theologically to have it built this way that's a good question I I wouldn't say that it really has a profound theological meaning I mean no more than a courtyard at your church would or a Presbyterian Church to me what it signifies that's important to this church is welcome one of my favorite things about being the pastor of this church is when I give Communion and Sunday I have a black couple white couple and Latino couple a gay couple a homeless guy at a former US Senator all receiving Communion at the same time Wow so the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church historically does Episcopal just mean Anglican Church not in England more or less that's not a bad way of putting it we are part of the worldwide family of Anglican churches or the Anglican Communion prior to the American Revolution we were all members of Church in England you know George Washington was remember the Church of England and other people like that obviously you can't have the Church of England after you've just thrown off English yeah sure so 1787 the remnants of the Church of England met in Philadelphia and said hey we need a new name and they call themselves the Episcopal Church which simply means a church ruled by bishops Episcopal so the Episcopal Church of that definitionally means not in England it means that this has to be a church that's very adaptable right is this in the age of later colonialism and all of that so in a way I feel like this space does come with a secondary theological assumption which is that this this message about Jesus should go out to the farthest reaches of the world because this is not what the part of the world where Jesus happened looks like I mean this is that's a good way exactly opposite end of the world yeah one way to cherish is that the Anglican Communion is a missionary church everywhere it exists it exists because missionaries came there so all of your organizations stuff your classroom stuff it's all this direction right right and I'm guessing the tall thing here is where we do worship yeah that's the sanctuary where the nave is it's officially called welcome to Christ Church again you do that the full organ thing yeah we do all right yeah my organ is like to say is the biggest organ in Nevada this is first thing I noticed walking in you've got pews like I'd expect to see in a New England church or an old Baptist congregation is that just a function of history or is there a reason for having pews as you know in the medieval church there were no pews the nave was empty and people would bring seats with them or their servants would bring seats for them and you'll see a lot of churches today including Episcopal churches trying to go back to that with more flexible seating for us it's a function of two things one cost and two people are just too traditional to give up pews okay now well and this makes it easy to have the kneeling bench it's either yeah churches they're being built today probably are less likely to have kneelers the old rule used to be sit to listen kneel to pray stand to praise which is pretty good I like that it's good theology I think but honestly the main thing is that people pray not whether they sit stand or kneel to do it so ok somebody comes in the first thing they're gonna see is this stained glass window what is what am I seeing here one thing that's interesting about Christ's Church is most liturgical churches are oriented that it's set up so that the theology of the church kind of begins here at the door so the font is right here at the door because the entrance to the church is through baptism right oh yeah this is actually where you do Baptist it's not ok it's it's a symbolic font okay all right and maybe the past dated baptisms there again practicality means that we want people to see baptisms taking place so we always do baptisms at the altar now where everyone can see it this room looks completely unfamiliar to me I don't think we have anything that this rings a bell with this is our Columbarium not a lot of churches have these but more and more going to it I think 90% of the funerals I've done have been for people who were cremated okay and we can take the ashes and put them here so this is a permanent resting place for people's ashes are we allowed to poker absolutely going in Wow one of the great things about this is you know in the past you do the funeral in the church and then go to the cemetery for the burial sure but when I do a funeral someone has been cremated we have the service and walk right back here place the ashes here over done with and I like that the whole service takes place right here and people can participate in all of it so these shirts records is this yeah and this is from the old church not too long after the church was built on this location they invited the Archbishop of Canada to speak here and so that's where he signed the book yeah it took me a minute to catch yeah okay yeah I would probably put that up to you I know yeah it's kind of soon if any Archbishop's of anything come to our gracious ever yeah so we step in here everything opens up hugely is there seating up above the choir is seated up there oh that's right my loft this thing couldn't have been cheap and you've got a choir and you have people putting energy into all of this why do you have music in church what does music mean geologically to you guys first of all we have a choir up here the primary require is the congregation okay the choir up here is secondary its function is to lead the praises of God's people that's it's only function really I mean they do solos who do anthems and all that but that's all secondary to leading the praises of God's people the Christian Church has been a singing faith from day one and Jesus saying him after the Last Supper when he went out of the garden right so we've always been a singing church oh it goes beyond that to the the temple and the synagogue there are as many different expressions of church music as there are Christian churches I used to teach a course in liturgy at the Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia and the main thing I try to get across to my students was that the architecture determines the style of worship in a church like this organ and choir fit yeah in a New England Congregational Church you'd want to do something simpler and it got the cathedral you want incense and you know the whole nine yards in a warehouse industrial coffee shop you might as well just get the rock band exactly that that's what you need for that cultural situation this light seems intentional to me this candle hanging down what does that symbolize what does it do that is the candle of the presence and it symbolizes the fact that the bread and wine in the silver box under the crucifix has been blessed at the altar on Sunday the reason that there's bread wine there is primarily so that we can take it to people who are sick or couldn't come to church on Sunday for whatever reason that's why it's in there right now during the middle of the week exactly it's more of a convenience than anything else is that is that candle ever out yeah it's if there is nothing in the box then the candle should be out and it's always extinguished on Maundy Thursday Thursday of Holy Week because after the communion service on Maundy Thursday we take everything out because in the end of the service on Thursday night of Holy Week until Easter day we don't have communion that is a symbol of the suffering and death and burial it's a sign of if you will a sign of absence and then comes back on Easter so apart from a liturgical calendar that is an interesting teaching tool that you're describing to remind us of the story of the Bible but attached to a liturgical calendar right this becomes an annual reminder of of what the theological transaction that was actually happened it's across the Resurrection and the interim exactly that's a really profound and unique way to communicate a truth that for me is primarily done by trying to think of new words to illustrate it yes here that's one of the things I love about the Episcopal Church the way symbols communicate theology and one of the most powerful ways that is the liturgical calendar yeah I'm understanding that better the more we talk at be at the Greek Orthodox Church that I went to me being here made sense me being up here did not make sense is there a difference between right here and right here you can go anywhere in this church you want to go okay can we well if you're you know if you're not ready Kenny start by lightning I'm I am afraid of that but I feel relatively safe I thank you all right we need to safe enough so you would call this an altar yes that was the original altar and prior to 1970s 76 or so maybe a little before that the priest would have celebrated with his fate back to the congregation okay and then again the liturgical reform movement came along and they said no we need to face the people and so they put in another altar okay so now this all happens here yeah and people participate do you do you bless the elements here does that happen before the service no we bless everything takes place publicly in in front of the people you've got this rail and so I'm assuming that that people come up and receive this directly from you yeah they do people come forward for communion and they usually kneel they can stand if they'd rather or for whatever reason they can't kneel standing is just fine also someone is even more disabled if they're in a wheelchair we'll take communion out to them but the norm is for people to come up and receive it in a way that's the altar call in the Episcopal Church we invite I issue an altar call every Sunday I invite people to come up and receive the body and blood from me and when I say body and blood I would have a lower Church understanding than some clergy for me the the bread and the wine are the sacrament of Christ's presence but not literally Christ's presence so he is here with us he is participating with us in the act of communion right but that is not some platonic transferal of essence in my opinion no I wouldn't I wouldn't say that okay I'm tracking who can respond to the call who can take communion well that's another good question and thinking about that has been changing traditionally we've always said any baptized Christian can receive communion but I have met more and more people who have experienced the presence of God in communion and for them it's been a conversion experience Wesley Acts we spoke spoke of communion as a converting ordinance huh and I'm not saying he gave communion to unbaptized people I don't know what Wesley did but I finally came to the conclusion that I can't refuse communion to anybody whoever they are so I just say anyone that wants to follow Jesus is welcome to receive bread the bread and the wine well I mean have you ever had somebody respond to that invitation with that language and be like hey that was actually my first communion ever yeah I a sit and talk about this and it kind of opens the door to the conversation then well you know if you want to receive communion why don't you go ahead and get baptized and that's happened to I promise you somebody who is in the third chair sitting in on our conversation here on the internet already has their fingers on the keys right now and I don't give them away because they're like oh he knows what I'm doing and their get ready to light you up from oh I know I know I know that'll happen what would you say to the person who would say no like this absolutely is like the final ordinance of the church this demonstrates and already established communion with Jesus and the other Saints and you're you're using the wrong ordinance to reach out to people yeah and I I get that help help me quell their fingers what I would say well one really practical question is where the Apostles baptized oh that's quite the question is and I don't know the answer to that they've been in water before yeah that's right hmm yeah so so the in theory the understanding is that the trajectory of becoming a part of this church would be baptism at an early age or as an adult either way right then some kind of confirmation or process by which people understand and assent to a certain expression of or a certain level of understanding of the theology of what you believe and then communion is something they're able to fully participate in what you're saying is those two steps are something that that you're congregation has agreed to say we still care about these things they're happening right that still maybe even our ideal trajectory yeah but but you feel this table should just be open to that it should be up to the individual as to whether their internship with Christ that's how I feel I just can't sit in judgment on anybody if someone comes forward for communion I'm gonna give the communion so this point of view is that is that your read on things or is that what Episcopal stew now there's a debate in the church right now there are people that would say that it still should be baptism first and then communion I think more and more people are saying no we issue the invitation and let people make up their own mind about that you really have opened up the side door I really have that's a good way to put in yeah yeah well thank you for the tour and thank you for sitting down with me to let me pester you even further here sure I think for a lot of people watching this the question is going to be there's some vague association between Anglicanism and the Pisgah peléan Church where do these two groups fit together and where do they fit in the grand scheme of church history sure the Episcopal Church was the first branch of the Church of England formed outside the British Isles okay in the late 18th century but to take it back a couple of steps the Church of England and anglicanism in general got it started in the 16th century as part of the Reformation there are three or four main parts the Reformation depending on how you look at it Luther Calvin swingley the Anabaptist and the Church of England excuse me in the Church of England in a sense is the most conservative branch the Reformation conservative in the sense that while Luther to a degree Calvin to much greater degree and Anabaptists even more throughout much of the medieval church we retained much of the medieval church so we retained the offices of priests bishop and deacon we continued to make holy communion or the Eucharist the central service of the church like Luther and Calvin the Church of England wanted a vernacular liturgy that is a service of worship and the language of the people so Luther had the German language Calvin French expect that yeah people hustle by here yeah we had the Book of Common Prayer the English prayer book how connected to Roman Christianity is English Christianity through the Middle Ages I mean you got water in between the two feels like culturally there's a little bit of difference there is there already a drift happening before the Reformation or does it is it pretty in lockstep there are people who say that English Christianity prior to the Reformation was the England was the most papal country of Europe or in Spain more than France and at least as much or if not more okay and Henry the eighth was a deeply committed Roman Catholic when Luther launched the Reformation Henry wrote a book called the defense of the seven sacraments which was a an attack on Luther okay Henry was actually a very learned man and especially in theology and so for writing that book the Bishop of Rome ie the Pope gave Henry and all his subsequent descendants the title defender of the faith but an irony is that even though the monarchs of England now are Protestant they're still defenders of the faith that's part of their like Harold that's right it's part of their time' queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and defenders of faith really exact applic title it's a Catholic title and I just think being very Catholic it's not anymore but I mean if somebody gives you that why would you give it up right yeah keep that keep that forever I give it to my kids so what happened though was that Henry was the second Tudor monarch to come to English throne and he came to the throne at the end of a century of violence and civil war at the end of the Wars of the Roses because his hold on the crown was challenged by some now a lot of people say that the Church of England will came into being because Henry wanted a divorce Catherine and Mary is mistress Anne Boleyn that has nothing to do with it Henry could have had as many mistresses as he wanted he was king and nobody cared what the King did what he needed was a legitimate male heir and the two parts of that that are significant are legitimate and male and he believed that God had cursed him because he'd married his brother's widow so he just he took the most radical route but the only possible route he could do and that was he declared that the Bishop of Rome the Pope no longer had authority over the Christian Church in England on what grounds remember that Eastern Christianity had been governed by the Emperor sure so Henry borrowed this idea from Eastern Christianity called Caesar Oh Pape ISM that is that the ruler is not only ruler of the state but also ruler of the church that the crown not only appoints civil officials but also appoints the bishops of the church which the Catholics would have seen different because of the investiture controversy exactly so Henry's got to go over the top of that to something much older that's exactly right you exactly went back to something much older okay and so he had Parliament declare him supreme head of the church in England and he appointed Thomas Cranmer to be Archbishop of Canterbury and Cranmer had actually proposed this idea to Henry namely that he throw off papal authority and so once Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury then Cranmer declared Henry's marriage to Katherine be null and void okay as long as Henry was king though the Reformation in England was pretty much stalled it was Catholicism without the Pope Henry rain from 1509 215 and I've forgotten the exact date the act of Supremacy by Parliament in 1530 s and so for the 1530s till the end of his life Henry was in effect the Pope of the Church of England but the liturgy continued to be celebrated in latin clergy were required to be celibate Cranmer mary but he married secretly because Henry did not favor Mary clergy and it wasn't until Harry can get married like yeah but Cranmer came six seven eight times right and that's a tough deal exactly a tough boss so his second wife Anne Boleyn also did not bear him a son she bore him one child Elizabeth who eventually does succeed Henry as as the ruler she worked out she worked out pretty well it was his third wife Jane Seymour who actually was the one that gave him a son and his son who became Edward the sixth came to the throne when Henry died in 1547 and Henry had entrusted Edward's education to Protestants so when Edward became King then the Reformation really got started it was after the 1549 two years after Henry died that the first English prayer book was published at the same time they also published a statement of faith that ultimately became the thirty-nine articles which is a mildly Calvinist statement of faith okay and that's different from the Westminster Confession that a lot of people associate with Otis had decentering deriv King James yes mister confession is about a century later and that takes place during the English interregnum between the death of Charles first and the advent of his brother Charles second that's when cromwell's and Jeff right exactly okay okay I think I'm getting the timeline may listen so it's confusing so who who is considered the founding monarch of Anglicanism is it Henry Edward or Elizabeth well that's a good question a lot of people would say Henry was but he really wasn't like I said he favored very few changes in the Church of England his son Edward was only nine years old when he became King so it was really the the Regents who ruled on his behalf who authorized the liturgical and theological changes okay then I Edward died in 1553 and his half-sister Mary Tudor came to the throne and that was Henry's daughter by his first wife Catherine of Aragon and she was a devout Roman Catholic and did everything she could to turn back the clock so she reinstituted the Catholic faith she had at least 300 Protestants burned at the stake best thing and that made her very unpopular hmm so she died in 1558 and her half-sister Elizabeth came to the throne so it's really Henry's daughter Elizabeth the first who becomes the primary architect of the Protestant Church of England okay as an outsider looking in if you said Episcopal or Anglican my uninformed read would be kind of Catholic kind of Protestant how did how do we land on how much Catholic looking and how much Protestant looking it ended up being well wouldn't you say that all Christians are Catholics yeah I think I think it's one of those tricky words though we're maybe not everybody knows what that means a Catholic what is that word well I Catholic holding the universal Christian faith okay you know subscribing to the Apostles Creed so all of us are Catholic with a small C we all hold the Bible as a rule of faith but most of us would regard the Apostles Creed as a accurate summary of the faith we'd all practice the two Dominical sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper I regard the Anglican Communion as a Protestant church and the Episcopal Church being part of it is a Protestant Church okay but in the nineteenth century there was a reform movement in England called the Oxford movement and this involve figures like John Henry Newman John Keeble Edward Pusey they wanted to really Catholic element in Anglicanism since then it's been more difficult for Anglicans to tell people whether they're really Protestant or really Catholic but I think if you really look at the way we're set up but the fact that lay people really have freedom to decide issues for themselves that that looks Protestant to me so in terms of decision making you have congregational elements we do have congregational elements but remember that Lutheran Calvin when we're not Congregationalist they did in favor a congregational model of the church they favored ruled by clergy and that's essentially what we have Episcopal in our name means that we are a church of Bishops having said that the Episcopal Church when it was organized in the 1780s made a lot of decisions that make us more Congregational in a sense our bishops are elected they're not appointed and each parish church is free to call its own priests with the bishops permission so rounding up timeline here it sounds like Episcopal was meant to be the expression of Anglicanism that exists in the Americas and outside of England but when I look around town now there are Anglican churches that say Anglican yep and there are Piscopo churches what happened was there was a read of ID or a reconnection that occurred it's a nature of Protestant churches to split we've had fewer splits I think than most Protestant churches but in the last 50 years the Episcopal Church has made some decisions we decided to ordain women to the offices of priest and Bishop and that provoked a split so but now virtually every branch of the Anglican Communion does ordain women to the office of priest ambition if I were to say what's the most basic stuff that you believe about God and man and the Bible what are the highlights well as I said I consider this to be a Protestant church so like all Protestants we would believe that we're saved not by our own efforts but by by God's decision I like to say that salvation isn't our achievement it's God's gift to us what sets us apart would be the fact that if you came to Christ church on a Sunday morning the church would look the service would look very Catholic it with a big see okay because our liturgy sounds like the liturgy you would find across the street at Saint Anne's Catholic Church our vestments would look very similar but that's part of what I meant by saying that we are the conservative branch of the Reformation and that we kept a lot of things from the medieval church so it's really a matter of emphasis and between the two elements word and sacrament we put more emphasis on sacraments the the word is there and I think we actually have pretty good preaching in the Episcopal Church in general but one of the reasons I became an Episcopalian is because the emphasis on sacrament the sacrament in a sense human personality doesn't get in the way you know the sacrament is God's offer of himself to me in the bread and the wine at the altar so that's a transaction between God and me if the sermon is not a very good sermon then I don't get as much out of it but the sacrament is always the sacrament so skeptical more trendy modern Protestant it goes to a more stripped-down version of church comes along and they're like well why the conservatism what was the advantage of hanging onto them as Catholic elements you've listed one the the sacramental God approaches us what are the other advantages what are the other things that they you feel were rightly preserved from medieval Christianity I think that what that does for me is it tells me that I am a part of a church that has roots going back 2,000 years the service that we have here on Sunday would have been recognizable to Hippolyta's in Rome in the year 150 hmm yeah and I think what we do would be disorienting it might be yeah I I think that you do have to respond to your culture and you have to something that is culturally that translates culturally so Christianity takes one form in this culture it takes a different form in Africa and yet another form in in China but I think that the we put the emphasis on those elements that are the same pretty much in all times and in all places so this channel is called the 10 minute Bible our I talk about the Bible a lot I like to talk about where it came from how it happened how different people read it I think a lot of people who watch this channel are really interested in that stuff as well so what is your read what is the Episcopal read on what the Bible is and how it happened and what we do with it probably the single most important theologian the Anglican Church is produced is a guy named Richard hooker who lived in Elizabethan England and hooker borrowed a phrase from Proverbs and he said that the Christian faith is like a three-fold cord not easily broken and he said the three elements the cord our scripture tradition and reason or you could also say it's a tricycle you have two little wheels tradition and reason but the primary one is scripture it's the big wheel on the tricycle other people would phrase it differently that that's my personal way of expressing it but I don't think you can understand scripture unless you apply reason and tradition to it and the word tradition can be a hot and button for some people the Catholic Church uses tradition in a very different way than I'm using tradition for me tradition is simply the ongoing conversation that the Christian Church is having I don't think any of us has ever read the Bible alone right every time we pick it up we are in conversation with every sermon we've ever heard every Bible study we've ever been in every person we've ever discussed Scripture with every heresy that's ever been repeating every heresy yeah exactly so that's what tradition means to me and reason is just obvious the scripture is written in Hebrew and Greek we can't understand it unless we apply a reason to it we can't understand the cultural context unless we do some historical research why did Paul say that women should cover their heads well because in Corinth prostitutes walked the streets with their heads uncovered it was not a directive to people for all time it was specific to that one situation so so Scripture is a part of this Anglican triad or three-fold cord it's the dominant or the senior element among the three elements and you know I have no trouble saying that Scripture is God's revealed truth but I like what Bart said you know scripture is Christ is the word scripture our the words about the word they are not the word itself after this conversation I would love to come and sit on a service sometime and so next time I'm in town I'm going to if somebody else is in Vegas we're rolling through town how do they connect with you our website is Christ Episcopal LV com LV Las Vegas got it yeah okay what if somebody's not in this part of the world they just want to learn more about the Episcopal Church in general just look up the Episcopal Church on the internet and that will connect you with a local church okay and statement of faith and all of that stuff those are things that are out there yeah and it's all on the church website cool I've learned a ton and I've also taken up a ton of your time some fun thank you so so much you're welcome really appreciate come see us okay well good luck with your and god bless your efforts thanks man appreciate it quick observation no actually a couple of quick observations and the first one is just father bear Yvonne is wonderful this guy is a fountain of knowledge he knows all this stuff off the top of his head he's put a ton of time into this and he would never say it on camera but he's got rock star advanced degrees from rock star institutions he carries himself with humility and kindness not like he's trying to impress you huge thanks to him if you're in Las Vegas stop by that church I think you'll really enjoy it but here's the second observation I went the day before to an Anglican Church a traditional Anglican Church and that was very intentional both of these were in Las Vegas just across town from each other both of these guys were fantastic if you want to see the video from the Anglican Church I'll link it somewhere or something but these churches are not in direct fellowship with each other anymore a lot of times you think about churches especially within Protestantism and gradually you know you maybe come to a different theological conclusion than another Protestant Church and it seems like he just split off and split off and split off maybe that's one of the weaknesses of Protestantism but I didn't see it as a weakness between these two guys I could have poked and prodded Barry Vaughn I could have poked and prodded Gordon Hynes over at the Anglican Church as much as I wanted and they just weren't going to take mean shots at each other they seem to really appreciate that they both exist and they seem to really appreciate that they both need to exist these searches have different takes on some frankly pretty secondary things in the grand scheme of God in the Bible and salvation but it would be really hard for them to function together as effectively as they could the way they're doing it right now and so I know I've been around Christians where they're really mad that somebody doesn't think the same thing they think and it kind of feels like maybe getting after each other a little bit but I've also been around Christians who come at it more like these two guys that was encouraging to me seemed to be in keeping with the spirit of this whole endeavor so thanks a ton for going to another church with me for learning about another tradition with me I hope it's having the same weird effect on you that it's having on me it's um certainly softening and and that's really fun for me as always if you like this stuff I would be enormous ly grateful if you would hit the subscribe button the reality is I want you to see these I'm excited about them I want to share them with you and the way YouTube does it now if you just hit subscribe you're not necessarily going to get notified they're doing all kinds of new stuff with the algorithm and so if you subscribe it makes it more likely that they will show you what I do if you really want to see these if you just kind of want to see these if you could click that little bell that means you get notified every single time I publish something like this for those of you who who are really resonating with this stuff and would like to do something to make more of it happen you can go to patreon.com/scishow thanks a ton if you want to be a part of that patreon.com slash gmbh if you don't that's no problem as well either way thank you thank you thank you for being interested in this stuff and for being so charitable as well I'm matt72 Bible hours do this again soon

Channel: The Ten Minute Bible Hour

Views: 157,633

Rating: 4.8179059 out of 5

Keywords: Episcopal, Anglican, Episcopalian, Henry VIII, Ten Minute Bible Hour, Visit Church

Id: vXD_64KBsn8

Length: 39min 58sec (2398 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Trigger Warning for this sub--priest says TEC is protestant

[u/TotalInstruction]

I only got through a third of the video but I think the priest did an excellent job in the portion I saw.

[u/mss24]

The same channel did an Anglican video recently but went to an APCK church in Las Vegas and as a result only got one take on the Anglican experience

[u/sl150]

Interesting! I had hoped this guy would go to an Episcopal parish.

[u/DioLives2019]

I really enjoyed this video. Thank you