Regarding the missing listings for the Episcopal Church at the American Bible Society's website, here's Tobias in the comments:
Blogger Tobias Stanislas Haller said...
As it now stands, TEC shows up on the Find a Church directory as a Specific Denomination under "Anglican" chosen as the General Denomination. This was my initial concern, and it has now been fixed. At some point the Episcopal Church, which had been in the list of denominations, was removed. It's now back, and categorized properly as Anglican.
However, on the screen where a parish enters its own information for the directory display, the two drop-down data entry boxes refer to "primary denomination" and "secondary denomination." There is no listing for just plain "Anglican" on either of these ( they appear to be identical). So an Episcopal parish should you just choose "Episcopal Church" as the primary denomination. There is no way, using these fields, to indicate any connection with the Anglican Communion. (My suggestion to the ABS would be to add "Anglican Communion" to the denominational list.)
If an Episcopal parish wants to indicate that it is Anglican on its directory display, the answer is to add the word Anglican to the parish description. Making reference to the Anglican Communion in descriptions of Episcopal parishes was commended by general convention, if I'm not mistaken in 2006. I have done this for my parish using the tagline "The Anglican presence in Fordham since 1853."
That seems to be the state of things; my primary concern has been addressed; and as to who it was removed the Episcopal Church from the listings in the first place (if this was an intentional act)... well, truly they have their reward. (my emphasis)
Other WB posts on the missing listings are here and here.
ABS evidently lists as "Anglican" any sect that claims to be Anglican. Their "Specific Denominations" section lists seven "Anglican" churches, only one of which, TEC - described simply as "Episcopal" - is a member church of the Anglican Communion.
ReplyDeleteLapin, that's true, but I wouldn't expect the ABS to sort all that out. The ABC, the "first among equals" head of the Anglican Communion, has enough trouble sorting it out.
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