Please be aware that this autocephalous church is neither Roman Catholic, Protestant, nor canonical Orthodox Christian. We do not raise funds, nor do we offer paid employment. We affirm the value of diversity without bias due to faith, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, sexuality, handicap, or any other life challenge, circumstance or loving choice. Peace to you and yours!
In February of 1993, at the end of a hard winter -- which had also been a hard winter of the soul for us -- clergy, candidates and laity from six ministries gathered in Washington DC for a much-needed retreat. We met for morning and evening prayer, we celebrated a diversity of Liturgies, we shared meals, we sat in silence together with the Holy Spirit, we spoke about our wounds and our hopes for ministry, we laughed, we healed, we allowed God to re-create our souls and to re-call our vocations.
Sitting in quiet appreciation following our final Liturgy, we realized that we had begun to do that which we longed to do -- we had become church together.
We affirmed that we are self-governing ministries who want to keep a certain tradition -- the apostolic sacramental tradition of the earliest Christian church -- and to make the sacraments available to all who sincerely desire them. Otherwise, we want to be free in Spirit, and must therefore leave others similarly free, for individual authentic choices in our spiritual lives and ministries. We discussed the way in which we had been called "free" by a previous synod -- free to be different in the same way that those bishops were different -- and found this to be no freedom at all. We affirmed that, in order to be truly free, we must be free to be different in individual ways and equally free to be similar, traditional, even conservative.
We realized that we would need one or more bishops in order to truly keep the apostolic tradition. I was already a duly elected and consecrated bishop in the catholic apostolic New Order of Glastonbury, and I had been charged specifically by my consecrator to stand by these very people gathered, whether or not they joined the New Order. There, in the sanctuary where I had just ordained a sub-deacon and celebrated Eucharist, I promised to teach the teachings of Jesus, to guarantee that our sacraments and successions would keep the apostolic tradition, and otherwise to leave everyone free in Spirit for authentic spirituality and ministry.
We had reached this point by true communal discernment during our retreat, so that we realized the value of such a manner of business. For sacramental and other apostolic matters, the pastoral care of a bishop would be needed. For all other matters, the communal discernment of laity and clergy would be sought. We affirmed that each of our ministries would make the same covenant I had made, and that each covenant ministry would be self-governed in all local matters not affecting the integrity of our apostolic tradition or our church community as a whole.
Today, we have ministries from Alaska to Florida. Our priests, deacons and laity are served by bishops who enjoy a variety of apostolic successions. We are dependent upon no other ecclesiastical institution, but we respect and give thanks to God for those bishops who have made our autocephalous apostolic church possible. We give thanks also for the collegial respect and love we share with several other independent bishops and clergy.
We are breachmenders, with a passion to serve the disenfranchised and marginalized. We value our tradition-with-freedom, and the result is a diverse community of people who respect one another. Candidates and ministries not yet in covenant develop in the care of a covenant ministry of their choice. Each covenant ministry selects one lay representative and one clergy representative to participate in communal discernment on matters which affect the entire church without affecting our tradition. We value the positive teachings of other churches and communions in the apostolic tradition, but we balance these teachings with the continuing inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which we wait upon and seek to discern in community. Thus our church is not Roman Catholic, not canonical Orthodox, not Protestant. We are Friends Catholic. I invite you to meet us, and to serve all of God's children with us.