CHAPTER 1

WHAT DIFFERENCEDOES IT MAKE?

Why does it matter whether the structure of the Episcopal Church isfederal, confederal, or unitary? In order to answer this question, itis necessary to show the conflicting nature of the evidence concerning thestructure of the church and the significance of the resulting controversyregarding the church's polity. Contradictory statements about the church'sgovernment abound.

The Controversy

It is possible to extract a considerable number of statements from theliterature about the Episcopal Church to support a federal hypothesis.These quotations fall into three categories. There are statements that simplycall the polity of the church "federal" without further justification. Forexample:

Actually, the Episcopal Church was a federal union of independent diocesanunits and each diocese a federation of independent parishes, ratherthan a single, closely-knit ecclesiastical institution.

Others cite certain selected constitutional features of the church's polity thatthey present as exhibiting the federal nature of the church's government:

Because the government of the Episcopal Church is that of a federatedunion of dioceses, the analogy of the federal government of the UnitedStates in this respect is very striking.

The American Church adapted herself entirely to the body politic of theUnited States. Certain features in her construction are in exact parallel withthe structure of the federation. The parallelism between General Conventionand Congress, Diocesan Convention, and State Legislature, is so evidentas to need no discussion.

The Episcopal Church is organized in a similar way to the United StatesFederal Government. Both received their Constitutions in the same yearand place, and many of the same people participated in both transactions.

Quotations also exist, however, which deny that there is any significantsimilarity between the government of the United States and that of thechurch, as far as their constitutional structure is concerned:

The true analogy therefore, is not to be found between the Church and theFederal Government, but between the Church and its dioceses on the otherhand, and any one State and its several counties on the other hand.

It is nonsense to say that [the Church's] governing power is patterned afterthat of the Republic.

The few resemblances between the Church and the nation sink into insignificance,however, when we compare the differences between them.

Sources can also be found to support the contention that the governmentof the Episcopal Church is confederal:

In the days of White and Seabury it was the prevailing opinion that theChurch was a confederation of independent dioceses, just as the nationwas a confederation of the independent states, and no national executivewas provided for in the Church's Constitution.

The Church of the States collectively—that is, of the nation—has no head,no governing power, no administration, no guide, no leader; but it ismerely a collection of confederated dioceses.

Moreover, there are those sources that state that the General Conventionis supreme, and thus tacitly show that the church is unitary:

The history of the legislation of General Convention since its formationshows that the Convention has again and again taken to itself powers whichonce belonged to the diocese, and in some cases to the individual parish.This fact demonstrates the correctness of the theory, as we have beforestated, upon which the General Convention has ever acted from the beginningof its history: that it has the power to legislate on any subject unlessexpressly forbidden to do so by the Constitution. The GeneralConvention not only makes the Constitution and amends it, but it interpretsthe Constitution. The General Convention limits its own power, andit can remove that limitation. It assumes that all power is in the GeneralConvention which the Constitution itself does not limit. The one conclusionthat follows from these facts is, that the General Convention is the ultimateseat of authority in American Church government.

The General Convention possesses the acknowledged power of supreme legislation,as a corollary of the supreme and sole authority to make, and to alterthe Constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.

I must say that after a careful and anxious scrutiny of the Constitution andCanons of our General Church, the power of the General Conventionseems to be unlimited, while that of the Diocesan Convention is only thatwhich the General Convention is pleased to concede.... That the sovereigntyof the Church is in the General Convention is shown by an almostunbroken current of legislation. It is difficult to see any limit, on the faceof the Constitution, to the powers of the General Convention.

How is it possible to reach such contradictory opinions regarding thestructure of the church's government? There seem to be three main reasons.First, there have been few systematic and comprehensive analyses ofthe governmental structure of the church. Equally important, no writer inhis description of the Episcopal Church's government has stated what hemeant by "federal," "confederal," or "unitary." Thus the structure of thechurch has been described in these terms without their definition. Finally,some of the crucial points concerning the church's constitutional structureare genuinely open to varying interpretations because the facts about themare inconclusive. Whether the persons who wrote the church's Constitutionbetween 1784 and 1789 were delegates of diocesan governments or merelyrepresentatives of the church in the several states has been frequently disputed.In part, this is because the definition of a "diocese" is controvertible.Whether all the framers of the Constitution were delegates of diocesangovernments or not depends upon the observer's analysis of the completenessof diocesan organization at the time, the "spirit of the time," theframers' intention, and the dependence of the church upon bishops.

Indeed, whether or not bishops are essential to the church—whetheror not there can be a true church without bishops, and whether or notgoverning power flows from the bishops downward to the clergy and laity,or upward from the individual...