The U.S. Mint’s Rev. Pauli Murray quarter was released in 2024. It was the 11th quarter in the American Women’s Quarter Program; it celebrates Murray’s life as an activist, writer, lawyer and Episcopal priest. Photo: United States Mint
[Episcopal News Service] If you ask New York Bishop Matthew Heyd for his two cents on how The Episcopal Church should mark the United States’ 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, you might well get 25 cents’ worth — as in one of the Pauli Murray commemorative quarters he keeps in a bag near his desk.
“Pauli Murray is this extraordinary expression of all the things we’re talking about in terms of moving toward her ideals, both as a church and as a country,” Heyd explained. “Her life embodied this dialogue that we’re having [now] between our faith and our civic ideals.”
This year, as the nation celebrates America 250, Heyd and other Episcopal leaders say the anniversary is a time to examine the nation’s and the church’s origin stories; a time for truth-telling and accountability, and for the church and the nation to live into their founding principles of liberty, justice, equality and respect for the dignity of every human being.
“There’s no time better than this time for the church to claim who it is as church and to be that voice that holds the nation accountable to its lofty vision of appreciating the equality and dignity of every human being,” the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, Washington National Cathedral’s canon theologian, said.
The 2024 commemorative quarter, issued as part of the American Women Quarters program, depicts the Rev. Pauli Murray, civil rights activist, co-founder of the National Organization for Women and the first Black woman ordained an Episcopal priest, on the reverse side. The obverse side depicts George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, who was also an Episcopalian. The quarter is a potent pocket-sized symbol that not only references the nation’s and church’s shared histories but also hints at what the church is being called to do moving forward – and who will do it – at this particular moment in time.
Like Heyd, Brown Douglas and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe mentioned Murray and her legacy, as well as those who engaged in similar work, when asked which part of the church’s past gives them hope for the future.
The obverse side of the Rev. Pauli Murray quarter depicts George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, who was also an Episcopalian. Photo: United States Mint
The front side of the coin: Change was made
First, though, what exactly is that past? Here’s a brief primer on the early years of The Episcopal Church in the context of America’s beginnings, drawn from both “A History of the Episcopal Church,” by Robert W. Prichard and the online Archives of The Episcopal Church.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, officially severing ties with Great Britain. Thirty-four of the 56 signers were members of the Church of England, from which The Episcopal Church would split after the American Revolution. Among the points of contention: Clergy were required to swear loyalty to the king in their ordinations, and the Book of Common Prayer in use at the time included prayers for the British monarch. These expressions of support, and the deep divisions they caused, made it clear that the church, like the country, needed to make a formal break.
In 1782, William White, rector of St. Peter’s and Christ Church in Philadelphia, who had been serving as chaplain to the Continental Congress since 1777, published “The Case of The Episcopal Church in the United States Considered.” It laid out a plan for the new Episcopal Church, which would be composed of both ordained and lay leadership: the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies. On Sept. 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the U.S. as a sovereign nation by signing the Treaty of Paris.
A group of 10 clergy in Connecticut elected the Rev. Samuel Seabury their bishop, but Church of England bishops refused to ordain him because English law would require him to take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Seabury was consecrated the first bishop of The Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, by three nonjuring Scottish bishops on Nov. 14, 1784, establishing the American episcopate.
The first General Convention of The Episcopal Church took place in Philadelphia from Sept. 27 to Oct. 7, 1785. Among the agenda items: officially adopting the name “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America,” authorizing the preparation of an American Book of Common Prayer and drafting a General Ecclesiastical Constitution.
In June 1786, British Parliament passed legislation that provided for the consecration of three bishops for the American church. The following February, William White and Samuel Provoost were consecrated bishops in Lambeth Palace Chapel by the archbishop of Canterbury.
At its third General Convention, July 28 to Aug. 8, 1789, The Episcopal Church approved its Constitution, setting in place the organizational framework that still exists today and marking its formal split with the Church of England.
For much of the next two centuries, the church and the U.S. government – forged in the same crucible of liberty – grew in parallel, facing the challenges of the day, including slavery, equal rights for women and LGBTQ+ rights. And, as exercises in representational government often do, The Episcopal Church made its share of missteps, including, but far from limited to, failing to take a stand against slavery in the run-up to the Civil War and refusing to ordain women priests until the Philadelphia Eleven forced the issue in 1974. A formal apology for slavery would not be issued until the 2006 General Convention.
“Yes, we were at the table,” Rowe said, regarding the intertwined origin stories. “We have 11 presidents, 34 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. George Washington was an Episcopalian. That ultimately became an important force in our development. At one point, it was our goal and part of our mission strategy to be the national church.”
That, Rowe explained, was how Washington National Cathedral, chartered in 1893, came to exist.
“‘Our idea was that we would sort of represent the Christian ideals of the nation, we would be the faith wing of the nation,” he said. “[That’s why] Congress authorizes the building of this cathedral [in 1893] that’s a national cathedral, but it’s an Episcopal church.”
The Episcopal Church’s role as the country’s unofficial official house of worship, which began with the construction of that cathedral in 1907, hit its zenith about 75 years ago, Rowe said. “You see it in full relief in 1951 when Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill was on the cover of Time magazine depicted with a cross behind him and throngs of people meant to represent all of Protestant Christianity in America. It was wild. His installation [as presiding bishop] was on the news reels.”
That kind of a relationship certainly has its advantages,” he said. “But it became clear that when you make a deal with that level of power, you often have to give on matters of faith. That relationship got to be more and more complicated, and one that we finally chose to abandon.”
The flip side of the coin: Be the change
Today, on the eve of the country’s 250th anniversary, Rowe said the two institutions are farther apart than ever.
“I think [right now] is where our stories are most sharply diverging,” he said. “We’re having laid before us this idea of Christian nationalism – this sense that we’re a chosen nation, that it’s a special relationship with God and somehow Christianity is aligned with that.”
Now is the time, Rowe said, for The Episcopal Church to stand apart from that rhetoric and avoid getting co-opted by politics. Arguing at the level of today’s partisan politics “is a trap for us,” he said.
Instead, it’s time for the church to stand in solidarity with those who have no voice, to speak up, he said. “It means us taking a hard look at the systemic work that still has to be done … to make lives different, to bring people closer into relationship with God, to show love in the world.
Brown Douglas says the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is an opportune time to do some rip-the-Band-Aid truth-telling, especially when it comes to acknowledging that both the country and The Episcopal Church suffer from what she calls a two-narrative problem.
“On the one hand, the Declaration of Independence has this lofty vision of a nation in which we respect the equality of all men – and men was what they meant, white property[-owning] men – who have inalienable rights for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Brown Douglas said. On the other hand, she said, “this freedom is built upon the exploitation – and that is an understatement – of enslaved African bodies. …There are some over 500 million or more enslaved persons at this time, [including] Black people who fought in the American Revolution and yet were returned to slavery afterward.”
Likewise, she said, The Episcopal Church has its own lofty vision – the Gospel – which is built on the same foundation. “Just as the nation’s wealth was built upon the chattel labor of the Black enslaved,” Brown Douglas said, “so is The Episcopal Church’s wealth.”
“The question is, which of these narratives is going to be the one we’re going to live into?” she asked. “What we’ve seen for the nation is ambiguity, but the church can’t afford such ambiguity, because it is governed by the call of God.”
And, like Rowe, Brown Douglas sees the current moment as an inflection point. “We are functioning in a time when the church feels at risk because of the current regime,” she said, likening the current political climate to the one Jesus faced. “[He] was crucified because he stood up for the values of God’s just future, and that put him at risk in relationship to both the ecclesiastical and political powers of the day.”
“The Episcopal Church has to decide whether it is going to be a social institution that happens to be religious, or if it’s going to be church,” she added. “And if it decides to be church, it will be that force that pulls the country forward into its more lofty vision.”
Historically, Brown Douglas pointed out, the course-correcting pushes toward the lofty vision come from one place in particular. “Oftentimes, those who have consistently called the church into what it means to be church have been the people on the underside of the church’s own sort of canons. Just as it has been in this nation, it’s been those people on the underside of our country’s own laws – that’s people like Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, Absalom Jones, Anna Julia Cooper [and] Pauli Murray. Be it African Americans, be it women, be it Indigenous people, they have taken seriously the church’s claim to be church, and … have always held the church accountable to that.”
Like Rowe and Brown Douglas, Heyd sees America 250 as a watershed moment. “We have to decide what kind of America we want to join,” he said. “Is it a season of spectacle, which is what’s happening in Washington at the moment? Or is it a season of freedom?”
By way of example, he pointed to Murray’s pioneering legal work to overturn segregation and her influential friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. “We embody that [season of freedom] through the ministry we do every day, and by taking up where the prophets like Pauli Murray have brought us.”
And Heyd agrees that finding the future Pauli Murrays – those who will push the church to be church – will be key. “I think,” he said, “the question now is, where are the prophets who can help call us forward toward our best ideals?”
As one way to find out, the Diocese of New York has launched a multi-week “Season of Freedom” program that kicked off on Juneteenth, includes Pauli Murray’s feast day, celebrated on July 1, and runs through July 5. It includes highlighting congregations and leaders in the diocese who have been part of the foundational story shared by The Episcopal Church and the nation it grew up alongside.
“Their example,” Heyd wrote in his newsletter announcement of the events in early June, “reminds us that, as people of faith, we are called to confront what is broken and to nurture what is possible.”
— Adam Tschorn is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and lifelong member of The Episcopal Church. His home parish, St. James in Arlington, Vermont, was founded before the American Revolution.