PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. —
The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, not to be confused with the Methodist Episcopal Church, is the American branch of the Church of England or Anglican Communion. During the colonial period, the established Church of England took root in the North American colonies, mainly in those not occupied by Puritans and Congregationalists.
After the peace of 1783, the Anglicans of Connecticut sent one of their ministers, S. Seabury, to Great Britain; however, he was unable to obtain consecration from any bishop of England. Instead, he received it in 1784 from three non-juror bishops (v.) of Scotland. In 1787, the Anglicans of the states of New York and Pennsylvania also secured the consecration of two American ministers, S. Provost and W. White, this time without difficulty from bishops of England. From these three bishops derives the entire episcopal hierarchy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, and hence also the validity of their ordinations. The Protestant Episcopal Church has experienced only two schisms: one temporary during the Civil War, with the separation of the Church in the North from that in the South, which ended with the cessation of hostilities in 1865; the other, which persists to this day, the Reformed Episcopal Church, founded in 1873 by the Bishop of Kentucky, D. Dummings, who refused to admit that the episcopate was a distinct order from that of the priesthood. The various religious movements that have taken place within the Church of England have had their repercussions in the Protestant Episcopal Church, where followers of High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church principles are found. Anglo-Catholics in America also seek to suppress the name "Protestant" and simply call their church the "Episcopal Church."
The doctrine is the same as that of the Church of England, but of the 39 Articles of Religion, the Protestant Episcopal Church has modified or altered the 8th (instead of three Creeds, it admits only two: the Apostles' and the Nicene); the 21st (no permission from the sovereign is required to convene general councils); the 35th (the Homilies are not obligatory); the 36th (consecrations must be performed not according to the Edwardian rite, but according to the American General Convention of 1792); and the 37th on the authority of the king or queen in the Church, which is replaced by another stating: "The authority of civil magistrates extends to all, whether clerical or lay, in temporal matters, but they have no authority whatsoever in purely spiritual matters." Some changes have also been made in the Book of Common Prayer.
The organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church differs somewhat from that of the Church of England. Whereas in the latter the supreme head is the king or queen, in the Protestant Episcopal Church the supreme authority resides in the General Convention, which meets every three years and elects a presiding bishop. During his term, i.e., between one General Convention and the next, he is assisted by a National Council, which oversees the Secretary of Missions, the Secretary of Religious Education, and others. Moreover, in the Church of England there are primates, archbishops, and metropolitans; in the Protestant Episcopal Church, only bishops. In the former, bishops are appointed by the government; in the latter, the government does not intervene at all. The primacy of England is attached to the diocese of Canterbury, whereas the presiding bishop may be bishop of any diocese. The presiding bishop oversees the Episcopal Mission in Italy, which has churches in Florence and Rome.