EPISCOPAL, PROTESTANT 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 Church. During the colonial era, the official Church of England established itself 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; he, however, could not obtain consecration from any bishop of England; he obtained it instead in 1784 from three bishops: non-juring (v.) of Scotland. In 1787 the Anglicans of the States of New York and Pennsylvania also obtained that two American ministers, S. Provost and W. White, be consecrated, and this time without difficulty, by bishops of England. From these three bishops derives the entire Protestant episcopal hierarchy of the United States, and therefore also the invalidity of their ordinations. The Protestant Episcopal Church had only two schisms, one temporary during the civil war, with the separation of the northern church from that of the south, which ceased with the end of the war of 1865; the other, which still lasts today, the Reformed Episcopal Church, constituted in 1873 by the bishop of Kentucky D. Dummings, who did not wish to admit that the episcopate was an order distinct from the priesthood. The various religious movements that have taken place in the Church of England have had their repercussion in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in which are found followers of the high, low and broad church. American Anglo-Catholics even think of suppressing the name "Protestant," and simply call their church "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 changed the 8th (instead of three Creeds it admits only two: the Apostles' and the Nicene; the 21st (the permission of the prince is not required to assemble general councils); the 35th (the Homilies are not obligatory); the 36th (consecrations must be performed not according to the educative ritual, but according to the American General Convention of 1792); the 37th on the authority of the king or queen in the Church, which is replaced with another that says: "The authority of civil magistrates extends to all, whether clergy or laity, in temporal things, but they have no authority whatsoever in purely spiritual things." Some changes have also been made in the Book of Common Prayer.
The organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church is somewhat different from that of the Church of England. In fact, while 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 3 years and elects a presiding bishop, who during his governance, that is, between one General Convention and the next, is assisted by a "national council" on which depend the "secretariat of missions," that of religious education, etc. Furthermore, in the Church of England there are primates, archbishops, and metropolitans; in the Protestant Episcopal Church only bishops. In the former the bishops are elected by the government, in the latter the government does not intervene at all; the dignity of primate of England is united to the diocese of Canterbury, the presiding bishop can be bishop of any diocese. On the presiding bishop depends the episcopal mission of Italy, which has churches in Florence and Rome.
BIBL.: sources