Consecration of Bishop Samuel Seabury

On November 14, 1784, Samuel Seabury became the first American bishop.  In Acts 20:28, Paul refers to “supervisors,” or “overseers” (depending on the translation) of the churches that he had helped to form, and was leaving to go to Jerusalem.  The Greek word is episkopos, from which we get the name of our church, “Episcopal.”  That Greek word comes down to us English-speakers as “bishop.”  Thus, as Episcopalians, we are defined as Christians who have bishops, as do Roman Catholic and eastern Orthodox Christians.

With them, we Episcopalians also share a belief in the doctrine of apostolic succession, or the historic episcopate: that there is visible chain of leadership in the Church, which has been handed down from the earliest Christian apostles in Acts by the laying on of hands.  In other words, the first apostles laid hands on their successors, and so on and so on.  Thus, the bishops of today’s church stand in the same position as the first apostles of the Christian church.

Christians of a more Protestant leaning will object that the Greek word apostolos means “one who is sent.”  So that to be an apostle is not to have authority over others, as today’s bishops do, but to be sent out on mission, to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ.  Back in the 1500s, more radical protestants argued that the “visible” church here on Earth had been corrupted, perhaps as early as the first century.  Therefore the true Christian church was “invisible,” hidden until we finally got it right in the Protestant Reformation.

There is clearly a risk involved whenever any human being is given power over others.  And whether reading the news today, or reading church history, it won’t take long to find abuses of power by those who took their power and the institutional church too seriously.  Thankfully, there are also those bishops who exercise their authority with gentle strength and wise humor.  I am blessed to serve under the authority ofone who does just that in Alabama, Kee Sloan.

As a Baptist child who came to the Episcopal Church as an adult, I believe in the “visible” church, and its apostolic successors, warts and all.  In the historical church, I see men and women who have struggled as we do today.  And I am assured that in this struggling church, God’s grace has been present, for how else could it have survived.  In the ceremonial laying on of hands, we publicly testify to the church’s need of grace.  And in that ritual, we trust God’s gracious will to be done in the church through our struggles and confusion. 

The bishop is the symbol of those struggles and triumphs of grace that will continue until the end of time.  Samuel Seabury was the first in the United States of America.  For him, and for all the bishops, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I give thanks.