TheOpen Episcopal Church (OEC) is aliberal Christiandenomination. It has bishops inEngland and Wales and clergy throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. It has over 29,000 members.[1]
The church was the first in Britain to ordain a woman as bishop and to perform religious wedding ceremonies for gay couples.
The OEC is a member of theInternational Council of Community Churches, which in turn is a member of theWorld Council of Churches andChurches Uniting in Christ.
In 1994Jonathan Blake, who had been a priest in theChurch of England for over 12 years, effected a Deed of Relinquishment,[2] severing his denominational ties.
As an independent priest[3] he offered sacramental ministry to all. In 1997 he wrote about these experiences in his book,For God's Sake Don't Go To Church.[4] The same year he nailed 95 theses[5] to the door ofCanterbury Cathedral, for which he was arrested[6] but not charged.[7]
A lesbian from the north of England arranged to meet Blake after reading his book. She felt a call to the ministry but had been rebuffed by the church over her sexuality and was interested in independentministry. Following the meeting Blake placed an advert in theChurch Times inviting all those interested in such a ministry to a conference the following March. Over 100 people contacted him, among them Richard Palmer,[8] who had been consecrated as a bishop of theLiberal Catholic Church in 1997, but had resigned in April 1999.
Blake wrote the Founding Principles[9] of the Society for Independent Christian Ministry (SICM), which was inaugurated by a group of Christians reciting theLord’s Prayer in the Sanctum of the Holy Circle Trust[10] nearRyarsh inKent at sunrise on 1 January 2000.
In February 2001, Blake conducted the first gay wedding blessing onRichard and Judy's prime time TV programmeThis Morning.[11]
By the time SICM met for the third time in Bournemouth, Palmer required those who had been ordained simply in Dartford to be ordainedsub conditione at this gathering in a full rite of ordination. Blake realized that a new denomination had to be founded and set about writing the necessary canons.[citation needed]
AtHazlewood Castle, Michael Wilson[12] was consecrated a bishop by Palmer and Blake. The three bishops issued the "Hazlewood Declaration" on 10 November 2001, which facilitated the creation of the Open Episcopal Church. The church viewed itself as being in succession from theOld Catholic Church, which had been established in England in 1908 byArnold Mathew from See of Utrecht and continued through theLiberal Catholic Church.[13]The first congress of the church was held at theAll Saints Pastoral Centre in June 2004. The church's college of bishops met at Weston Manor in Oxfordshire in January 2005 and Wilson, an evangelical, resigned from the Church. The second congress was held atWhaley Hall at Whaley Bridge in mid 2005. In October, Roger Whatley[14] was consecrated a bishop in the Chapel of theAmmerdown Conference Centre.
The church has had threearchbishops: Richard Palmer, who left the church along with Roger Whatley after the allotted five-years of Palmer's tenure as archbishop ended; Elizabeth Stuart, who left the church in 2006 and was appointed the Archbishop of the Province of Great Britain and Ireland of the more traditionalistLiberal Catholic Church International; and Jonathan Blake, OEC's founder, who was the church's sole remaining bishop after Stuart left.
In 2008 the Open Episcopal Church became a member of theInternational Council of Community Churches[15] and through them, a member of theWorld Council of Churches andChurches Uniting in Christ.[16]
The church received national and international attention due to the wedding blessing Blake conducted forreality television figuresJade Goody andJack Tweed,[17][18] through interviews broadcast after Jade Goody's death,[19] through the prayer released before Jade Goody's funeral,[20] through Blake's response toMichael Parkinson's criticism of Goody,[21][22][23] through the launch of Post the Host (an outreach provision to distribute the consecrated Hosts by post),[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and through David Gillham leading the prayers in the Scottish Parliament.[32]
Following Jade Goody's wedding, Christopher Woods, Chaplain and Director of Studies in Theology atChrist's College, Cambridge, called upon the Church of England to speak out against Blake and the OEC. The Church of England declined to comment.[33]
The church consecrated the first woman as a bishop for Wales in 2007.[citation needed] The bishop of Scotland, David Gillham, ordained Helen Hamilton atSt Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney in 2010; Gillham later fell into dispute with the church and left.[34] Hamilton was subsequently consecrated as the first woman bishop for Scotland in June 2012.[35] She made an episcopal visit toDerry.[36] In 2013 the church consecrated a female bishop for Northumberland.[37]
Blake contributed to the bookA Strange Vocation: Independent Bishops Tell Their Stories in 2009,[38] and contributed liturgical material to Geoffrey Duncan's anthologyCourage to Love[39] and Leanne Tigert and Maren Tirabassi's compilationAll Whom God Has Joined.[40] In 2014 Blake's bookThat Old Devil Called God Again: The Scourge of Religion was published.[41]
The church has clerics from Anglican, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Lutheran and Franciscan backgrounds and has grown internationally into America, Egypt, Brazil and Thailand.[42] The church promotes its KITE Awards for young people making a positive difference in the community.[43][44]