Traditional Episcopalian Church Meets at Harvard

Sunday Service at 9 a.m.

Traditionalists Form Their Own Communions By Geraldine Hawkins April 4, 2003 A conservative Episcopal Church with its traditional pageantry, music and beliefs can now be found at the Swedenborg Chapel on the Harvard campus in Cambridge. "Harvard may try to ignore its Christian heritage, but it cannot be erased," says Rev. H. Bowen Woodruff, vicar of the Anglican Church of the Incarnation, which meets in the Chapel. "It's everywhere." Father Woodruff describes his church as, "The little engine that could." A young, former lawyer from Alabama, Woodruff says the church has not been allowed representation in United Ministries, Harvard's official body of religious organizations.

Rev. H. Bowen Woodruff, vicar of the Anglican Church of the Incarnation.

"They have two Baptist churches, two Presbyterian churches, and Christ Episcopal Church among their ranks, but Stuart Barnes of Christ Episcopal has objected to our being there," he says. Fr. Woodruff's church is part of the Anglican Communion, but it is emphatically not part of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, or even of Episcopal Church USA, which is the mainstream expression of the Anglican stream of Christianity in this country. Fr. Woodruff's congregation is part of the Anglican Province of Christ the King, which was formed in 1977 in order to preserve historic Anglican Christianity in America.

"The need for the new Province arose because of changes in the fundamental faith and practices of the Episcopal Church USA," says the Province's official literature. "The radical restructuring of the Episcopal Church came to a head at the 1976 Episcopal Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At this meeting the ECUSA adopted sweeping changes to accommodate new beliefs and practices."

The traditionalists who founded the Province were disturbed by the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which was put in the pews of all Episcopal Churches in 1979. This new book contained not only "new and unorthodox theology," according to the traditionalists, but went against the idea of common prayer itself by introducing unfamiliar rites.

Caption: Church of the Incarnation is located at the corner of Kirkland and Quincy Streets, right next to Harvard's School of Design and across Quincy Street from Harvard's Memorial Hall.

The effect in the Episcopal Church has been to create a constant state of disequilibrium, as some members of the congregation will automatically respond according to the traditional rite, while others are following one of the contemporary rites. "Also manifested was an ever-increasing secularization of the Christian church and the subsequent failure to uphold Scriptural standards of morality," continues the Province's official history. "The unilateral 'ordination' of women to the priesthood contradicted the Anglican tradition founded on the rule that only what is 'primitive and catholic,' considered by the great doctors of the English church to mean the first five centuries, would be allowed as the public faith and practice of the Church. This was attended by growing confusion about the nature of human sexuality, which has resulted in the church's increasing tolerance of sexual activities outside the estate of Holy Matrimony. "We believe that, while decisive action to rectify political, economic, and environmental ills is a vital duty for all believing Christians, such actions should not be made a substitute for faith in the mystery of an incarnate, transcendent Christ."

In other words, feminist priests, sanctimonious left-wing preaching and widespread affirmation of immorality have resulted in hundreds of "disgruntled and disgusted Episcopalians," says Fr. Woodruff.

The Province's seminary, St. Joseph of Arimethea in Berkeley, California is called "Fort Defiance" by the Province's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Robert Morse.

At Harvard, Woodruff believes the students are surrounded on all sides by cutthroat ambition and a materialistic worldview. "You see what happens in a world without God, and it isn't pretty."

Rev. Woodruff evangelizes through his show "The Vicar from Dixie," which is seen on Cambridge local access cable television channel 9 at 6 p.m. on the first and third Tuesday of the month and is rebroadcast at 10:30 a.m. the following Wednesday and at 1:30 a.m. Thursday.

For the Tuesday night broadcast, a group gathers to watch from the bar at the Sheraton Commander Hotel at 16 Garden Street, around the corner from Harvard Square.

"I will discuss something in detail, perhaps a feast day or some story from the Gospels, and use art, works of the masters, to illustrate it. We'll talk about the paintings," Woodruff says. "One of my parishioners is a scholar on T.S. Eliot. I'm going to have her on my show in April."

Young Law Students Are Attracted

In order to make the church's presence known, Fr. Woodruff, who graduated from the University of South Carolina Law School, attends meetings of the Federalist Society, an organization that provides a forum for conservative and libertarian attorneys, as well as law students. Among those he has brought into the church through this venue are Austin Bramwell, a third year law student and contributor to The National Review, and Brian J. Hooper, president of the Federalist Society and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Harvard's Journal of Law & Public Policy.

"It's a tricky line I have to walk, because I am not at Harvard Law School," Woodruff tells MassNews. "Since I am shut out by Harvard proper, I have to be creative and innovative. I get the sense that [United Ministries] is like the U.N. Security Council." His law school friend, Austin Bramwell grew up on East 95th Street in Manhattan, where he was baptized Episcopalian but confirmed as a Presbyterian. "My parents decided that the Episcopal Church was about meeting the right people, so they turned Presbyterian," he tells MassNews. "When I converted back to Christianity as an undergraduate at Yale, it was as a Presbyterian, but Calvinism is a severe and unlovely form of Christianity," he says. "At that time, I needed to be told that I was radically fallen. But the faith is incomplete without tradition, and Calvinism doesn't even make sense. It can't all be based on Scripture, and one needs the Sacraments." Bramwell says that he was especially influenced by Thomas Howard's book Evangelical is Not Enough, and followed Howard into St. Mary the Virgin, an Episcopal Church in New York City. "Historically, my family were parishioners at Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan," Bramwell says. When in New York these days, he attends St. Mary the Virgin, where he has an "extremely conservative" friend from Yale who is on the clergy staff. He says that St. Thomas Church is "strong" these days, but when he went there a few Christmasses ago, the sermon was mostly about the evils of Newt Gingrich. "Most Episcopal Churches are just anodyne," Bramwell tells MassNews. "Most churches don't go out of their way to offend people who actually believe in the Creeds, so what you tend to get is a lot of flummery about sin, sin defined as racism, sexism, classism, ageism. Now, I suppose it is true that classism is a sin, but I do not like hearing the Christian faith used for partisan political ends." Bramwell tells MassNews that the most recent time he was at Church of the Heavenly Rest, he was appalled by the use of the terms BCE [Before the Common Era] and CE {Common Era] in church. "If universities are no longer Christian, it's consistent for them to eschew the use of BC and AD, but in a Christian setting, it's asinine!"

Traditionalists Form Their Own Communions After the Episcopal Church, USA (ECUSA) swung to the left in the mid-1970s, disparate groups of traditionalists have formed their own communions under conservative bishops who have agreed to oversee them. These small denominations, all of which use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and hold to orthodox faith and practice, include the Anglican Catholic Church, Anglican Province of Christ the King, Anglican Church in America, Anglican Mission in America, and the Charismatic Episcopal Church. Together, they form what is called the Continuing Anglican Movement. Several of these groups have active congregations in Massachusetts. Following is a list of those known to the staff of MassNews: 1. St. Botolph's Anglican Catholic Church, which meets Sunday at 10 a.m. at the YMCA Chapel at 316 Huntington Avenue. Tel: (617) 236-5884 2. St. Michael's Anglican Church (Anglican Church in America), meeting at 10 a.m. at Kittredge and Cliftondale Streets in Roslindale. Tel: (617) 327-7802. 3. St. George's Anglican Church (Anglican Church in America), meeting at 4 p.m. in the Trinity Lutheran Church building on Clark Street at Rt. 141 in Easthampton. Tel. (508) 943-5877. 4. St. Columba's Anglican Church in Dudley, which meets at the Nichols College Chapel, Dudley Hill off Rt. 197, Sunday at 10 a.m. Tel. (860) 779-3476. 5. St. Alban the Martyr (Anglican Province of Christ the King), 644 High Street, Clinton, MA 01510. Tel. (978) 365-9083. 6. Mission Emmanuel (Charismatic Episcopal Church), P.O. Box 826, West Brookfield, MA 01585. Tel. (508) 867-9414. 7. St. Paul's Parish (Anglican Mission in America), P.O. Box 456, W. Bridgewater, MA 02379.

Bramwell is also irritated by the refusal in many Episcopal churches to refer to God with a masculine pronoun. He believes that to de-sex the language is "a refusal to give people the full plenitude of Christianity."

Another Young Member

David Trumbull is an executive with the National Textile Association and a longtime Episcopalian who for many years has been dissatisfied with the Episcopal Church at both the national and diocesan levels.

Trumbull is excited about the Anglican Church of the Incarnation. He says: "Fr. Woodruff is a young man with energy, ideas and resources. He is absolutely responsive, and he will try anything! This is Fr. Woodruff's first church, and his only job is to build it. I think it's wonderful that Fr. Woodruff is chaplain to the jockeys at Suffolk Downs, many of whom grew up in religious households in South America and in Ireland. They are often only in their '20s and hundreds of miles from home."

Trumbull was relieved to find the church because he disliked the changes in the Book of Common Prayer and ECUSA's disregard of Biblical teachings regarding sex.

"The Anglican tradition has always held marriage to be a sacramental, lifelong union. Divorce, while not absolutely prohibited as in the Roman Catholic tradition, was accepted as something that happens sometimes, and that required a dispensation from the Bishop. Now, in the Episcopal Church there are clergy and bishops who have remarried multiple times. If you can get married in a civil ceremony, you can get married in the Episcopal Church, which is a complete change from what the position was.

"For remarriage, the Catholic Church had the annulment process, and the Episcopal Church had dispensations from the bishop - but to throw [the requirement] out entirely? The only place where Anglicanism is growing is in Africa, where the Biblical position is adhered to," says Trumbull, who adds that ECUSA seems "to justify its positions by the latest thing Rosie O'Donnell said."

Trumbull tells MassNews that Fr. Woodruff's church provides a way to stay an Anglican and worship with the traditional liturgy "without all these innovations."

Name Comes from Boston Church

The Anglican Church of the Incarnation takes its name from the fact that several of its parishioners came from Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill, and that in the Christian calendar, "after the Advent comes the Incarnation," Fr. Woodruff explains.

The Church of the Advent was badly shaken by a feud within the parish several years ago in which the rector ended up leaving. "Each side claims the other side was trying to liberalize the parish," says Trumbull.

Advent is the second wealthiest parish in the Diocese of Massachusetts, the first being Trinity Church, Copley Square. Because Advent has so much money, the church is allowed to retain its traditional Anglo-Catholic worship with its exquisite music, incense and Elizabethan language, but as is the case in many Episcopal churches, many feel that the beauty of the worship is undermined by the moral ugliness.

"Advent was written up in the Boston Phoenix as one of the hot places for gay men to pick up dates," Trumbull tells MassNews. "There are two congregations going on there, and you see it at the coffee hour, with gays mostly talking to other gays. There are some families at the nine o'clock service, but very few at eleven o'clock. Many people, including gay people, go there to encounter Christ and to hear the Gospel - but it's also a gay pick-up."

Trumbull says that he never heard anything from the pulpit at Advent that could be construed as an endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle, but neither were there any strong denunciations.

"The clergy are not going to go out of their way to offend such a large segment of the congregation," says Trumbull. "They look the other way."

Austin Bramwell concurs with Trumbull's assessment. "This is a dying tradition," says Bramwell, laughing at the venerable stereotype of the Episcopal Church. "Most people my age who have been raised Episcopalians don't go to church. Most of those churches are full of homosexuals. There's not a stuffy WASP among them."

David Trumbull tells MassNews that in ECUSA, a faithful priest can only go so far in maintaining orthodoxy and the Diocese plans to liberalize all of the parishes sooner or later. He points to All Saints, Ashmont, as a prime example.

All Saints had an older rector who was orthodox. "But the Diocese got their moles in there to undermine it. When they tried to call another rector who was orthodox, the Bishop said no. Often they won't bother a parish which has an older rector, with the thought that, 'When he's gone, we just won't allow anybody else like that.' Then they put in one of the performers. The same thing will happen at Advent, when the Diocese is strong enough, and Advent is weak enough."

Trumbull tells MassNews that Rowan Williams, the recently installed Archbishop of Canterbury, will be no help at all. "This new guy doesn't think traditionalists need to be tolerated."

Trumbull is excited about the opportunities at Fr. Woodruff's church for evangelizing the student body at Harvard.

"We are living in a culture in which students don't understand a lot of English literature because they don't recognize the references to the Bible," says Trumbull. "They hear 'Call me Ishmael' and they think it has to do with something going on in Iraq! This is a group we can evangelize. Students are searchers, looking for Truth, and they can see through the lies that are being preached from St. Paul's Cathedral [the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts]."

Trumbull realizes that Fr. Woodruff's congregation will probably not attract the majority through their specific expression of the faith, but his church does provide a haven for serious Christians who love the formality of Anglican worship with its rich tradition of English choral music. At this time, Anglican Church of the Incarnation has a four-person choir drawn from students at Harvard and the Longy School of Music.

"I know that there are many people who are dissatisfied with the mainstream churches, and it seems that we can't stop the decline. Local congregations want to throw up when they see it. People are disgusted, but they don't know where to go. The Roman church has its own problems.

"There are many churches that teach the Bible, but I'm never going to be a guy who raises his hands and sings hymns that sound like music they use to advertise soap on television," Trumbull says laughing. "I know I sound like a terrible snob, but a lot of people feel that way. It doesn't mean that we don't believe it as firmly, but we express it in a different way. Once they know about our church, they will find that it is what they have been looking for."

The Anglican Church of the Incarnation meets at 9 a.m. on Sunday and at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the Swedenborg Chapel at corner of Quincy and Kirkland Streets on the Harvard campus. The Wednesday evening service is followed by Bible study. Fr. Woodruff can be reached at 617-864-3232.