we invite: who are the episcopalians?

To put it simply, the Episcopalians are baptized Christians striving to live by the message of Christ, in which there are no outcasts and all are welcome. 

In the Episcopal Church there is room for your questions about God, faith and the church. If you are looking for a Christian community that will nurture your spirit and celebrate your gifts, there is a place for you here at Parish of the Epiphany.

Our church is grounded in an ancient heritage that finds contemporary expression in worship and service that are alive to the realities of daily living in today’s world.

Shared worship and prayer

We come together weekly to praise and thank God, to hear God’s word and to pray for ourselves and others. Our services tell a story and act it out. As Jesus invited us, we gather, as around a family table, with bread and wine, to celebrate his risen presence and to be renewed and strengthened for the work God gives us to do.

Shared leadership

Everyone participates in the worship, ministry, leadership and governance of the Episcopal Church: lay people from all walks of life; women and men who are ordained to serve as priests and deacons; and women and men who are elected and ordained to serve as our bishops. Lay people, clergy and bishops make up the representative governing bodies of our church and together determine its policies, programs and budgets.

Shared service in the world

We gather together as a church and we are sent to be that church in the world. Our work in the world is reflected in our daily lives and our many ministries: with children and families, wit young adults and elders, with those who are hungry, homeless, poor sick or in prison. We are called to minister in places of need in our cities and to work together to bring about social and economic justice, at home and abroad.

Epiphany is part of the eastern Massachusetts diocese of the Episcopal church. The diocese is home to 77,000 people in nearly 200 congregations in cities and towns throughout eastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands. Our congregations make up our diocese, and our diocese is part of the wider Episcopal church, which in turn is part of a larger, global community of Anglican Christians.

1. Some information about our theology
3. Episcopalians have long believed that Christians should be able to worship God and read the Bible in their native language. Our worship is guided by our Book of Common Prayer, which provides the instructions and rites for Anglican Christians to worship together. We also draw on many other sources.
5. Our faith is based on the "three-legged stool" of scripture, tradition, and reason. We acknowledge the Bible as containing the Word of God and all that we need for our salvation, but at the same time we realize that the Bible speaks to us in our own time and place. We respect the past two thousand years of experience of God and Christ by the body of faithful people called the Church as a connection among all believers and a starting point for our own understanding.
7. But we also believe that every Christian must build their own interpretation, based on our God-given reason (or intellect) to take the text of the Bible itself, and what Christians have taught us about it through the ages, to sort out our own understanding of it as it relates to our own lives.