St. Stephen’s is an Episcopal Church, which is part of the Anglican Communion. As Anglicans, our style of Christian spirituality and temperament is unique. Anglican spirituality is best outlines in the writings of John Westerhoff:
Anglican Spirituality
Liturgical/Biblical: Anglican/Episcopal spirituality is rooted in communal daily prayer (Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayers, Evening Prayer, Compline) as laid out in The Book of Common Prayer. Thus, our way of praying tends to have more formality and structure and is shaped by the Scriptures, the divine reading of Scripture and the prayerful meditation on the psalms.
Communal: For Episcopalians, communal prayer comes before and shapes personal prayer. Prayer is seen as an activity that connects us to God, to each other, to include the living to the dead. Communal prayer is a part of daily, weekly and yearly rhythms and both surrounds and informs community gatherings and meetings in which decisions are made.
Sacramental: Episcopalians see the world, itself, as sacramental, that is, capable of mediating the grace of God. Anglicans also emphasize the two primary sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist as well as offer the other sacramental rites of confirmation, holy matrimony, reconciliation, unction, and ordination.
Eucharistic (A Life Centered in the Holy Eucharist): Everything we do at St. Stephen’s is centered squarely in what we do at the Altar. All our ministries and outreach begin and emanate out from our celebration of the Holy Eucharist. We at St. Stephen’s believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist.
Incarnational: Episcopalians emphasize the incarnation, God’s entry into human life and history. Accordingly, we have an earthy spirituality that affirms the goodness of life and the created world and believes that the extraordinary is to be found in the ordinary.
Mystical: Episcopalians experience union with God as happening over time, bit by bit through a journey aided by spiritual discipline and prayer. Such a belief is consistent with the description of spiritual progress found in the mystics.
Anglican
Comprehensive: We believe the truth is to be found in the tension between counter-opposites. We affirm both the sacred and secular, both the material and the non-material, both the mind and the heart, both the transcendence and the intimate closeness of God.
Ambiguous: We are not “black and white” thinkers, but instead affirm the ambiguity of experience and the value of learning to tolerate and embrace complexity and ambiguity in many aspects of human life and in the spiritual journey.
Open-minded: We are people of a questioning faith. We search for wisdom in many places and encourage people to listen to each other and to bring their honest questions to their spiritual life.
Intuitive: We are at home in the world of image, symbol, myth, ritual, and the arts. Very few Anglicans write systematic theologies. Instead we are writers, poets, pastors, and musicians.
Aesthetic: We believe that beauty is the doorway to truth and goodness and that beauty is a doorway to God.
Moderate: We avoid extremes, believing that a godly life is one that is disciplined, balanced and temperate.
Naturalistic: We have a reverence for nature and its rhythms. Anglicans believe in working to protect the natural world and its creatures.
A bit different
St. Stephen’s has long been a pioneer in the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota. At the heart of who we are is the desire to articulate a way of being Christian in a way that is an alternative to the Christian faith portrayed in the public realm while at the same time holding on to historical Christian traditions and ways of worship. We often grow weary of defining our Christian faith in negative terms: “We aren’t fundamentalists. We believe women have an equal place in the Church as men. We don’t believe that God hates gays. We don’t believe that transgender people shouldn’t deserve a safe place to worship. We don’t believe that people of other faiths are going to hell unless they convert to Christianity. We don’t deny the right of women to choose what happens to their bodies.” We uniquely embody these ideals in the causes we choose to support, the efforts we speak out for and in our uniquely High Church way of worshipping.
Scriptural Foundation
Scriptures are read at every Mass and at every one of our liturgies; they are the foundation of our beliefs, faith, and values.
We believe that Jesus’ commandment to “love one another as I have loved you” is foundational.
We cherish the Bible, especially the Gospels which point us to Jesus. We believe that the Bible must be read prayerfully and critically. We read the Bible to help us understand God more fully, but we also understand that the Bible has been written by humanity, and therefore it is not without error.
We are more comfortable acting on our faith than talking about it.
Saint Francis of Assisi’s wisdom: “preach the gospel always, and when necessary use words” resonates deeply. We believe that Christian faith is a journey, not a destination. We think of ourselves as “work in progress” Christians.
We believe that God’s will and way were revealed in Jesus. We believe that the historical Jesus, the Jewish Rabbi carpenter who lived in ancient Palestine, became the Christ as his followers encountered him in their midst after his earthly death. The Holy Spirit awakened them to the power of Jesus’ presence in their midst. Jesus came alive when they trusted that his love, guidance, support, comfort and challenge remained with them even though his physical body did not. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, provide the inspiration and challenge for us to live as followers of Jesus today.
We believe that Jesus is alive in our presence whenever we gather and is uniquely present in the Bread and Wine of the Holy Eucharist, and in the sharing of his words and message in how we live them out in our lives.
Our Beliefs
1. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IS FOUNDED ON THREE PRIMARY CALLS WE SEE THROUGH JESUS;
To love God, to love our neighbor, and to love ourselves.
2. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IS OUR WAY OF BEING FAITHFUL TO GOD. BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY.
Christianity is the truth for us. For us, we have chosen to follow Jesus and to live his teachings in the world. At the same time, we believe it is not the only truth.
This principle stems from the reality of the 21st century. We experience our fellow people as loving and caring by following their religious traditions. To deny that is to deny that God can only draw people with one way. That simply isn’t born out in our experience.
The power of the Christian faith to transform lives does not require it to be exclusively true. Exclusivity is born out of fear. The fear that there is one train to God and if you aren’t on the right train, you’ll go to hell. We believe there are many trains and God welcomes them all.
3. LOVE OF GOD INVOLVES ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE, NOT JUST HUMAN LIFE.
Care of the Earth and its ecosystems is an expression of Christian faith and stewardship. This principle stems from our ever-widening understanding of climate change and influence our “carbon footprint” has on the quality of the air, water and soil. Science and religious faith are friends – each informs the other. Wisdom and insight from both are essential for Christian faith.
4. LOVE OF NEIGHBOR MEANS EXTENDING KINDNESS AND CARE…
To those in our family and in our local and global communities. Further, love of neighbor includes affirmation of the LBGTQ community, immigrants, people of other faith traditions and even those who are enemies.
5. LOVE OF SELF MEANS ENGAGING IN SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES
Worship, prayer, the Eucharist, music, contemplation, chant, poetry, art, study of Scripture and other literature feeds the mind, heart and spirit. Love of self also includes giving time for rest, recreation, nurturing friendship, a healthy diet and physical exercise. Love of self requires humility and humor.
Liturgical
The Beauty and Reverence of Worship: We worship God in the beauty of holiness. We use candles, water, color, banners, music, flowers, incense (at our Wednesday evening Mass), etc. as an expression of our piety. Such ceremonial is done to honor God, and it is understood to be prayer made visible.
The Sacramental Life of Stewardship and Discipleship: As Anglican Christians we see that sacraments are outward and visible signs of God’s inward grace. In our very lives we too are meant to be Sacraments to God. We seek to live our lives faithfully to God’s plan for us, being good stewards of everything God has entrusted to us already, and visible signs in this world of God’s love and grace.
Eucharistic: A Life Centered in the Holy Eucharist Every ministry we do at St. Stephen’s is centered squarely in what we do at the Altar. All our ministries and outreach begin and emanate out from our celebration of the Holy Eucharist, in which we experience the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Bread and Wine.
Justice and the Care of All People: Our devotion and worship is useless if we are not engaged with the struggles of our world. Because of our high view of the dignity and worth of every human being, and because God and God’s love resides in every person, it is imperative that we seek wholeness for the entire creation. The beauty of holiness must lead to a passion for justice and pastoral care.
Worship is central to our life and mission at St. Stephen’s. The purpose of worship is not to entertain, edify, educate, inspire, motivate, or instruct; worship can and often does accomplish these things, but its primary purpose is to render to God the praise that is his due. Along the way, we may find our spirits lifted into God’s presence so that we receive a foretaste of heaven. By worshiping regularly, we grow spiritually to become more and more the persons that God has created us to be. But, again, the point of worship in our tradition is not what we get out of it, but what we give.
Worship is liturgical; that is, it follows an ordered and predictable pattern. While our services may seem confusing to someone attending for the first time, they quickly become comfortably familiar to those attending Sunday by Sunday – because most Sundays the same things are said and done in much the same sequence. This highly structured order of service is not stifling but liberating. Not having to reinvent the wheel each week, we gain the freedom to concentrate on worshiping God.
Worship is sacramental, in two senses of the word. First, it gives a central place to the Sacraments of the Church, especially the Holy Eucharist, as the appointed means by which we receive God’s grace and strength. Second, because we are not pure intellects or disembodied spirits, worship engages us in the fullness of our humanity, body and soul, by visible signs and symbols that appeal to our sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Our worship is thus richly sensual, making use of music, incense (only on Wednesday nights), candles, vestments, sacred images, and ceremonial pageantry to lift our hearts and minds to the unseen God.
Finally, worship is corporate, in that it is the activity of a gathered assembly. God did not create us to be isolated individuals. As human beings, we realize the fullness of our identity in relationship with others. The liturgy thus brings us together as members of a community. Worshiping together, we grow in the ability to forgive one another as God has forgiven us, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Every Sunday we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: the ultimate triumph of all that is good, true, and beautiful. We celebrate with joy the relentless gift of newness, and the invitation to transformation that stands even in our midst.
Our celebration of the Eucharist is rooted in ancient tradition, as we do as Christians have done for centuries. Our praise of God engages all the senses: with chant, music, ritual, and incense we lift our hearts and minds from the stresses and strains of modern living. For we believe that in our worship we glimpse heaven itself – a world so much bigger and greater than the present moment, and a vision of hope.
Although we embrace ancient traditions our outlook is fresh and inclusive; our community diverse. Our commitment is to translating the wisdom and beauty of the past to the needs and hunger of the present. The best way to learn about our worship is to experience it: we invite you to join us.
