This presentation is intended to give an overview of the ECP’s journey to financial autonomy, highlighting certain events and actions that have significantly affected - weakened, built up and enhanced - its capacity for self-support and self-reliance as well as learnings gained from these experiences.
(I)
The history of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines traces its beginnings to the American Occupation of this country in 1898 when Episcopal chaplains, joining the occupation forces, landed in these shores and celebrated the first Episcopal service. Three years later, a Missionary District of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA [PECUSA] was established in the Philippines, with Charles Henry Brent as its first Bishop. Initially considering himself as chaplain to an occupation force, Bishop Brent intensified missionary work in the country, following a policy of “not putting an altar over another altar”, thus, moving to hinterlands where lies the un-churched peoples or un-`altar’ed place. That missionary strategy largely explains why the Episcopal Church in the Philippines [ECP], which now has 130,000 members spread out in 593 local congregations, is largely concentrated among indigenous peoples in the Cordillera in the northern part of the country and in the island of Mindanao.
Bishop Brent found in these un-churched places indigenous communities, generally called Igorots in the north and Lumads in the south, who have resisted and/or escaped subjugation by the Spanish colonizers who earlier ruled these islands for more than three hundred years. These communities had not been brought into the mainstream of Filipino colonial society and had maintained their distinct ways of life. Accordingly, Bishop Brent made a compelling decision to extend mission work among these indigenous communities because of his perception that “they (the Igorots) were in the position of Adam and Eve – after the Fall”. Hence, “theirs is the greatest need, and no one had held out a helping hand to them.”
The Episcopal Church in the Philippines (ECP) is an autonomous Church in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. It is one of the Church Provinces of the Anglican Communion – the global fellowship of autonomous Anglican Churches or Church Provinces in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and with one another. The Anglican Communion consists of some 40 autonomous, national or regional Churches spread across more than 160 countries and has a membership of over 75 million.
The ECP virtually began with the first Episcopalian worship service conducted in the Philippines by the Rev. Charles Pierce, an Episcopal Church chaplain of the U.S. Armed Forces that occupied Manila in 1898. This service was conducted on September 4, 1898 for the Americans and other English-speaking residents in Manila. The first Episcopal Church worship service conducted for Filipinos took place on December 25, 1898.