Who is Present? - marking absence in Anglican tradition

*Gravestones of New England slaves. Courtesy of Atlas Obscura.*

The weighty spine of Documents of Witness: A History of the Episcopal Church, 1782-1985 casts a shadow across my bookshelf, a reminder of my denominational obligation to be directed in my study of its history. (1) In it, we read voices allowed into the privileged space of recorded history, unsurprisingly, mostly well-to-do white men. While these stories inform the history of my church, I am aware of the many bodies not represented who, in weekly presence, play an essential and formative part writing the ongoing history of the Episcopal Church. Diverse unacknowledged voices fill the interior of worship spaces during services giving body and shape to the liturgies held on pages. Members, often anonymously, tend to various elements of church practice: polishing sacramental pieces, patching prayer cushions, arranging feast day flower arrangements, and so on. Yet my book retells few of these stories.

Turning our gaze back into history, one can imagine various women in 18th century Virginia meticulously embroidering certain biblical ideals onto altar coverings or reseating the performed politics of holy communion around the tables of their hosted post-service meals. These categorically domestic acts contain choices with the potential to promote distinct interpretive strands of religion. Going deeper into these examples, one must also consider the fingers that picked the cotton and spun the fiber used for the altar embroidery along with the hands that harvested and prepared the food that graced those curated tables. While these roles, on the surface carry less documented significance, history still rests on their existence and, as such, should be considered witnesses to the history of the Episcopal Church.

As a simplified response to this documentary failure, I wish my book of witness held a blank page for each enslaved person whose backs literally bore the becoming of the Episcopal Church. But the problem of marking the past reaches beyond this book. Any solution that claims to bind history firmly between two covers negates the importance of an ongoing recovery of silenced voices. We need ways of holding space to both mark the voices absent and mark history as an ongoing process of recovering and becoming that we, as Episcopalians, participate in. As a church grounded in liturgy, this holding of space must be realized not only in the records of academic historical inquiry but also in the enacted and material markers of ritual practice.

Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2018 and A Great Cloud of Witnesses, the Episcopal Church’s guides to liturgically recognizing religious figures of significance, note several groups of nameless martyrs. (2) Here we find brief narratives and appropriate prayers to honor these noted individuals. In addition, the church defines All Saints’ Day as a feast that “commemorates all saints, known and unknown.” (4) However, while there are regional celebrations, as of today, there exists no official commemoration within The Episcopal Church of enslaved or indigenous people as an important part of our history. This is appalling and unacceptable. I hope initiatives to remedy this will be brought to the General Convention next year.

In the meantime, individual dioceses and parishes should consider expanding existing saint days to include and mark the unnamed histories that inform our worship. For example, December 28th, remembering “the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod,” (5) could be used to consider the historical and contemporary oppression of other children, such as migrants currently in crises on the US/Mexico border. Additionally, the unknown of All Saints’ Day should be highlighted as an acknowledgement that our history as a church has been and will always be informed by people without designated feast days. As we work to hold space for silenced voices, we must also move to de-center privileged voices, not necessarily by erasing the problematic aspects of our history, but by openly discussing the toxic systems perpetuated by their pedestaled presence. (6)

In addition to liturgical revisions, we should also consider the history reflected in our places of worship. In the interior of Episcopal Churches one expects to find names of saints, historic figures and monetary benefactors occupying noticeable positions of privilege, but the fingerprints, stains and material wears of persistent presence frequently remain overlooked. We must work creatively to hold physical space for those unnamed, or lesser-known persons that have informed our history. Washington National Cathedral offers an initial model for this by surrounding its high altar with anonymous figures of mercy, venerating the simple acts of kindness that shape our lives. (7) These sculptural representations honor acts instead of actors, shifting the arc of history from a series of idolatrous portraits to invitational illustrations. Perhaps this precedent might move donors to placard pews with remembrances of acts instead of individualizing names.

In addition to furniture and other aesthetic objects, places of worship honor memory with graves. Here we find another precedent for marking nameless participants of history. Graves of unknown warriors dot churches across Europe, but I am aware of only one with a monument to the countless numbers of enslaved people buried in unmarked graves. (8) Again, this is appalling and unacceptable. However, there are works-in-progress to mark unacknowledged bodies on church grounds. At St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cold Spring Harbor, a woman searching for the grave of her ancestors led a priest to a forgotten cemetery across the street with graves of African American and Indigenous people. Here, important work continues, uncovering the histories lying beneath unmarked stones in church ground. (9) In New York City faith communities are working to offer a few of the hundreds of unclaimed bodies fallen to COVID spaces in columbaria. These examples point to ways in which churches are recovering lost histories and reserving space for histories that might otherwise disappear.

As we move out of this pandemic moment, a time when the lack of witness to historical patterns of marginalized oppression holds fatal sway, we must recognize that the practice of remembrance shapes and reflects our understanding of what it means to be Christian and Episcopalian. Our history — the stories we retell, the names we speak aloud, the bodies we hold — forms our present. While the story of the Episcopal church, and this country, includes many mistakes that we might rather forget, it also points to determined individuals and groups who pressed in and changed the shape of our religion. Some of these voices have been reclaimed, but some still remain silenced. As we continue the process of being church, we must find new ways for our rituals to mark a history of ongoing becoming. Perhaps through these expanded liturgies, by holding space for the yet known parts of ourselves, stagnant texts might be joined by practicing bodies as documents of witness.

Don S. Armentrout & Robert Boak Slocum, Documents of Witness (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1994).
Martyrs of Japan, El Salvador, the Reformation Era, Uganda, New Guinea in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 80-81, 148-9, 216-7, 254-5, 380-1 and Righteous Gentiles in A Great Cloud of Witnesses (2016), 327-8.
“All Saints’ Day,” An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. Accessed 15 March 2021. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/page/3/
One should note that other churches are doing deliberate historical and liturgical work in this area. See the Anglican church of Canada’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation commission. https://www.anglican.ca/tr/
The Book of Common Prayer, 238.
As an example for thoughtful removal, the lengthy discussion regarding the Lee-Jackson stained glass windows at Washington National Cathedral. https://cathedral.org/lee-jackson-windows-task-force/
“Works of Mercy,” Washington National Cathedral. Accessed 15 March 2021. https://cathedral.org/what-to-see/interior/works-of-mercy-2/
St. Augustine’s Catholic church in New Orleans https://staugchurch.org/ For history see https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/20194/documents/2019/11/Insert_History_PRESS%203.pdf
See https://www.stjcsh.org/blog/harbor-road-cemetery/ & https://www.stjcsh.org/blog/cemetary-update-progress/