Ten minutes before Mass, a small group gathers in front of the Our Lady of Africa icon. The ancient prayer begins, “The angel of the Lord announced to Mary…” Others are in their pews, some silently preparing, others chatting with one another.
The procession enters and sweeps forward, a cloud of incense rising as we move past an icon of Blessed Bernard Mizeki, an African catechist who refused to leave his people in a time of danger. On the other side, is an icon of the Anglo-Catholic slum priests who served the poor of the city in Eucharistic service and liturgy. We then move past an icon of Blessed Frances Perkins, the first woman Secretary of Labor who routinely went on silent retreat with All Saints Sisters of the Poor.
As the priest censes the altar, our eyes look into a sanctuary. On the right is a statue of Saint Clement of Rome and on the left one of Moses the Black.
The procession hymn may be Newman’s “Praise to the Holiest in the height, and in the depth be praised,” and later for the communion hymn, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” And in the middle of June you can join in the non-Prayer Book Feast of Juneteenth and sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “We Shall Overcome.”
Incense, movement with energy and grace, third century hymns translated from the Latin, and gospel hymns rising from the pain of slavery, bread and wine made body and blood, God’s love enfleshed.
Information on the Anglo-Catholic Icons in the Nave. Click the Link Here!
Welcome to Saint Clement’s parish.
A Climate of Acceptance
“Give people some slack,” “forgive,” “show mercy,” “you are an instrument of God’s love to the world.” These are all phrases you’ll hear at St. Clement’s. We routinely ask folks to pitch in, but we are also OK with hearing “no.” We’re small and sometimes things don’t get done. We assume that our life together starts with worship and community, and that we’ll figure out the rest.
Fr. Kilmer Myers was the vicar of St. Augustine’s Chapel in the late 1950s. The church was in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and, after some years of relative peace among rival gangs, resulting from a truce that Fr. Myers had helped negotiate, there was a new outbreak of violence that left two young people dead. In response, Fr. Myers changed the way the parish would celebrate its patronal feast. In full vestments, with cross and banners, incense and hymns, the congregation moved in solemn procession through the streets in a prayer that the killing would stop, and that city officials would see the young people of the neighborhood with the eyes of compassion rather than punishment. Fr. Myers saw that task as beginning in the life of the parish church. In Light the Dark Streets he wrote:
The story of every parish should be a love story...One possible definition for a parish is that it is God's way of meeting the problems of the unloved. This meeting between God and the unloved, the unwanted, takes place in the preaching of the Word, in the Sacraments, in the social life of the parish made possible by the climate of acceptance which is engendered by those who have been baptized and confirmed in the Catholic faith. Kilmer Myers
Come to St. Clement’s and help us shape a community of acceptance.
Many Flavors
There are many kinds of Anglo-Catholics.
Some have described the kind of Anglo-Catholicism found at St. Clements as earthy. An earthy Anglo-Catholicism. Others have said we are an unfussy, unpretentious Anglo-Catholicism.
The Anglo-Catholic family is wide. Those claiming the mantle are conservatives and socialists; Democrats, Republicans, and independents; of all genders; rich, poor, and everything in between. There are some Anglo-Catholic parishes in the US that don’t want women priests and there are Anglo-Catholic parishes and dioceses lead by women priests and bishops. There’s a similar range of approaches with human sexuality and gender. St. Clement’s welcomes and includes women and LGBT people in all areas of parish life. We appreciate the wide array of individual identities present in the parish, and the one we focus on and nurture – especially in worship – is our common identity as Christians.
I feel more and more convinced that only a spirituality which thus puts the whole emphasis on the Reality of God, perpetually turning to Him, losing itself in Him, refusing to allow even the most pressing work or practical problems, even sin and failure, to distract from God—only this is a safe foundation for spiritual work. This alone is able to keep alive the awed, adoring sense of the mysteries among which we move, and of the tiny bit which at the best we ourselves can apprehend of them—and yet, considering that immensity and our tininess, the marvel of what we do know and feel. Evelyn Underhill
What we all share is a love of beauty, pride in the history of the slum priests, and a view that Christian action flows from the worship of God.
Join us at St. Clement’s in our earthy Anglo-Catholicism.
Our African American heritage
The hand of friendship and love
There’s a beautiful heritage of African American leadership and participation at St. Clements’s. Some of the key moments in that heritage include Mrs. Theresa Dixon, her daughter, Christine, and son, Chester, becoming members in 1899. Then in 1926, the parish sponsored St. Phillip’s Mission, which became the Church of the Advent. In the ’50s, the parish received many African American families when the Church of the Advent sadly closed. (“Here they take you right in so casually that you feel right at home,” said Mrs. Harold Morris, former Advent Member). During Father Ralph’s time, African American music and symbols were more fully incorporated into parish life. This was also a period when Deacon Constance Moorehead provided significant leadership. More recently, we’ve acknowledged Saints Absalom Jones and Martin Luther King as patrons of the parish.
“At St. Clement's I feel that the hand of friendship and love and fellowship is extended to all that would join us there.” Floy W. Ruffing’s 2001 reflection about joining St. Clement’s in the ’50s.
The Vocation of Justice
The saints that join us in prayer, the icons on the walls around us, include artists, poets and musicians, mystics and the sisters and priests who died in Memphis. There are several that have been servants of God’s holiness and justice.
Blessed Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, calls us to a fullness of Christian life: “If you do not pity Jesus in the slums... [i]t is folly, it is madness, to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.”
Blessed Martin Luther King, martyred in Memphis, calls us to freedom and responsibility. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Blessed Jonathan Daniels, martyred in Alabama, calls us to prayer and action. “I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled ‘moment’ that would, in retrospect, remind me of others – particularly one at Easter three years ago. Then it came. ‘He…hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things…’ ‘I knew then that I must go to Selma.’”
The vocation of enchantment - The holy gaiety of the saints
How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. (Gen 28:17)
Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. (John 1:51)
The two quotations above, the first from Jacob, the second from Jesus, are in the readings for the Daily Office on the Feast of St. Bartholomew. Both speak of a life of joy and enchantment.
Allan Rohan Crite’s 1948 book, Three Spirituals from Earth to Heaven, is his artistic reflection on three traditional hymns. His written explanation of the spiritual includes this:
In these last drawings the saints are in solemn procession before the throne of Our Lord, who is vested as a prelate and king, having all authority both in heaven and in earth. Surrounding Our Lord are the hosts of heaven: the winged wheel-type angels are the Thrones, whose duty it is uphold the throne of God; closest to Our Lord are the Seraphim, reflecting the love of God; And further away are the Cherubim, reflecting God's wisdom; thus the highest hierarchy of the nine choirs of angels shown. The entire character of this hymn reflects faith in the unspeakable joys of the Beatific Vision; it is filled with the holy gaiety of the saints. Allan Rohan Crite
We have those moments at St. Clement’s – the love of God, the joys of the vision of God, the holy gaiety.
This last is from The Anglo-Catholic Vision by John Orens.
The question we ought to be asking is “What does the world need?” And the startling answer is that the world needs us in that commonness which bespeaks divinity. This is why God has preserved our little Anglo-Catholic family through tempest and storm. In the secret places of their hearts, modern men and women are seeking themselves. They sense, although they cannot believe it, that they have enduring value, that there is more to themselves than their employers, their accountants, their government, or even their families can possibly know. What the world craves is the assurance that there is "a splendor burning in the heart of things." Naked dogma cannot supply this need, nor can empty ritual. Only the Catholic vision will suffice. But if the world is to find that vision it must be found in us, clothed in living thought and embodied in holy lives…Ours is the vocation of enchantment, restoring to humanity the divine image which sin has hidden but cannot destroy. It is a ministry of holy responsibility as well as delight. We must teach the truth to an age that does not believe in truth, preach hope to men and women bereft of confidence in the past or the future, and labor for justice in a time of ideological bankruptcy and political cynicism. But what will ultimately win souls—drawing human beings out of despondency to embrace their true selves, their brothers and sisters, and their God—is wonder: the spontaneous love and joy which lures us to Mass Sunday after Sunday. John Orens
Does your life need more mystery, wonder, beauty and grace?
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Related Resources
“What is Anglo-Catholic” – Fr. Kevin presents some of the history.
Anglo-Catholics: A bit of history – A variety of material.
St. Philip's, Church of the Advent, St. Clement's – A story of Seattle African Americans in the Episcopal Church
Church of the Advent - Episcopal History “The Church of the Advent, Seattle, formerly St. Phillip’s mission, was a historically African American Episcopal congregation that was closed in 1958 by the Right Reverend Stephen Bayne, Bishop of Olympia. Most of its members that remained in the Episcopal union transferred their membership to St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, Seattle. The information in this collection provides a microcosm of the impact of integration and the closing of so-called segregated churches during the 1950s and early 1960s.” Overview of documents held in the Virginia Theological Seminary Archives.
On Anglo-Catholicism – from two parish churches. Atonement, Chicago St. James, Vancouver
Two historic African American Parishes
The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia
From the Archives of the Episcopal Church
The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice
The web pages of a few other Anglo-Catholic parishes:
St. Michael & All Angels Church, Tucson, AZ St. Mary's, Phoenix, AZ
Christ Church, New Haven St Mary Magdalen's Church, Oxford