{"id":13727,"date":"2022-09-20T11:33:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T11:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.interfaithamerica.org\/?p=13727"},"modified":"2023-11-27T18:57:49","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T18:57:49","slug":"queen-funeral-american-bishop-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.interfaithamerica.org\/article\/queen-funeral-american-bishop-story\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Queen’s Grand Funeral, an American Bishop Finds a Larger Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n American Civic Life<\/span>\n

In a Queen’s Grand Funeral, an American Bishop Finds a Larger Story<\/h1>\n
\n By
Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows<\/address>\n <\/div>\n

September 20, 2022<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Episcopal Bishop Indianapolis, left, with the Rev. Cathrine Ngangira of Zimbabwe in England this summer at the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Anglican Communion bishops from around the world.<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n
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On Monday, Queen Elizabeth\u2019s state funeral and burial was conducted with the full solemnity of the Church of England, borne of nearly 500 years of solemn Anglican tradition. As a bishop in the Episcopal Church, I mourn the Queen as a sister in Christ, and honor her long reign as a woman of deep faith. She was an inspiration to me and to many Anglicans across the globe. But this Anglican tradition we share is not a simple one, and it contains much that I grieve and seek to dismantle.<\/p>\n

The Anglican Communion is a loose confederation of churches around the world that share a history with the Church of England, which was founded by Henry VIII in 1534. Anglicanism began travelling around the world with British invaders, missionaries and colonial rulers almost as soon as the English church separated from Rome. But even as colonial ties dissolved beginning in the 18th<\/sup> century, Anglican bonds have remained, sustained not by shared doctrine or a single spiritual leader, but by shared worship traditions, music, and relationships that span the globe. This summer, I spent two weeks at Canterbury Cathedral in England with more than 650 other bishops from across the Anglican Communion for a meeting called the Lambeth Conference that takes place once a decade. Gatherings like this foster mission partnerships and shared priorities among Anglicans around the world.<\/p>\n

Our shared history and worship mean that, even when we harbor deep grief and concern about the violence, racism and injustice perpetrated by the British Empire, Anglican eyes are often glued to television screens when the Royal Family and the Church of England are in top ceremonial form. The liturgies offered for Queen Elizabeth in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England in the past week have contained elements familiar to Anglicans everywhere, even as they have illustrated the Anglican gift for adapting our traditions in our own countries and contexts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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