Readings for the Day:
Original Manuscript:
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We, Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Council
assembled as Bishops in the Church of God, do hereby solemnly declare to all whom it may
concern, and especially to our fellow-Christians of the different Communions in this land,
who, in their several spheres, have contended for the religion of Christ:
1. Our earnest desire that the Savior's prayer, "That we all may be one," may, in its
deepest and truest sense, be speedily fulfilled;
2. That we believe that all who have been duly baptized with water, in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the Holy Catholic Church.
3. That in all things of human ordering or human choice, relating to modes of worship
and discipline, or to traditional customs, this Church is ready in the spirit of love and
humility to forego all preferences of her own;
4. That this Church does not seek to absorb other Communions, but rather, co-operating
with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order, to discountenance schism, to heal the
wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian
graces and the visible manifestation of Christ to the world.
But furthermore, we do hereby affirm that the Christian unity . . .can be restored only by
the return of all Christian communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the
undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence; which principles we believe
to be the substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his
Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world, and therefore incapable of compromise
or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the
common and equal benefit of all men.
among the divided branches of Christendom, we account the following, to wit:
1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revealed Word of God.
2. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.
3. The two Sacraments,--Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,--ministered with
unfailing use of Christ's words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.
4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the
varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.
our own land, we hereby declare our desire and readiness, so soon as there shall be any
authorized response to this Declaration, to enter into brotherly conference with all or any
Christian Bodies seeking the restoration of the organic unity of the Church, with a view to
the earnest study of the conditions under which so priceless a blessing might happily be
brought to pass.