What is the Episcopal Church About?

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ and comprises 106 dioceses and one mission area across 22 countries or territories.

While The Episcopal Church is headquartered in New York City, we are not a national church—we are a multinational denomination. As the only U.S.-based member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church is part of the world’s third-largest group of Christians and currently has more than 1.5 million members.  We are denominational descendants of—and partners with—the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church.  The mission of the church, as stated in the Book of Common Prayer’s catechism, is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”  In step with that mission, The Episcopal Church follows Jesus into loving, liberating, and life-giving relationships with God, with each other, and with the earth.  We are the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. 

Meet the Presiding Bishop

The Rt. Rev. Sean W. Rowe was elected the next Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church on the first ballot at General Convention in Louisville. Since 2007, he has served as the bishop of the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania, and in 2019, he became bishop provisional of Western New York. He assumed the role of Presiding Bishop on All Saints’ Day of this year, 2025, and will serve a nine-year term. 

Born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, the bishop graduated from Grove City College in 1997 with a B. A. in history and graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary in 2000 and returned to the diocese. Rowe was 32 in May 2007, when he was elected bishop on the first ballot. For almost 12 years, he was the youngest bishop in the church. He is known for his research and work on organizational learning and adaptive performance in the church. He earned a Ph.D. in organizational learning and leadership at Gannon University in Erie in 2014.

He serves as parliamentarian for the House of Bishops and the Episcopal Church Executive Council; chair of the Episcopal Church Building Fund; and as a member of the Standing Commission on Structure, Governance, and Constitution and Canons. He also serves on the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable. In 2018, he became the first bishop to serve on the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church, a position he held until 2023.

He is married to Carly Rowe, a Christian educator, and they have a daughter, Lauren.

BREAKING NEWS!

And Now back to our story

 I believe in God,

the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. I believe in the Holy Spirit...the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

We Episcopalians recite the above (the Nicene Creed) every Sunday, but that doesn’t mean we all agree about every word of it! We DO believe in a loving, liberating, and life-giving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As constituent members of the Anglican Communion in the United States, we are descendants of and partners with the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church, and are part of the third largest group of Christians in the world.

We believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection saved the world.

We have a legacy of inclusion, aspiring to tell and exemplify God’s love for every human being; and the people who serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church are diverse and equal in every way. Laypeople and clergy cooperate as leaders at all levels of our church. Leadership is a gift from God, and can be expressed by all people in our church, regardless of sex, gender, sexual identity or orientation.

We believe that God loves us, all of us – no exceptions.

“Will you seek to serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”

“I will, with God’s help”

— Baptismal Covenant, Book of Common Prayer, p. 305