Church Crawl - Part 2: The Anglican Church

For our second church crawl adventure we chose to check out the anglican church. Neither of us have been in an Anglican church before, and the place looked quite fancy so we had to check it out.

Only things known about the place was that it has something to do with this Henry dude and the Roman Catholics.

The Anglican Church

The first thing we found ourselves doing is looking up the word "Eucharist", which happens to be just another word for, or related to Communion.

As we walked into the church, we were met by the usual church greeter type people. Nowadays it seems that you only get to see greeters at churchs and large department stores. It is kind of nice sometimes. This friendly person is wondering how I'm doing and giving me a pamphlet. Makes one feel special.




In any case, we found a nice bench. A damned hard wood bench. All the benches in the place were wood, with a nice drop down kneeling pad thingy attached to the back. The church had nice large stained glass windows, and crazy cool huge organs.

A choir at the place of the place had been singing from the time we had arrived, it seemed. It was nice. Nice intermission music is a nice touch.

Looking around, there was a hell of a lot of people in robes. Practically everyone not sitting down had a long monocoloured outfit on.

The priest/pastor guy greeted everyone, and then a red robed "organist" guy talked about all the cool tunes he's been hashing out and what good shows are coming up.

The boss talked about the Anglican magazines they've been making and where you can pick them up or subscribe.

At this point, I start thinking this place has really got quite a slick operation.

Then the confusion begins. Everybody stands up and grabs a book. Cue the music. Everybody is singing. What the hell is going on? It dawned on me that there was not going to be any Powerpoint lyric projections and this is a real deal Catholic service.

Mr Jello Shooters already had a music book out. A blue one. Looking around made me conclude that everybody else was reading from a green book. Hasn't even been 5 minutes and we're already screwing stuff up. We play along and pretend to sing for a while, then give up on the show and change books halfway through the song. The page numbers were posted up front and in the pamphlet, which proved useful.

Then we sat down for a while. I don't really remember what was going on while we were sitting, being a bit shell-shocked from the first song.

Then we stood up again, and sang some more. Sometimes the crew got into a bit of a chant. Sometimes we had to sing only the bolded text while the robed posse sang the regular text. Mr Jello Shooters was beginning really good at flipping pages. I got better at pretending I could sing. This church really likes music.

We sang some more while the robed guys and gals walked around with a huge cross thing. They then came into the middle of the congregation and stopped. Everybody was staring at the woman at the center. The woman would say a prayer, and the congregation replied a bunch of memorized phrases.

During the service, I did a lot of mumbling to make it appear I knew what to say. I'm the churchgoer that looks like a badly dubbed movie.

The woman then took off somewhere, and some guy with a multicolored iron cross shawl took the stage. We all sat down again.

Buddy told us a lot of interesting history about the church, monasteries and things, and about some great people that did some cool stuff.

After the history lesson, we started prayer. Flipped down the kneel thingy and got to it. Tired from the night before, I faded in and out of a drowsy half-sleep. I drooled a bit but nobody saw. But now everybody knows.

After the prayer, everybody started to do the "Peace be with you" bit and shaking hands with everybody. Met a lot of people.

After all the how-do-you-do's, the choir went into kind of a song that sounded like the background music to Halo.

A bunch of people got up to get some wine and bread, but we decided to keep sit this one out as we were unsure if they had any funny rules about it.

After communion, there was a bit more talking followed by a bunch of robed people walking a big cross around the congregation. Then the organist started playing what sounded like the soundtrack to Dracula as everyone finally came to a consensus that the service had indeed ended.

We were invited out back for some coffee and biscuits.

Members described how they liked this service as it was a solid ritual and the musicians did a very good job. It was true.

The guy carrying the huge cross around came by and asked us why we didn't come up for some wine. We said that we didn't really know what the heck was going on. He explained only the Roman Catholics are hardcore with rules, and that the chances of contracting illness from drinking wine from the same cup were slim to none.

As opposed to the SDA's grape juice shot glasses, the Anglicans drank real-deal Sherry out of the same cup. Between the silver chalice and high alcohol content (preserves well) he figured if you were going to catch something at a church it likely wouldn't be from the blood of christ.

He went on to boldly state that church was more about economics than theology. Shocked, we listened as he explained that a lot of churches don't do the wine and bread thing every week as it incurs too many costs. He also claimed that the real reason Roman Catholic priests can't marry is that the Vatican couldn't build St Peter's and support wives and children of priests at the same time.

Members of the congretation also said that the musicians weren't as intense as they could me. They said that sometimes they have a very involved service with a lot of music (which was surprising, cause the service that day was a load of singing) and that the organist is excellent. I had visions of "Ride of the Valkyries" playing in a stained glass hall with helicopters flying overhead.

We explained the church crawl idea to the priest - it turns out he did a very similar thing while on sabbatical, except he hadn't visited the Seventh Day Adventist and had a few questions about them.

Everybody in the congregation was extremely nice. The rituals of the church seemed similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church, except they have less conservative views on things like homosexuality, etc.

If you're looking for a church with a badass organ, solid traditions yet without the antiquated rules of the Vatican, then the Anglican Church is for you.