Listening and learning are gifts shared widely among Anglicans -- Christian people who number some 77 million in 164 countries around the world. Together these Christians form the Anglican Communion.
In the United States, Anglicans are known as Episcopalians. The terms are interchangeable: all Episcopalians are also Anglicans, all part of a spiritual tradition that dates to the year 597 AD in England with St. Augustine's arrival in Canterbury, and to the early 1600s in the United States with the formation of the Jamestown Colony nearly 400 years ago.
The Episcopal Church -- which today numbers some 2.4 million people in nine provinces and 110 dioceses -- is now in a new time of listening and learning with its Anglican counterparts, and of affirming its deeply valued Anglican heritage.
Part of the distinctive tradition of Anglican listening and learning is identified by the 16th century English theologian Richard Hooker, who described Anglicanism as rooted in scripture, reason and tradition.
This triad of interrelationships is central to current conversations across the Episcopal Church as it seeks to respond faithfully to the request of Anglican leaders, via the 2004 Windsor Report, to learn more about sister and brother Anglicans internationally by participating in a careful process of intent listening.
These processes of listening and learning are recorded here, beginning with the 2005 observance of the Feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the gift of God's Spirit to the world, imparted through a multiplicity of voices.
