I got an email today: “Why exactly does anyone beyond America’s handful of Episcopalians care about the Lambeth conference?”
It’s a good question. As a colleague of mine pointed out to me last year, in 2006, the American Baptist Churches Pacific Southwest region split off from the denomination over issues pertaining to homosexuality, and not too many people outside the denomination noticed or cared. Certainly, the New York Times has devoted far more attention to the Episcopal church’s struggles since 2003 than it did to the American Baptist split.

There are only 2 million(ish) of us. There are more Brooklynites than Episcopalians.
So why all the attention?
For good or for ill, the Episcopal church has always been, in some sense, “America’s church.” In the colonial era, the Church of England was legally established in the southern colonies. It was therefore associated with powerful political elites — royal governors. And in colonies like Virginia, the plantation gentry had tremendous power in local churches. After the Revolution, when disestablishment meant that tax monies no longer supported the church in states where it had previously been established, and when monies from England stopped flowing into the coffers of churches all around, Episcopal churches had to figure out new ways to raise cash. Churches sold or rented pews, female parishioners held enterprising fund-raisers…and the super rich gave occasional large gifts to fill in the gap. This pattern of wealthy parishioners underwriting local churches solidified the sense that the Episcopal church was the church of the well-heeled. Furthermore, political and economic elites have disproportionately worshiped in the Episcopal Church: the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Astors, the Morgans…they were all Episcopalians. As was FDR. Episcopalians also founded some of America’s most influential prep schools…so it didn’t seem at all unusual that when Groton graduate Paul Moore was consecrated bishop of New York, another Groton grad who was also an Episcopalian was there to cheer him on — the mayor, John Lindsay. All in all, it’s pretty rare to hear someone describe their local Methodist church as “the local country club at prayer.” Usually that moniker has been reserved for the Episcopal house of worship. (The association of Episcopalians with country clubs is quite literal: I have heard that on the wall of the country’s very first country club — founded in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1882 — hangs a tennis racket that Episcopal Bishop William Lawrence supposedly used to play the first game of tennis ever played in the US.)
This makes many Episcopalians today a little uncomfortable. When I became a Christian, I was baptized in the Church of England for lots of reasons; I hope that some secret lusting after Cheever-esque waspy prestige was not, subconsciously, among them. Many of us today wish the Episcopal Church could shed entirely this image as the church of the carriage trade and the county-seat elite.
Indeed, the social upheavals of the1960s and 1970s went a long way toward undoing the assumption that the Episcopal Church was the church of political power and social prestige. And yet, the Episcopal Church still occupies a certain place in our cultural landscape. The National Cathedral in Washington, after all, is not affiliated with the American Baptists. For good and for ill, in our collective imagination, the Episcopal Church still represents the church of America’s movers and shakers. And that may be why people who go to some other church, or who go to no church at all, people who couldn’t begin to name the General Secretary of the American Baptist churches (Roy Medley) can tell you who Gene Robinson is, and are interested in reading about Lambeth.