We, as a church, are a product of the American experience. The very same leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence and the drafted the U.S. Constitution then turned right around and became founding leaders and members of this new church that had suddenly found itself cut off from the mother church in England. Like the new nation, the Episcopal Church had a distrust authority from afar. Our church would be democratic. Our bishops would not be appointed by the queen or the pope or a prince or baron, they would be elected and elected not just by their clergy peers but also by the laity.
Local parishes call and hire their own clergy.
These things are taken granted today but were revolutionary in their time. Like a democratic nation that exists in the seeming chaos of opposing ideas, so to a democratic church, for that is our heritage. To be a follower of Jesus Christ means that we can not hide from our sometimes messy and confusing world. That which goes on out there affects what goes on in here. It took the civil rights movement in the 1960 s for women to finally take their rightful place around the vestry table of our churches.