To The American Bible Society

This is a slightly edited copy of a note I just sent to the American Bible Society.

TO:
Autumn Black, Director of Public Relations
American Bible Society
ablack@americanbible.org

Dear Ms. Black,

I was surprised this evening, on visiting the ForMinistry website operated from your Virginia offices, to discover that The Episcopal Church does not appear in the Church Directory.

I note that when one enters "Anglican" as a general denomination (there being no entry for "Episcopal"), a number of other Anglican churches appear as possible choices, but not The Episcopal Church, which is, at this time, the only U.S. church recognized as a member of the Anglican Communion.

I hope this oversight will be corrected. It is shocking to think that The Episcopal Church is not listed in this directory, considering that one of the American Bible Society's founding member and first president -- John Jay -- was an Episcopalian.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I am sharing a copy of this note with the Bishops and Deputies of The Episcopal Church.

Yours,
(The Rev.) Tobias Stanislas Haller

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UPDATE: In the "credit where due" department, I was tipped off on this matter by John White of Openly Episcopal in Albany. He provides more detail at that blog, and the additional information that the webpage for his parish hosted on ForMinistry had been rendered "inactive." I was not, of course, able to verify this, but was able to visit the ForMinistry "Church Directory" and ascertain that TEC is not listed there, under any conceivable terminology (The Episcopal Church, The Protestant Episcopal Church..., The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society...). The only officially "Anglican" church in the US (not "in North America" as I inadvertently said in my initial note to the ABS... an oopsey for which I apologize to Canada and Mexico; no doubt induced by the overall 'American' tilt of the ABS) is not on the ABS listing. Oh, and I took screen shots of the drop-down menus, in case anyone is interested...

TSH

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A further UPDATE: Our friends over at Stand Firm have picked up on this story, and note my error in referring to John Jay as the first president of ABS. I mis-remembered on that: he was a founding member in 1816 and later (1821) elected president. Interestingly enough, his involvement with ABS marked his opposition to Bishop Hobart, who wanted to support an explicitly denominational (i.e., Episcopal) Bible Society; Jay felt a Bible society should transcend such denominational concerns. This is where the present act to remove reference to the Episcopal Church seems so out of keeping with the original purposes of the Society.