Who We Are

Original Woodcut by Stefan Dollak

St. Augustine's is named for St. Augustine of Canterbury, the Benedictine monk from Italy who led Pope St. Gregory the Great's Mission to England in the late 6th Century and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Episcopal Church's ministries to university campuses have long been known as Canterbury clubs, and our founders chose St. Augustine of Canterbury as our patron because we are, at our core, a university Episcopal parish, made up of and ministering to the diverse intergenerational communities that find themselves in a college town like Tempe.

St. Augustine's is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, which is part of The Episcopal Church, which is part of the Anglican Communion, and it is St. Augustine's current successor, today's Archbishop of Canterbury, who binds this worldwide Communion together.

The word "Episcopal" comes from the Greek word for bishop, and every Episcopal church operates under the authority of its diocesan bishop. Our episcopate didn't begin with St. Augustine of Canterbury, however. Our bishops are in the Apostolic Succession, which means that they were ordained by bishops who were ordained by bishops who were ordained by bishops, going all the way back to the Apostles.

While all Episcopal churches share the same organizational structure and worship according to The Book of Common Prayer and other authorized resources, Episcopal identity finds a wide variety of expression across the Church. Along with being a university parish, our Episcopal identity at St. Augustine's is expressed in some of the following key ways.

High Sacramental

Among the various names for the Holy Eucharist, one is “The Divine Liturgy.”

Our liturgy is intended to express that we are doing a divine thing, a heavenly thing, when we gather for the Holy Eucharist. By engaging all our senses, sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, it invites us toward the transcendent realities we move within during worship.

When we enter into any celebration of the Eucharist, we leave clock time, known as chronos, and enter into God’s Time, the Eternal Now where angels and archangels and all the company of heaven forever sing, “holy, holy, holy.” This sacred time is called kairos, and we enter it not as an escape, but so our lives on earth might be soaked in the aroma, acclimated to the culture, and fed from the table of heaven, so that, in the words of First John, we might be as God is in this world.

It’s often said that the word “liturgy” means “the work of the people,” but a better translation is “public work” or “work for the sake of the people.” The Divine Liturgy is done not merely for our edification and uplifting, but for the life of the world. And through it, as living members of the ascended and glorified Body of Christ, we take our part in his work of redeeming all things.

Seamless Living

"Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee." -George Herbert

The Latin word, regula, is where we get the words "rule" and "regular" in English, and a good description of our approach to spiritual formation at St. Augustine's is that it is "regular".

We don't mean by this that we're "regular" instead of "unusual" or that we enforce a strict list of "rules". By "regular" we mean that we embrace a patterned way of life after the example of our Christian forebears, with daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms of prayer and worship in community.

This is how we live seamless lives as baptized members of Christ's Body, the Church. We don't compartmentalize our identity, adding "church" or "spirituality" like an accessory to our "real" life. Through this regular pattern for our whole life we seek to live fully into our baptismal identity and be shaped into the likeness of Jesus.

This seamlessness is not only personal, but communal as well. We recognize baptism to be full initiation into the Church, which means that children and babies are no less a part of the Mystical Body of Christ than the rest of us. We are, therefore, a joyfully intergenerational community, praying, worshipping, and being formed as one Body with many members of all ages.

Faithful & Affirming

In the wider culture, it is often assumed that holding an orthodox Christian faith and living a life of traditional devotion is at odds with affirming LGBTQ identities. This is not so here at St. Augustine's.

When you look at the faithful leaders and devoted members of our church, you see members of the LGBTQ community. This is not a matter of ideology or identity politics for us. It's a matter of family, of our shared life as siblings in God's Household.

The same is true for all historically marginalized communities, including women as well as racial and ethnic minorities, those whom the great 20th Century theologian Howard Thurman called "the masses who live with their backs constantly against the wall."

We believe that Jesus is on the side of the disinherited of every age, liberating Creation from the injustice inherent to the systems of this world, "the evil powers . . . which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God" (BCP 302), and establishing God's reign of true justice on earth as it is in heaven.

At St. Augustine's we seek to join Jesus in this prophetic vocation, which is nothing less than the mission of the Church: "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ" (BCP 855).

“May we be willing to be lifted and transformed more completely into the loving, liberating, vibrant likeness of Jesus.”

Prior Chad- Joseph Sundin