What exactly is Episcopal church?

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What exactly is Episcopal church?
What are the differencies between Episcopal church and the two major denominations Catholics and Orthodox churches?
Sorry that I am that ignorant…
 
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The Episcopal church is the name for the US branch of the original Church of England.

The Church of England was a Protestant church founded when King Henry VIII of England (the one who had six wives) decided he wanted to break away from under the Pope and have a Protestant Church of England with him as the head instead of the Pope. So it was called “Church of England” or “Anglican”.

In USA after the American Revolution they changed the name to “Episcopal” because now that the US was independent from England, nobody wanted to be attending a church called “Church of England”. This is what the Anglicans on here have told me anyway.

The Episcopal Church is not part of Catholicism at all. It is a Protestant church.
 
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So they have Protestant views on Sacraments (baptism and Eucharist).
 
The Episcopal Church is the American break away church from Church of England.

Since the head of the Church of England was the King of England (and is the Queen today), when America broke from England, Anglican Americans didn’t want to be under the King of England for civil or religious reasons.

So the American members of the Church of England broke away and created the Episcopal Church.
 
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All the Church of England churches will often try to present themselves as being the same as Catholicism. Of all the Protestant churches, they probably have the most similarities with Catholicism. Some of them have services like a Mass, to the point where if you just walked in and didn’t realize it wasn’t Catholic, you could be confused.

However, they are not Catholic, no matter how much they try to say that they are.

So yes, they do have Protestant sacraments, and Catholic people are not supposed to receive sacraments there.
 
My Episcopal church has 14 very nice Stations of the Cross icons. We make the sign of the cross, but so not have individual confession. We still kneel at the rail that surrounds the altar for Holy Communion and have the choice of taking a sip of the wine from the cup.
 
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