As you may know, Charles and John Wesley both served the Anglican congregation at Frederica, St. Simons Island, in the 1730s. Their church, Christ Church Frederica, is still the parish for the north half of the island, but the old building was burned during the Civil War.
There is now a Methodist conference center on the island, and the busloads of Methodists on tour always drop by Christ Church. They often file in and sit in the back -- and they are absolutely SHOCKED to find that they have walked in on an Episcopalian church service.
Well, DUH! Chuck & Jack never left the Anglicans, didn't want to leave the Anglicans, and didn't mean for their followers to leave the Anglicans. It just happened.
Also apropos of that . . . when I was a young college student and engaged to marry my husband, his grandfather was a Methodist minister and the Chaplain of Emory University as well as senior pastor of a local church. I got invited to lunch over at Emory . . . and discovered to my surprise when I got there that the entire vestry or board of elders or whatever the Methodists call them had shown up for lunch too.
I got thoroughly cross-examined on my faith to see if I was suitable for the eldest son of the house . . . one sweet little old blue-haired lady asked me, "So, when are you going to convert, dear?" I replied, "Well, ma'am, since Charles and John Wesley lived and died Episcopalians, I hope it will be o.k. for me to do the same." She really didn't have much of a response, but I think they were relieved that (1) I wasn't a heathen; and (2) I knew my church history.
They would be absolutely horrified, I'm sure, to discover that all of us have gone Straight Over to Rome.
Chuck & Jack never left the Anglicans, didn't want to leave the Anglicans, and didn't mean for their followers to leave the Anglicans. It just happened.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with two gentlemen from Jordan, after last Sunday's Mass. On learning they were from Jordan I asked if they were Maronite. They seemed perplexed and confirmed that they were Roman Catholic. That surprised me but, aware of the fact that there are a few RC parishes in Jordan, I decided to use this as a 'teaching moment' and introduced them to the 21 Eastern Catholic Churches, most of which are from their part of the world. I brought their names up at last night's Parish Council meeting and related the conversation from Sunday. Father said he recently ran into them at an event run by the Syrian Orthodox Church, along with their parents and cousins. He assumed they were Orthodox. He then explained that in the Middle East, families are so religiously mixed that many of these people no longer know into which Church they were baptized, if at all. He then proceed to relate the story behind a recent phone call from someone seeking official documents for his son, about to be married in Lebanon. He assured Father that his son had been Baptized and Chrismated in our parish, yet there are no records. The caller could not produce any witnesses either.
This simply intrigues me no end. In our parish we have a blend of Maronite, Melkite, Latin Rite and Orthodox who come together each Sunday, simply to worship God. No doubt God keeps His own records ;-)