Church of the Holy Spirit celebrates SPCK/USA

Tom McCarty of Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, San Antonio, TX recently wrote to SPCK/USA’s Karen Joy describing all of the activity at Holy Spirit including participation in “Celebration in Ministry” and help with an SPCK/USA display at Diocesan Council. He also wrote an article for his church newsletter, The Spirit:

PARADISIS ACCORDING TO AQUINAS
(THE TRUTH IN OUR TRADITIONS)
SPCK/USA

A year ago, I described how Thomas Bray, whose feast day we celebrate on February 15, was largely responsible for the Episcopal Church’s existence today. Because of his contributions to American Anglicanism, the Men’s Group of this congregation, took as its name, the Society of St. Thomas Bray and made SPCK/USA its main Outreach effort.

More than 300 years ago, Bray founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) “to promote learning in the plantations and abroad and to propagate Christian knowledge at home.” The SPCK has distributed over 30 million books and provided for translating the Book of Common Prayer into 200 languages. This society sent the first printing presses to India, opened the first British schools for poor children, gave equal education for girls and sent the first printed books to Australia. Starting with the British colonies in North America, it established libraries for clergy and missionaries in many countries, and published the first Braille books. The SPCK is the oldest Anglican missionary society. Today it has chapters in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States.

SPCK/USA was established at the School of Theology of the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. in 1983. It is a founding member of the Episcopal Partnership of Global Mission. This is the SPCK/USA Mission Statement:

The purpose of SPCK/USA, its roots firmly in the Anglican communion, is to enable Christians in their indigenous churches grow in faith and knowledge. SPCK/USA supports projects for the creation, preparation and distribution of Christian knowledge by utilizing print and other media. As a missionary society, SPCK/USA works for the proclamation and understanding of the gospel in and by all nations.

This February, The Society of St. Thomas Bray will provide SPCK/USA $22 to send two Bibles and two sets of Christian education materials to a child in Uganda, $25 to buy a Square Foot of the New Adopt-A-Seminary warehouse, $50 to support a Summer Camp Scholarship for a child in the Episcopal Diocese of Cuba and $100 to ship 100 pounds of theological books to an overseas seminary through the Adopt-A-Seminary program.

More information on SPCK/USA can be found at its website at http//www.spck.usa.org.

Yours in Christ,

-Tom McCarty