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Church of the Advent/ St. John’s Chapel is the Cape May parish of The Episcopal Church, a province of the world wide Anglican Communion.

Our Anglican tradition has elements that would be familiar to one coming from a Roman Catholic or Orthodox background or from one of the Protestant traditions. The celebration of the Holy Eucharist or Mass or the Holy Communion is the central act of our worship; but the study of scripture, preaching and congregational singing are important aspects of our worship lives.

We are “episcopal” in structure with bishops (in our case, one for New Jersey) who carry with them and transmit the faith traditions of the church from its earliest days.  We recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as a focal point of leadership but there is no equivalent to the international central authority which characterizes other faith traditions with bishops.

We look to the Bible as the word of God, and believe that it must always speak to us in our own time and place. Episcopalians believe that every Christian must build an understanding and relationship with God’s word in the Bible.  To enable that, God has given us intelligence and our own experience, which we refer to as “Reason”.  When we study the Bible, and the thought and experience of Christians through the ages, we are called to develop our own understanding of it in our own lives.  The Episcopal Church supports us with a long tradition of theological scholarship and active engagement with the world.

Our liturgy uses a Book of Common Prayer which is similar to those used in other parts of the Anglican Communion.  We tend to vary our worship moving from simple liturgies to those that claim the richness of our tradition from centuries past.