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by Jim Stroup
Some, perhaps many, of us have noted the flag that stands behind the altar. This is the flag of the Episcopal Church.
The history of the Church flag goes back to 1918 when the Diocese of
Long
Island celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. At that time, the then Bishop of
Long Island, Dr. Frederick Burgess, appointed a committee to make plans for
observing the anniversary, and to head the committee he chose one of his best
known laymen, William M. Baldwin.
Among Mr. Baldwin's plans was a great procession through the grounds of the
Garden City Cathedral of the Incarnation to precede the anniversary service in
the cathedral. To add color, Mr. Baldwin arranged with heraldic experts to
design banners to be carried in the procession. There was a diocesan banner,
three for the archdeaconries, twenty for the diocesan societies, and one for
each parish and mission, a total of one hundred and seventy banners in all. One
thing saddened Mr. Baldwin; there was no flag representing the Episcopal Church.
Quite a few other Churchmen agreed with Mr. Baldwin about this matter, and so
the next Long Island Diocesan Convention petitioned the General Convention to
take up the matter of having an official Church flag. The General Convention
appointed a commission to take care of the matter, with Baldwin as secretary of
the Commission.
Mr. Baldwin gave some twenty year's work and thought to the flag. He was "the
father of the flag." The General Convention adopted the flag on a very
appropriate day, one that marked thehundred and fifty-first anniversary of the
day when the Philadelphia General Convention ratified the Constitution and
Canons of the Episcopal Church and adopted our Book of Common Prayer.
Designer of the flag was Pierre de C. la Rose, who until his death, was one of
the leading American authorities on heraldry. Mr. la Rose, incidentally, was a
Roman Catholic and designed the coat of arms of the majority of the Roman
hierarchy in this country.
The flag's symbolism is full of interest. The white field represents purity. The
red cross throughout the white field represents the blood of martyrs. It has
been used for centuries as the Flag of Faith of the Christian Church throughout
the world. The blue of the upper left hand field, known as the
dexter chief, is not the deep ocean blue of the American flag, but the light
blue of the sky, used often by old artists for the clothing of the Blessed
Virgin. It is called Madonna blue and represents the human nature of Our Lord
which He received from His mother. The nine white cross-crosslets on the blue
field represent the nine original dioceses of the Episcopal Church. They were
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, Delaware and South Carolina. The cross-crosslets are symbolical of the
spread of Christianity, and they are arranged in the form of a St. Andrew's
Cross to commemorate the fact that Bishop Samuel Seabury, our first American
prelate, was consecrated in Scotland.