November 2023 Anglican Commentary: Addie Tapp ’25
Hello! My name is Addie Tapp. I am a middler (2nd year) Master in Divinity student at VTS, and I also spend a few days a week in the Center for Anglican Communion’s office as a student worker.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks in Malaysia. Like a good seminarian, the first thing I did was set out to visit as many religious sites as I could. I toured a Mosque, visited lots of temples, and learned about the variety of ways people connect to God and to their loved ones through religion. As a visitor in a place new to me, I spent a lot of time immersing myself in things that felt unfamiliar and challenging myself to see things from a new point of view. It was wonderful and it was tiring.
In the midst of that, I found a sanctuary at an Anglican Church in town – St. George’s church in Georgetown, Penang. They had a sign outside for a Wednesday noonday service in English, and I am so glad I went.
Worshiping with the people of St. George’s felt like home. On the other side of the globe from VTS, in a place unfamiliar to me in many ways, we prayed the same prayers I know by heart and shared in the Eucharist together. It was wonderful. By accident, I attended the noonday service that the bishop was leading, and I was able to hear from him about his life and ministry in the Anglican Diocese of West Malaysia.
The Anglican Communion is an incredible gift. There is something so powerful about knowing that, as we gather for Eucharist on Sunday mornings in the U.S., millions of other Anglicans around the world pray the same prayers and share in the same liturgy as we worship God together. The Anglican cycle of prayer takes 3 years to cycle through, praying for a different diocese each day. How neat is that! It is incredible to consider that the whole Anglican Communion will pray for the Anglican Diocese of East Malaysia on Friday, March 14, 2025, and we will all pray for my home Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina on Friday, November 6, 2026. We all need prayer, and our commitment to pray for each other is remarkable.
My appreciation for the Anglican Communion has only grown stronger as I’ve begun working at the CACS office this semester. CACS brings so many amazing people together (often on our own VTS campus!) to share in important conversations, learn from each other, and build relationships across the world. My favorite part of the job is getting to meet the wonderful people to come to campus as Communion Sabbatical Visitors. Each person who comes through the CACS office brings incredible things to share from their home communities: stories of God at work, stories of ministries growing and changing to meet the needs of the world, stories of hope and joy, as well as the stories of people and places in need of prayer and change.
This summer, I hope to be able to visit some of our previous CACS visitors in Tanzania and Kenya and continue to learn from them about how God is at work in their contexts. And I hope to convince Bishop Stephen Soe Chee Cheng from East Malaysia to visit VTS on sabbatical. There is so much to learn from our siblings in the Anglican Communion, and I am so grateful we have a resource like CACS here on campus as part of our seminary experience.
Addie Tapp ’25
Postulant, Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina