CHAPTER 1
History
Beginnings
When a baby is born, the grandparents and cousins and friends will come toadmire the new member of the family and someone will say, "Isn't she the veryimage of Great-aunt Abigail!" or, "Doesn't he look just like Uncle Fred?" Forbetter or worse, we inherit many of our characteristics from our ancestors.Churches, like people, are shaped by their past.
But how far back must we go to understand the Episcopal Church? As members of anAmerican church, we need to know what happened in the colonial period andRevolution, but as inheritors of a European tradition, we can't avoid dealingwith the church's English heritage also. Finally we will need to go stillfurther back and understand something about the Reformation and the Middle Agesand the early church. If we had time, perhaps we should talk about Adam andAbraham! But this book is an introduction to the American Episcopal Church, sowe will need to concentrate on the last few centuries of our history and taketime here for only a few comments about the early church, Middle Ages, andReformation. What we need to look for in a quick summary of our church ancestryis the common characteristics that have always been part of the church's lifeand still are today. Let's begin with the Bible.
The Bible tells us that the first Christians "devoted themselves to theapostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers"(Acts 2:42). If that is a thumbnail description of the early church, then, in achurch descended from the apostles, we should expect to find that the breakingof bread and prayer are still at the center of the church's life, that arelationship with the apostles is still evident, and that our faith today isstill rooted in their teaching.
Episcopalians claim that the very name of the church indicates our continuationof apostolic tradition. The apostles were overseers of the church, and the name"Episcopal" (from the Greek episcopos or overseer) indicates that we area church that believes bishops, as successors to the apostles, are a vitalaspect of our common life. The Prayer Book (p. 510) tells us that the church hashad "three distinct orders of ordained ministers," bishops, priests, anddeacons, since the time of the apostles. That the Episcopal Church maintainsthis tradition links us strongly with the church in all ages. It also provides acommon bond with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches of today.
Why is it, then, that there are so many churches around us that do not sharethis pattern? What is it that separates us from our fellow Christians in otherChristian churches, both those with bishops and those without? To understandthese divisions, we need to look briefly at the Middle Ages and especially atthe Reformation of the church that took place in the sixteenth century.
The Reformation
The church that grew up in the Roman Empire survived the empire's collapse andbecame the primary civilizing force in western Europe for almost a thousandyears. The monasteries, cathedrals, and parish churches were centers of lightand learning, teaching faithfulness and compassion in a chaotic and generallysavage world. But to hold on to the faith in such a world and avoid destruction,the church had to resist change and to exalt its own authority in every aspectof life—a policy that became increasingly difficult to maintain. As thenation-states of modern Europe began to emerge, increasing conflict between theold order and the new led to an explosion, which we know as the Reformation.Many of the factors that contributed to that divisive explosion were the veryones that had united the church of the Middle Ages, matters of churchgovernment, language, and culture. Others were deeper matters of faith thatmight have been dealt with peacefully if political and economic considerationshad not complicated the picture.
At the heart of the matter were concerns for unity and power. The church hadmaintained its unity in the Middle Ages by the use of Latin as a commonlanguage, but the people of Europe in the sixteenth century spoke French,English, Spanish, German, and other languages as well. The church had maintainedits unity by training the clergy as an educated elite, but growing commercialopportunities required an educated laity. The church had maintained its unity byeducating clergy to teach the faith, but the invention of the printing press anda better-educated laity made it possible for others to read the Scriptures andto raise questions about the differences they saw between the church of theapostles and the church around them. The church had maintained its unity byappointing bishops who were, in effect, the local agents of the Bishop of Rome;through them money flowed to Rome to enable it to maintain the structure thathad been so crucial to the survival of western civilization, but now there werenational rulers who wanted that money for their own purposes. The Reformationwas not only about changes in the church, it was also about a new economicorder, the role of educated lay people, and the authority of secular rulers inconflict with the authority of the pope.
In the turmoil of reformation, the role of bishops as guardians of the faith washard to distinguish from their role as representatives of papal government. Innorthern Europe, where independence from papal government was as much an issueas was a reformed faith, the bishops were seen as nonessential aspects of thechurch's life and even as obstacles to the creation of a renewed and purifiedchurch. In England, however, geo-graphy and personalities shaped a differentoutcome. As an island in a distant corner of Europe, England was somewhatinsulated from the full force of the Reformation. As a unified territory underthe strong rule of Henry VIII, the English church was held back from followingthe teachings of Luther and Calvin, the leaders of the Reformation on thecontinent. Had it not been for a personal quarrel between Henry and the pope,the English church might have remained under Roman rule; indeed, Henry hadwritten a criticism of Luther's teaching that so pleased the pope that he hadconferred on Henry the title "Defender of the Faith." The separation betweenRome and England took place afterwards for political reasons, not theological,and was designed to give Henry, rather than the pope, final authority inEngland. The reformation that took place in England afterwards was far moremoderate and gradual than that on the continent. The Church of England, onceseparated from papal government, became a reformed church, but it was not asradically changed in its structures, practices, and teaching as the reformedchurches of continental Europe. Bishops still served as overseers of the church,but now they served by appointment of the crown rather than the pope. The Churchof England also became a church that worshiped in English, the language of thepeople, and in which people were permitted to receive the wine as well as thebread in Holy Communion. The same bishops and priests still ministered the samesacraments in the same cathedrals and parish churches, but the vital importanceof the individual's faith and the intelligent participation of the people inworship as in the early days of the church were affirmed. Most important of all,the English church, like the reformed churches of Europe, made it clear thatsalvation comes through God's grace and the faith of the believer, not throughhuman merit or achievement. The church in England was also defined more by acommon Prayer Book and pattern of worship than by a pope or a statement ofdoctrine. This reformed catholic church was then carried out from England bycolonists and missionaries to the New World, which was just beginning to beexplored and colonized.
The Church in the Colonies
The first tentative English contact with the New World began with a round-the-world cruise by Sir Francis Drake. Putting ashore in San Francisco Bay in 1579,Drake's chaplain conducted the first Prayer Book service in the presentterritory of the United States on its western coast. The spot is marked today bywhat is known as "the Prayer Book Cross." But, of course, it was on the eastcoast that the first European efforts were made to settle the newly discoveredland. An ill-fated colony planted at Roanoke, Virginia, disappearedmysteriously, but before it disappeared, Virginia Dare became the first childbaptized in this country. The service was conducted on August 18, 1587, out ofthe Book of Common Prayer.
The first permanent settlement was made at Jamestown in 1607, and the colonistsbrought a chaplain named Robert Hunt to lead them in worship. With a sail for anawning and a plank nailed between two trees for a pulpit, they made themselves achurch and planted the seed from which the Episcopal Church grew. ButAnglicanism in the New World would become something very different from what ithad been in England. Here the governor and House of Burgesses filled some of theroles played by the crown, the bishops, and the parliament in England, but thechurch had to develop new ways of life since the governor could not exactly be abishop. What happened in Virginia was that each community organized itself as aparish with a vestry to administer it, voted taxes to pay for a church, and thenimported a priest from England. As a result, without any plan for it to do so,church life in Virginia developed a democratic, congregational style ofgovernment. Church members called themselves Anglicans, but the nearest bishopwas in England—and the colonists rather liked it that way. It was, ofcourse, a nuisance to send young men to England to be ordained or to importolder men already ordained, but bishops were still thought of as an arm of thegovernment, and the colonists didn't mind keeping the various arms of Englishgovernment at a distance. They were learning that democracy was enjoyable.
Meanwhile, to the north, New England began to be settled by dissenters from theChurch of England. There had always been some who were not satisfied with amoderate reformation and who yearned for the more radical reforms of Calvin'sfollowers. Failing to attain their goals in England, they migrated to the NewWorld and, with a charter from the king that made them still part of England,they established a church-state in Massachusetts without either Prayer Books orbishops to impede them. Yet New England was royal territory and not all thosewho came were inspired by Calvinist teaching. Many merchants and traders andfarmers came simply to find new opportunity, and the Church of England felt itimportant to provide clergy for them. Societies were formeo to raise funds andsupport the missionaries who came out, and slowly the Church of Englandestablished a minority presence in the northern colonies.
The Anglican Church in New England, however, had a very different style fromthat in Virginia. In New England, the support of the government went to theCongregational Church, not the Church of England. Support for Anglican clergy,therefore, came from the societies in England, and the Anglicans in New England,quite unlike those in the south, valued their ties with England and theirdistinctive identity as Anglicans in a Calvinist society. In an odd reversal,the Anglicans in Virginia, though established by act of the House of Burgesses,developed a congregational style of life, while the Puritans, who had fled theestablished church in England, created an established, though congregational,church in the New World.
The Revolution
The American Revolution tested the identity of these New World Anglicans andcreated something new out of the fire of conflict. For members of the church inthe southern colonies, the new situation created the possibility of a differenttype of church entirely separated from the state and freed of all the oldtraditions that seemed out of place in an enlightened age. Thomas Jefferson evenrewrote the Bible, leaving out passages that he thought were no longer relevantor credible. Many of these southern leaders imagined an American churchcontrolled entirely by the laity, without bishops or prayer books or complicatedcreeds, with clergy who would exhort people to behave themselves and to maintaina proper, if distant, relationship with their Benevolent Creator. Under theirinfluence, the first proposed American Prayer Book left out the Nicene Creed,shortened the Apostles' Creed, and dropped references to being born again fromthe baptismal liturgy.
New England Anglicans had a different view of things. Many of them had fled toCanada at the onset of revolution; others found their churches closed by mobsand themselves tarred and feathered for daring to continue using their prayerbooks with the prayers for the king and royal family. When the war was over,those who remained saw that they would have to take radical steps if theirpattern of life and worship was to survive in any recognizable form. First ofall, they believed, they needed bishops. The clergy of Connecticut met and choseone of their number, Samuel Seabury, to go to England to seek consecration as abishop. What Seabury found on arriving in London in 1784 was that the Englishbishops could not take that step. In the first place, the existing laws ofEngland required an oath of loyalty to the king, which Seabury obviously couldnot take. And, in the second place, the English bishops were very doubtful thatit was right to send a bishop out to a territory where the government would notimpose taxes to support him. They could not imagine that people would supportbishops of their own free will.
Seabury did, however, have an alternative. Although England had followed its ownpath at the Reformation, the majority of the Scottish people had becomefollowers of Calvin and established a Presbyterian Church. But some in Scotlandhad resisted the Calvinist majority and created a small, unestablished churchwith its own Prayer Book and bishops. They knew that it was possible to maintainan Anglican identity with bishops and without taxes, and they were willing toconsecrate Samuel Seabury. The Scottish bishops did, nonetheless, exact certainpromises of Seabury. He must, they insisted, do all in his power to shape theAmerican Prayer Book to be like theirs. And, in particular, they commended tohim an invocation of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic prayer. They hadborrowed the practice from the Eastern Orthodox liturgy and believed it wastruer to the ancient pattern of Christian worship. The Prayer Book of the newAmerican church would have links not only to Scotland but also to the EasternOrthodox Church.
When Seabury returned, the next question to face was whether the former membersand clergy of the Church of England in the colonies could be united to form onenew national church. It wasn't easy. Virginia was accustomed to doing withoutbishops altogether and being governed by the laity, while the New Englanders hadbeen governed by the clergy and the missionary societies in England without muchinvolvement of laity. The first proposal for a General Convention of the churchincluded no separate house of bishops. Connecticut church leaders said theywould not join under those conditions. For a while it seemed as if New EnglandAnglicans would not come into a church that gave laity any significant role andVirginia Anglicans would not come in if bishops were to govern. Fortunatelythere were representatives of the "Middle Colonies," New York, Delaware,Maryland, and Pennsylvania, led by William White of Pennsylvania, who provided amoderating influence and worked out, in sometimes heated negotiations, aconstitution that provided a separate house of bishops with the right to reviewand veto but not to initiate, and a lower house in which all the dioceses wouldbe represented by equal numbers of clergy and laity.
Then the problem facing the church was what bishops would do betweenconventions. Americans had had a church without bishops for almost twocenturies. Now that they had bishops, they would have to work out what they werefor. At first, the new bishops served as rectors of larger parishes and visitedthe other parishes occasionally to confirm candidates. Gradually variousadministrative duties were added and bishops were freed from parishresponsibilities. Over time, Episcopal bishops have won a place for themselvesas leaders and chief pastors, but their administrative powers are stillcarefully balanced by elected clergy and lay representatives. Episcopal bishopsmay wear vestments that make them look authoritative, but they function in amuch more collegial manner than do bishops in other traditions. And that is aresult of the church's colonial heritage.
A New Beginning
Having built the structure, it remained to be seen whether anyone would come.Some were quite certain they would not. Sadly diminished in numbers, cut offfrom English assistance and prohibited from using taxes any more for theirsupport, it seemed to some that this remnant of the Church of England would fadeaway in a generation. That it did not was due to a new generation of leaders whowere convinced, in spite of appearances, that the church could not only survivebut grow.
They were right. By 1835, the Episcopal Church was ready not only to maintainitself but to launch out in mission. The General Convention of that yearproclaimed that the entire church was a missionary society and sent outmissionaries to the new territories in the Midwest (another first—bishopsfor areas where there were still no churches) and even, following St. Paul'sexample, to Greece.
Four men might be selected to illustrate the spirit of this new and livelyAmerican church: John Henry Hobart, Jackson Kemper, Absalom Jones, and WilliamAugustus Muhlenberg.
Hobart, elected as Bishop of New York in 1816, was a man of enormous energy andenthusiasm. If you read the story of his life and ministry, you find yourselfworn out by his activity and not surprised to find that he died at the age of56. He was a prolific writer and constant organizer. In 1817, he founded theGeneral Theological Seminary, the oldest seminary in the Anglican Communion, asa school to teach his views to a new generation of clergy. He also founded aPrayer Book society and a mission society, and he traveled constantly to buildup the church. On one visitation in western New York State, he covered fifteenhundred miles in thirty days over roads so bad he frequently had to get out ofhis carriage and walk. But he believed in episcopacy and did what he could topropagate it. He wrote, "Without [episcopacy] there can be no visible ministry,no visible sacraments, no visible church." His motto, "evangelical faith andapostolic order," summed up all that was best and most hopeful in the resurgentlife of the church in the first part of the nineteenth century.
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