Founding of the Episcopal Church, Part II

Previously in This Series

The Revolutionary War had serious effects on the Anglican churches in the New World. A meeting of some Maryland clergy and laymen in 1780 tried to cope with some of the local financial consequences, and the name "Protestant Episcopal Church" came out of this meeting. The present article recounts the first steps taken toward creating a unified Episcopal Church nationally. The time period is 1782 to 1785. The people involved had differing points of view on how to unify the churches, points of view greatly dependent on geography. Although great differences in values were involved, the principal characters knowingly or unknowingly set themselves on a course in this time period that would allow them ultimately to come together. There were four principal characters: William White of Pennsylvania and William Smith of Maryland were introduced in the previous article, Samuel Seabury of Connecticut is introduced in the present article, and Samuel Parker of Massachusetts will be introduced in the next article.

Priorities

The official end of the Revolutionary War came with the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, but hostilities had largely ended by the beginning of 1782. Anglican clergy in the United States saw that the relationship between the mother church in England and the daughter church in America would have to change in serious ways. At the least, the clergy would have to address the maintenance of the apostolic succession and the need for changes in liturgy. For the most part they wanted also for the church in America, which they called the Episcopal Church or the Protestant Episcopal Church, to remain united. Their priorities, however, were greatly influenced by geography.

In the New England states, where the Church of England had suffered from minority status, the priority was on ecclesiastical principles, especially that the new church organization should be created and managed by bishops. Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) of Connecticut would come to be the leader from these states. In the middle states, which had been well positioned to admire the process of creating a new nation, the priority was on democratic principles, especially the idea expressed in the Declaration of Independence that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." William White (1748-1836) of Philadelphia

William White

would come to be the leader from these states. The southern states tended to share the priority of the middle states---just as soon as the consequences of the disestablishment of the Church of England could be dealt with. William Smith (1727-1803) of Maryland would come to be the leader from these states for the first few years. The views of high-church vs. low-church in liturgy tended to be highest in the north and lowest in the south People in South Carolina, for example, were distrustful of everything associated with aristocracy. High-church ritual and bishops suggested aristocracy to them, partly because in this period all bishops in the Church of England were members of the House of Lords.

In short, the priorities of the New England states and the middle/southern states were exact opposites. Seabury wanted to have bishops in place first, and then questions of organization could be discussed, led by the bishops in top-down fashion. White and Smith wanted to have an organization in place first, and then questions of bishops and apostolic succession could be addressed in bottom-up fashion. It was far from clear that unity was at all possible without some compromises of principles by one group or the other.

Point of View in the Middle States

An early step was taken by William White, rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia and cochaplain of the Continental Congress. White committed some of

White's 1782 Pamphlet

his thoughts on all these matters to a pamphlet entitled "The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered." This document was published in August 1782 and was widely circulated.* One theme of the pamphlet was to find a way of keeping the church united in the changed circumstances; the other was to deal with apostolic succession. Although the Church of England under some name was still the established church in a few states, White anticipated that the Episcopal churches would ultimately be completely separate from the civil government. In Britain the Church of England proceeded from the monarch and Parliament; the church was regarded as one flock, and the civil government thus appointed bishops and carved out dioceses. As the population grew, the dioceses were then broken into individual parishes. In America with the civil government not in the picture and with individual parishes already in place, it made sense to have a different system that avoided vesting too much power in one individual or group of individuals. As White wrote, "The power of electing a superior order of ministers [bishops] ought to be in the clergy and the laity together, they being both interested in the choice." Government support being lacking, White saw an "impossibility that the churches should provide a support for that superior order of clergy ... ; of consequence, the duty assigned to that order ought not materially to interfere with their employments, in the station of parochial clergy; the superintendence of each will therefore be confined to a small district; a favorite idea with all moderate Episcopalians."

With these principles in mind, White went on to sketch a three-tiered representative government involving grouping individual Episcopal churches into small districts, the small districts into three large districts, and the three large districts into the whole. Each church in a small district was to get equal representation, independent of its size. Clergy and lay people were to be involved equally. Decisions were to be made at the lowest possible level. The representatives of the large districts were to meet once every three years. And so on.

As to liturgy, White felt that limiting changes to as few as necessary in order to make prayers compatible with the new civil government was the most likely course for producing unity. Finally White turned to the question of apostolic succession. His proposal at this time was for conditional ordinations and consecrations; he cited some precedents and suggested some detailed procedures. He summarized by saying, "The conduct meant to be recommended ... is to include in the proposed frame of government a general approbation of Episcopacy, and a declaration of an intention to procure the succession, as soon as conveniently may be; but in the mean time to carry the plan into effect without waiting for the succession." He argued, "This is founded on the presumption that the worship of God and the instruction and reformation of the people are the principal objects of ecclesiastical discipline: if so, to relinquish them from a scrupulous adherence to Episcopacy, is sacrificing the substance to the ceremony."

Point of View in the New England States

Samuel Seabury

The New England Episcopal clergy had a different idea. Having suffered as a minority under Congregationalists, they tended really to appreciate the system of organization within the Church of England, and many of them still harbored loyalist feelings. The largest concentration of them was in Connecticut, where there were fourteen clergy and forty churches with a total membership of perhaps as many as 40,000. Ten of the fourteen met in secret on March 25, 1783, at a house in Woodbury, Connecticut. Lay people were not included and written records were not kept of the meeting, since the ten felt that their actions might be misunderstood. It was to be almost a year before actions resulting from the meeting would become widely known. The plan was to elect a bishop, who was to travel to England to seek consecration. If that attempt failed, he was to try in Scotland. After consecration he was to try to return to Connecticut, or to some other state if Connecticut was impossible, or to Nova Scotia if no state was possible. At the least a bishop would then be available

Seabury's First 1784 Pamphlet

in Nova Scotia to ordain new ministers. The ten Connecticut clergy selected two candidates, both of whom were natives of Connecticut living in New York. The first declined because of age and health. The second, Samuel Seabury, was a long-time missionary, then serving on Staten Island, and he agreed to make the trip.

Seabury had impeccable credentials as a loyalist, and it was thought that these credentials might be looked upon with favor by the British: He was almost certainly the author of four pamphlets written in 1774 and 1775 under the pseudonym A. W. Farmer (short for "A Westchester Farmer"), the first one entitled "Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress"; these were answered by a young Alexander Hamilton. He was a signer of the White Plains protest of 1775 against "all unlawful congresses and committees," he served as a chaplain for a British regiment in 1778, and he continued to receive a pension of half pay for this service.

Consecration of Bishop Seabury

Seabury left for England on July 7, 1783, on the flagship of a departing British admiral, armed with persuasive documentation. Despite his credentials, Seabury's stay in Britain was a mixture of small successes and overall failure at getting the rules changed and British clergy's hearts softened so that he could be consecrated. With his money running out in late 1784, he went to Scotland, where the Scottish bishops were only too happy to offer him consecration. The service took place on November 14, 1784, in a private chapel in Aberdeen. Seabury and the Scottish bishops signed a "Concordat" (or "bond of union") the next day containing a number of stipulations, the only unexpected one of which was that Seabury would use his best efforts to persuade the Americans to adopt the communion liturgy used by the Scottish Episcopal Church rather than that used by the Church of England. Seabury left England on March 15, 1785, stopped in Nova Scotia and stayed there a while, made a short stop in Rhode Island, and arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 29, 1785. He became rector of St. James Church in New Haven and was introduced to Episcopalians in Connecticut as their bishop at a meeting beginning August 2, 1785.

Effects of Disestablishment on Church Property Ownership in the South

Before Episcopalians in the southern states could do anything about unity, they had to arrange for their churches in effect to be disestablished without the loss of property. South Carolina was the first to settle matters. Before 1776 all the people had been taxed to support the churches of one quarter of the population, and this had to change. Accordingly Article 38 of the South Carolina Constitution of 1778 provided, among other things, that the state religion would henceforth be enlarged to be Christian Protestant, that all the existing Anglican churches would be incorporated and would keep their real estate and other property, that a procedure would be in place for other Christian Protestant churches to be recognized and incorporated, and that people would not be compelled by law to pay toward the support and maintenance of religious worship other than their own. The effect of the incorporation was to free the Anglican churches from all state rules except for adherence to a minimal list of religious beliefs, and the Anglicans in the state could thus pursue a united Episcopal Church.

In principle Maryland and Virginia proceeded in the same way, but the details were different and consequential. Maryland would succeed in sorting out its problems by 1783, but Virginia's problems extended well into the 1800s.

--Tony Knapp

* White's pamphlet has been transcribed online at http://individual.utoronto.ca/hayes/anglican/white.htm. In the transcription the title is given in abbreviated form, and the year is recorded incorrectly as 1787.

Picture Credits
1. William White, University of Pennsylvania archives: www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1700s/people/white_wm.html.
2. Title page of White's 1782 pamphlet: www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html.
3. Samuel Seabury, engraving by Sherman and Smith from an oil painting about 1784 by Thomas Spence Duché (1763-1790), engraving in the collection of the New York Public Library: digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm.
4. Title page of Seabury's first 1774 pamphlet: anglicanhistory.org/usa/seabury/farmer/.
5. Depiction of consecration of Samuel Seabury as bishop: www.cathedral.aberdeen.anglican.org/history.htm.
6. Key vote in Virginia: www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel05.html.

Key Vote in Virginia. Opinion was almost evenly divided in Virginia on state support of ministers. In late 1784 Patrick Henry tried to get the state to legislate such support; he was backed to some extent by George Washington, John Marshall (later Chief Justice), and Richard Henry Lee (then beginning a one-year term as president of the Continental Congress). James Madison, backed by Thomas Jefferson, strongly opposed the legislation. Madison's forces won the day with a 45-38 vote to postpone consideration for a year, and Patrick Henry's bill was not brought up again.