Founding of the Episcopal Church, Part IV
Previously in This Series
Although Episcopalians in all states wanted unity in the early 1780s,
there were two opposing points of view on how to proceed. The
First General Convention met in 1785 to address three principal issues,
but
with no representatives from the New England states in
attendance.
The issues were the problem of obtaining at least three bishops, the
writing of an ecclesiastical constitution, and the modification of the Book
of Common Prayer. The first step toward obtaining three
bishops was to prepare a letter to the bishops and two archbishops of
the Church of
England, enlisting their help. A committee of correspondence was
set
up to handle details.
First General Convention: Other Business
The delegates to the First General Convention made up their minds that
success at having bishops consecrated in England was to be assured in
advance, or else the candidates would not make the trip. Mindful
of the obstacles that Samuel Seabury had encountered in England, the
convention decided that among the seven states represented, the ones in
the best
position to elect bishops were Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia,
that the clergy in each of these states should promptly obtain a
document
from the "executive authority" of the state government assuring those
in England that consecration of a bishop would interfere in no way with
the governmental relations between the United States and Great Britain,
that these documents should be given to the committee of correspondence
for forwarding to England, and that the delegates of each state
electing
a bishop should assemble documentation of the candidate's election and
of
his good character, bringing that documentation to the 1786 convention.
As to the other two principal items of business (constitution and
prayer book), William White says in his memoirs that there was
considerable sentiment against proceeding with them until the bishops
were in place, but that the eventual decision was to go ahead
anyway. In White's view the putting of bishops in place without
rules and without an organization ran the risk that some churches in a
proposed diocese would not subscribe to a particular bishop and his
prayer book, thus being tempted to form
their own diocese with their own prayer book. Indeed, King's
Chapel
in Boston, which had opened in 1689 as the first Anglican church in
Massachusetts,
was turning Unitarian and writing its own prayer book in this period;
thus
it furnished a telling example of what could happen.
To handle the details of the constitution and prayer book, a committee
was formed with one clergyman and one layman from each state and with
William Smith presiding. This committee divided into two
subcommittees, one chaired by White to draft the constitution and the
other chaired by Smith to deal with the prayer book. The
resulting constitution, after
an amendment from the floor, was essentially an elaboration of the
principles recommended from the New York conference of October
1784. It was
made explicit that the liturgy would consist of the Book of Common
Prayer
with certain specific modifications contained in a written instrument
approved by the General Convention and that any state could join the
Protestant Episcopal Church by agreeing to the constitution.
The outline of the revision of the prayer book was
primarily the work
of William Smith. The revisions were of two kinds---those that
were necessary and were to be adopted by the General Convention and
those that were desirable and were merely to be recommended to the
state conventions for ratification. The former consisted of the
allusions to the
king, to Parliament, and to special days commemorating British
history. The latter were of many kinds. For them Smith's
starting point was the list of revisions that produced in 1689 a
proposed but unapproved revision of the 1662 prayer book. He was
influenced greatly by trying to please the absent bishop, Samuel
Seabury; to do so, he followed as much as possible the detailed
recommendations that had been communicated by Seabury and Samuel Parker
just before the convention, not knowing that these detailed
recommendations had turned out to be unacceptable to the Connecticut
laity. Smith's changes that attracted the greatest notice were
recommendations to delete from the Apostles' Creed the words "He
descended into hell" and to omit completely the Nicene Creed and a
third creed called the Athanasian Creed (whose text appears on pp.
864-865 of the 1979 prayer book). The General Convention
established a writing committee to prepare and
publish the prayer book after adjournment. This committee
consisted
of Smith, White, and one other person, but it was given ambiguous
instructions
concerning how to handle the revisions of the second kind. It
perhaps
unwisely went ahead and included all the revisions of both kinds, and
the result published in 1786 has been known ever since as the Proposed
Book. Smith was the author of the preface.
Delivery of Mail and the Response
To ensure proper delivery and consideration of the convention's
letter to the bishops and archbishops, the American ambassador to Great
Britain, John Adams, delivered the letter to the Archbishop of
Canterbury
personally on January 3, 1786, along with a cover letter dated October
24, 1785, from Richard Henry Lee, who was the president of the
Continental
Congress, and a cover letter from John Jay, who was the secretary of
state. The cover letters gave assurances that consecration of
bishops in America was completely proper from the government's point of
view. By letter dated January 4, 1786, Adams informed the
committee of correspondence of his activities and of the initially
favorable reaction from the archbishop. Other material detailing
what had happened at the convention was sent by more ordinary means,
and it took a long time to be delivered. The writing committee
sent pages of the Proposed Book also, and those pages also took
a long time to be delivered.
In a letter dated February 24, 1786, the bishops and archbishops
responded warmly but cautiously to what they had received. Having
thus far heard only rumors of particular actions of the First General
Convention but not having yet received the acts of the convention or
the pages of
the Proposed Book, they asked to see the detailed changes to
the
liturgy and said for their part that they would seek "to acquire the
legal
capacity" to go ahead with the consecration without inclusion of the
oath
of allegiance to the king.
First Session of the Second General Convention
The Second General Convention met in Philadelphia from June 20 to June
26, 1786, to respond.
David Griffith (1742-1789), rector of Fairfax Parish in
Virginia,
presided.* White's memoirs say, "The convention assembled under
circumstances, which bore strong appearances of a dissolution of the
union, in the early stage of it. The interfering instructions
from the churches---the embarrassment that had arisen from the
rejection of the [P]roposed [B]ook in some of the states, and the use
of it in others---some dissatisfaction on account of the Scottish
Episcopacy---and, added to these, the demur expressed in the letter
from the English bishops, were what the most sanguine contemplated with
apprehension."
White went on to say that the interfering instructions "were all
silenced by the motion that stands on the journal, for referring them
to the first convention, which should meet fully authorized to
determine on a Book of Common Prayer." The motion had the effect
of amending the constitution. There was a lesson for the future
here, White said,
in that the instructions showed "the futility of taking measures, to
be reviewed and authoritatively judged of, in the bodies of which we
were the deputies. Such a system appeared so evidently fruitful
of discord and disunion, that it was abandoned from this time."
The dissatisfaction with the Scottish Episcopacy surfaced over priests
whom Bishop Seabury had ordained in the south. There were two
problems, one that some people did not like Seabury because of his
record as a loyalist and the other that English bishops and Scottish
bishops had taken seemingly incompatible oaths at the time of their
consecration. Both these issues were swept aside until 1789 by
parliamentary maneuvers.
The main business of the convention was the letter from
the English
bishops. In the reply the convention gave its assurances that the
Episcopal Church was not departing from the doctrines of the Church of
England. It said that the only changes to the prayer book were
those calculated to remove objections so as to be "more conducive to
union." The letter was signed by all the delegates and was dated
June 26, it was accompanied by a copy of the amended constitution and
the Proposed Book, it repeated the request of the previous
letter, and it mentioned that the nominations of candidates from the
states were now in hand. The meeting adjourned to a call from the
committee of correspondence that a reply had been received.
During the convention it emerged that the people being
nominated by the
state conventions for bishop were Samuel Provoost (1742-1815) of New
York, William White of Pennsylvania, William Smith of Maryland, and
David Griffith of Virginia. Provoost was the rector of Trinity
Church Wall Street. These names were not communicated to the
archbishops in the June 26 letter, however.
Activities Between the Sessions
Between the sessions of the Second General Convention, the churches of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire met in Boston in July
1786 and found themselves agreeing with most of the Proposed Book
but discouraged by the fact that the churches in the southern states,
which had proposed many of the changes, did not like the book.
The church in Connecticut met in September and largely disapproved of
changes resulting in the Proposed Book. An even more
important objection in
the Connecticut view was that the book had been
set forth without the authority of a
bishop. At this time
Bishop Seabury floated out a service of Holy Communion based on the
Scottish prayer book, recommending it to the clergy of Connecticut, who
embraced it wholeheartedly.
Not long after the adjournment of the Philadelphia session, the
committee of correspondence received a letter from the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York and a subsequent letter dated July 4 from the
Archbishop
of Canterbury alone. The first of these said in essence that the
supplementary mailings had arrived and that the Church of England was
prepared to go ahead with the consecrations except for the legal matter
and for some concerns over the creeds and a technical detail in the
constitution.
The second letter said that a suitable act of Parliament had been
passed
eliminating the need for an oath to British civil authority, hence that
the legal matter had been resolved; with the letter was the text of the
act. The first letter objected to the deletion of the line "He
descended
into hell" in the Apostles' Creed, and it expressed what seemed
possibly
to be a pro forma objection to the omission of the other two
creeds. The letter was striking to the delegates for its
moderation. Since the archbishops were not in a position to check
on character references, the archbishops asked for particularly
stringent care in choosing the candidates for bishop. Two
suggested forms of letters were enclosed, one for testimonials
from the members of the convention in the state recommending a
candidate
for consecration and the other from the members of the General
Convention.
The latter included an assurance that the candidate "hath led his life,
for the three years just past, piously, soberly, and honestly."
--Tony Knapp
* A parish, even in 1786, typically had more than one
church. Two churches already in existence in Fairfax Parish
in 1786 were The Falls Church and Christ Church, the latter now called
Christ Church, Alexandria. Both these churches are now many times
their original size. Fairfax Parish originally cut into the part
of
Virginia that was later set aside for Washington, D.C., and it includes
part of Mount Vernon.
Picture Credits
1. Title page of 1786 Proposed Book:
accessed from justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/bcp.htm.
2. Historical view, The Falls Church, Fairfax
Parish, Virginia: www.thefallschurch.org/clientimages/29455/images/historicchurchbwphoto.jpg.
3. Historical view, Christ Church, Fairfax Parish,
Virginia: www.historicchristchurch.org/images/ccetch.jpg.
4. Samuel Provoost, oil painting by Thomas Spence
Duché, 1787, New York Historical Society: www.episcopalchurch.org/78716_ENG_HTM.htm.
5. Trinity Church Wall Street, about 1846: www.trinitywallstreet.org/history.
6. Title page of Seabury's Communion Office of
1786: justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Seabury.htm.