An Introduction to the Episcopal Church. Joseph B. Bernardin
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Independence and of the Constitution of the United States were its members.
In the year 1783 the Church in Connecticut elected the Rev. Dr. Samuel Seabury as its bishop and sent him to England to be consecrated at the hands of the English bishops. This they refused to do because he could not take the oath of allegiance to the King, and they had no authority without parliamentary sanction to dispense with it. Tiring of the delay, he turned to the Scottish non-juror bishops, who had remained loyal to the House of Stuart and were consequently not recognized by the State nor bound by the laws of the Established Church, and was consecrated by them at Aberdeen, Scotland, on November 14, 1784. In the years 1784-86 conventions of the various Churches were held to decide what course of action should be taken. In 1787 Dr. Samuel Provoost, Rector of Trinity Church, New York, and Dr. William White, Rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, went to England and were consecrated bishops in Lambeth Palace Chapel by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and the Bishop of Peterborough, a law having been enacted to make this possible; and later, in 1790, Dr. James Madison was also consecrated in England as Bishop of Virginia. In the year 1789 at Philadelphia a General Convention was held at which a Constitution was adopted for the Church and the English Prayer Book revised for American needs.
The Episcopal Church grew slowly in numbers, for in the eighteenth century the prevalence of Deism (rationalistic, naturalistic religion) was widespread, and most of the clergy were indifferent to missionary endeavor. As the tide of emigration swept westward beyond the Alleghenies they refused to follow, and the vast field of the Central States and the Middle West was left to the Methodists and the Baptists to evangelize. Finally, however, influenced by the Great Awakening under John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, came a revival of personal religion and evangelistic endeavor, and the Episcopal Church awoke to its missionary responsibility, largely due to the efforts of Bishop John Henry Hobart in New York and Bishop Alexander V. Griswold in New England. Bishop Philander Chase was consecrated Bishop of Ohio in 1819. The following year the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was incorporated, and in 1835 General Convention declared that every member of the Episcopal Church by virtue of his membership was also a member of the Missionary Society. In this same year Bishop Jackson Kemper was consecrated Bishop of the Northwest; and by the time of the Gold Rush the Episcopal Church was fully alive to its responsibility and Bishop William I. Kip was sent to California.
The General Theological Seminary for the education of men for the ministry of the Episcopal Church was opened in New York City in 1819; and shortly afterwards the Theological Seminary in Virginia was established at Alexandria with special emphasis on preparing men for missionary work. Since then many more have been founded throughout this country and also overseas.
The nineteenth century saw the flowering of the Evangelical Movement with its emphasis on personal piety and good works; then in polarity to it, the Anglo-Catholic or Oxford Movement, with its emphasis on the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church, and a revival of interest in church ceremonial, ritual, and catholic practice. At the same time the Church was faced with the problems produced by the new scientific knowledge in conflict with biblical and creedal statements, particularly in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution; and also by the growth of biblical criticism, in which the books of the Bible were investigated and studied by the same methods of literary and historical criticism as any other writing.
The Episcopal Church weathered the Civil War without any permanent division into North and South such as was the fate of most of the larger denominations at that time. In the second half of the century sisterhoods and monastic orders for men were established in the Episcopal Church, as well as secondary, industrial, and mission schools, several colleges, and numerous hospitals. Mission fields were developed in the various territorial possessions and dependencies of the United States; and the Episcopal Church, by the end of the nineteenth century, had taken its rightful place in the forefront of the religious life of the country. With the increasing interest in the beauty of worship, church buildings and cathedrals expressive of the highest in art and architecture were built, and music of appropriate dignity and beauty maintained.
In the interest of the efficient management and further development of so vast an organization, the central administration of the Episcopal Church was reorganized in 1919 under a National Council which carries on the functions of General Convention between its triennial meetings. Two years earlier the Episcopal Church, in order to provide adequate retirement allowances for its clergy and pensions for their direct dependents in case of death, established its Pension Fund, which has become a model for those of other denominations.
In 1872 the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions was organized, which in 1920 broadened the scope of its work to include other activities of the Church besides missions in its program, and became the Woman's Auxiliary to the National Council. In 1889 it started the United Thank Offering (a voluntary, monetary expression of gratitude for God's blessings on the part of the women, placed in a little blue box), which has become one of the chief supports of the Church's missionary and educational work. In recent years the Woman's Auxiliary has become the Episcopal Churchwomen; and the National Council has been renamed the Executive Council.
In 1934 the Forward Movement was inaugurated to stimulate the spiritual life of the Church. It proposed a disciple's rule of life: Turn—Follow—Learn—Pray—Serve—Worship—Share. It continues to publish helpful devotional booklets. At the Anglican Congress in 1963, in order to bring about a rebirth of the Anglican Communion, the concept of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ (MRI) was set forth. Numerous dioceses have linked themselves in mutual aid and support with a companion diocese within the Anglican Communion.
The Episcopal Church, as well as the whole Anglican Communion, has been one of the leaders in the ecumenical movement for the restoration of the visible unity of the Church. Bishop Charles H. Brent in 1910 initiated steps which resulted in the formation of the World Council of the Churches in 1948 at Amsterdam, with all of the leading Churches of the Anglican Communion as members. In addition, the Episcopal Church is also a member of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, which was constituted in 1950 out of thirteen interdenominational agencies. It is also one of the original members of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), seeking the organic union of many of the larger American Protestant Churches.
The twentieth century has also been marked by an increased participation of the laity in the work, worship, and governance of the Church. Persons other than white (they now number 52% of the Anglican Communion) have taken a more prominent and equal place in the Church's life, and women a more active part in its governance—in 1976 they were authorized to be ordained to all three orders of the ministry. The early part of the century found much emphasis on the Social Gospel, particularly in its application to the relations between capital and labor. More recently there has been an emphasis on Liberation Theology, dealing with the problems of the poor and the oppressed, particularly in the less developed countries. At the same time there has been an increased interest in worship and its study, spurred by the Liturgical Movement begun in the previous century. It has resulted in the production of revised and elaborated forms of worship, not only in the Anglican Communion, but in the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches as well.
In reviewing the Church's history, it is important to remember that it is as new as it is old; that it was founded by our Lord Himself, and in the course of its history has seen many forms of government and used many languages in its worship; but that, while outwardly the Church adapts itself efficiently to the circumstances of the time, within there is enshrined the tradition which is received from the apostles of the revelation of God in the Person of Jesus Christ, as illuminated for every age by the Holy Spirit.
BOOKS FOR FURTHER READING
BARCLAY, W., Jesus of Nazareth. New York: Ballantine, 1989.
———, The Mind of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSF, 1976.
BEVAN, E. R., Christianity, reprint. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
Book of Saints, A Dictionary of Servants of God. Compiled by the Benedictine monks of St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1993.
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