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History Links |
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English Beginnings: The Church of England in England Life in the Colonies The American Revolution
List of Supreme Govenors of the Church of England List of Archbishops of Canterbury List of Presiding Bishops
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Biographies |
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Queen Bertha of Kent |
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King Ethelbert of Kent |
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King Henry VIII of England |
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Anne Boleyn, queen to Henry VIII |
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Katherine of Aragon, queen to Henry VIII |
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Queen Mary I of England |
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Queen Elizabeth I of England |
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King Edward VI of England |
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Lady Jane Grey, queen of England |
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Thomas Cranmer
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Life in the Colonies |
The first tentative English contact with the New World came in 1579, when Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world. He put ashore in modern day San Francisco, where his chaplain conducted the first Prayer Book service in the modern day United States. The spot is marked today by what is known as the “Prayer Book Cross.” But it was on the East Coast that the Church of England first took hold.
An ill-fated effort to establish a colony in Roanoke, Virginia, mysteriously disappeared, but before it did, Virginia Dare became the first baby christened in America. The service was conducted in 1587. The service came from the Book of Common Prayer.
The church permanently arrived in America at Jamestown, Virgina, in 1607, and the colonist brought with them a chaplain named Robert Hunt to lead them in their worship. A plank nailed between two trees was the first pulpit in the first make-shift church in Virginia, but it was enough to root the Anglican faith.
The English colonists in America were far from their crown and the national church to which they had become accustomed. So, they turned elsewhere for monarchical guidance. The House of Burgesses, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World, and they assumed leadership of the church.
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The House of Burgesess, though, could not play the role of a Bishop. As a result, each community in the colony organized itself into a parish with a vestry to administer it, voted taxes to pay for the church, and then imported priests from England. As a result, the church organized the precedence for the American republic that would come. Colonial church members called themselves Anglican, as Americans still may, but the nearest Anglican bishop was in England.
As colonization left the South and moved Northward, settlers of that region grew more and more anti-Anglican and more and more Calvinist in view. Having failed to attain Calvinist reforms in England, they had set sail for New England. Yet, New England was royal territory, and not all who came were Calvinists reformers. Others came for new opportunities, and they were largely Anglican. The Church of England felt compelled then, to provide Anglican clergy in the North. Funds were raised and societies sprang to life to support missionaries, and slowly the Church of England came to represent a minority presence in the Northern Colonies, while maintaining a majority in the South.
The Northern Church, though, had a different ambiance than its Southern counterpart. In the North, the support of the government went decidedly to the Congregationalist, and societies were left to continue to support Anglican clergy. Futhermore, Northern Anglican cherished their ties to England. In the South, they beginning to see themselves as separate, and capable of self-governance.
The American Revolution
With a significant amount of Anglicans populating the colonies, many still saw themselves as English. Many still, could not separate themselves from the crown and their ties to the national church. The American Revolution would test the foundations of New World Anglicans.
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In the South, colonists were already developing a reputation as fighters, strong-willed, independent, passionate, fiery, and set in their ways. For them, the situation that was on the horizon brought with it opportunity for a different church, entirely separate from the church they had left in England. Thomas Jefferson even re-wrote the Bible, leaving out passages that he felt were no longer relevant to the new age. Southern leaders were ready to leave behind the Church of England and were envisioning the Church of America, autonomous, entirely controlled by laity, without bishops, prayer books, or creeds, with clergy who would enforce propriety on society, and a relationship, if even distant, with their maker. Under the leadership of Southerners, the first American Prayer Book was written without the Nicene Creed, and a shortened version of the Apostle’s Creed, and dropped references to being “born again” from the liturgy.
Northern Anglicans had a different view altogether. Many of them had already fled to Canada at the outbreak of revolution. Others found their very English churches closed by mobs, and themselves tarred and feathered for daring to continue to use their prayer books, and for their continued prayers for the king and the royal family. When war was over, those who had not fled, saw that they would have to take sweeping steps to perpetuate their way of life and worship.
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The American Revolution |
The belief remained in the North that bishops were needed. The clergy in Connecticut chose one of their own, Samuel Seabury, to go to England and seek consecration as a bishop. Seabury quickly discovered that English bishops could do nothing for him. At the very least, consecration in England required an oath of allegiance to the king, which Seabury could not take. Secondly, the bishops could not send someone into a territory where the government of England had no control. They could not imagine that people would support bishops with the crown.
Seabury did, however, have an alternative in the church in Scotland. The Scots had discovered that it was possible to continue to live Anglican lives with bishops and without state taxation. Most importantly, they agreed to consecrate Samuel Seabury. Their one prerequisite was that he must do all in his power to shape the American Prayer Book like that of the Scots, who had taken practices from the Eastern Orthodox Church, which were perceived to be truer to Christian worship. Therefore, the American Prayer Book not only has English roots, but Scottish and Eastern roots, as well.
When Seabury returned, there remained debate on whether or not old Church of England clergy could be united to form an all new national church. It wasn’t easy. Southerners were accustomed to living without bishops and being governed by laity. Northerners had been governed by clergy and missionary societies from England. The very first General Convention included no separate House of Bishops, but Connecticut refused to join under those conditions. Northern Anglicans seemed to have no desire to enter a church that offered laity any role in leadership, and Southern Anglicans were not happy if the church offered any role to bishops. Fortunately, there was a slight buffer between the North and the South. The Middle Colonies of the Mid-Atlantic region, led by a William White of Pennsylvania, served as a mediator, and through fiery debate, the North and the South worked out their early differences: a separate house of Bishops with a right to review and veto, but not initiate, and a lower house, where all the dioceses could be represented in equal numbers of laity and clergy. That left one question: what should bishops do between conventions?
In the early days, the bishops served as rectors to large parishes and visited smaller parishes for confirmations. Slowly, the bishops were given more and more roles, and they were freed from the pulpit of parishes. As time progressed, bishops gained a place for themselves as leaders and pastors, but their administrative power remains balanced by elected clergy and lay representatives. American bishops may were vestments that look authoritative, but they function differently than bishops of other traditions. And that is a result of the America’s early colonial experience.