The Episcopal Church and the American Revolution David L. Holmes evolutions, like street fights," an Episcopal church historian has written, "are likely to be as dangerous to the innocent by- JL ^standers as to the participants."1 Technically speaking, the Ang- lican Church in America was an innocent bystander in the American Revo- lution. But since it lived in the neighborhood of one of the participants and was intimately related to the other, it emerged with a terrible beat- ing. The war raised questions of patriotism, of loyalty, and of the obliga- tions of Christians at a time of war, and Americans who have lived through the Civil War or the Vietnam War have been there. Distinguished from other denominations in the colonies by its triple attachment to the Book of Common Prayer, to the Monarchy, and to the Episcopate, the American transplantation of the Church of England seemed in good condition on the eve of the Revolution. Anglicanism- the terms 'Protestant Episcopal" or "Episcopal Church" were not officially adopted until the 1780's- was not only the second largest denomination in the thirteen colonies but also one that was increasing rapidly. Although the Anglican parishes had their problems, the question of survival ap- peared not to be one. Yet Anglicanism emerged from the Revolutionary War seriously weakened in most of the newly-independent states and on the point of extinction in others. In New England-a traditional stronghold of anti-Anglicanism, where Congregationalism was established by law in all colonies except Rhode Mr. Holmes is Associate Professor of Religion at the College of William and Mary and Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia - Editors Note . 1William W. Manross, A History of the American Episcopal Church, 2d ed. (New York, 1950), 172. 261 This content downloaded from 24.208.34.85 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 01:48:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 262 HISTORICAL MAGAZINE Island- Anglicanism was steadily increasing in numbers and in influence by the eve of the Revolution. Although it remained small in New Hamp- shire (two clergymen and two parishes as of 1774) and in that portion of Massachusetts called Maine (five congregations served by one missionary), it had proportionately good strength in tiny Rhode Island. Especially in the Puritan citadels of Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Church had made great gains. Starting in 1689 with only one clergyman and one church, by 1768 the Anglicans of Massuchusetts had approximately twenty churches or other meeting places staffed by some dozen clergy. With twenty priests serving more than forty congregations, Connecticut had witnessed an Anglican boom; according to a report made in 1774, seven to eight per cent of Connecticut's population was now Anglican, where 50 years earlier the colony had only a single, small Anglican parish. The aggressive growth of Anglicanism in Puritan New England caused serious tensions.2 In the Middle Colonies - where Calvinists, Quakers, and Lutherans pre- dominated - Anglicanism was also a minority church. Other denominations outnumbered it in New York, although the Church of England was estab- lished in the four lower counties of the colony. By the last years of the colonial period, New York had better than two dozen Anglican churches and somewhat fewer clergy, including extensive missions among the In- dians; King's College (now Columbia University) was under Anglican con- trol. In New Jersey, the Church's growth had been steady but slow, with about a dozen Anglican clergy serving some two dozen churches by 1770; contrary to occasional assertions, the Church of England was never estab- lished in the colony. In tolerant Pennsylvania and in closely-related Dela- ware, Anglicans formed only a tiny minority, constituting perhaps two per cent of the population. In Philadelphia the Church not only had an influen- tial membership but also substantial influence in the College of Philadelphia. Anglicanism's greatest strength lay in the South, where the Church of England was the established church in all of the colonies - though only in Maryland and Virginia did Anglicans actually outnumber members of other denominations. At the opening of the Revolution, Maryland had numerically the second strongest Anglican church in the colonies, with upwards of 50 clergy serving more than 40 lucrative parishes. Virginia was even stronger, with over 100 clergy serving slightly less than 100 parishes stretching from Norfolk in the east to a western parish called "Kentucky." Like Maryland and South Carolina, Virginia had consciously transplanted English parish life; its College of William and Mary was the oldest Ang- lican college in the colonies. In neighboring North Carolina Anglicans re- 2Two concise summaries of the tensions may be found in Glenn Weaver, "Anglican-Congregationalist Tensions in Pre-Revolutionary Connecticut," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church , XXVI (1957), 269-285, and in Winthrop Hudson, Religion in America, 2d ed. (New York, 1973), 87-92. This content downloaded from 24.208.34.85 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 01:48:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 263 mained a small minority, though the 1760's and 1770's witnessed an ambi- tious program to put clergy (there were about 11 by the eve of the Revolution) in each of its projected 30 parishes. More vital and influential but still a minority faith was the Anglican Church in South Carolina, with some two dozen parishes, somewhat more than 20 clergy, and close to half of the population. In Georgia, the last of the colonies founded, Anglicanism was technically established, but again, it was a minority faith, having in 1773 only two rectors for 13 parishes, some of which existed only on paper. In all, at the opening of the hostilities with England, Anglicanism had well over 400 regularly-meeting congregations and perhaps 300 clergy.3 As recent historical scholarship has clearly shown, the traditional con- ception of colonial Anglicanism as upper class in membership is only par- tially true. Anglican parishes in all colonies did include the wealthy, but they also included large numbers of the poor and the illiterate; adjoining con- gregations of other denominations - Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Quaker - often contained more wealth than the Anglican parishes. Future research will undoubtedly display even more clearly the social comprehensiveness of the colonial Anglican congregations.4 Similarly exaggerated is the stereotype of the colonial Anglican clergy as fox-hunting, socializing, sporting parsons. In colonies where wealthy, large- ly autonomous planter vestries controlled the parishes - Virginia, Mary- land, South Carolina - some of the clergy clearly adopted the worldly attitudes and lifestyles of the planter aristocracy; the eighteenth was a worldly century. But the majority of the Anglican clergy who served American parishes at the time of the Revolutionary War were missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a High- Church5 English society of firm devotional and moral standards. Planting Anglicanism in areas without clergy and nurturing it in colonies where it was struggling, the S.P.G. dispatched more than 300 missionaries to the American colonies from its founding in 1701 until the cessation of its American activities following the Peace of 1783. Almost all of the Northern clergy received its aid; in the South, only the established churches of Vir- ginia, Maryland, and ultimately South Carolina failed to require it. As a group the S.P.G. clergy inevitably proved superior to the non-S.P.G. paro- chial clergy, for the life of a missionary pioneer was demanding, the So- 3The best single survey to date of Anglican strength in the American colonies on the eve of the Revolution is Frederick V. Mills, "Anglican Expansion in Colo- nial America, 1761-1775," HMPEC (1970), 315-324. In The Fledgling Province (Chapel Hill, 1976), 193-232, Harold E. Davis sheds new light on the status of Anglicanism in colonial Georgia. 4See, for example, Bruce E. Steiner, "New England Anglicanism: A Genteel Faith?," William and Mary Quarterly , XXVII (1970), 122-135. 5The term had not yet taken on the ritualistic and sacramental connotations it assumed in the nineteenth century. Colonial High Churchmen emphasized the episcopacy, the monarchy, the authority of the Church, and the traditional us- ages, vestments, and theology of the mother Church of England. This content downloaded from 24.208.34.85 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 01:48:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 264 HISTORICAL MAGAZINE ciety's low annual stipend generally attracted only the idealistic, and the Society carefully selected and supervised its clergy. Among the first mis- sionaries to Georgia of the S.P.G. was one of the most famous clergy to serve in the American colonies, John Wesley.6 The problems of colonial Anglicanism were many. Constantly frustrat- ing, especially to the High-Church S.P.G. clergy, was the lack of a bishop in America. Without a bishop, not only Anglicanism's power of mission in the colonies but also its discipline, its morale, its vitality, and its recruit- ment of a native clergy all suifered; ordination required an expensive and dangerous 6,000-mile round-trip across the Atlantic, during which one of five candidates perished. As early as the 1630's, the Archbishop of Can- terbury drew up plans for Anglican bishoprics in America, and the S.P.G. promoted similar plans at frequent intervals throughout the eighteenth cen- tury. But proposals for an American episcopate increasingly aroused fears of an Anglican plot to overthrow the civil and religious rights of non- Anglican colonists. The opposition of colonial political authorities, of South- ern Anglicans, of Calvinist clergy, and of Whig governments in England combined to prevent the appointment of any Anglican bishops for America.