A Republican Episcopate

An Anglican or rather Episcopalian Episcopate was not established in the American Colonies until the 1780s, and much of the theoretical basis was worked out by the Rev. William White of Philadelphia (1748-1836) who was Rector of the United Parishes there. A supporter of the Patriot Cause, he had served as chaplain to the continental congress at one point, and when hostilities ceased in 1781, he turned his mind to preserving what was left of the Church of England in the newly independent Colonies.

He drew attention to the matter by writing a pamphlet, “The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered” which argued for the continuation of the Episcopal Church in the former colonies and provided an outline scheme for its governance. Later, he joined with others in calling for a General Convention in association with the annual meeting of the Widows and Orphans Fund to discuss the constitutional arrangements for the reorganized Church. The Revolutionary War had left the Church reduced in numbers, with about a third of her ministers having left for Canada or England, and it incurred considerable enmity on basis of it being the Established Church of the former colonial power. If it were not to disappear, swift action was needed, and the first of a series of General Conventions met in 1785 to hash out the discipline and worship of the new Church.

To revert to White’s ‘Case.’ The work makes interesting reading in that he has no qualms about adapting the institutions of the Church to suit the American experience. For example, White recognizes the historical priority of parishes over dioceses in North America, by contrast to the Mother Country were dioceses predated parishes. This caused him to write,

“One natural consequence of this distinction will be to retain in each church (parish – PDR) every power that need not be delegated for the good of the whole. Another, will be an equality of the churches; and not, as in England, the subjection of all parish churches to their respective cathedrals.”

This priority of parish over diocese also suggests that the property of the Church belongs in the first instance with the Parish and its Vestry, and that the fundamental unit of Church administration is the parish, rather than the diocese.

Having established the basics, White then elaborates proposing a three-tier system of government with District, State, and Continental Conventions which is oddly reminiscent of Ussher’s proposals of 1641. At the lowest level, White suggests that each parish, or union of parishes, send equal numbers of lay and clerical representatives to a district convention. The presiding officer of this Convention was to be a minister elected permanently to the post. They in turn were to send equal numbers of lay and clerical representatives to State Conventions, again with a minister as president, to take order for the Church within each State or Commonwealth, or possibly several states together. Finally, these middle level Conventions would send delegates to the Continental Convention which would legislate on those matters in which it is necessary for the Church to have uniformity across the Continent. White, being a good son of the Revolution, conceives that only such matters as cannot be handled at the local, or lower levels, be delegated to the middle- and upper-tier Conventions.

White’s scheme is nowhere near fully worked out, but the barebones of the Protestant Episcopal Church’s constitution can be seen in germ in what the future Bishop proposes. His vision of Church government is very much bottom-up, rather than top-down, and in this is echoes the general sentiments of the newly born Republic with regards to its governmental institutions. When it comes to Bishops, White disposes of many of the common American objections quite briefly,

“In the minds of some, the idea of the episcopacy will be connected with that of immoderate power; to which it may be answered, that power becomes dangerous, not from the precedency of one man, but from his being independent. Had Rome been governed by a presbytery instead of a bishop; and had that presbytery been invested with the independent riches and dominion of the Papal See; it is easy to conceive, of their acquiring as much power over the Christian world, as was ever known in a Gregory or a Paul.

Then of too hard and fast a connection between kings and bishops, he writes,

“It may be further objected, that episcopacy is anti-republican; and therefore, opposed to those ideas which all good citizens ought to promote, for securing the peace and happiness of the community. But this supposed relation between episcopacy and monarchy arises from confounding English episcopacy with the subject at large. In the early ages of the church, it was customary to debate and determine in a general concourse of all Christians in the
same city; among whom the bishop was no more than president.”

He appeals to the history of the Church before the Constantinian Compromise. He also makes short work of objections to the title of bishop suggesting that if such a name be found offensive president, superintendent, or overseer be used instead.

The most radical part of the scheme was what he proposed to do if the historical succession could not be secured. Citing Hooker, Ussher, Burnet, and Hoadly on the admissibility of presbyterial ordinations in emergency, White proposes what is in effect an Episcopate without the historic succession to allow church government to continue in good order. Whether these presiding offices of the Convention would have ordained until such time as the Historic Episcopate can be secured is left unclear. Something similar occurred some 80 years later in the Free Church of England where Benjamin Price exercised oversight as “bishop” without having been consecrated. White concludes that, in the emergency then existing,

“All the obligations of conformity to the divine ordinances, all the arguments which prove the connexion between public worship and the morals of a people, combine to urge the adopting some speedy measures, to provide for the public ministry in these churches; if such as have been above recommended should be adopted, and the episcopal succession afterwards obtained, any supposed imperfections of the intermediate ordinations might, if it were judged proper, be supplied without acknowledging their nullity, by a conditional ordination resembling that of conditional baptism in the liturgy; the above was an expedient proposed by Archbishop Tillotson, Bishops Patrick, Stillingfleet, and others, at the revolution, and had been actually practised in Ireland by Archbishop Bramhall. [Nicholson’s “Defence of the church of England,” Introduction.]”

White’s scheme is practical and pragmatic, and as providence would grant, the English bishops stirred themselves and secured an Act of Parliament allowing them to consecrate bishops without exacting the oaths to the Crown. As a result, White and Provost were consecrated to be Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania and New York respective, and James Madison (of Augusta Co.) was consecrated as Bishop of Virginia in 1790. The General Convention accepted Samuel Seabury’s Scottish Consecration in 1789 allowing a unified, Episcopal Church to emerge, albeit one without the Methodists. White’s view of the episcopate was decidedly republican – they were elected presiding officers with limited clearly defined power, not imperial prelates. Their material needs were to be provided for by their remaining in the parishes which they already held, and conducted such Episcopal business as came their way alongside their parochial duties.

Over the next few years, a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing occurred in which the Constitution of the General Convention was worked out. Until the 1789 Convention, it was going to be a unicameral body in which the clergy voted as one house, and the laity as the second. The president of the General Convention was to be a Presiding Bishop, and there was no Episcopal veto. To accommodate Seabury, the General Convention of 1789 agreed to the creation of a House of Bishop when three of more were present, and gave them a veto, which could be overturned by a four-fifths vote of the Delegates.

What White proposes is a distinctively American or Republican episcopate shorn of the trappings of the English Establishment focussing solely on its spiritual functions. White clearly sees the bishop of a given area as being the minister of one of the larger parish churches, elected by the lay and clerical members of the local Convention. The bishop presides over that body and other organs of the Church and with performs with the necessary administrative functions of Church whilst retaining his traditional rights to confirm and ordain. This is not a ‘high mitre’ Episcopate, but one focussed on the well-being of the Church as it seeks to re-establish itself in the young Republic.