Happy 40th Anniversary to the Philadelphia 11

July 29, 1974: The Ordination of
the Philadelphia 11

I was listening to the radio the other day as I was driving and came across Maureen Fiedler’s Interfaith Voices, a program that I always enjoy.  Dr. Fiedler (aka Sister Maureen Fiedler IBVM) had a special program commemorating “The Philadelphia 11.”  Forty years ago today, July 29^th 1974, eleven women deacons in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA presented themselves to Bishops Daniel N. Corrigan, Robert L. DeWitt, and Edward R. Welles and were ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church.  The eleven women—the first women priests in the Episcopal Church (though not in the Anglican Communion) were the Reverends Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campell (don’t Episcopalians have wonderful names?), Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield.  Jeannette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig.  Katrina Swanson is the daughter of the late Bishop Welles, one of the ordaining bishops. 

There was nothing in the canon law of the Episcopal Church to prevent the ordination of women as priests, but the General Convention of the Church in 1970 and again in 1973 failed to approve motions authorizing such ordinations. Surprisingly it was not the House of Bishops that had objected, but the House of Delegates comprised of lay and lower clergy representatives.   In search of good pastures, shepherds are often ready to move faster and further than their flocks whose vision is limited by their narrow experience—a reason why we often call those who cannot (or will not) think critically “sheep.”  There was a day in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States when we had Shepherds like Richard Cushing, John McNicholas OP, Frank Haas, James Gibbons, John Dearden, Albert Meyer, Paul Hallinan, Bernard Topel, Bernard Sheil, to name a few.  (To be honest, I can’t think of many more.)  Heck, our first Bishop, Archbishop John Carroll, was even pushing for Mass and the Sacraments in English almost two hundred years before the Church finally came ‘round.  But back to the Episcopalians. 

Confronted with the fact that there were now eleven women on whom hands hand been laid and the Holy Spirit invoked, the Bishops of the Episcopal Church had to devise a protocol to confront the new situation.  At first they were inclined to declare the ordinations invalid in as that the (Protestant Episcopal) Church had not called these deacons to ordination.  The sacrament of Orders is not some arbitrary thing that a bishop can do at will.  At least in the Reformed Theology—and in fact, (though more in theory than in practice) in Roman Catholic theology—it is the Church that calls the candidate to the ministry and the Bishop is acting not on his own behalf, but as the head of a Church that has called the candidate.  In the ordination service—the Roman Catholic Ordination Rite as well as most other ceremonials—the assent of the gathered faithful is asked for by the ordaining bishop.  Given that there had been no such call, save from the assembled congregation that morning in Philadelphia, and given that the (Protestant Episcopal) Church had in fact refused to call women to the priesthood, and complicated by the fact that each of the three ordaining bishops were not the head of any (local) Church in whose name they could be acting, but all retired, foes of the ordination of women claimed that the ordinations were invalid.  But then Bishop Arthur Vogel, considered to be the best theologian among the Episcopal Bishops (a group not known in general for intellectual prowess), got up and presented a counter-argument: the women had been ordained by duly consecrated bishops and according to the official rites of the Church.  The ordinations were therefor valid.  The whole matter was replete with irony.  Bishop Vogel was a somewhat extreme High Churchman, not one who would be expected to argue for the ordination of women.  His argument, befitting a prelate educated at Nashotah House (a seminary that would cause the SSPX astonished confusion for its Tridentine Anglicanism) was pure Catholic Theology.  You have a valid minister; you have a valid rite; you must presume valid intention unless there is clear intention otherwise.  (As there was nothing in the canon law of the Protestant Episcopal Church) preventing the ordination of women, you also had a valid candidate.)  In the end the ordinations were ruled valid but the women were asked not to exercise priestly ministry until such time as the General Convention recognized women’s ordination which they did in 1976—a significant year for several reasons. 

The Catholic situation is somewhat different.  First, we have no women deacons.  There is a strong movement to ordain women as deacons—there were deaconesses for the first six centuries or so of the Church—and their duties corresponded to the duties of the male deacons though their ministry was directed towards women and the needs of women.  There are two reasons why we do not ordain women to the diaconate.  It would shake the growing rapport with the Orthodox Churches of the East (Greek, Russian, Syrian) as well as the other ancient Churches (Copts, Assyrians, Armenians), none of whom yet ordain women.  (Though the subject of admitting women to the diaconate is coming up for discussion in some of the Orthodox Churches.) The second reason—perhaps a bit more “on the ground” as it were, is that the diaconate is the firewall to insuring we don’t ordain women to the priesthood.  As the Episcopalians discovered that July day forty years ago: if they are already deacons, get a bishop to go along and they can move quickly and surreptitiously into the priesthood before you can stop it. 

The Catholic situation is somewhat different also in as that Catholic Church Law specifically declares that a valid candidate for ordination must be male.  There is therefore, under the current law, no way that the “Church” can call a woman to ordination. It simply would not be valid even with a validly ordained bishop following the prescribed rites.  So when we hear that several women were “ordained” on a boat on the Rhine River or in someone’s back yard in Maine, the only “Church” that called them is the community gathered at that time and in that place.  Unlike the typical ordination service in which the assembled congregation is representative of the larger Church, such assemblies are not representative of the Catholic Church.  The women ordained may be priests, but they are not Catholic priests.  The Catholic Church has not called them to priesthood. 

A tricky situation would be if a Bishop who was Ordinary of Local Church (in other words, a Bishop who heads a diocese) ordained a woman; that Bishop has a right to act on behalf of and in the name of the Church which he heads.  But for him to ordain a woman would take him—and his Church—out of the Roman Communion.  So again, perhaps the newly ordained would be a priest—but not a Catholic Priest. 

There is the case of Ludmila Javorová, a Czech woman who claims to have been secretly ordained to the priesthood in December of 1970 by Bishop Felix Maria Davídek.  Davídek himself had been secretly consecrated Bishop in 1967 during the period of Communist persecution of the Church in Czechoslovakia.  Allegedly Bishop Davídek secretly ordained a number of women as they would not be suspected of being priests and would thus have more mobility during what was one of the most virulent persecutions of the Church in the 20^th century.  Javorová’s disclosure that she had been ordained triggered Pope Saint John Paul II to write his 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in which he teaches that it is by Divine Law, not human law, that the priesthood is given only to men and that therefore this law is immutable and that consequently the ordination of a woman is ipso facto invalid because the candidate is inherently ineligible.  Sounds pretty final doesn’t it?

There is still some argument about the theological soundness of the Pope’s Letter and there is still some (though not as much perhaps as twenty years ago) clamor among Catholics in the developed World for the ordination of women.  Now let me make it very clear.  I am not disagreeing with the teachings of Pope John Paul or of the Church itself.  I am not writing theologically.  I am not equipped to do so.   I am writing as a historian and only in that capacity.  And as a historian I know that I will not see the ordination of women even if I live another generation. (Of course, there was a day when I was told that I would never see Mass in English, but that is beside the point.)  No one reading this post is ever going to see the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.  Neither—probably—will your children.  But the trajectory of history makes the ordination of women in the Catholic Church inevitable.  I know, Pope Saint John Paul said that it can’t—by Divine Law—happen.  I know, I know.  Pope Boniface VIII said that no one who was not subject to the Roman Pontiff could be saved.  Pope Pius XI condemned the Ecumenical Movement.  Pope Pius IX said that it was theologically erroneous (and most seriously so) to believe or teach that : The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.  “Things change, Kundun!”  I am not advocating change but two centuries down the line Catholics will look at the arguments about the ordination of women and wonder “what were they thinking with all the problems of the 20^th century and they were arguing over that?”  A millennium down the line and the arguments will be as obtuse as the arguments over Homooúsios or Homoiousia though of infinite less consequence then or now.  So happy anniversary to the Philadelphia 11.  We’d jump in the pool with you to celebrate but seem to have forgotten our bathing suit.  And since there are now ladies in the pool, skinny dipping is not an option.  Well, it may be for you Episcopalians, but we Roman Catholics are still a bit priggish, aren’t we?  

The Foundation of the Anglican Church II

Plan of a Christian Church from

the Roman Period found at

Silchester, England. A curious

feature of this church is that it faces

west rather than east as was the more

normal practice

  In speaking of the Ecclesia Anglicana or the English Church, one of the things of which we need to be precise is the term “English.”  When you see the Latin word for English—Anglicana (Anglicanus, a, um), you can see why.  Anglicanus and its English derivative “English” refer to the Angles—a Germanic people who, along with two other Germanic peoples, the Saxons and the Jutes, began to migrate to the British Isle in the fifth century.  In other words there were no English (Angli, Angles) in England until sometime between 400-500 AD.  We usually refer to the people who lived in the southern half of the Island before the Anglo-Saxon migrations (or, some would say, invasions) as the Britons.  (The northern half of the Island populated by the Scoti and the Picts.) Thus when we talk about the Church in Britain in this period of Roman domination we would not refer to it as the Ecclesia Anglicana or the English Church.  But there were no “Roman Catholics” in Britain at this period either.  There were simply the Romano-British Christian communities.  There were bishops at what is today London, York and Lincoln. Other cities and towns such as Colchester, Bath, Carlisle or Verulamium, which flourished in the Roman period probably had their Christian communities as well, each with its own bishop.  Certainly by the beginning of the fifth century (400 AD) the predominant religion in Britain would have been Christianity.  And as Britain was part of the Roman Empire, Christians there would have been aware of the Church of Rome and its Bishop.  They almost certainly would have included the name of the Bishop of Rome in the diptychs signifying that they were in communion with the Church and the bishop of Rome.  But they weren’t “under” the bishop of Rome in any sense. 
Let me digress for a moment to tell you about the diptychs as this is an important feature—and a feature we still follow today—for the unity of the Church.  The diptychs were two panels hinged together on which were written the names of the living for whom prayers were offered on the one side, and the names of the dead to be commemorated in the prayers on the other.  On the side of the living would be included the names of the prominent bishops and Churches of Christendom.  The priest or deacon would read out these names during the prayers so that hearing the names of the leading bishops, a travelling Christian would know they were in a catholic (note the small “c”) and not some breakaway sect or heretical faction.  Today, at Mass, we include the name of the Pope and the local Bishop in the Eucharistic Prayer.  Thus when I am at Mass away from home, and I hear the Pope’s name I know I am in a Catholic Church and not an Episcopalian or a Lutheran Church where the Liturgy is very much the same.  (Don’t be smug. I know devout Catholics who have been to Episcopal or Lutheran Eucharists and not known they were in the wrong pew.  This can be particularly tricky if there is a language barrier.)   
While these Churches in Britain were in communion with the Roman Church they were in no way “under” the Roman Church or its Bishop, whom we may now refer to as “the Pope.”  (It would not be precise historically to call the bishop of Rome “the Pope” before Leo the Great, (pope 440-461) or certainly before the Constantinian settlement, c. 315. But that is another subject entirely.)  Each of these Churches would have elected its own bishop in the traditional way—an assembly of the laity along with the clergy—with the election confirmed by the bishops of the surrounding communities.  That bishop, once elected, would have governed the local Church without reference to outside authority other than that of any council of the bishops of his region that might be held, or an Ecumenical Council called by the Emperor. 
The coming of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the fifth century uprooted but did not destroy these British Christian communities.  At the beginning of the fifth century, Roman troops were called home from the far-flung corners of the Empire to protect the city of Rome from the various invaders that threatened it.  Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, threatened by Attila in 452, sacked again by the Vandals in 455, and finally sacked once more by the Ostrogoths in 546.  (We won’t deal here with later sacks.)  Once the Roman troops had withdrawn, these Germanic tribes saw room for expansion in the rich and fertile British Island.  As they moved in, the native British population shifted more and more to the west and to what is now Wales to escape them.  The Germanic peoples were pagans of the old Germanic religion with Wotan and his buddies from the Ring of the Nibelung.  In places like York and London and Eboracum (York) Christianity held on by a thread but the centers of Christianity shifted to the west and south west and to Wales with the surviving Briton population.  This was the Britain of Arthur and we know little about it with any certainty, but at the very time Christianity was most vulnerable, reinforcements to the faith came from the west in the Celtic missions. And that is for next time.

Spiritual Malnutrition in Modern America

I was surprised to hear that Ann Romney had been Episcopalian and converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormon faith) when she met and was dating Mitt.  When I heard that her family was of Welsh background I was particularly curious as while there are some Welsh Anglicans they are fairly rare, the Welsh being mostly evangelicals—Baptists and Wesleyans in particular along with various “free Church” Congregations.  The Anglicans in Wales are usually quite Low Church but high income—the upper crust sort of people.  Working class Welsh—and Mrs. Romney’s grandfather was a miner—are either non-religious or, as I said, evangelicals.  It turns out that Edward Davies, Mrs. Romney’s father, an immigrant, had been raised in the Free Church tradition but was strongly opposed to organized religion.  This may have been due to the heavy and rigidly Calvinist bent of the Welsh Evangelicals which is dour enough to suck all joy and life out of you like one of Harry Potter’s Dementors.  The Davies family rarely went to Church and while Ann identified herself as an Episcopalian, I can’t find any mention of her ever being formally received into or confirmed in the Episcopal Church. 

But it isn’t Ann Romney whom I want to write about today. It is rather the Episcopal Church.  Thinking—until I started to research—that Mrs. Romney had been a cradle Episcopalian I was going to bring up the subject of how the Episcopal Church has been gutted of its membership—dropping 40% of its membership over the last 40 years.  What has caused this loss?

Actually I think the loss is even more dramatic—many of the Episcopalians I know, indeed most, are people who have joined the Church over the last 40 years meaning that the number who have left is even greater than 40%, the converts taking the place of perhaps another 20 or 30%.  An Episcopalian priest friend of mine—who himself is a former Catholic priest—says that about two-thirds of his congregation of 350 members joined the Episcopal Church as adults.  Many of these are, like the priest himself, former Catholics.  They feel more comfortable in the Episcopal Church because they are in second marriages, or they are in gay unions, or they feel emarginated in the Catholic Church because of their support for “liberal” causes.  “Father Joe” said too that there are a number of regular attendees at his parish who still call themselves Catholics but are just more comfortable worshipping in an Episcopal Church because it is more “inclusive” and “welcoming.” 

“Father Joe” said that in addition to converts from Catholicism he has about an equal number of people who have come from other Christian faiths—particularly evangelicals—who are drawn to the Episcopal Church (they say) by the more formal liturgy.  “They like the music—and the language of the Prayer-Book.  These are the ones who are most resistant to liturgical innovations and they love the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’.”  Some of these “pass through the gastro-intestinal tract of the Episcopal Church and into the Roman Catholic Church because they want even more ritual than we can give them, but they tend to become Latin Mass Catholics.  I even know of one or two,” the priest said, “who used the Catholic Church as a changing station for Russian Orthodoxy.  But people on that sort of spiritual journey are generally just restless and not religious.” 

What has caused the exodus from the Episcopal Church?  Liberal Protestantism in general has gone into decline since the heady years of their support for the Civil Rights movement and Anti-War movement of the Vietnam years.  Those were exhilarating times for liberal Protestants in general and Episcopalians in particular.  But the subsequent causes—feminism, abortion rights, gay rights—the Churches have embraced have been much more polarizing.  Yet I think the affinity for the Episcopal (and Presbyterian) Church for liberal agendas doesn’t really answer the question of why their membership has declined.  While a minority of former Episcopalians have either gone into the schismatic Anglican groups such as Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) or moved to more evangelical Churches, the majority have just stopped going to any Church or attend a church of their choice on a sporadic basis or as need for a funeral or wedding occur.  American society is overall far less churched in 2012 than it was in the Ozzie and Harriet years of the Eisenhower administration. 

I think—and I could be wrong—that another reason that Church attendance and membership has dropped in the mainline denominations, including the Episcopal Church, is that the churches had become little more than a social event.  The preaching is often bland and sufficiently vague to make sure that no one is offended and the liturgy is often the triumph of form over substance.  I think a focus has been lost on the saving work of Christ and how that saving work intersects not with some future afterlife, but with the demands of faithfulness in the here and now world.  This brings me back to one of my theme songs—the lack of substantial spirituality in contemporary American Christianity.  I have written before on this issue as it relates to Catholicism, but I think the problem is much wider.  Anglicanism has a strong spiritual tradition both with the Caroline Divines and the Oxford movement.  Methodism too in Wesley has a strong spiritual heritage that leads the Christian to look honestly at himself and what much change for fidelity to Christ.  I think the various “Bible Churches” and other pseudo-evangelical groups present a distortion of this spirituality—not a willful distortion just a failure to capture the real thing—in the sort of emotional theatrics of mega-church worship and people find their “faith” satisfied even as a child would rather fill-up on Cotton Candy rather than Broccoli and lean meats.  The meat and potato spiritual diet found in Ignatius Loyola or John of the Cross or John Wesley or Teresa of Avila or Lancelot Andrews or Jeremy Taylor requires a discipline that the musical surge and stage lighting of a Joel Osteen or a Pete Wilson or a Brad Powell or a Pat Robertson supplants so that the believer can “feel the feeling” without having to confront the challenge.   The mainline denominations, Catholicism included, needs to get back to its deep spiritual roots and find the sort of faith that sustain contemporary Christians in a post-Christian world. 

Two Sad Stories and a Happy One

A black youth is killed by a “Neighborhood Watch” warden with the very white name of George Zimmerman.  Stories abound—conflicting and contradicting one another.  Some rally around the white man and cast aspersions on the youth—he was suspended from school; he had been found with marijuana.  He was always in trouble.  They point out that George Zimmerman is in fact Hispanic.  (His ancestry is both European and Latino).  Others speak up for the victim: the President of the United States says: if I had a son, he would look like that young man.   Rick Santorum risks alienating his conservative base and jumps in on the side against the killer.  When Zimmerman’s defenders say: “He looked suspicious—he was wearing a hoodie,” thousands of people wear hoodies to Church to protest profiling.   Zimmerman’s friends claim that he, not the young man, was the victim.  They allege that the kid jumped Zimmerman, beat his head against a sidewalk.  911 tapes are released telling Zimmerman “We don’t need you to do that (follow Trayvon Martin)…” indicating that Zimmerman was out for the kid.  Racist remarks by Zimmerman are heard on the tapes but Zimmerman’s friends say there are other tapes not yet released that will give a different story.  Who knows what happened?  I wasn’t there.  This is what we have Grand Juries for. 

       And it is like the continuing saga of Marcel Guarnizo, the priest who denied Barbara Johnson communion at her mother’s funeral Mass because Johnson isn’t heterosexual.   Guarnizo has his story. Johnson has hers.  Guarnizo is having trouble getting people to go along with his story—not only family members but funeral home employees, parishioners, and even parish staff who were present are not backing him up and in fact accusing Guarnizo of bullying them to support his claims.  So the Archdiocese of Washington is convoking an investigation,  much like a Grand Jury, to determine as best they can the facts of the case.  And people on both sides are making wild accusations at the opposite side.  You know, Don Wuerl, those red hats don’t come cheap.  You pay for them with migraines.

      In the meantime, I want to surface a letter that appeared in the Washington Post two weeks ago that puts a different face on Catholicism.  Not on official Catholicism, the Downtown Chancery sort of Catholicism, but the real every day sort of Catholicism.  An Episcopal Priest,  the Reverend Anne Monahan, wrote of the compassionate warmth she received from a Catholic parish when her mother died and was being buried from a Catholic Church.  read below.  

      When my Roman Catholic mother died, I had a very different experience at her funeral than did Barbara Johnson, the gay woman recently denied Communion during the service for her mother at St. John Neumann Church in Gaithersburg.

       Until my mid-20s, I was, as a friend commented, “a little more Roman Catholic than the Pope.” But after starting a news reporting career, marrying a good Irish Catholic in my family’s parish church and giving birth to three daughters in three years, I had many questions for the church. Soon I found that the church did not welcome questions and had unsatisfactory, rigid answers to many of them. In 1966 I voted with my feet and left for the Episcopal Church, where a priest told me, “We may not have answers but we’ll walk with you on the search for answers.” 

     My journey led to ordination as a priest and a 30-year ministry. Once the culture shock wore off, my parents proudly told the world, including their pastor and his assistant, “Our daughter is a priest.”

      As my mother’s congestive heart failure approached its end stage, she and Dad informed their pastor that they wanted me to participate “up front” at her funeral. When she told me that the priest had agreed, I cynically thought, “The Second Coming will arrive first.” But I said I would ask about funeral participation when the time came. 

       Mom died in the early morning hours of a beautiful autumn day, and in the afternoon I called her priest to inquire about funeral planning. Prepared to be put in my place as an apostate, I gingerly approached the subject of participation, asking if I might read a lesson or lead the psalm.

     “Oh, more than that. You can do anything you want,” Father responded.                     

     “Anything?”

      “Anything,” he repeated.

       We set a meeting for the next morning at the rectory. There, warmly received by the pastor and his assistant, I found myself talking easily as we discussed our ministries and, as priests often do, exchanging war stories (e.g., a parishioner who wanted to be buried in a columbarium but definitely did not wish to be cremated). People are people, no matter where they pray, and priests have lots of stories to prove it. 

       As we planned Mom’s service, I found that “anything” meant “anything,” beyond my imagination. Both priests urged me to vest in alb and stole and to choose Scripture readings and hymns. When I said I hoped to read a lesson, they insisted it be the Gospel, which is reserved for a priest or deacon. Preach? “Your mother would want you to do that.” Two hours later, the service was outlined. At no time would I be excluded. 

       When I asked if they needed to get approval for my participation from their (very conservative) bishop, they gently informed me it is easier to seek forgiveness than permission, a practical rule I’ve invoked several times in parish ministry. I was awed by their courage in responding pastorally and compassionately to my family even though it might bring them harsh discipline from their hierarchy. (I decided not to name the church here, just to be on the safe side.)

        Vested as a priest, I presided at the reception of the body, read the Gospel, preached, concelebrated at the altar, distributed the bread, imparted the final blessing and led the graveside service from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. I will never forget the pride in my father’s face or the tears and smiles of those, especially women, who received Communion from my hand.

       There was no dis-invitation to receive Communion, an act that has offended so many Christians at Roman Catholic services. Everyone was welcome. After all, a female priest was “up front.”

         As I left the cemetery, a local Episcopal priest and his wife, my friends and also former Roman Catholics, tearfully related how my presence at the altar and their reception of Communion had helped to heal the pain they’d felt at their parents’ funerals, where Communion, along with any role in the service, was denied to them.       

       That evening my daughter Sue told the family that, as she stood graveside with the pastor’s assistant, he smiled and quietly said to her, “Remember what you saw today at the altar. That is the church’s future.”

        I pray it is, for all my brothers and sisters in Christ, and especially for Barbara Johnson.

       Well, I don’t know where this happened and hopefully the diocese in question will never find out.  But it just one more example that the Church on the ground is usually far ahead in the journey to God’s Kingdom than the Church of the Chancery office.  If there is anything wrong with Catholicism it is this: that the hardness of the official party line is allowed to mask the evangelical faithfulness of its pastoral practice.   

Church of the Presidents

President and Mrs. Obama along with their daughter Sasha attended Saint John’s Church Lafayette Square, where they received Holy Communion at the Episcopal Liturgy Sunday (March 18) morning.  Saint John’s is called the “Church of the Presidents” as every United States President since it was built in 1815 has attended worship there at least once during his time in the White House. The Church stands facing 16^th Street, across Lafayette Square from the White House. It was built after the burning of Washington during the presidency of James Madison.  Madison was a charter member of the parish and his wife Dolly, a convert from Quakerism, was baptized and confirmed here. At the time, the Madisons were not living in the White House which had been burned by the British during the War of 1812, but in Octagon House on New York Avenue in Foggy Bottom, about twice the distance from Saint John’s as the White House. When President Madison left office, he and Dolly retired to his plantation, Montpelier.  Not one for quiet country life, in her widowhood Dolly returned to Washington in 1837 and lived until her death in 1849 in a home just “around the corner” on Lafayette Square from Saint John’s where she worshipped regularly.  

      The Madisons regularly sat in pew 28, during subsequent rennovations this pew was renumbered 58 and then later 54.  President Taylor “bought” the Madison pew in perpetuity (the purchase of pews by parishoners for regular use was a custom in many churches—Catholic as well as Protestant—in the nineteenth century) for use of himself and future presidents.  However it is the protocol that the President and his family, when they do attend, be seated in the first pew on the right.

     At the time of John Kennedy’s tenure in the White House it was still considered forbidden for Catholics to attend Protestant services and this provided a challenge to the custom that each President visit the church at least once in his term of office. However, when the Reverend John C. Harper was installed as Rector in March 1963, President Kennedy made a courtesy call on the new rector at the beginning of the service, discreetly leaving before the service proceeded.   

      The Church has many connections with prominent Americans besides presidents.  Benjamin Latrobe, the architect of the United States Capitol, was a man of many talents and not only designed Saint John’s Church, but served as its first organist and choir-master.  The 1000 pound bell in the church steeple was cast by Joseph Revere, son of Paul Revere—the metal supplied from British cannon captured in the War of 1812.

     The Obamas, accompanied by Vice-President-elect Joe Biden and his family, attended services at Saint John’s before proceeding to the Capitol for their inaugurations on January 20^th 2009. (Vice President Biden is a devout Catholic but today the Catholic Church does not object to Catholics attendng worship services in other Christian traditions although Catholics do not generally recieve Holy Communion except at a Catholic Eucharist.)  The Obamas have been back at least twice since before this morning for services.  The President attends church services only occasionally but, while he is not an Episcopalian, has attended Saint John’s more than any other church during his time in office.

James Madison, the Constitution, and "A Christian Nation?"

James Madison, Architect of the American
Constitution

The next of our founding fathers we want to look at in regards to whether or not the United States is by design of our Founding Fathers a Christian Nation, or a Judeo-Christian nation, is James Madison, the principal architect of the United States Constitution.  Madison, like Washington, was an Anglican/Episcopalian.  (Anglican until the Bishop of London renounced jurisdiction over the American Church upon English recognition of American independence in 1783 with the consequent result that American Anglicans were now an autonomous religious body and came to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.)  Madison was not particularly devout and seems to have worn his Christian faith somewhat casually although his wife, the famously extroverted Dolly, converted from the Quaker faith in which she had been raised to the Episcopal Church.  Dolly, like many of the wives of the founders of the Republic, was more religious than her husband.  Madison’s religious beliefs are particularly important given his role in the Constitution of the United States.    

     In the first years of the American Republic we were governed by The Articles of Confederation, a constitution that conceived of the nation as a loose affiliation of autonomous states pledged to collaboration rather than as a single nation with a sovereign government.  The system outlined by the Articles did not work.  It was ineffectual in dealing with issues such as the immense debt incurred by the American Revolution as well as matters of foreign policy.  Collaboration under the Articles depended on the mutual trust among the States but the divisions that would eventually lead to Civil War some eighty years later were already beginning to fester, imperiling the unity of the new nation.  It was clear to many, though not to all, that a stronger federal government had to be designed.  A convention was called to refashion the Articles of Confederation but once in session and without explicit authorization from the Continental Congress that convoked such an assembly, the convention decided to scrap the Articles and replace it with an entirely new Constitution.  Given that so many of the heroes of the Revolution were members of that Convention—Washington, Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, among others (Jefferson and Adams were abroad on Diplomatic Missions) the members of the Constitutional Convention got away with their bait-and-switch coup and our present Constitution was the result.  It was not an easy struggle.   There were those among the great founders who were appalled that so much had been taken from the sovereignty of the several states and given over to the national government.  Moreover, they not only saw the danger to the States, but saw the rights of individual imperiled by the failure of the new Constitution to explicitly guarantee them.  It was agreed that as soon as the Constitution was approved it would be necessary to amend it with a “Bill of Rights” that would make explicit the rights that were taken as due the individual under the English Common Law tradition dating back to Magna Carta. 

     Madison did not single-handedly write the Constitution.  No one person wrote it.  He did not even serve the role to the Constitution that Jefferson had for the Declaration of Independence.  The Constitution was produced by incessant argument and debate over each point but no individual was as active in that discussion and debate process as was James Madison.  In the four months of the convention (May-September 1787) Madison spoke over 200 times.  He clearly articulated a plan for government and when it was necessary to come to compromise, as it was time after time on point after point, it was Madison who guided the way out of each impasse.    

      When the Constitution was finally ratified it was Madison who then took up the cause for a Bill of Rights.  It was not at first a popular cause among the leaders of the new government although it certainly was a matter of concern in several of the States and among the citizenry at large.  Congress and the Executive branch were busy trying to get the Constitution itself to work and were reluctant to begin amending it.  Nevertheless Madison was able to guide the passage of the first ten amendments which we now call the Bill of Rights.  He did not get everything he wanted.  For example, Madison wanted an amendment that would assert the sovereignty of the national government over that of the individual States—an amendment that some historians believe would have prevented the Civil War, or at least robbed secession of any constitutional legitimacy.  (It would have interesting consequences for several of today’s issues as well.)  Nevertheless, the Bill of Rights was eventually passed and quickly ratified by the states. 

      The first amendment guarantees: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

      The phrase that interests us in this question of our being a Christian nation is the idea that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibition the free exercise thereof.  It is clear from the text that not only is no one Church to be established—or proscribed—but religion itself is neither to be established nor proscribed. 

      Madison was a protégé of Thomas Jefferson and while he may or may not have subscribed to Jefferson’s deist philosophy, he clearly subscribed to Jefferson’s political philosophy articulated in Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.  Madison had worked with Baptist preacher, Elijah Craig (after whom the designer Bourbon is named), in making sure that there would be constitutional guarantee for religious liberty.  Craig had served time in jail for preaching without a license in the days when the Anglican Church was established by law in Virginia and non-Anglicans were forbidden to preach or hold services.  While an Episcopalian himself (his cousin, also James Madison, was the first Episcopal Bishop of Virginia) Madison clearly wanted to make sure that the no religion was set up to have a claim of precedence over others in either Virginia or the new Republic.  It would be inconsistent with his record to say that the “Father of the Constitution” saw the United States as a Christian Nation in the sense that Christianity (or any other religion) had a pride of place among various systems of belief or thought recognized by law or governmental courtesy in the American Republic whom he had done more than any other individual to shape.         

The Christian Faith of George Washington IV (and final)

George Washington wearing his Masonic Apron

while laying the cornerstone of the United States

Capitol

Well back to the Christian faith—or lack thereof—of George Washington, the most important of our Founding Fathers. Washington was, as we have said, an Anglican (before the American Revolution) Episcopalian (after American independence when the Episcopal Church in America separated from the Church of England.)  He attended church with a respectable regularity (though far from every week) and even served as vestryman and warden of his parish for about twelve years before the American Revolution.  There is debate as to whether or not Washington participated in The Holy Communion in the Episcopal Church but it seems as though he did not.  Given his undisputed integrity in public and private life, this abstinence from the Lord’s Table might be an important indication of how he understood Christian faith. 
      In addition to Washington’s being an active member of the Episcopal Church he was also a Freemason.   He was initiated in Freemason Lodge no.4 at Fredericksburg in 1752 at age 20.  Freemasonry was not simply a social activity for Washington.  With the same or even greater regularity as Washington attended church, he attended Lodge Meetings both while at Mount Vernon and while away, including the years spent away commanding the American forces during the Revolution.  Many of the senior officers in Washington’s command were also Freemasons, including his favorites, the Marquis de Lafayette and Henry Knox.  When Washington was sworn in as President in 1789 he took the oath of office on the Bible belonging to Saint John’s Lodge in New York City,  and when he laid the cornerstone of the United States Capitol in 1793 he wore his masonic apron, a sign of his membership and status in the Freemasons.      
       Today many devout Protestants are members of the Masons—and even, despite Church Law, Catholics.  Traditionally, however Lutherans and Catholics, the two most doctrinally minded Churches in the spectrum of Christian denominations, have refrained from affiliating to the Masons because historically Masons have offered a questionable (from an orthodox point of view) theology that differs substantially from Christian faith.  Classic freemasonry does not embrace the Father-God revealed in the Christian scriptures whose personal oversight extends into the lives of each of his children but rather offers the rationalist deity who is the Master Mason of the universe, the great designer of the laws of nature and embodiment of a rational justice whose moral laws are written on the human heart not by divine revelation but by absolute reason.  Such religion has a positivist understanding of the human person as guided by reason, not by grace, to goodness and sees sin not as the violation of Divine Command but a failure of reasonable judgment on the part of the individual.  Such “sin” does not need atonement and Christ is no longer Savior of the World but moral guide whose teachings are founded in reason rather than in revelation.  Such a savior has no need of being divinity incarnate but an enlightened human person whose godliness is a measure of his reason and not a divine nature.  As we saw in previous postings this allows the thinker to move from Christianity to Deism, from faith in Jesus to an admiration of Jesus, from Trinitarianism to Unitarianism or Deism (or Agnosticism) and from a personal God whose immanence is apprehended by faith to a Supreme Being whose Transcendence renders the believer significant only to the extent of his reasonable choices in life.  Now, I am not saying that all Masons, and in particular contemporary Masons, have moved this far from orthodox Christianity but it was typical of the Masons of the late seventeenth and of the eighteenth centuries.  Did Washington embrace such a rationalist “faith” rather than Christian orthodoxy?  We cannot say for sure but it is interesting that when Washington wrote of God he used such terms as “Providence,” “The Great Architect of the Universe,” "that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be"and “The Blessings of Heaven.”  When he wrote about Jesus it was as a moral teacher, not as a Redeemer.   All in all, one would have to say that viewed from today’s perspective Washington was more the Mason than the Episcopalian; more the Deist than the Christian.   Yet, unlike Jefferson or Franklin, I don’t think one could say about Washington that he wasn’t a Christian, at least of some sort.  In religion, as in politics, Washington was not a theoretician but a doer.  I suspect that for him Christianity was not about affirming doctrinal faith in Jesus Christ but living according to one’s best ability to follow the practical ethics found in the New Testament.  Even here, however, I think modern Christians would find Washington wanting.  Most seriously he maintained slaves.  He supported the American rebellion against constituted legitimate authority and he did so, in great part, because it was to his personal economic advantage.  But again when it came to morality, I think Washington was a man of practical judgments not abstract theory.  He did provide in his will that his slaves (not Martha’s) should be freed upon Martha’s death.  Even though Anglicans, like most Christians (including Catholics) other than Quakers did not object to slavery, Washington’s own moral compass told him that slavery was morally unsupportable but he knew that he could not maintain his public responsibilities without the benefits of a slave economy, nor was he willing to leave his widow without the practical support she needed to maintain their standard of livelihood once he was dead.  (And actually the majority of slaves on their estates were Martha’s, not George's.  He had no right in law, of course, to free her slaves.) I think for Washington public responsibilities took moral precedence over the freedom of one’s slaves.  This is a curious perspective, indeed troubling to the modern mind, but where would our Republic be had he chosen otherwise?  Similarly, Washington had no qualms about violating the oaths of loyalty to the King he had taken as a member of the militia, as a member of his church vestry, and as a member of the House of Burgesses.  I think Thomas Jefferson made it clear in the Declaration of Independence that the King’s failure to maintain the welfare of his American subjects justified the colonists in turning away from his “protection,” but it must be noted that severing the political subordination to Great Britain was of immense financial benefit to Washington and other Virginia Planters.  All of this is a way to say that Washington seems to have been guided not by Christian moral teaching but practical ethics symptomatic of Deist thought.  On the other hand, I think it is noteworthy that Washington has never been accused of marital infidelity with either a slave nor a social peer, despite his well-known love for Sally Fairfax, the wife of a friend and neighbor.  This is only one example of Washington being a person of exceptional ethical fiber. For Washington it would seem that moral integrity was more a matter of personal honesty rather than what we would call today “social justice.”  I don’t think that was atypical, however, of eighteenth-century men of his social position whether or not religious. 
     Finally, let us note that when Washington was dying no clergy were summoned to attend him.  His funeral at Mount Vernon comprised both the traditional Episcopalian (formerly Anglican) Prayerbook rite and Masonic rituals. 
     All in all, I think Washington might be categorized with the oxymoron of a “Christian Deist.”  Unlike Jefferson or Franklin, Washington’s practical mind permitted him a dual allegiance to a vague Christianity and the religious indifferentism of Enlightenment Freemasonry. Unlike the more militant (and mostly European) masons, Washington was not hostile to religion and he never tried to exclude it from public life.  In addition to Sunday Worship he attended various services organized for the Continental Congress.  He was not only a generous financial supporter of the Episcopal Churches to which he belonged, but local legend maintains that through the agency of his friend and former aide, Colonel John Fitzgerald, Washington was one of the first contributors to the building of Saint Mary’s Church, Alexandria, the first Catholic Church in Virginia.  On the other hand, religious principles cannot be said to have guided his public or private life.  One would have to lump him with Jefferson, Franklin, and John Adams in embracing a public life guided not by Christian principles but by what we might today call humanist ethics.