Foundations of the Anglican Church CVIII

A Quaker Meeting in the early
18th century

We have begun to see how with the suppression of bishops in 1646 the English Church began to fracture with the official government (the Republic/Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell) Church being what we would call today “Congregational,” but with a myriad of other sects of varying orthodoxies emerging among those for whom the presbyterian worship and polity of the government-sanctioned Church was still to “Romish” or at least not sufficiently reformed. 

We looked at the Baptists and the Seekers—a group who rejected not only any structured worship but creeds and even the idea of sacraments or ordinances.  Next we should look at the Quakers—a religious tradition that, unlike the Seekers, survives today (and with great credibility) but was to some extent rooted in the Seeker movement.

Quakerism is ascribed to the religious insights of George Fox (1624-1691). Fox was from Drayton-in-the-Clay Leicestershire.  His family background was strongly puritan and he himself from his youth was deeply religious—so deeply religious that some thought he should be sent on for the clergy.  His parents were known for their integrity and were themselves deeply religious; moreover they had the funds to send George on to University (the path that to the clergy) but for some reason he did not go on for higher education but was apprenticed to a dairyman/sheepfarmer.  George was given huge amounts of time in his youth to spend in the pastures watching over the animals.  This solitary and even bucolic life seems to have encouraged a natural strain of mysticism in the young man and he burned with religious interest and questions.  Through reading the scriptures in his solitude he came to identify with biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Amos, all of whom the scripture records as being keepers of animals. 

As he grew older, George began to search out clergy to carry on conversations and to learn more about the bible from them, but he found most of the clergy to be more interested in their tithes and rents than in their spiritual lives.  He also was turned off by what he perceived to be an endless contentiousness over the minutiae of the current doctrinal controversies.  In the end he decided that clergy were not only useless but a hindrance for one’s spiritual growth and, believing in the universal priesthood of all believers (a key Reformation doctrine), he judged that each person could come to religious truth himself or herself without the mediation of an ordained clergy.  He also had a natural respect for women and perceiving the interest of women in religious experience, made no distinction between the roles of women and men in religion. 

His reading the Bible gave Fox a conviction for simple living and the avoidance of any excess.  In this same vein he developed an abhorrence for tobacco (for which he also had a natural dislike) and alcoholic beverages which he had seen had led too many men down the wrong paths in life.  In 1647 Fox wrote of his religious experience and where it led him:

as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i.e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally.    

From his religious convictions Fox developed the following principles:

1.    God “dwelleth in the hearts of his obedient people” not in buildings made by man and God can be given true worship anywhere that his saints gather—meadows, orchards, private homes, meeting houses.  

2.    For those have experienced a true conversion to Christ, rituals have no real significance

3.    True communion is spiritual and not in bread and wine. 

4.    The word “church” should not be applied to a building; such buildings are “steeple houses.” 

5.    One is called to ministry by the Holy Spirit—university degrees or ecclesiastical studies are of no consequence; everyone—including women and children—who is called by the Holy Spirit is qualified to minister the Word.

6.    Because God dwells within the heart of his faithful people, one’s inner guide is at least as important as scripture.

In addition to these principles it should be noted that Fox was, at least practically, a unitarian in as that he did not distinguish between the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity: Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit were more or less manifestations of the same Oneness.   

In or about 1647 Fox began itinerant preaching and gathered many followers.  His message, while positive, was not all sweetness and light and he was a very strict moralist who made no tolerance for the weaknesses of the flesh.  He scored not only alcohol and tobacco but gaming and even such traditional recreations as dancing and the maypole. Nevertheless he was very popular and won many followers.  In particular his opposition to the clergy—and the mandatory paying of tithes to support the clergy—as well as his emphasis on individual religious experience won him many followers.  In 1652 he had a mystical experience convincing him of the eventual fruitfulness of his mission.

As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.

His popularity threatened to be his undoing.  His preaching challenged the official Church and persecution of Fox and his followers followed.  He was arrested several times and sometimes imprisoned at some length.  During a 1650 arraignment he told the Judge that he should “tremble before the Word of the Lord.”  The judge, mocking Fox and his followers, ascribed the name “Quakers” to them, a name that stuck and not to Fox’s displeasure.  Fox’s condemnation of war—and remember, England was in the midst of a civil war between Cromwell’s forces and the monarchy—and his refusal to sanction fighting or the taking of an oath of loyalty to the government (at that time Cromwell’s) led to several arrests.  He was brought before Cromwell in 1655, however, and the depth of their spiritual conversation left Cromwell very moved and put Fox in good favor with the Lord Protector, though not making a convert of him.  At a second meeting in 1656 Fox urged Cromwell to “lay down your crown at the feet of Jesus.”  Cromwell declined but continued to hold Fox in good regard. 

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 put Fox and his movement in a dangerous situation as Charles II was re-establishing the traditional Church with its bishops and suppressing all non-conformists.  But once the dust settled and the Crown was again secure, since Fox and his followers were committed to non-resistance they were more or less left in peace though several times through the following decades Fox was arrested and Quakers imprisoned for refusing to take loyalty oaths.  With the overthrow of James II and the accession of William and Mary, official tolerance was granted to non-conformist groups such as the Quakers.

It is difficult to say when exactly the format of Quaker worship—the silent meeting in expectation of the Spirit giving an utterance through a believer—emerged.  Even today there are Quaker meetings where there is hymn singing and scripture reading, but classic Quaker worship is silent assembly waiting for one or more participants to speak under the guidance of the Spirit.  There are, of course, no rituals or sacraments.  Quaker meeting houses are generally plain rooms with benches arranged so that the worshippers sit facing one another in concentric rings.  The lack of a common creed makes Quaker beliefs hard to categorize and there is a wide spectrum of belief among them.  While most Quakers would still consider themselves Christian, their Christology generally tends towards the Arian and their theological perspective is, in general, more in the Unitarian/Universalist direction than classic Christianity.  However there are meetings whose members confess the Divinity of Christ and there are, on the other end of a spectrum, those who find their spiritual inspiration in other religious traditions.  There is more or less an agreement to disagree on specific doctrines.   

Foundations of the Anglican Church CVII

Monksthorpe Baptist Chapel in

Lincolnshire England

Well, back to our overview of the history of the Church of England.  My last posting about the tension over the consecration of women bishops that led the Archbishop of York to recuse himself from consecrating the Rt. Rev. Philip North as the Bishop of Burnley out of (what I think is a misguided) respect for North’s objection to the ordination of women in favor of consecrators who have so far refused to participate in the consecration of the (to date) sole woman Bishop in the Church of England, demonstrates the sort of ecclesial breakdown that the English and other Protestant Reformations led to.  Once the unity of the Church is no longer an absolute value, differences of theological opinion will inevitably open fissures in the Body of Christ.   And the breakdown of unity in the Church is quite literally the devil’s work. 

Our word “devil” comes from the French diable from the Latin diabolus from the Greek διαβολειν comes from the Greek to divide or to scatter. The Devil is the one who divides, sets people against one another.  The Kingdom of God gathers all creation into One in Christ; the kingdom of the Evil One is set upon shattering that unity. 

We left off the saga of the Church of England with the abolition of the episcopacy and the emergence of Separatist groups that began to erode the unity of the Church in the mid-seventeenth century. With the abolition of Bishops and the adoption of a Presbyterian form of Church governance, the Congregationalist faction became dominant in the Church of England, but even this development did not satisfy more radical believers.  We saw how the Baptists emerged from the Puritan movement.  Baptists rejected any liturgical forms whatever, even the very Calvinist forms of worship suggested by the Directory for Public Worship. There had to be an explicit warrant found in the New Testament for any thing done in worship. Some did not even permit the reading of scripture since the scriptures were translations of the received texts and thus of human origin. Sacraments were replaced by “ordinances” (those things mandated  or “ordered” by Christ in the New Testament, namely baptism [“go baptize all nations”] and holy communion [“do this in memory of me”]).  Baptism was performed by full immersion and only to those able to make their own confession of faith. 

But even the Baptists didn’t satisfy the desire of many for a more radical approach to Christianity.

Among many of the adherents of the more radical sects emerging from the various Reformations that continued to divide and subdivide Christianity in Western and Central Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century there was a strain of anti-clericalism.  The Reformation ideal of the priesthood of all believers made the idea of an ordained clergy seem somewhat a frivolous excess that was an unnecessary encumbrance on the right of each believer to interpret the scriptures for him or her self.     This was certainly true in England where while the Congregationalist/Presbyterian establishment retained clergy and even the Baptists normally had recognized preachers, among the various dissenting sects the option was to allow each believer to have his (and sometimes her) own say about what was true Christian faith and practice.  Any sort of sacramental practice usually fell away in such priest-less assemblies and congregations pretty much focused on Bible Study and discussion. Without a theologically trained clergy religion most usually became an intellectual free-for-all with opinions and beliefs ranging from pure rationalism to illuminist mysticism shot through with unbridled psychosis.  Often these groups, unfamiliar with or rejecting of the historic Creeds devolved into an anti-Trinitarianism or at least a practical Arianism which demoted Christ from the Divine Nature and led to theological unitarianism (not to be confused with modern Unitarian/Universalism) that remained Christocentric but not Christotheistic.  Dissenters also often embraced the idea of an immanent return of Christ to establish his Kingdom on earth in a radical and egalitarian social upheaval.  The doctrine of Original Sin also faded from belief among the various dissenter groups along with the doctrine of pre-destination so essential to the Calvinist Anglicans of Elizabeth’s and James’ reigns.  In place of an anthropology of fallen humanity was a certain quasi-Pelagiaism that emphasized the essential natural goodness of human nature.  There also was a certain ambiguity about the afterlife with a collapse of the traditional ideas of heaven and hell.   All this was sometimes complicated by a fascination with the theories attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the Graeco-Egyptian culture of late antiquity whose writings paralleled the development both of Christianity and Gnosticism and have elements in common with each. As can be imagined, Dissenters devolved from orthodox Christianity into a variety of confusing and often mutually contradictory beliefs.  It was a theological Woodstock—electric, creative, free of rules and structure, and off the flipping wall. 

One of the groups that emerged out of this theological chaos were the Seekers.  They really weren’t a sect in as that you could be a Seeker and belong to another sect.  There were no defining creeds, no sacraments. They saw “The Church” as a voluntary association of believers, without a fixed creed, free of State coercion or supervision, and anxious to evangelize.  They expected Christ to return to earth and their spirituality was to prepare themselves for his Second Coming.  Their worship was to meet and to sit in silent expectation of God to reveal himself to the individual soul.  Quakerism, which we will talk about in our next posting on this subject, grew out of the Seekers.  

Inauguration Weekend III

Today, at noon, President Obama was sworn in for a second term in the Blue Room of the White House. Tomorrow there will be a public ceremony on the steps of the Capitol.  Today is Sunday and there is a tradition going back to 1821 that when Inauguration Day falls on a Sunday, the public festivities are delayed until Monday.  The last time this happened was with the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1984.  The origins of  this, of course, are to respect the Christian Sabbath although President Monroe, whose inauguration it was in 1821, was only nominally a Christian, being—like Jefferson, Madison, and probably Washington—a Deist, something more akin to today’s Unitarian.     

As far as I could tell there was no prayer in today’s official swearing-in.  Tomorrow there will be both an invocation and a benediction.   The invocation, or opening prayer, will be given not by a member of the clergy but by Myrlie Evers-Williams who was the widow of Medgar Evers, the civil-rights leader whose 1963 murder in Jackson Mississippi became part of the plot to the popular novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  The Benediction will be given by the Reverend Luis Leon, Rector of the Episcopal Church of Saint John, Lafayette Square—the so-called “Church of the Presidents” just across Lafayette Square from the White House. The Obamas are not regular Church attenders as were the Clintons and the Carters though they do attend more often than the Reagans or even the Bushes.  Saint John’s tends to be the default Church more often chosen than other houses of worship.  Other than a funeral the President has not opted to worship in a Catholic Church since becoming President but then, since he would not be welcome at Holy Communion, I can understand why. 

Supposedly the President wanted the opening prayer to be led by someone other than a member of the clergy and thus Mrs. Evers-Williams was invited.  Good choice by the way. Initially the Reverend Louie Giglio, pastor of Atlanta’s Passion City Church had been invited to give the closing prayer, but when some anti-gay remarks were discovered in a twenty-year old sermon, Dr. Leon was named to replace him.  Now, both Luis Leon and Louie Giglio should be Catholic names—that is a topic for some future blogs but right now we will let it pass.  

All this indicates, I believe, that despite their occasional episodes of public worship, President Obama and his family represent the casual approach towards Christian fellowship that is becoming more and more common in our culture.  This is not a criticism, just an observation.  The First Family does not currently have a church membership.  Worship seems to be something that they do “when they need it” and somewhat like the modern hybrid cars who make less frequent trips to the gas station than our old traditional gas-guzzlers, modern Americans—like the Obamas—“fill ‘er up” somewhat infrequently, having other sources of energy.  Of course this contemporary piety (or lack thereof) is based on the idea that worship is something we do for spiritual energy rather than a duty we have towards our Creator.  It is all part of the radical subjectivism that is pac-manning our “culture.” On the other hand, Vice-President Biden and his wife are, I understand, faithful Mass-goers to the annoyance of the Pharisee party in the Catholic Church and the bewilderment of most fellow-liberals who don’t quite know what to make of believing Catholics.  But then Jefferson and Franklin admired the Carrolls but were bewildered by their attachment to our anti-Enlightenment faith.    

Where do we go with this?  Nowhere in particular.  Just read the signs of the times.  Protestant clergy with name like Luis Leon and Louie Giglio; Catholic Chief-Justices swearing in thoroughly secularized Presidents; Liberal Democrats attending Mass without qualms of conscience; laity replacing clergy in leading prayer; public prayer being reduced to the inoffensive and politically correct; and what else might I be missing?  It is a new world and we have no choice but to adapt to it and devise a thoroughly new strategy of evangelizing in this post-Christian culture.  Don’t waste your time crying over spilt holy water—the time for that is past.  This is the time to ask the Holy Spirit’s Guidance on how to bring the Gospel alive in this brave new but vapid world. 

Protestant Martyrs and Catholic "Liberty"

The burning of Archbishop Thomas Cramner
in the reign of Bloody Mary

I recently was shown this slide-and-music presentation regarding the Fortnight For Freedom and the challenges facing the Catholic Church in the United States to preserve its religious freedom in face of the threats to it by liberal secularism represented by Democratic Party and the Obama administration.  This video is a stirring presentation designed by one Margie Sindelar to make it clear to the viewer that we must make a choice between our Catholic faith and the Affordable Care Act sponsored by President Obama—there is no middle ground; there is no compromise.  Ms. Sindelar shows us images of Pope Benedict representing truth and  President Obama incarnating falsehood.  The former is the good side, of course; the latter, as we all know, the evil side.  The one, in the words of the soundtrack hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” represents bloom and light; the other darkness and blight.  It is very simple really.  Doesn’t require one to think much about the issues—just watch the video and run out and vote against the Reign of Evil currently occupying the White House.  Here is the link to Ms. Sindelar’s video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YIJ-G3gu9JQ

And below are the lyrics of its soundtrack—James Russell Lowell’s poem “Once to Every Man and Nation” put to the music of Thomas J. Williams. (An alternative melody sung in some churches is Haydn’s “Austria”—you would recognize it: it is the melody to Deutschland Deutschland Über Alles, the anthem associated with Hitler’s Germany.)   

Once to Every Man and Nation

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Lowell wrote the poem as a young man in 1845, the year after his marriage and it was published in The Boston Courier in December of that year.  Though his student-days reputation at Harvard had been one of a troublemaker Lowell went on to make a name for himself as a poet, critic, and editor.  He was active in the movement to abolish slavery and he saw the role of the poet was to be a prophet who called society to account.  He had that Whig optimism that characterized 19^th century liberalism. 

But here is the irony.  Lowell came from a Church family—his father was a Unitarian minister.  Now 19^th century Unitarians were not the vague humanists of today but were still well within the Christian orbit.  They were more Arians—Christians who reserved the fullness of Divinity to the Father but seeing Jesus as his Son come to the world to teach us through the scriptures an enlightened path that would lead us to a better world.  Like most New England Protestants, the standard pieces of religious literature in the Lowell home were the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, sometimes known as The Acts and Monuments.  This book, first published in 1563 by Anglican clergyman and polemicist John Foxe, recounted a long history of martyrdoms and persecutions stretching back into antiquity in which Foxe managed to make every victim a Protestant—even those long before Luther—and every tyrant an agent of the Pope. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was standard reading in every English (and New England) home from Puritan times down to the 20^th century and it was one of the strongest—if not the strongest—factor in creating an anti-Catholicism that portrayed the Pope as the evil enemy of Christ and his faithful, the Anti-Christ, desirous of forcing his false doctrines on them to the cost of their religious liberty.   The “burning martyrs” to whom Lowell referred in this poem-turned-hymn were the Anglican Divines put to death by burning at the stake under the reign of the Catholic Queen “Bloody” Mary.  The “cause of evil” of which Lowell wrote was Catholicism; the “truth” contrasted with it was Protestantism.  Lowell tells us that innocent and pure Protestant Truth was given the portion of the scaffold by the Catholic Queen—in the wrong—on the throne.  All this makes it a bit ironic that Ms. Sindelar uses this particular hymn as the stirring motivation to win people to the Catholic cause against that evil heir of Bloody Mary, President Obama.  But that is what happens when people don’t know their history. Tut, tut. 

In the Protestant mind of James Russell Lowell, Catholicism with its desire to force its doctrines on good bible-believing Christians is what had threatened religious freedom from the days of those first Protestants—the Apostles—down to his own day.  Lowell saw Protestantism as standing for that freedom of conscience against the tyranny of Catholic Doctrine.  It should make us think for a moment or two. 

Is the freedom that some are seeking in our name the prerogative to impose Catholic doctrine on the larger society—this is the very thing and Lowell and American Protestants had feared from the colonial days of Puritan New England until Vatican II and the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae  that made freedom of conscience a principle of Catholic Doctrine.  There is nothing wrong with winning our countrymen and women to our Catholic faith and its moral principles—indeed to enter into a dialogue leading towards truth is part of our mission as Christ’s Church—but do we truly want to impose unilaterally our principles on others before they come to the truth of the Catholic faith?  Would this not be the true threat to religious liberty when the doctrines and morals of one religious tradition become the standards of the civil and criminal law applicable to all?   As I said in yesterday’s blog, I have my concerns about the Obama Administration’s understanding about the mission of the Church but I am not afraid that my religious liberty is in jeopardy.  To be frank, I am concerned that the religious liberty of others may be in jeopardy due to the extremism of some of my coreligionists.       

The Christian Faith of George Washington I

Samuel Seabury, first bishop

of the Episcopal Church in

the New Republic

Sorry I haven’t posted in a few days, but have been doing some Christmas travel.  So let’s go back to our Founding Fathers/Christian nation series for a few entries.  I want to look at George Washington and his religious views, but before I do we need to understand the Anglican/Episcopal Church as it stood in the eighteenth century.  Washington was an Anglican/Episcopalian but that can be a bit misleading if we do not put it into context. 
     First of all why do I call his religious affiliation “Anglican/Episcopalian?”    Until the American Revolution the Anglican Church in the American colonies retained its traditional name—as it still does in most of the world—“Anglican.”  It was also called “The Church of England” in the colonies even as it was in the “Mother Country.”  “Anglican” means “English”—coming from the “Angles”—one of the Germanic tribes that in the fifth and sixth centuries had settled in what is today England.  In fact, England means “the land of the Angles.”  Even before Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1536 the English Church had a distinct identity and was known, even by Rome and in papal documents as the Ecclesia Anglicana—the English Church, the Anglican Church.   When the American colonies declared their independence from England many Anglicans, especially in New York and the northern colonies, were Tories and supported the British cause.  In Virginia, however, it was different. Most of the Virginia aristocracy was Anglican but for various reasons, including economic advantage, supported the break with England and were in favor of independence.  They did not want their Church to be known as “The Church of England” or as Anglican. They were no longer English.  They were Americans.  They needed another name. 
      At the time of the Reformation the Church of England had kept the traditional hierarchical order of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons though there is dispute over whether or not they maintained the apostolic succession or whether they understood the offices of Bishop and Priest in a sense compatible with Catholic dogma (see entry for December 7 2011 on “Valid Orders” for an introductory essay on this question.  We will have to deal with it in depth in some future entries—especially when we get to the subject of the English Reformation.)  In the colonial period American Anglicans were subject to the diocesan supervision of the Bishop of London as no Bishops had been appointed for the American colonies.   With independence that link with the Bishop of London was severed because the Bishop himself, Robert Lowth, refused oversight to the now independent former colonies.  After the Revolution, in 1783, The Anglican clergy of Connecticut elected one of their own, Samuel Seabury, and sent him to England to be consecrated as a bishop.  The English bishops, however, could not by English law consecrate him because he would not, as an American citizen, swear allegiance to the King.  English law required Anglican Bishops to take an oath of loyalty to the Crown as part of the Consecration Rite, even as Catholic Bishops were required to give obedience to the Pope.   Consequently, Samuel Seabury travelled to Scotland where several Scottish bishops who did not recognize the legitimacy of George III (their loyalty was to the Stuart claimant, Charles Edward, the “Young Pretender)” consecrated him to the episcopacy.  Several years later Maryland Anglicans elected William White and New Yorkers elected Samuel Provoost both of whom in 1787 were consecrated in England where the law by then had been changed to permit the consecration of bishops for lands not subject to the English Crown without requiring the oath of loyalty.  (By the way, this dispute about consecrating Bishops for America played an important role in the separation of Methodists from the Church of England, but that is for a future posting.)  Virginia Anglicans elected James Madison (no, not the future President but another James Madison) who was consecrated bishop in England in 1790.  With an established hierarchy, American Anglicans chose the name “Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.”  That name is both significant and misleading.  The Church is Episcopal in as that it has an Episcopal system of government which is to say that it is led by bishops.  The confusion is in the name “Protestant.”  That was primarily meant to make it clear that, while it retained bishops, it was not “Catholic” in the sense of being in communion with the Pope. (“Bishops” were widely considered to be a Catholic innovation by most Protestants who followed a Presbyterian system of government.)  But what does Protestant mean and does it mean the same thing today as it did in the eighteenth century?  Did the organizers of the Episcopal Church choose “Protestant” as a negative identity, only to distinguish it from Catholics, or was it meant to convey a positive meaning, in terms of embracing the evangelical principles of the Reformation? 
      Today we see Episcopalians as “almost Catholic,” or, as one of my friends says “Catholic light: all the ritual, half the guilt.”  But what we see today in the Episcopal Church is not what George Washington would have seen in his day when Episcopal priests usually wore at the altar simply a black gown and preaching tabs and not even surplice much less Eucharistic vestments.  In Washington’s day, the pulpit was the focus of the church.  There was no altar, but a simple wooden communion table which held neither cross nor candles. Behind “The Holy Table” was mounted on the wall, tablets containing the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles Creed. The Service of Holy Communion (equivalent to the Catholic Mass) still had much of the structure of the Mass about it, but it was a far more Calvinistic Service than the 1928 Prayerbook or the1979 Book of Common Prayer.  For example, the reception of Holy Communion came directly after the Words of Institution “Take and eat, for this is my body…take and drink, for this is the cup of my blood….”  The Lord’s Prayer was only recited after Communion, the idea being the very Protestant idea that Christ gave us the Eucharist only for the eating and drinking in his memory. It was only with the Oxford Movement which began in 1833 that “Catholic” practices were revived in the Anglican and Episcopal churches—and revived slowly and with much opposition from the evangelical or “Low Church” wing, some of which still refuse the use of vestments, candles, altar cross, and hold to the Calvinistic liturgy and theology.   Far more significant to the Oxford Movement than the revival of pre-reformation ritual, however, was the insistence of doctrinal orthodoxy on the part of the Tractarian leadership of the Oxford Movement who realized that Anglicanism had been on a two-hundred year slippery slope into agnosticism and no longer held unswervingly to the Apostolic faith.  Many Anglicans embraced the rationalism of the period which had drifted from orthodox Christology and Trinitarian faith to Unitarianism and even Deism.  Thus we will see that George Washington’s being an Episcopalian is not guarantee of his being, by modern standards, a Christian.  Washington would recognize shreds and tatters of the Episcopal Church of his day in some of the language of the Prayer Book but he would be shocked to see both the liturgy and doctrine held by most modern Episcopalians who, as liberal as they are, were not nearly as scrubbed clean of Christian Orthodoxy as were Washington and his contemporaries. 

Founding Fathers and Christian Nations

Well, we have looked at Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and seen that their religious beliefs were what me might call post-Christian in as that, while recognizing the benefits of organized religion for the moral formation of the ordinary citizen, they themselves not only did not subscribe to any particular Christian denomination but in fact did not believe in a personal God as defined by the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.  They were both deists, what we might call today secular humanists, who believed that sound human reason, not divine revelation, was the cornerstone of moral formation and that human nature, being essentially rational and good, was inclined to moral behavior.  Of course I think that is incredibly naïve but then, like Luther, Calvin, and Benedict XVI, I am a pretty strong Augustinian.  Although both Franklin and Jefferson saw the benefits of organized religion for character formation of individuals less enlightened than themselves and their peers among the intelligentsia, Franklin seems to have held Christianity in higher regard than Jefferson but then while neither of them suffered fools gladly, Franklin was the more graciously mannered of the too.  Jefferson was your classic liberal showing little or no patience with those whom he regarded as his inferiors.  That is the problem with liberalism: it is not truly democratic but replaces socio-economic hierarchy with a social order based on intellectual pretense.  But let’s not pursue that, at least not now.  Instead let’s look at the third person responsible for the Declaration of Independence, John Adams—and by way of contrast—his cousin the instigator of independence, Sam Adams.   Both the Adams cousins were born and bred in New England Congregationalism.

     Congregationalism grew out of the Puritan wing of the Church of England and represented a strong Calvinist presence in the Established Church.  During the English Civil War when the monarchy was replaced by Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, Episcopacy was abolished in the Church of England and was replaced by Presbyterian Church Order.  That is to say that bishops were abolished and the Church was administered by Presbyteries—boards of pastors. The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 not only brought back the King but the bishops and the reintroduction of bishops split the Church of England with the Puritan wing refusing both bishops and the Anglican liturgy, and being known as non-Conformists (because they would not conform to the Anglican Church Order of Bishops and the Prayer Book).  During Cromwell’s Puritan Parliamentary government in England, the vast majority of colonial American Anglicans had not deviated from the Prayer Book and classic Anglicanism—though the Church in America never did have bishops—but in New England, which had always been quite Puritanical, nominal membership in the Church of England gave way to the emergence of a very non-Anglican denomination which we call Congregationalism. In the course of the eighteenth century New England Congregationalism itself split with many—indeed in Boston, the majority—of congregations rejecting Trinitarian faith for Unitarianism.

      Now, let’s talk for a moment about Unitarianism.  At the time of the Protestant Reformation there were many in Europe—particularly in England, Poland, Hungary, and Italy—among the intellectuals who rejected the Christian idea of a Trinitarian God—three “divine persons” consubstantial in one Divine Nature.  Trinitarianism was, and in some circles still is, seen as lightly disguised polytheism.  Nevertheless, the civil authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, rigorously suppressed any dissent.  After all, a corollary of Unitarianism is that Jesus is not Divine.  In the Enlightenment many mainline clergy—Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregationalists—embraced Unitarianism which at the time was not a separate denomination (much less a religion)  but rather a movement or opinion in various religious groups.  New England Congregationalism was split between Trinitarian and Unitarian factions.  Samuel Adams who maintained his membership at Old South Meeting House was a Trinitarian.  John Adams, who had studied at Harvard—a bastion of Unitarian thought—identified with the Unitarian faction.  It was only in the early nineteenth century, however, that the formal break came and Unitarianism and Congregationalism went their separate ways. 

     The Unitarianism of John Adams should not be confused with the Unitarianism of today.  Although it rejected the Divinity of Christ it considered itself—and was widely considered by others—to be a Christian denomination.  Unitarians believed—much like Jefferson—that the professions of Jesus’ divinity and the stories of miracles were added to the teachings of Jesus by the Evangelists and later generations of Christians.  Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Unitarianism looked to the Jewish-Christian scriptures for moral guidance and for inspiration though they did tend to give the texts a far more liberal interpretation than their more orthodox peers.  Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Unitarianism, influenced by theological Modernism, gradually dissolved its Christian identity in favor of a more universal approach to religion.  In John Adams’ day however, Unitarians still had a strong Christian (though not orthodox) identity.  While Jefferson and Franklin can be called Deists and post-Christian, John Adams should be counted as a Christian from a social point of view, if not a theological one.  That does not mean, however, that  he favored a Christian identity to the American Republic.  He wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1815:  “The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?”

       Adams saw organized religion as a threat to intellectual freedom and he bore a particular animus against Catholicism.  He had written his law dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law and, in true Enlightenment fashion, saw the Catholic Church as repressive of scientific advancement.  Yet he defended the rights of Catholics in the new Republic and despite a particular hatred—and fear—of the Jesuits he recognized that the American Republic had a duty to accept them.  He wrote to Jefferson: “I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits.... Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters? If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell, it is this society of Loyola's. Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum.”  Reading this I cannot but wonder what he would have to say about Muslims in American today? 

       Samuel Adams was of a different bent than his cousin.  Perhaps no other individual save Thomas Paine was as responsible for fanning the flames of colonial discontent into the conflagration of Revolution as Samuel Adams.  Adams was a member of Old South Meeting House, a Congregationalist Church that when the break with the Unitarian faction came remained an bastion of Trinitarian belief. Sam Adams, even more rabidly anti-Catholic than his cousin, remained an orthodox Christian and religiously conservative. Today he would probably identify—though “today woulds” in history are tricky and unreliable (as well as irrelevant to argument) place himself among the so-called “Evangelicals.”  Would he favor the idea that we are “Christian Nation?” That is hard to say.  I can find no evidence either way.  During the lifetime of the Adams cousins Congregationalism was the official Church of Massachusetts—it was not disestablished until 1833.  Given his rationalist approach to religion,  I doubt that John Adams would have supported the idea of an officially  Christian Nation, but the more conservative Sam Adams might have.