O God, whose Name is excellent in all the earth, and thy glory above the heavens, who as on this day didst inspire and direct the hearts of our delegates in Congress, to lay the perpetual foundations of peace, liberty, and safety; we bless and adore thy glorious Majesty, for this thy loving kindness and providence ...
The appointed Epistle opened with the words "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice"; the appointed Gospel concluded with "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed".
There is little here that would have been out of place in the religious culture of the early years of the American Republic. Such use of Scripture - particularly the application of biblical references to liberty and freedom - had been heard from Patriot pulpits since the beginning of the controversies with Parliament in the 1760s. The notion that the Continental Congress issuing the Declaration of Independence was an act of Providence was routine - and, of course, it was reflected in the Declaration's statement of "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence". It is also the case that the thanksgiving's reference to "peace, liberty, and safety" reflected a common discourse that would soon find expression in the preface to the 1787 Constitution:
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
There was, in other words, no obvious reason why this 'Service for the 4th of July' should have been controversial. It did, however, find opposition from a surprising quarter: William White, the Rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, a chaplain to the Continental Congress, a leading ecclesiastical Patriot, and president of the General Convention, spoke against the inclusion of the service in the revisions of the Book of Common Prayer. It was, he declared, "the most injudicious step taken by the convention".
In his Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (1820), White explains the grounds for his opposition to the service. He begins by noting that it could have become a source for opposition to the revised Prayer Book:
Might they [i.e. the Convention] not have foreseen, that every clergyman, whose political principles interfered with the appointment, would be under a strong temptation to cry down the intended book, if it were only to get rid of the offensive holiday?
This comment, of course, indicates his recognition that half of the Episcopal clergy had opposed the Revolution, including the significant majority in what had been the northern colonies:
It was said, that the revolution being now accomplished, all the clergy ought, as good citizens, to conform to it; and to uphold, as far as their influence extended, the civil system which had been established. Had the question been concerning the praying for the prosperity of the commonwealths, and for the persons of those who rule in them, the argument would have been conclusive; and, indeed, this had been done by all the remaining clergy, however disaffected they might have been, throughout the war. But, the argument did not apply to a retrospective approbation of the origin of the civil constitutions, or rather, to a profession of such approbation, contrary to known fact.
The greater stress is laid on this matter, because of the notorious fact, that the majority of the clergy could not have used the service, without subjecting themselves to ridicule and censure.
The fact was that the vast majority of the Convention did not share this view and clearly regarded the service as a straightforward reflection of the political and theological consensus in the new Republic. This is seen in the fact that the service was opposed only by White and "but one gentleman - and he a professed friend to American independence". By contrast, the author of the service had himself been an initial opponent of independence:
What must further seem not a little extraordinary, the service was principally arranged and the prayer alluded to was composed, by a reverend gentleman, (Dr. Smith) who had written and acted against the declaration of independence, and was unfavourably looked on by the supporters of it, during the whole revolutionary war.
Smith's service won the clear support of the Convention, albeit White indicates that observance of the service was not widespread:
For the author's part, having no hindrance of this sort, he contented himself with having opposed the measure, and kept the day from respect to the requisition of the convention; but could never hear of its being kept, in above two or three places besides Philadelphia.
It is very possible that White's concerns regarding the Fourth of July service drawing attention to the Loyalist allegiance of clergy during the Revolutionary War was a significant factor in the service not being widely observed. At a time when Loyalists were reintegrating into communal life across the states, providing an opportunity to discuss or examine previous allegiances would not have been welcome.
Despite this, however, White does note that the service was observed in Philadelphia, the de facto national capital before 1790 (and the official capital from 1790 to 1800). This is worthy of note: in the city particularly associated with the Revolution, in which the Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed, and in which the Constitution would be drafted, Episcopal churches used the Fourth of July service. Indeed, as White states, he himself - as rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia - used this service, as required by the General Convention.
This brings us back to Dr. William Smith's service. What is perhaps most striking about it is how it closely reflected the 1662 state services. The opening lines of the collect, for example, echoed the collect provided in BCP 1662 for the 5th November service:
Almighty God, who hast in all ages shewed forth thy power and mercy in the wonderful preservation of thy church, and in the protection of every nation and people professing thy holy and eternal Truth, and putting their sure trust in thee ... (Fourth of July service);
O God, whose Name is excellent in all the earth, and thy glory above the heavens; who, on this day, didst miraculously preserve our Church and State ... (Gunpowder Plot service).
The provision of particular Sentences for the beginning of Morning Prayer and of a replacement for the Venite were also characteristics of the services for 5th November, 30th January, 29th May, and 25th October (in thanksgiving for the accession of King George III). As for the opening verses of the replacement for the Venite on the Fourth of July, they were exactly those also found at the beginning of the replacement for the Venite in the service for 29th May:
My Song shall be alway of the loving kindness of the Lord : with my Mouth ever be shewing his Truth from one generation to another. Psal. 89. 1.
The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done his marvellous Works : that they ought to be had in remembrance. Psal. 111. 4.
Who can express the noble Acts of the Lord : or shew forth all his praise? Psal. 106. 2.
The works of the Lord are great : sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. Psal. 111.2.
The thanksgiving for Fourth of July also echoed that provided in the accession service for 25th October:
a spirit of peaceable submission to the laws and government of our country ... (Fourth of July);
and dutiful submission to his Authority (25th October).
The Fourth of July collect was unembarrassed in its recognition of Providence:
We yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for all thy public mercies, and more especially for that signal and wonderful manifestation of thy providence which we commemorate this day ...
This is quite clearly based on a prayer from the 29th May service:
We yield unto thee our unfeigned thanks and praise, as for thy many other great and publick mercies, so especially for that signal and wonderful deliverance, by thy wise and good providence as upon this day ...
The Fourth of July service, therefore, stood very much in continuity with the state services in the Prayer Book of the Church of England. This, of course, should not be surprising. Those who sat in the General Convention had, until recent years, been members of the Church of England and subjects of the Crown, to whom the state services would have been familiar. This is also reflected in the opening rubric of the Fourth of July service:
For the inestimable Blessings of Religious and Civil Liberty; to be used yearly Fourth Day of July ...
Here we have a distinct echo of the reference in the Gunpowder Plot service to "the preservation of our religion and liberties". After 1688 the Gunpowder Plot service also included thanksgiving for "the happy Arrival of His Majesty King William on this Day, for the Deliverance of our Church and Nation from Popish Tyranny and arbitrary Power" - "to preserve us from the attempts of our enemies to bereave us of our Religion and Laws". Giving thanks for "the inestimable Blessings of Religious and Civil Liberty" on the Fourth of July thus reflected the thanksgiving of 5th November for Providence preserving a constitution of liberty, what Burke would later call "a liberal descent".
The continuities with the 1662 state services is also seen in a sermon delivered on the first occasion of the use of the Fourth of July service, in Philadelphia in 1786. The preacher, Samuel Magaw, was Rector of St. Paul's in the city. Magaw's text was Deuteronomy 33.29, one of the appointed sentence "to introduce the service of the day". While he had been a Patriot, with a brother who was a colonel in the Continental Army, Magaw emphasised that the thanksgiving for the Revolution was not driven by animosity towards "the people from whom we separated":
While we adore and bless the power of the Lord, for the revolution that hath taken place, it is in perfect persuasion, that it will issue in the noblest consequences; it is, in a consciousness "void of offence" towards the people from whom we separated; it is, in clear conviction, that the very time was come, for our assuming a distinct, personal rank in the family of nations; it is, in the experience, that religious and civil liberty go hand in hand.
In the entirely conventional manner of sermons at Anglican state services, Magaw expounded the need for public religion in a duly ordered and well-governed society:
Senators, and Guardians of this rising Republic! Your abilities and nobleness of mind allow you not to doubt, that the felicity of a country depends on the virtue of its inhabitants; and the virtue of its inhabitants, on their being endued with a pure and manly piety. Unless the Divine Being hath the hearts of the people,— your laws will be considered as ungracious restraints; they will never sweetly draw, and rationally bind their affections. Unless their principles be rendered uncorrupt, and their morals pure, your very best contrived systems of policy—your most approved forms of government—your wisest plans of union and confederation, will never insure to the Public, stability, or happiness. Honour and recommend the religion therefore which constitutes the people's wisdom and welfare, by making them fear God; this will give your institutions an hold in their judgments and consciences, that no other principles can effect. Fix the credit of Christianity among them, and spread its glory by the lustre of Your Examples.
A particular historic and cultural vision of civil religion underpinned this understanding, as was made clear in the sermon:
We find the safety of states and countries in all ages, running parallel with the observance which they paid to the Divine Being and his laws. Religion and piety, even in countries where their true objects were unknown, had, we find, a propitious influence upon the public concerns: They fixed a restraint upon the passions of the people; they strengthened and preserved their union; they heightened their moral sense; increased their ideas of a common interest; gave them a confidence in the time of dangers; firmness under trials; a modesty and temperance amidst their successes. The most flourishing periods of ancient Greece and Rome, were those, in which a regard to the Powers supposed to be above them, and the practice of their religion, even such as it was, did most obtain.
Here, too, a commonplace Anglican understanding was at work. Two years earlier, on 29th July 1784, churches across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland responded to a royal proclamation which designated that day as "a General thanksgiving to Almighty God, for putting an End to the late bloody, extended, and expensive War in which we were engaged". Preaching before the House of Commons, George Pretyman - then a Prebendary of Westminster, to be appointed to the episcopate in 1787 - likewise invoked ancient Greece and Rome:
Nor was there any thing, in all the wise and excellent institutions of that wonderful republic [i.e. Rome], which more deserves our attention, or which tended more to raise and preserve its greatness, than the constant care of its government to keep alive in the people a sense of religion, to a degree in which I question whether it has ever existed in any other nation ... But however defective and blameable their religion may be in other respects, the private vows and supplications of individuals, and the public sacrifices and oblations which perpetually occur in Roman and Grecian authors, sufficiently indicate that those two celebrated nations of antiquity believed in the efficacy of prayer, and that they were by no means strangers to the duty of thanksgiving.
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