Thanksgiving ... for William White

Each Thanksgiving Day, laudable Practice likes to give thanks for an aspect of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.  This year the subject for thanksgiving is William White, first presiding bishop of PECUSA.  His leadership guided the new church through the challenges of establishing its existence in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War and ensured its place in the social and cultural fabric of the new Republic.  

Following White's death in 1836, Bishop George Washington Doane - a High Churchman with Tractarian sympathies - commemorated him in the sermon 'The Path of the Just'.  He interestingly compared White to Cranmer, celebrating "a wonderful resemblance".  Diarmaid MacCulloch reminds us that Cranmer is not a role-model "for uncomplicated courage".  Rather, it was Cranmer's caution, diplomacy, and quiet scholarly frame of mind, alongside his involvement in the affairs of the body politic, which ensured the reform of the ecclesia Anglicana.  While MacCulloch wants to shock us by declaring "how unAnglican Cranmer was", we might suggest that these characteristics are very Anglican indeed.  Something of this is reflected in Doane's praise for William White:

In Bishop White, was signally illustrated the divine wisdom, in raising up for great emergencies great men, and in adapting them to their appropriate station. A Church was to be reformed, and Thomas Cranmer rose. A Church was to be built up, and he sent William White. In the two, as in their great trusts, there was a wonderful resemblance; diversified, however, as was called for by the several times and purposes for which they were provided. To the great task to which he was divinely sent, Bishop White brought a sound and discriminating mind. Never was there more occasion for it.

Like Cranmer, he was no stranger to involvement in the affairs of the polity:

In the struggle for national independence, he engaged, so far as became his sacred office, was elected the first Chaplain of the American Congress, and was for many years the friend and pastor of Washington.

Doane goes on to note how White's discriminating leadership navigated the challenges facing Protestant Episcopalians in the new Republic:

And yet nothing was to be done that should unnecessarily provoke the popular suspicion. A Church, so long established that her union with the civil institutions of the country had come to be regarded as essential to her character, if not to her existence, was to be severed from all hold upon the government, and stand, self-poised, upon her primitive integrity. The episcopacy was to be sought from a Church, which could not act but with consent of parliament, and but a few years after the jurisdiction of that body was thrown off, and its power repelled: and yet was not to be received on any terms which should imply, however faintly, dependence or subjection. Surely, there needed for these things, a keen, cool, steady, prudent and sagacious mind, comprehensive in its range, largely forecasting, and discriminating well. The result proves, ourselves are grateful witnesses, how fully and completely all these were supplied in him.

If White was like Cranmer, he was unlike Luther:

The fiery zeal of Luther would have broken up and scattered to the winds the frail remainder of the struggling Church. The cool, collected, cautious, but determined, energy of White, gathered every fragment up, set it in the most appropriate posture, turned it to the best purpose; and, with God to bless him, prepared the way for that magnificent result, which he was spared to see, and then, like holy Simeon, to “depart in peace.” 

Doane goes on to portray the "patient energy" of White, akin to that of Cranmer:

Patient energy, therefore, may be regarded as the great characteristic of our great departed Bishop. Had he been only patient, his life, long as it was, had never been sufficient for his work. Had he possessed superior energy, but failed in patience, he would have marred it in a thousand ways, and failed at last. "As it was," to quote the language of the last biographer of his great parallel, illustrious Cranmer, "the unimpassioned sedateness of his nature achieved, in a considerable measure for him, what the momentum of a more energetic character sometimes fails to accomplish. It enabled him to go forward against all impediments with a moderate, even and incessant pressure. The hindrances might frequently be powerful enough to stop him. But they never could exhaust his patience . The moment they were removed or relaxed, the pressure was still in action, to carry him forward again."

Doane was quoting from Strype's Memorials of Cranmer (1694).  In a footnote he points to the "following unquestionable points of resemblance" from the headings of the final chapters of that work:

His temperance of nature - His carriage towards his enemies - Stout in God's cause - His hospitality - His learning very profound - An excellent Bishop - Affected not his high styles - A great Scripturist - Humble and condescending - Peaceable and mild.

Similarly, Doane states that Cranmer's quiet scholarship was also reflected in White:

Of Thomas Cranmer, it was said, that "he was a most profound learned man in divinity, as also in the civil and canon laws" ... And of this character, and of like comprehension, was the learning of our senior Bishop - from whose deep, copious stores he continued, to his last days, to edify the Church, whose infancy he watched and tended.

While Doane does not mention Cranmer when he refers to White's moderation, it is difficult not to think that here too was an implicit comparison:

His moderation, so far from being inconsistent with the most unwavering firmness, was its ground work and its sanction. He was moderate, that he might be firm. He was firm, because he had been moderate. 

Nor can we miss the Cranmerian echoes in another of Doane's footnotes:

He was, as he might well be, an earnest advocate for a learned Clergy - above all, for a learned Episcopacy.

Not mentioned by Doane in the sermon, but surely worthy of comment, is that also like Cranmer, White ensured a role for the laity in church governance.  For Cranmer it was via Crown and Parliament; for White, lay deputies in Convention.  In both cases, it was crucial to ensuring that the respective Churches were rooted in the culture and society in which they ministered.

On this Thanksgiving Day, then, we can give thanks that while a mythology has grown up around Seabury and the influence upon TEC of Non-Juring Scottish Episcopalianism, it was White's Cranmerian character and disposition which shaped PECUSA.  The influence of Scotch Non-Jurors, if it had predominated, could very well have resulted in Episcopalianism being relegated to the cultural backwater of ecclesial sectarianism, rather than being a central feature of the religious, cultural, and social life of the Republic throughout the 19th century and beyond.  William White and his Cranmerian character was central to this.  

There is one other Cranmerian tendency which Doane saw in White.  He notes that the Preface to the 1789 revision of the BCP was written by White.  In the Preface, White clearly indicates that PECUSA was indebted not to Scottish Episcopalianism but to the Church of England:

The Church of England, to which the Protestant Episcopal Church in these States is indebted, under God, for her first foundation and a long continuance of nursing care and protection ...  it will also appear that this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; or further than local circumstances require.

White pointed PECUSA not to the culturally marginalised Scottish Episcopalians but to the Church of England, a national Church ministering to and within the cultural mainstream.  His Cranmerian character and disposition ensured that PECUSA was prepared for this vocation.