Thanksgiving for Anglicanism in the True North: "this little Sion"
Doty, born in New York, had received orders in the Church of England in 1770, before serving as rector to two churches in the province of New York. During the American War he was chaplain to a regular British unit and then to the King's Royal Regiment of New York, a Loyalist unit, many of whose officers and men, with their families, found refuge in Quebec at the conclusion of the war. And it was in Sorel, Quebec, that Doty was to be found at the war's end, conducting divine service for the first time in that settlement on - rather ironically - 4th July 1784.
According to a history of Christ Church, Sorel - the church founded by Doty - the vestry and wardens of an Episcopal church in Albany, in the now United States of America, invited him at this time to become their minister. Despite the obvious attractions of returning to the region of his birth, with greater security than his missionary context in Sorel, Doty remained with his United Empire Loyalist flock in Canada.
By Christmas Day 1784, a newly-purchased property was converted into the first Anglican church in Canada: Christ Church, Sorel. Sorel's sermon in the new church on that day provides an insight into how the United Empire Loyalist experience fundamentally shaped and enriched the founding of Canadian Anglicanism.
The sermon - with Psalm 43:3 as its text - opened with an evocative reference to David's experience of exile, obviously drawing parallels with the experience of his Loyalist congregation:
This prayer of David seems to have been made while he was in exile from the Holy Hill of Sion, the City of his God; from which the malice of a party, and the cruel hatred and persecution of Saul, or of his own rebellious son Absolom, had forced him. On these trying occasions great and grievous were his feelings. But, what affected him most, and filled his pious soul with unutterable anguish, was, that his flight deprived him the joy and happiness of worshipping JEHOVAH in the Congregation of his Saints.
With the thoughts of the congregation inevitably turning to the churches they had known in the former colonies, in which prayers for the King had once been offered, Doty then reflected on how this settlement of refugee Loyalists had now been without a Church of England place of worship (and note, by the way, the reference to Royal Psalmist):
How long and lamentably destitute of the Sacred Institutions of Pure and Undefiled Religion you have been in this Village, my Christian Friends, it is needless to observe; and how fervently this Prayer of the Royal Psalmist hath, in substance, been repeated by you. Most of you also were in circumstances very similar to his: exiled from your native homes, and from the Tabernacles of your God, you were here in a dry and thirsty land where no Water was. Hungry and thirsty for the Bread of Life and for the Waters of Eternal Consolation, your souls have fainted within you, and darted many a fervent Ejaculation to the God of all mercy, that he would be graciously pleased to send out his Light and his Truth to lead and bring you once more to his Holy Hill, and to his Tabernacles: that he would perform his promises to make those who sow in tears to reap in joy; and to cause light to spring up for his afflicted Church in darkness. Were not these the pious breathings of some among you?
The sermon's description of the simplicity of the new building of Christ Church, Sorel, was not only a matter of praising the modesty of a provincial Anglican church. It also sharply contrasted this modesty with Roman Catholic churches. This probably arose from the fact that Anglican divine service in Sorel first took place in a Roman Catholic chapel, there being no Protestant places of worship. Furthermore, there may have been a sense that the new Christ Church, Sorel, converted to sacred use from a secular building, compared unfavourably with srather more substantial Roman Catholic chapels in Quebec. As such, Doty provided a Reformed Catholic emphasis which gave theological justification for the ordinary, plain, provincial Anglican church buildings which sustained those first generations of United Empire Loyalists in a new land:
In this modest building unpolluted by Meretricious Ornaments of Superstition, and, like the Pure Gospel to which it is subservient, plain, simple, suited to our wants, we have now assembled to offer up our united prayers and praises; and, in so doing, to Consecrate it to such religious use. For, as the Bread and Wine which we are about to receive in Commemoration of our Saviour's Love, though they be not Transubstantiated or changed by the prayer of consecration, but remain after it no other than simple Bread and Wine, are nevertheless thereby set apart from Vulgar Use, and sacred to the Eucharistic Service; so this house, though it derive no inherent holiness or efficacy from our present devotions, yet is it hereby solemnly set apart and dedicated to the honor and service of God, and of the Lamb, henceforth no more to be considered in a vulgar view but as Christ's Church, the Tabernacle in which he has promised to meet and bless us.
At the sermon's conclusion, Doty drew together three significant aspects of this first divine service which, to Loyalist ears, would have had particular resonances:
And now, let me add, this day is joyful to us on three several accounts. First, as it is the Anniversary of our blessed Lord's Nativity: Secondly, as it is the day on which, having finished the great Work of Redemption, he arose triumphantly from the dead: and Thirdly as it commences our more decent and orderly Worship; and opens the First Protestant Church in the province of Canada.
The celebration of Christmas Day may have provoked a contrast with the custom of New England, in which old Puritan animosity towards the festival was still experienced, the day not being celebrated there until well into the mid-19th century. Sunday was referenced as the day of Resurrection, not the Sabbath, perhaps another contrast with the Puritanism and Dissent which Loyalists routinely regarded as driving the rebellion in the former colonies which had been their homes. Finally, "decent and orderly Worship" was a long-standing Conformist description of Prayer Book worship, contrasting with the Puritan meeting house. Well might Dory have described Christ Church, Sorel, in all of its simplicity and plainness, as "this little Sion". Much more modest, indeed, than loud, brash boasts of a 'City upon a Hill', or grandiose claims of a Novus ordo seclorum, but much more compelling and attractive because of this very modesty, an echo of the One who is "the author of peace and lover of concord".
On this Canadian Thanksgiving Day, therefore, laudable Practice gives thanks for those United Empire Loyalists and their first "plain, simple" provincial and frontier churches, by which the Anglican way took root in the True North. Alongside the Puritan and revivalist traditions which profoundly shaped the new Republic to the south, and the French Roman Catholic tradition integral to Quebec, the United Empire Loyalists in those "plain, simple" churches ensured that the Reformed Catholicism of the Anglican way, and its vision of peace, order, and good government under the Crown, would be present in North America.
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