Yale Apostasy Day: Anglicanism with a New England character
On past commemorations of Yale Apostasy Day, laudable Practice has considered how the the ministry and writings of the Yale Apostates did indeed offer such an alternative. This year, however, I consider a somewhat different theme: did Church of England congregations take root in New England after the Yale Apostasy because of similarities with the Congregationalism of the New England Way?
In 1733, one of the Yale Apostates, Samuel Johnson, ministering to an Anglican congregation in Connecticut, published A letter from a minister of the Church of England to his dissenting parishioners:
you think your Fathers were very good Men, and came here for the sake of Religion and you can scarcely be persuaded to think they could be mistaken. To this I answer, that I believe I think as charitably of your Fathers as any of you do; I am ready to believe that they meant well, and endeavoured to please God according to the best of their Light: But I don't therefore think they were perfect ... Indeed I own they and you too are right in many Things, nay in most of the Essentials and Fundamentals of Religion: For you joyn with us in teaching the Necessity of Repentance towards God, and Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and a sober, godly and righteous Life, and of the supernatural Grace of the holy Spirit, to enable us to repent, believe and obey the Gospel, and that our Acceptance with God depends wholly on the free Grace of God, and the Merits and Intercession of Jesus Christ. It is happy that we agree thus far, and so far as we have attained, let us walk by the same Rule, and mind the same Things.
Here a Yale Apostate not only states that New England's Congregationalists share "in most of the Essentials and Fundamentals of Religion" with the Church of England; he also says that, while acknowledging that the Pilgrim Fathers were not "perfect", he thinks of them "as charitably" as his Congregationalist neighbours.
Johnson's statement regarding sharing "the Essentials and Fundamentals of Religion" with New England Congregationalists should not be entirely surprising. It was, after all, precisely what the 1708 Saybrook Platform - the constitution of Congregationalism in Connecticut - had declared:
As to what appertains to soundness of judgment in matters of faith, we esteem it sufficient that a church acknowledge the scriptures to be the word of God, the perfect and only rule of faith and practice, and own either the doctrinal part of those commonly called the articles of the church of England, or the confession or catechisms, shorter or larger compiled by the assembly at Westminster, or the confession agreed on at the Savoy, to be agreeable to the said rule.
In other words, the shock of the Yale Apostasy should not be overstated. A flurry of defences of New England Congregationalism, and attacks on the polity and liturgy of the Church of England, did indeed follow. The evidence, however, suggests that, after the initial shock, New Englanders could say - to use words spoken by Burke later in the century about religious differences - "heats are subsided". Jeremy Gregory, in his excellent article 'Refashioning Puritan New England: The Church of England in British North America, c.1680-1770' (2010), notes that by the 1760s "the Church of England was becoming embedded in New England life". He provides significant evidence that this was at least partly due to similarities and co-operation between Congregationalists and Church of England congregations.
Gregory points, for example, to Congregationalists being amongst the benefactors who, in 1745, enabled Christ Church, Boston - whose rector was no less than Timothy Cutler, the leader of the Yale Apostates - to acquire a ring of bells for its new steeple. There are also other cases of Congregationalists "helping to build or improve Anglican churches". Another example of Congregationalist openness to things Anglican is seen regarding Anglican observance of Christmas - a bête noire of New England Puritanism, which continued to be provoke the ire of some leading Congregationalist clergy into the mid-18th century. Anglican Christmas Day services attracted not inconsiderable numbers of Congregational laity:
By the 1730s and 1740s, both Boston's three Church of England places of worship, and those elsewhere in New England, were able to attract larger numbers than usual for their Christmas celebration and these included not a small number of Congregationalists. Timothy Cutler, for example, maintained that on Christmas Day 1744, Christ Church, Boston, was 'thronged among others by some Hundreds Dissenters'.
At the same time, there is also evidence that Church of England congregations in New England were observing that quintessential Puritan celebration, Thanksgiving. In 1774, amidst the heightening political tensions, the Congregationalist Ezra Stiles noted that it was the first time in 80 years that Anglicans in Cambridge had not observed Thanksgiving, and that the refusal of the incumbent of Christ Church, Boston, to hold a service for Thanksgiving had displeased the congregation. As Gregory states, Anglican observance of Thanksgiving is "suggestive of how something that had roots in a 'Puritan' context had in the recent past been able to transcend possible anti-Church of England connotations".
Even when Congregationalist ministers became Anglicans, there was often an emphasis on similarities between the two traditions. Gregory therefore quotes the words of Matthew Byles - the great-grandson of Increase Mathers - who told the Congregationalist church he was leaving in 1768, "There is not a sermon that I have preached in this place but what I shall in the Church of England". The year before, when Congregationalist minister Nathaniel Rogers - likewise of impeccable original Puritan stock - became a parishioner of Christ Church, Boston, the rector drew attention to the belief that Rogers was descended by the Marian martyr John Rogers, "as if to stress a common Protestant heritage for both Congregationalists and Episcopalians".
Gregory's conclusion is that "New England Anglicanism was not an oxymoron in Puritan New England". Prior to the political upheavals of the 1770s, the Church of England was increasingly embedded in New England life; those upheavals forced the vast majority of Anglican clergy in New England, and a significant proportion of Anglican laity, to side with the Crown against their Patriot neighbours. The similarities between Congregationalists and Anglicans, which had contributed to the acceptance of Anglicanism as a feature of New England life, were overwhelmed by rival political allegiances.
In the decades following the Yale Apostasy, however, such a political conflict could not be imagined. At the conclusion of the Seven Years War/the French and Indian War in 1763, New England Anglican and Congregationalist clergy alike heralded peace and victory with remarkably similar sermons. Compare, for example, extracts from two sermons, Anglican and Congregationalist, preached at thanksgiving services in the Summer of 1763:
Our countrymen, of this Province especially, though undisciplined and unused to arms, had by their spirit and courage in the preceding war, taught the English how to conquer in America: and Providence, during the last years of the war just concluded; by an amazing series of victories, and by the wisdom of our King; by every title of conquest and treaty, hath given us the just, undisputed, and peaceful possession of a territory, whose value and extent we are not able to estimate. Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever - from the sermon by East Apthorp, SPG Missionary at Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts;
[God] was pleased to raise up those, whom he delighted to honor, as the chosen Instruments of our Deliverance. In this Connection, the Patriot Pitt will not be forgotten. Unity and Harmony were restored to our public Counsels. The British Lion aroused as from a Sleep. A martial Spirit and Fire was diffused and spread into our Fleets and Armies. Expeditions were form'd and plan'd with Wisdom and Consistency; and carried into Execution with Firmness and Steadiness; and a Spirit and Resolution that Nothing could daunt or resist. The guilty, ambitious Schemes of France vanished like a Dream of the Night: Our Enemies fled before us in every Climate: Our Fleets and Armies went on from conquering to conquer. The British Troops triumphed in every Quarter of the World: Europe, Asia, Africa and America, beheld with Wonder our Success and Victories. - from the sermon by James Lockwood, Pastor of First Church, Wetherfield, Connecticut.
Anglican and Congregationalist alike rejoiced in the victory of the Crown, perceiving the workings of providence. Note, too, how the Anglican sermon had no embarrassment in echoing the New England Puritan fashion of invoking the promise of the land to Israel, in order to interpret the settlement of North America. Indeed, both sermons referred to New England as "our country".
A common Protestant theological framework shared with Congregationalists, a neighbourliness that at least partially moderated confessional animosities, a sense of New England as "our country", and a shared political allegiance (until the 1770s), aided Anglicans in becoming a settled - and relatively successful - feature of New England's religious landscape. In some ways, the Yale Apostasy itself can be regarded as suggestive of all this. Those who declared on this day in 1722 their desire to seek episcopal orders were, after all, sons of Congregationalist New England: they had been born and come of age in its communities, they had subscribed to its confessions, been ordained and served in its churches, and were products of one of its greatest institutions, Yale. To dissent from the polity of New England's Congregationalism, and its rejection of the rites and ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer, was not to entirely reject the theology, piety, and communities which had nurtured them.
If we were to seek material expression of the New England character of this Anglicanism, we might look at two New England Anglican churches from the colonial era: Old Narragansett Church, Wickford, Rhode Island, built in 1707, and Old Trinity, Brooklyn, Connecticut, built in 1771. Both are built in the fashion of the New England meeting house. There was, of course, an Anglican distinctive in both churches: the Holy Table was, unlike the traditional interior of the Congregationalist meeting house, prominent. While this identifies them as Anglican, they are very much in a style that is definitively that of the New England meeting house: a simplicity, modesty, and charm that is quietly, peacefully beautiful. Old Narragansett and Old Trinity, Brooklyn, perfectly embody the New England character of the Anglicanism which took root in these provinces in the decades following the Yale Apostasy.
(The first picture is of the pulpit of Old Narragansett Church, Wickford, Rhode Island; the second is of the church building; the third is of Old Trinity, Brooklyn, Connecticut.)
Comments
Post a Comment