Following on from Friday's post on PECUSA worship in 1900, and reflecting on a recent photograph from Pohick Church with the description "the old Virginia tradition", I came across Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia (1857), by William Meade, Bishop of Virginia 1841-62. Meade refers to the "liberty" and "variety" regarding the surplice that "has ever existed in the Church of Virginia". What is more, he also presents this as within the canonical context established and maintained by PECUSA: As to the vestments, the same liberty and the same variety has ever existed in the Church of Virginia, without interruption to its harmony. It is well known that the controversy in our Mother Church concerning the use of the surplice was a long and bitter and most injurious one ... At the revision of the Prayer Book by our American fathers, this and other changes, which had long been desired by many in England, and still are, were at once mad...
Protestant Episcopalian - Burkean - clerk in holy orders