laudable Practice

The picture is of this year's annual Lantern Service in Old North Church , Boston. The service commemorates the lighting of two lanterns in the church's steeple on 18th April 1775, leading to Paul Revere's famous midnight ride before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In the 50 years since the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, the service has been an annual fixture. In the words of the Old North Church website: [it] recalls the lights of liberty that shone from Old North’s steeple on April 18, 1775, while reflecting on the meaning of faith, freedom, and American democracy today. The service culminates with the lighting of the church's two historic lanterns. When I looked at photographs of this year's service, what immediately struck me was this photograph. It encapsulates the 'Publick Religion' that traditionally has been part of the Anglican vocation: surplice, tippet, hood, bands - noble and modest; a historic church; a national commemoration.  It is,...

I continued, as did all of us, to pray for the king, until Sunday (inclusively) before the 4th of July 1776. So said William White , supporter of the Patriot cause and chaplain to the Continental Congress. It is a reminder of the complexities and nuances of Anglican allegiances and identities in North America during these years. Similarly we might also point to the Loyalist parson Jonathan Boucher's critique of the Administration in Westminster in a 1774 sermon: Their whole conduct, indeed, has been so utterly devoid of counsel, that I seem to have no right to tax those persons with being superstitious, who ascribe to it a preternatural infatuation ... That they wish for a reconciliation, we cannot but believe: yet every step they have taken, since the dispute began, has, through their folly, or our perverseness, or both, tended only to widen the breach; tended to make new enemies and lose old friends. Boucher also admitted, in his farewell sermon the following year to his parish i...

To the Pulpit, the Puritan Pulpit, we owe the moral force which won our independence. The famous words of John Wingate Thornton are quoted at the outset of the weighty volume Political Sermons of the American Founding Era . The introduction to this collection similarly points to The History of the American Revolution by Massachusetts pastor William Gordon and his claim that it was the clergy of New England who spoke "boldly for the liberties of the people", against "the parson" who taught the people "slavishly to bow their neck to any tyrant".  The posts over the past few days, exploring the political sermons of Anglicans aligned to the Patriot cause, suggest a rather different account.  The preaching of Anglican political theology was shaped by the Revolution of 1688 with its commitment to constitutional liberties and obedience. It expounded (and understood itself to be) a 'middle way' between ancien regime absolutism and an over-zealous emphasi...

On 9th December 1775, Crown forces engaged Patriot troops in the Battle of Great Bridge. It was the first engagement of the Revolutionary War in Virginia. Only weeks later, on 1st January, the Royal Navy bombarded Norfolk, Virginia, with British landing parties being confronted by Patriot militia. The confrontation resulted in the town being burnt to the ground. On the eve of the shelling of Norfolk, and ending the tumultuous year of 1775, David Griffith - then rector of  Shelburne Parish in Loudoun County, northern Virginia - entered the pulpit of Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg.  Griffith had previously publicly indicated his support for the Patriot cause. Now from the pulpit, amidst the realities of armed conflict and political confrontation, preached on a scriptural text at the heart of Anglican political theology, and often invoked by Loyalist clergy, Romans 13:1&2:  The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth ...

In the week of 4th July last year, laudable Practice considered how English, Irish, and Loyalist Anglicans responded to the 'American War' , perceiving it as an unjust rebellion against the liberal constitutional order secured by the Revolution of 1688. This year, in the week leading up to 4th July, we turn to those colonial Anglicans who sided with the Patriots. Their understanding of the Revolutionary War was encapsulated in a resolution of the Maryland Provincial Convention on 25th May 1776 : Whereas his Britannic majesty King George has prosecuted, and still prosecutes, a cruel and unjust war against the British Colonies in America, and has acceded to acts of parliament, declaring the people of the said colonies in actual rebellion: and whereas the good people of this province have taken up arms to defend their rights and liberties, and to repel the hostilities carrying on against them ... As the resolution continued, it demonstrated how it had a particular relevance for A...