[Disclaimer: As most folks here know, I am a New Testament scholar by training and a patristist/medievalist by inclination. I do not claim to be an authority on colonial America or the early Republic. I have perused some key second sources and primary sources on this matter, chiefly the early Journals of the General Conventions and the reminiscences of Bp. William White. So—caveat lector.]
Churchmen (as Anglicans were then known) were found in most of the American Colonies before the Revolution with a greater concentration in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies. Although present in the North, the Congregationalist churches were stronger there. Nine of the 13 colonies had established state churches receiving support from taxpayers; they break down as follows:
| Anglican | Puritan/Congregationalist | None |
|---|---|---|
| Virginia | Massachusetts | Rhode Island |
| Maryland | Connecticut | Pennsylvania |
| North Carolina | New Hampshire | Delaware |
| South Carolina | New Jersey | |
| Georgia | ||
| New York |
After the Battle of Yorktown at the end of 1781, it became clear to all that the Colonies were going to win their independence from the British Crown. Dr. William White, a leading Churchman of Pennsylvania, began writing regarding what the Protestant Episcopal Church would look like at the conclusion of the war and under the new regime. The Treaty of Paris concluded hostilities and opened the way for “what came next” in September of 1783.
Now, do recall that the period between 1781 and 1789 as the era of ACPU—the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union—which created a bond amongst the fledgling states with a relatively weak federal government. The Constitution would not appear until1789. This is important, because in these first years of organization, states held a stronger sense of their own autonomy and jurisdiction than they would later.
With the coming and eventual ending of the Revolution and the political thoughts thereof, changes occurred with respect to the state-funded churches. New York and North Carolina abolished the state establishment of their churches in 1777 and 1776 respectively. Six states continued to fund churches with taxpayer funds within the ACPU era and beyond; these break down into two groups—those who continued to fund a single denomination, and those who enabled taxpayers to direct funds to any Protestant Church:
| State | Denomination | Disestablished |
|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | Congregationalist | 1833 |
| Connecticut | Congregationalist | 1818 |
| New Hampshire | Congregationalist | 1819 |
| South Carolina | Christian Protestant religion | 1790 |
| Georgia | Protestant | 1798 |
| Maryland | Christian religion | 1810 |
Virginia suspended its support of the Anglican Church early in the Revolutionary War, but legislators fought in the 1780’s whether there should be a tax supporting all Christian churches. Jefferson and Madison succeeded in passing a religious liberty law in 1786 that official separated Church and State.
The reason why all of this matters to us in talking about the 1789 Communion Office is twofold: first, it provides a clearer sense of the general religious character of the new states; second, it sheds light on a dynamic that was to impact the prayer book—bishops.
Bishops were a divisive issue in early America (which came as a surprise to me!), and the strongest opponents of bishops were not even Churchmen. The reason for this opposition makes a lot more sense if we consider the British context; in England, bishops automatically became members of the House of Lords—the upper chamber of legislative assembly. Following that model, would Protestant Episcopal bishops automatically become members of the state senate for any states that had an established church? This is why William White’s writings from 1782 initially suggested that bishops might not be needed in a post-Revolutionary Anglican church.
Despite these external discussions, the Churchmen in America began to assemble themselves in 1784. Some clergy from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania assembled in May, 1784 and called for a larger convention in October of that year. This convention convened in New York City, passed some basic organizational principles and called for an even larger convention the next year to be held in Philadelphia. A key article of those organizational principles was article 4:
4. That the said church shall maintain the doctrines of the Gospel,
Journals of the General Conventions, ii
as now held by the Church of England; and shall adhere to
the liturgy of the said church, as far as shall be consistent with the
American revolution, and the constitutions of the respective states .
Thus, the official liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church remained the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with as-yet unspecified alterations to make it amenable to the American context.
The called Convention would assemble in Philadelphia in September-October, 1785 and take up the major questions of the church, chief among them, the necessary alterations that would result in the Proposed Prayer Book of 1786 to which we shall turn in the next post.