WASHINGTON ON AN AMERICAN EPISCOPATE

As a Low Churchman, a leader of religious matters in his church (as vestryman and church warden) and in his government (as a member of the Committee on Religion), George Washington, was confronted with the question of an American Episcopate. During the Colonial era, the fact that there were no bishops in America caused difficulties for the progress of the Anglican Church. Yet the colonists were wary of the power that bishops would wield in America. Editor of the Writings of Washington John C. Fitzpatrick notes,

One of the grievances of the Colonies was this question of the Established Church’s rule from London. Young men from America who desired to enter holy orders were obliged to travel to England to be ordained, and few, if any, could stand the expense. The American episcopate was thus, like the American governors, an alien body and not likely to be in sympathy with the people.⁴⁵

So when plans began for the sending of a bishop to America, there was unrest. The fear of the New Englanders was that there was a plot to impose bishops on the colonies against their will. One popular political cartoon depicted an angry mob of New Englanders pushing a ship back toward England, because it was bringing a bishop. The bishop in the cartoon prayed, “Lord, now lettest thou thy Servant depart in Peace.”

Other elements of the cartoon included Calvin’s writings being thrown at the bishop, and protests of “No Lords Spiritual or Temporal in New England”; “Shall they be obliged to maintain bishops that cannot maintain themselves?” and “Liberty & Freedom of Conscience.” To put it mildly, the New England colonies were not ready for an American Episcopate.

Anglican Virginia was not ready for an American Episcopate either. From his vantage point of serving on the Committee of Religion in the House of Burgesses, Washington, the Low Churchman, wrote about an American Episcopate with less than enthusiasm. Writing on May 4, 1772 to Reverend Jonathan Boucher, the tutor of his stepson Jacky Custis, he said: “After a tiresome, and in my opinion, a very unimportant Session, I returned home about the middle of last Month ....”⁴⁶ Washington continued:

The expediency of an American Episcopate was long and warmly debated, and at length rejected. As a substitute, the House attempted to frame an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, to be composed of a President and four other clergymen, who were to have full power and authority to hear and determine all matters and causes relative to the clergy, and to be vested with the [power] of Suspension, deprivation, and visitation. From this Jurisdiction an Appeal was to be had to a Court of Delegates, to consist of an equal number of Clergymen and Laymen; but this Bill, after much canvassing, was put to Sleep, from an opinion that the subject was of too much Importance to be hastily entered into at the end of a Session.⁴⁷

Having a bishop, even in Washington’s Anglican Virginia, was an idea that had not yet achieved support. In fact, when the Committee on Religion had begun in 1769, it had “...drafted plans to block a proposed Anglican episcopate and keep the church under indigenous control.”⁴⁸

CHANGES IN THE PRAYER BOOK CAUSED BY THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

One of the changes to the Anglican faith that Washington personally experienced was the impact of the Revolution on the prayer book he so frequently used. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer had the worshipers in morning prayer asking that the Lord would grant the King “long to live,” and that he would “strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies....” Obviously, prayers for the King’s success could not continue in the church’s worship, if the church was convinced that he was assaulting them as a tyrant. After the Declaration of Independence, the vestry of the Bruton Church in Virginia, for example, covered over the prayer for the King. A hand written text replaced the original prayer with a prayer for the President instead:

O Lord our heavenly Father, the high and mighty Ruler of the universe who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth, most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour to behold and bless thy servant the President of the United States and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will and walk in thy way; Endue them plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant them in health; and prosperity long to live and finally after this life to attain everlasting joy and felicity through Jesus Christ our Lord.⁴⁹

After the War, President George Washington would regularly pray this prayer of salvation for himself and his congressional colleagues from his new American version of the Book of Common Prayer. As Washington prayed along with all who assembled with him in New York and Philadelphia, he prayed that he as president would “after this life attain everlasting joy and felicity through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We know that Washington worshiped regularly on Sundays as president for eight years. If he only worshiped on half of the Sundays, allowing for travel, health issues and other necessary absences, that means that he publicly prayed this prayer for himself over two hundred times as president. Nelly remembered his prayers vividly and said, “No one in church attended to the service with more reverential respect.”⁵⁰ We wonder then, if Washington historian Joseph J. Ellis’s description of Washington as a “lukewarm Episcopalian” is the same Washington described by his granddaughter, who sat in the same pew as he did Sunday after Sunday admiring his most “reverential respect”? So then, did Washington ask for the gift of eternal life? We know he did so with deep, reverential respect on at least two hundred occasions.

But before the American Book of Common Prayer could become official, the American Episcopal Church had to be structured and its governance had to be addressed.

THE PROPOSED BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER OF 1785

With the consecration of Bishop Samuel Seabury⁵¹ in 1784, and Bishop Samuel Provoost⁵² and Bishop William White⁵³ in 1787, an American Episcopacy became a reality in an independent America. The church was no longer under the crown of England or the Bishop of London. Children could be confirmed by American bishops and so be properly admitted to the Eucharist. American clergy could be ordained without traveling to London. And between the times of these two Episcopal consecrations, since White and Provoost were ordained together three years after Seabury, a 1785 American Proposed Book of Common Prayer (published in 1786) became available. While there were several changes made in the revised prayer book to the historic 1662 Anglican version, the most important ones for our discussion appear to be:

•   It replaced prayers for the King with prayers for the nation;

•   Changes were made to the 39 Articles,⁵⁴ as well as the Apostles Creed;

•   The word “Priest” was replaced on most occasions with the word “minister”;

•   The Athanasian Creed was removed.⁵⁵

And most interestingly for the new nation, it included an order for the celebration of July Fourth. The Service for July 4th was listed as “A Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the inestimable Blessings of Religious and Civil Liberty; to be used yearly Fourth Day of July” and included the following prayer:

O God, whose Name is excellent in all the earth, and thy glory above the heavens, who as on this day didst inspire and direct the hearts of our delegates in Congress, to lay the perpetual foundations of peace, liberty, and safety; we bless and adore thy glorious Majesty, for this thy loving kindness and providence. And we humbly pray that the devout sense of this signal mercy may renew and increase in us a spirit of love and thankfulness to thee its only author, a spirit of peaceable sub mission to the laws and government of our country, and a spir it of fervent zeal for our holy religion, which thou hast preserved and secured to us and our posterity. May we improve these inestimable blessing for the advancement of religion, liberty, and science throughout this land, till the wilderness and solitary place be glad through us, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. This we beg through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen⁵⁶

The Proposed Book of Common Prayer of 1785 was especially the work of the patriots of the Revolution, with much of the work having been done by Reverend William White. Reverend Mason Gallagher explained the importance of this book from the perspective of the Low Church tradition:

The same spirit which led the Puritans under Elizabeth and James to struggle and suffer for freedom of conscience, and for the unadulterated truths of Holy Scripture, animated the Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch and Lutheran pastors of the Revolution, and were it not for their incessant stirring, patriotic appeals from the pulpit and the rostrum, and their presence in the army, where they both fought and prayed, I feel assured that the War of Independence would never have issued in the success of the Colonists. I am aware that there were noble exceptions to the course of the Protestant Episcopal clergy in espousing the cause of the mother country. The names of Bishops White and Provoost, Dr. William Smith of Philadelphia, Peter Muhlenberg, and Dr. Griffith, (Bishop-elect) of Virginia, and Robert Smith of South Carolina, afterwards a bishop, were foremost among those who sympathized with the struggles of the patriot army; while Bishop Seabury of Connecticut, and his disloyal friends were exiled or imprisoned for giving aid and comfort to the oppressors of our grandsires.

… in this city [New York City] of Revolutionary fame, that Bishops White and Provoost, with Dr. Wm. Smith and Dr. Griffiths, were among the framers of the Prayer Book of 1785,…on whose principles this country first received its Episcopacy.⁵⁷

What the Low Church clergyman would have us understand is that there were two streams of Episcopalian thought in post-revolutionary America. The movement under Bishop Seabury represented the Loyalist High Church view. The clergy of this tradition had been Tories and opposed Washington and the American Revolution. The second stream was the Low Church, composed of those clergymen who chose to stand with the patriots led by General Washington. Consistent with their patriotic spirit was the inclusion of the special service to celebrate the Fourth of July in the Proposed Prayer Book. This did not seem to them to be inappropriate, since it paralleled the Anglican annual celebration of the Gunpowder Plot’s providential deliverance of the King and Parliament from Guy Fawkes’ destruction on November 5, 1605.⁵⁸

A CHURCH LED BY LAYMEN

As the issue of governance surfaced, the historic concerns over bishops in America again arose, but not just in New England. This occurred in the South as well, as independent minded Americans felt a natural connection with their practice of lay-led churches. The Low Church Reverend Mason Gallagher wrote,

It is well known that the fear of the Establishment of an Episcopal Hierarchy on these shores was one of the causes which led the Colonists to desire separation from the mother country. The inherent nature of this intolerant system was thoroughly appreciated by the descendants of those who had so greatly suffered by it.

The diocese of South Carolina united with the other dioceses on the condition that no bishop should be placed over them. It afterwards elected Robert Smith, who had served as a private in the siege of Charleston. The conventions of Virginia were at first presided over by a layman. It is well known, also, that John Jay and James Duane, with Provoost and others, earnestly endeavored to prevent all ecclesiastical connection with Bishop Seabury after the Revolution.⁵⁹

Bishop White of Philadelphia, before the possibility of ordaining an American bishop developed, conceived a view of Episcopalian governance that was quasi-Presbyterian in form⁶⁰ and would have eventually opened the way for an American bishop.

But the Anglican leaders in New England did not wait. They sent Samuel Seabury to Scotland to be ordained by the Anglican bishops who had remained loyal to Charles Edward Stuart, a descendant of James II. These bishops refused to take an oath of loyalty to William and Mary. Because they had not sworn their oath to the crown, they came to be known as the “Non-Jurors.”

Thus, the predominance of laymen was a mark of the early Low Church Episcopal movement. The Reverend Gallagher explains:

It is eminently worthy of remark, that in the four primary Conventions in which Bishop Seabury was neither allowed presence nor influence, the lay element largely predominated. In all the succeeding Conventions the clergy were in the majority. In the First Convention, which settled the Prayer Book of 1785, three-fifths of the body were laymen. In the convention of 1789, which decided to admit Bishop Seabury, three-fifths of the number were clergymen.⁶¹

CONCLUSION

Washington was a churchman through and through. His life in the Anglican Church in the Colony of Virginia, far away from the Bishop of London, created a spirit of independence and self-sufficiency. These qualities led him and his fellow Virginian Anglicans to be Low Church adherents. But his commitment to the Low Church also meant that he was a believing Christian, and not a Deist. In a subsequent chapter we will address how these struggles between the High Church and the Low Church impacted Bishop William White in Philadelphia, and how this had a natural distancing effect between him and Washington. We believe this helps us to explain why Washington did not commune in Philadelphia.

SIXTEEN

George Washington and the Bible

“The blessed religion revealed in the Word of God.”

George Washington, (1789)

¹

Things that people value manifest themselves in their conversations and compositions. Since George Washington loved farming at his lovely and tranquil Mount Vernon plantation, we anticipate his speaking of growing crops, the amount of rain, or improvements to his buildings. Perhaps surprisingly, or maybe unexpectedly, another of the things Washington valued enough to impact his thinking and writings are the scriptures. His writings are sprinkled with phrases and sentences from the Bible. It shows how well he knew the scriptures. We will here discover that it was second nature for him to use its language repeatedly. Not only was he biblically literate, he was communicating to people who were also biblically literate, since he fully expected his vast biblical vocabulary to illuminate rather than darken the understanding of his correspondents.

We have gone through and counted over two hundred different biblical allusions and expressions that come right into his writings from all parts of the scriptures. We find them repeatedly. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the pervasive impact the Bible made on his life and his beliefs.

But given what we have just claimed, it is important to note that Paul Boller strongly disagrees. He writes, “…there are astonishingly few references to the Bible in his letters and public statements.”² This means we are completely incorrect in our claim, or that Boller doesn’t know the Bible well enough to see Washington’s biblical illusions. Perhaps he expected George Washington to list out the references or perhaps he did not read Washington as carefully as he should have.

However, those who are familiar with the scriptures and employ them in their communications generally don’t do that. When Abraham Lincoln said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” his hearers knew he was quoting the Bible. When Reverend John Winthrop said aboard the Arabella that the Pilgrim settlers would be as a “city on a hill,” his hearers knew he was quoting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Usually, only a clergyman in a sermon spells out a Bible reference.

As we shall see in this chapter, there are hundreds of places in Washington’s writings, private and public, where he used biblical phrases and allusions.

POHICK CHURCH: “HEARING THE WORD OF GOD READ AND PREACHED”

As of this writing, the Reverend Dr. Donald Binder is the rector of Pohick Church, one of the key churches where Washington served for years as a lay leader (a vestryman). He points out that in George Washington’s day, the Anglican churches in Virginia placed a special emphasis on the Bible. Speaking of Pohick Church, Dr. Binder notes:

…this was known as an auditory church. The focus was on the Word of God, not on visual imagery. That was seen as too papist. So some of the things that you may see in the church today, the crosses, the candles, any ornamentation here would not have been here in Washington’s day. Those are sort of concessions to modern liturgical practices. In Washington’s day, the church was fairly plain, and the emphasis again was listening to the liturgy, participating in the liturgy, hearing the Word of God read and preached, and you have to remember this is a period not long after you were even allowed to hear the Bible in your own language. So this was something that they held as being very precious, something we tend to take for granted today. So the very fact that they could hear the word of God, expounded upon and read in their own language was just a very important thing to them, and so they set up their churches that way. You can see the pulpit looms over top of the boxes. It’s given really the focal point of the worship.³