The Low Churchman
“The expediency of an American Episcopate was long and warmly debated, and at length rejected.”
George Washington, May 4, 1772
1
The Anglican tradition in Virginia at the beginning of the American constitutional era had two streams of thought. They have been called the High Church and the Low (or broad) Church. The High Church under the leadership of Bishop Samuel Seabury in New England had certain distinctives that were not shared by the members of the Low Church, which was led by Bishop Samuel Provoost in New York. The Low Church reflected the traditional Anglican Church in Virginia, of which Washington was a part. The High Church emphasized apostolic succession. This view claimed an unbroken chain of ordination all the way from the Anglican bishops to the apostles. Adherents of apostolic succession claimed that the Anglican Church was the only church that could properly administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This created an air of exclusivity and theological distance from other Protestant churches.
The Low Church, on the other hand, while not discounting the value of apostolic succession, felt it was not the foundational doctrine for the Church’s life. Instead of emphasizing the continuity of bishops by an unbroken succession of ordination, the Low Church focused on the importance of lay leadership. Instead of emphasizing an exclusive and uniquely legitimate Communion, the Low Church emphasized a broader Communion with other churches within the historic orthodox tradition of Christianity.
Interestingly, this division between the High Church and the Low Church not only reflected different theological ideas, but it also reflected the natural division of geography. The northern church of New England was High Church and the southern church of Virginia was Low Church. In between the two was Philadelphia, governed by Bishop William White and New York, governed by Bishop Samuel Provoost. Initially, these two Bishops espoused the Low Church tradition of Virginia. As a result of the ecclesiastical debates, and even though he was a great patriot and Low Churchman, Bishop White reached out to High Church Bishop Seabury to establish a union between the High and Low Church. This compromise was uncomfortable for the Virginians and bitterly opposed by Bishop Provoost in New York City. This was the milieu in which George Washington found himself in Philadelphia as he worshipped as president. In fact, colonial America had wrestled with the question of whether there should be a bishop in America at all.
Here and in a later chapter, we will seek to explain why Washington was initially opposed to an American Episcopate that would have lessened lay leadership by elevating the rule of bishops and why he also would have been uncomfortable to personally connect with Bishop White, whose alliance with Bishop Seabury thwarted the Low Church’s vision for the new Protestant Episcopal church.
We begin this story before the Revolutionary War, where we find Washington serving in the House of Burgesses, having been elected to the new Committee on Religion. The very fact that Washington was on this committee, as well as being a sincere Low Churchman, not only meant that he would be opposed to Bishop Seabury’s views and the claims of the High Church, but it also meant he was not a Deist, because the purpose of the Committee on Religion was to check the growing menace of Deism in Anglican Virginia.
WASHINGTON WAS A CHURCHMAN FROM THE LOW CHURCH TRADITION
To understand Washington’s religion, we need to appreciate the Virginian Low Church tradition of which he was a part. The Low Church’s dominance in Virginia was a natural result of America having no bishop of its own. It was not just that America had no bishop, but New England as well, as Virginia had strenuously resisted having an American Episcopate. The original Congregationalists had, in large part fled England for New England to escape Episcopal persecution. On the centennial of the end of the Revolutionary War, Reformed Episcopalian clergyman, Reverend Mason Gallagher explained:
In divine Providence, we owe to the tyranny of [Anglican Archbishop] Laud and the Stuarts [the English royal family], the freedom and the independence which now we so greatly enjoy.
If the noble men whom these tyrants subjected to prison, to fine, to mutilation, and other forms of persecution, even to death, had not been driven from the mother country, and their ecclesiastical home, never would there have been reared in this land, a people willing and able to fight for seven years [in the American Revolution] as the descendants of the Pilgrims did, for the privileges of civil and religious liberty, which, thanks to God and to these patriots, we are privileged now to possess.2
Since there was no bishop in America, Washington grew up without being confirmed.3 As a vestryman, he had helped manage the parish churches and called pastors without the immediate aid of a bishop.4 He was active in the House of Burgesses that oversaw Virginia’s Anglican state church that had no resident bishop.5 This meant that Washington and his fellow Virginians were not only relatively independent, by historical experience, but Washington was also quite knowledgeable in Anglican life and teaching. Washington, by faith and practice, was a Low Church Anglican.
WASHINGTON’S PERSPECTIVE ON ANGLICANISM THROUGH HIS SERVICE IN THE VIRGINIA HOUSE OF BURGESSES
Washington served for many years as a member of the House of Burgesses. His initial plans to run for office brought him into consultation with his pastor, Reverend Green.6 With his fame from military service, as well as his close connection with the influential Fairfax family,7 Washington was elected on his second run for office and began his service in May 1759, just four months after marrying Martha Custis,8 thereby following the family tradition of serving in government. He occupied his seat as a Burgess in the Virginia Assembly, which held its sessions at Williamsburg.9
A Christian sermon preached for the Virginia House of Burgesses that Washington had in his library
The Burgesses reflected Virginia’s Christian tradition, in part because Virginia had an established church. Washington’s knowledge of the Anglican tradition was deepened by serving on the Committee on Religion for several years in the Virginia House of Burgesses. On occasion, they even published sermons. One such sermon has George Washington’s signature on the cover page, entitled, “The Nature and Extent of Christ’s Redemption.”
The sermon was presented before the House of Burgesses by the Reverend Stith, president and professor from the Anglican William and Mary College in Williamsburg in 1753.10 The theme of the sermon addressed the evangelical doctrine of salvation through faith in “the death of Christ.”11 President Stith argued for what theologians have called the “unlimited atonement” of Christ, or that Christ’s death on the cross was intended by God for all humans, not only for his elect. He also wrestled with the perennial Christian missions question of whether the unreached are responsible for not believing in a Gospel they’ve not yet heard, and how they can gain salvation under such circumstances. In his introduction, Professor Stith suggested that he was at least in part influenced by Christian enlightenment philosopher and theologian John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity.
The date of Stith’s sermon was six years before Washington entered the House of Burgesses. We do not know when Washington signed the sermon, nor the occasion of his securing it. He did, however, include it in his sermon collection that was bound during his life and kept in his library.12
From his position in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Washington had opportunity to consider many religious matters that concerned the established Anglican Church of Virginia. These included matters such as: The Two Penny Act and the Parson’s Cause,13 which unveiled Patrick Henry’s legal skills,14 as well as a clergyman’s defense against a heresy charge of violating the Anglican confession of faith by a teaching that seemed to deny the deity of Christ.15 This concern over heretical teaching, by the way, demonstrates that the open denial of Christ’s deity was not an acceptable position in English Anglicanism, and would have been even less so in the colonial context. Since Deism by definition denies the deity of Christ, this further supports the incongruity of claiming that Washington was a Deist.
About the time that Washington became a vestryman, he bought An Exposition of the XXXIX Articles of the Church of England by Gilbert Burnet Bishop of Sarum,16 a deeply theological and soundly orthodox statement of Anglican theology, in what was to become known as the broad church or Low Church theology.
Another evidence of Washington’s Anglican heritage was that he was offered the position of Chancellor of the Anglican William and Mary College. The school, although not always living up to its purposes in Washington’s mind,17 had very explicit religious duties:
There are three things which the Founders or this College proposed to themselves, to which all its Statutes should be directed. The First is, That the Youth of Virginia should be well educated to Learning and good Morals. The Second is, That the Churches of America, especially Virginia, should be supplied with good Ministers after the Doctrine and Government of the Church of England; and that the College should be a constant Seminary for this Purpose. The Third is, That the Indians of America should be instructed in the Christian Religion, and that some of the Indian Youth that are well-behaved and well-inclined, being first well prepared in the Divinity School, may be sent out to preach the Gospel to their Countrymen in their own tongue, after they have duly been put in Orders of Deacons and Priests. . . .18
The duties of the Master was to “take Care that all the Scholars learn the Church of England Catechism in the vulgar tongue; and that they who are further advanced learn it likewise in Latin. . . .let the president and Masters, before they enter upon these Offices, give their Assent to the Articles of the Christian Faith. . . .”19 While Washington ultimately decided not to accept the invitation to serve, his decision was reached because of his desire to retire20 and not because he did not believe these things. The facts of his life show that he did believe them.21
WASHINGTON’S SERVICE ON THE COMMITTEE ON RELIGION
Washington’s responsibilities in the House of Burgesses included membership on the Committee on Religion. He was elected to the brand new committee in 1769, serving with such illustrious men as Colony Treasurer Robert Carter Nicholas (Chair), Attorney General John Randolph, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Edmund Pendleton.22 Several of these men were the very ones who traveled to the First Continental Congress in 1774 to represent Virginia.23
The religious faith of these men is a relevant question to consider. It is clear that they were not Deists, when we consider what Bishop William Meade records of their lives. Speaking of Virginian culture at large, Bishop Meade explains, “There were those, even then, among them [Virginia patriots], who had unhappily imbibed the infidel principles of France; but they were too few to raise their voices against those of Washington, Nicholas, Pendleton, Randolph, Mason, Lee, Nelson, and such like.”24
Five of the members of the Committee on Religion are here singled out as opponents of the Deist movement in Virginia. Bishop Meade again writes, “If tradition and history and published documents are to be relied on, the patriotic, laborious, self-sacrificing, and eloquent Richard Henry Lee, of the Revolution, must have deeply sympathized with Washington, and Peyton Randolph, and Pendleton, and Nicholas, and Henry, in their religious character and sentiments.”25
The Christian faith and commitment of these various members of the founding Committee on Religion is written in the pages of Virginia’s history and is recorded by Bishop William Meade.26 Patrick Henry is most known for his fiery, patriotic oratory. But his patriotic fire was strengthened with biblical reflection. In May 1765, the Burgesses passed the Stamp Act Resolves. Years later, on the back of the paper, Henry wrote a note for posterity that highlighted several of the key events that led to the Revolution. His climactic statement declared in bold letters that he was not a Deist.
This brought on the war which finally separated the two countries and gave independence to ours. Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings, which a gracious God hath bestowed on us.
If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable.
Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, and encourage it in others. P. Henry27
There was concern over the entrance of Deism into Virginia through the teachers at William and Mary.28 Was this one of the unspoken reasons why Washington did not want to place his grandson at William and Mary?29 But there were also concerns about infidelity in the pulpit. Bishop Meade writes,
I have other reasons for knowing that infidelity, under the specious garb of Universalism, was then finding its way into the pulpit. Governor Page, Colonel Nicholas, and Colonel Bland made complaints against someone preaching in or near Williamsburg about this time for advocating the doctrine with its usual associates, and prevented his preferment. . . At such a time, when the writings of French philosophers—falsely so called—were corrupting the minds of the Virginia youth, the testimony of such men as Peyton Randolph, Mr. R. C. Nicholas, Colonel Bland, President Nelson, Governor Page, and the recovery of Edmund Randolph from the snare, has peculiar weight.30
Again, the names of those openly defending historic Christianity against Deism in Virginia are Washington’s fellow members of the Committee on Religion. John Randolph who was on the original committee, left for England when war was beginning to become a possibility.31 But it was clear that the Randolph family was deeply committed to the defense of the Gospel, having been deeply touched by deistic thought. Bishop Meade relates:
Mr. Peyton Randolph ever showed himself the warm and steady friend of the Church as well as of his country. He went by the name Speaker Randolph, being for a long time the presiding officer in the House of Burgesses. He was also chosen Speaker of the first, second and third Congress, but suddenly died of apoplexy, during the last. He was buried for a time in Philadelphia, but afterward removed to Williamsburg. In connection with the foregoing notice of Mr. Peyton Randolph, I added something concerning his nephew and adopted son, Edmund Randolph...[the following is an] Extract from a paper written by Edmund Randolph, soon after the death of his wife, and addressed to his children.
