Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T06:43:17.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Mitre Without Sceptre: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revilution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Frederick V. Mills
Affiliation:
professor of history inLa Grange College, La Grange, Georgia

Extract

The American revolution caused the Anglican churches in America to separate from their parent body: the Church of England. This threw the Episcopalians upon their own resources to rebuild their church. In the process of reorganization, the former Anglicans accomplished an ecclesiastical revolution in respect to episcopacy. For the first time since the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Episcopalians in America made a bishop of a major religious body the elected official of a convention of clergy and laymen. In the second place, the office of bishop in a major denomination was completely separated from the state for the first time since Emperor Constantine officially recognized Christianity in 313 A.D.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Barlow, Frank, The English Church 1000–1066 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1963), p. 99.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 137.

3. Cheney, C. R., From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), p. 20.Google Scholar

4. Barlow, op. cit., p. 129.

5. Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1955), p. 9.Google Scholar

6. Brydon, G. MacLaren, “New Light on the Origins of the Method of Electing Bishops Adopted by the American Episcopal Church,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 19 (09, 1950), 207.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 208.

8. White, William, The Case of the Protestant Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered, ed. Salomon, Richard G. (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society Publication, 1954), p. 24.Google Scholar

9. Samuel Seabury to William White, 19 August 1785. Hawks, Francis L. and Hawks, William S., Documentary History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut 1704–1789 (Hartford: The Historiographer, 1959), p. 281.Google Scholar

10. Salomon, Richard G., “British Legislation and American Episcopacy,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 20 (09, 1951), 293.Google Scholar

11. Phillimore, Robert, The Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England, 2 vols. (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1895), I, 144 and 148.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., I, 47–49.

13. Journals of the General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America; 1784–1814 (Philadelphia: John Bioren, 1817), p. 76.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 77.

15. Philllimore, op. cit., II, 924–927.

16. Ibid., I, 607, 638–641; II, 832, 1927.

17. Ibid., I, 65–71; II, 972.

18. Journals of the General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, op. cit., p. 76.

19. Phillimore, op. cit., II, 1553.

20. Journals of the General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, op. cit., p. 75.

21. Ibid., p. 76.

22. Phillimore, op. cit., I, 317.

23. Journals of the General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, op. cit., pp. 95–96.

24. Ibid., p. 95.

25. White, , The Case, p. 32.Google Scholar

26. Thomas B. Chandler to William White, 2 September 1785. Perry, William S., A Half Century of Legislation of the American Church (Claremont: New Hampshire, 1874), p. 74.Google Scholar

27. Sykes, Norman, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1934), p. 61.Google Scholar

28. White, , The Case, p. 25.Google Scholar

29. Beardsley, Eben E., Life and Correspondence of the Right Reverend Samuel Seabury, D.D. (Boston: 1881), p. 285.Google Scholar

30. Hawks, Francis L., Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836), I, Appendix, 23.Google Scholar

31. Harold, and Schneider, Carol (eds.), Samuel Johnson, President of King's College His Career and Writings, 4 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929), I, 72Google Scholar, and Chandler, Thomas B., The Life of Samuel Johnson, D.D. (London: Reprinted for C. and J. Rivington, 1824), p. 201.Google Scholar

32. Dexter, Franklon B. (ed.), The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Seribner's Sons, 1910), III, 173.Google Scholar

33. Perry, , Half Century of Legislation, p. 358.Google Scholar

34. Beardsley, op. cit., p. 318.

35. Manross, William W., A History of the American Episcopal Church (New York: More- house Publishing Co., 1950), pp. 188–89.Google Scholar