WEBVTT NOTE 32. The Beginning of the Struggle over American Bishops 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.800 volume 2 chapter 32 the beginning of the struggle over american bishops the anglican communion even 2 00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:16.480 in those colonies where it served as an established church lived under strictly local control ministers 3 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:24.080 were appointed by local vestries and approved by the governor of the colony the church in america 4 00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:44.080 Thus remained under secular American and even local direction. It was not subject to more than the nominal control of the Bishop of London, nor could it be otherwise so long as the church was not represented by resident bishops in the American colony. 5 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:52.080 The only pleas for the installation of Anglican bishops in America came not from the southern colonies, 6 00:00:52.080 --> 00:01:00.080 where the established Anglican clergy relished their independence and the laity their local control, 7 00:01:00.080 --> 00:01:06.080 but from the far weaker missionary clergy in the northern provinces. 8 00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:13.880 The first agitation for American bishops came from the Society for Propagating the Gospel 9 00:01:13.880 --> 00:01:22.040 – SPG, the Great English Missionary Society founded in 1701. 10 00:01:22.040 --> 00:01:29.200 The SPG proved to be the greatest single force in extending the Anglican Communion in America, 11 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.040 especially in the northern and middle colonies. 12 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:40.240 Dr. Thomas Bray, founder of the SPG, was the first to launch the campaign in 1701, and 13 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:45.300 the cause was soon taken up by the Reverend John Talbot, one of the leading missionaries 14 00:01:45.300 --> 00:01:53.000 in the Society in the Middle Colonies. In 1705, fourteen Anglican missionaries assembled 15 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:59.500 at Burlington, New Jersey, and petitioned for a bishop. The SPG itself continued to 16 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:13.500 The campaign came to a climax in 1713 when petitions for bishops came in from New York and New England and Queen Anne agreed to the proposal. 17 00:02:13.500 --> 00:02:27.500 This agreement is not surprising as it fitted in admirably with Queen Anne's high Tory aim of exalting the power of throne and altar over her hapless subjects. 18 00:02:27.500 --> 00:02:47.500 The death of Queen Anne in 1714, however, followed by the accession to power of Sir Robert Walpole and the Whigs, shattered the plan for American bishops, and dashed other high Tory hopes as well, thus ended the first campaign for an American episcopate. 19 00:02:47.500 --> 00:02:54.240 The SPG now ended its organized agitation, but petitions for missionary ministers continued 20 00:02:54.240 --> 00:03:00.500 to come into London. At first, the agitation was rather desultory, but the lead was soon 21 00:03:00.500 --> 00:03:08.220 taken in 1723 by a group of Connecticut ministers newly converted from the Puritan faith and 22 00:03:08.220 --> 00:03:15.860 headed by the Rev. Samuel Johnson and Timothy Cutler. Johnson and Cutler mobilized the New 23 00:03:15.860 --> 00:03:23.700 New England Anglican Clergy to Petition for Bishops in 1725 and 1727. 24 00:03:23.700 --> 00:03:29.980 The dramatic conversion of Cutler, the rector of Yale College, the center of orthodox Calvinist 25 00:03:29.980 --> 00:03:36.700 training in America, along with several Yale instructors, particularly rankled and alarmed 26 00:03:36.700 --> 00:03:42.820 the Puritan clergy of New England. Especially galling was Cutler's admission that he had 27 00:03:42.820 --> 00:04:10.760 The Reverend Mr. Johnson, in the course of his pleas to England, urged that an episcopate 28 00:04:10.760 --> 00:04:18.120 would be most useful in cementing the rule of the English crown over America and preventing 29 00:04:18.120 --> 00:04:26.720 any dangerous tendencies toward American independence. As Johnson trenchantly put it, it has always 30 00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:33.240 been a fact and is obvious in the nature of the thing that anti-episcopal are of course 31 00:04:33.240 --> 00:04:40.240 Anti-Monarchical Principles, so that the danger of our effecting independence would naturally 32 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:47.880 flow from the want of episcopacy, which would be the most effectual means that could be 33 00:04:47.900 --> 00:04:54.900 devised to secure a dependence on our mother country. Yet, in England itself, and even 34 00:04:56.140 --> 00:05:03.140 in the SPG, interest in the scheme had all but ended with the death of Queen Anne. It's 35 00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:11.320 The first revival came with a sermon before the Society by Bishop Thomas Secker in 1741. 36 00:05:11.320 --> 00:05:17.360 Secker took up the argument of Johnson, and his public address alarmed the New England 37 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:24.520 descending clergy. In a reply, the liberal Massachusetts Congregational Minister Andrew 38 00:05:24.520 --> 00:05:32.160 Elliott expressed his alarm over an episcopate that would inevitably entail the dangers of 39 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:38.960 of an Anglican Establishment in the Northern Colonies. Such dangers included a general 40 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:48.760 tax to support the establishment, to be extracted from the pockets of the non-Anglican colonists. 41 00:05:48.760 --> 00:05:54.600 Bishops established in America would, in short, inevitably obtain the considerable temporal 42 00:05:54.600 --> 00:06:20.000 The drive for an American Episcopate began in earnest with the accession of Thomas Sherlock 43 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:27.760 To the Bishopric of London in 1748, pursuing his grand design for an American establishment, 44 00:06:27.760 --> 00:06:34.560 intertwined with the English state and church, Sherlock immediately began to press the king 45 00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:40.160 for an American bishop. Sherlock was repeatedly turned down by the shrewd officials of the 46 00:06:40.160 --> 00:06:47.160 crown under pressure of the influential English dissenters. Particularly active in rejecting 47 00:06:47.160 --> 00:06:57.160 The Great Whig Leaders, The Duke of Newcastle, Lord Hardwick and Horatio Walpole 48 00:06:57.160 --> 00:07:15.160 The liberal Horatio Walpole expressed the shrewd sentiments of the Whigs by warning that such a far-reaching scheme would really provoke and alienate the American colonists, dissenters and even Anglicans alike. 49 00:07:15.160 --> 00:07:23.160 Sherlock was joined in his agitation, however, by bishops Secker and Cutler, and Sherlock 50 00:07:23.160 --> 00:07:29.680 raised the problem to a new plane by deciding to employ virtual blackmail upon his American 51 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:31.680 communicants. 52 00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:38.240 For in an effort to force the Anglicans in America to demand a resident bishop, Secker 53 00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:45.540 Secker virtually refused to exercise any of his jurisdiction over the Church in America. 54 00:07:45.540 --> 00:07:53.840 Pursued by successive bishops of London, however, this policy only left Anglicans in the colonies 55 00:07:53.840 --> 00:08:01.840 with even less English control and supervision than they had experienced before. Furthermore, 56 00:08:01.840 --> 00:08:07.720 Secker's methods aroused the ire of Anglicans, especially in the South, and particularly 57 00:08:07.720 --> 00:08:14.220 Re-Alarmed the New England Puritans and other dissenters who saw the specter of an Anglican 58 00:08:14.220 --> 00:08:22.560 establishment from which so many of them had fled. As early as 1750, the liberal Reverend 59 00:08:22.560 --> 00:08:31.840 Jonathan Mayhew warned that people have no security against being unmercifully priest-ridden, 60 00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:39.440 but by keeping all imperious bishops and other clergymen who love to lord it over God's heritage 61 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:46.960 from getting their feet into the stirrup at all. Mayhew trenchantly warned that, in plain English, 62 00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:54.480 there seems to have been an impious bargain struck up betwixt the scepter and the surplus 63 00:08:54.480 --> 00:08:59.720 for enslaving both bodies and souls of men. 64 00:08:59.720 --> 00:09:06.520 The agitation over possible bishops in America died down during the distractions of the war 65 00:09:06.520 --> 00:09:11.260 with France, only to flame up again when the war was over. 66 00:09:11.260 --> 00:09:16.700 In addition to the specific problem of the bishops, general Anglican encroachments on 67 00:09:16.700 --> 00:09:23.340 religious liberty exerted a significant impact on politics and opinion in New York. 68 00:09:23.340 --> 00:09:29.100 That colony, where Anglicans were aiming at an establishment, found a great champion of 69 00:09:29.100 --> 00:09:36.020 religious liberty in William Livingston, of the leading landed family of New York. 70 00:09:36.020 --> 00:09:42.100 As a student at Yale, Livingston had been influenced by the English rationalist liberal 71 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:50.180 writings of John Locke and the independent Whig, rather than by Calvinist orthodoxy. 72 00:09:50.180 --> 00:09:57.340 The Independent Whig, written in the early 1720s, was the great arsenal of argument for 73 00:09:57.340 --> 00:10:04.300 religious liberty and against establishment, written by the English journalist John Trenchard 74 00:10:04.300 --> 00:10:11.900 and Thomas Gordon. In late 1752, Livingston and his friends launched the publication of 75 00:10:11.900 --> 00:10:19.740 a weekly paper, The Independent Reflector, dedicated to opposing establishment and consciously 76 00:10:19.740 --> 00:10:26.640 modeled after Trenchard and Gordon's independent Whig. The principal goal of the paper was 77 00:10:26.640 --> 00:10:33.700 opposing oppression and vindicating the liberty of man. Livingston stoutly affirmed that in 78 00:10:33.700 --> 00:10:41.660 the cause of the truth and liberty he would defy all tyrants, civil or ecclesiastic, and 79 00:10:41.660 --> 00:10:49.320 specifically any Anglican domination over New York. Moreover, Livingston's libertarianism 80 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:55.600 was by no means confined to defense against the Anglicans. He also boldly defended the 81 00:10:55.600 --> 00:11:02.600 Moravian Church against the attacks of his own Presbyterians. The lively, trenchant, 82 00:11:02.760 --> 00:11:07.520 independent reflector quickly won fame not only in New York but throughout the northern 83 00:11:07.520 --> 00:11:14.080 colonies and was ardently discussed in pulpits, coffee houses and taverns. The independent 84 00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:21.480 Reflector, Drawing Blood, stimulated an intense Anglican counter-attack, but much of the Anglican 85 00:11:21.480 --> 00:11:28.640 rebuttal only furnished more material to alarm its critics. Thus William Smith, inspired 86 00:11:28.640 --> 00:11:35.720 by the Anglican leader, the Reverend Samuel Johnson, blatantly declared, National establishment 87 00:11:35.720 --> 00:11:43.920 can diffuse through a country the full social advantages arising from religion. If, according 88 00:11:43.920 --> 00:11:48.920 According to the Reflector's Scheme, all religions were equally favored by the civil 89 00:11:48.920 --> 00:11:54.760 power, none established, and every man left at liberty to preach and practice what he 90 00:11:54.760 --> 00:12:00.920 thought proper. What a scene of confusion would thence arise from such unbridled liberty 91 00:12:00.920 --> 00:12:06.980 of conscience. As to the political uses of national establishments, the statesman has 92 00:12:06.980 --> 00:12:13.580 always found it necessary for the purposes of government to raise some one denomination 93 00:12:13.580 --> 00:12:20.960 of Religion above the rest, this favored denomination by these means becomes as it were the creature 94 00:12:20.960 --> 00:12:29.540 of the government, which is thus enabled to keep all in subjection. But let a government 95 00:12:29.540 --> 00:12:35.700 once give away the power of bestowing its own favors, and let all sects and persuasions 96 00:12:35.700 --> 00:12:49.900 Smith concluded by accusing the reflector of being un-British. 97 00:12:49.900 --> 00:12:55.100 This leveling notion of perfect religious equality before the law was derived not from 98 00:12:55.100 --> 00:13:01.020 British liberty, but from the Frenchman Voltaire. 99 00:13:01.020 --> 00:13:07.220 In contrast, William Livingston declared that matters of religion have nothing to do with 100 00:13:07.220 --> 00:13:14.580 the interest of state. The civil power hath no jurisdiction over the sentiments or opinions 101 00:13:14.580 --> 00:13:21.260 of the subject. Anglican pressure, however, soon made a mockery of any freedom of the 102 00:13:21.260 --> 00:13:27.620 press in the colony. Livingston's printer, threatened with deprivation of the vital public 103 00:13:27.620 --> 00:13:34.460 Printing Contracts succumbed to pressure and refused to continue printing the independent 104 00:13:34.460 --> 00:13:42.460 reflector. Printers in Boston and Philadelphia also refused to print the controversial paper 105 00:13:42.460 --> 00:13:49.500 and it was forced to close in early 1754. But while the Anglican government managed 106 00:13:49.500 --> 00:13:57.360 to kill the reflector, the paper refused to die. Its name persisted and bound copies and 107 00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:03.760 and later reprints were eagerly sought. Furthermore, the public protest induced another New York 108 00:14:03.760 --> 00:14:12.760 paper that had closed its doors to anti-establishment opinion to open them again, and William Livingston 109 00:14:12.760 --> 00:14:19.920 continued, with learning and wit, to belabor his opposition in a watchtower column. The 110 00:14:19.920 --> 00:14:26.240 religious controversy also served to polarize New York politics, with the Delancey faction 111 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:33.240 and becoming a pro-Anglican party and the Livingston faction reflecting its Presbyterian leadership.