THE IMPERIAL ORIGINS OF THE KING’S CHURCH IN EARLY AMERICA, 1607-1783
Posted: 02 Nov 2006 @ 00:00
Palgrave £55; (1-4039-3219-0) Church Times Bookshop £49.50
Reviewed by Alec Ryrie
WE ANGLICANS like to congratulate ourselves on our pragmatism and
flexibility. But Anglican history is more often shaped by ecclesiastical
rigidity and unresponsiveness. From the beginning of the English colonisation
of America, many people in England and in the colonies were keen to establish
the English Church in the New World. However, it was ill-structured for
missionary activity, and was institutionally paralysed in the face of the
challenge.
Astonishingly, there was no Anglican bishop in the New World until American
independence in the 1780s. For nearly two centuries, the "King’s Church" in the
American colonies existed in a political and administrative limbo, a nebulous
extension of the diocese of London. James B. Bell’s book asks how the Church
survived under these circumstances. The answer is, by improvisation.
The English Church was unable to support its American offshoot financially.
Initially, the English Treasury met most of the bills. In the 18th century, the
burden was taken by English donors to the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel. The Church’s political status was equally uncertain: one early ruling
imposed a week’s enslavement on those who failed to attend divine service on a
Sunday.
Latterly, the King’s Church enjoyed varying degrees of semi-establishment.
But despite repeated pleas from the American clergy for a bishop, British
political inertia and American Puritan fear of episcopal tyranny prevailed.
Hundreds of Americans seeking ordination had to make the long, expensive and
dangerous journey to England.
Bell takes the view that these problems crippled the King’s Church, but much
of his account suggests otherwise. Americans remained remarkably obedient to
the mother Church, but distinctively American practices filled the
administrative vacuum. Informal synods, greatly empowered vestries, and the
absence of effective episcopacy made the King’s Church almost Congregationalist
(indeed, it won some prominent Congregationalist converts). If the clergy
wanted local bishops, many lay Anglicans did not.
Bell sees the damage that the Church suffered during American independence
as evidence of its weakness. Yet it seems likely that the Church might have
been wiped out entirely had it not had such an arm’s-length relationship with
royal and episcopal authority.
This is a fascinating and little-known subject. This book does not really do
it justice. Bell’s command of the detail is impressive, but it is often
ill-digested and under-interpreted. And the prose is more tortuous than in most
works of academic history. A well-researched account, but not a good read.
Dr Ryrie is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham.
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