The Episcopal Church over the Years by Peter Schaaphok

Part Four

The beginning of the 19th Century found the young Protestant Episcopal Church depressed and seemingly ready to expire. Less than .0025 percent of Americans were Episcopalians and the General Conventions were so poorly attended that in 1808 a small bedroom was sufficient to accommodate a meeting of the House of Bishops. Many thought that the church would vanish with the passing of the last generation to have come of age before the Revolution.

Nevertheless the seeds for future growth had been sown during the last decades of the 18th Century with the establishment of multiple educational institutions founded on Episcopalian doctrine. The benefits of these schools were reinforced early in the 19th Century with the founding of groups like the Society for the Promotion of Religion and Learning in New York and the Protestant Episcopal Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in Connecticut. This propagation of Christian values and Episcopalian doctrine began to bear fruit. Under the dynamic leadership of men like Bishop John Henry Hobart of New York the Episcopal Church saw a steady rise in membership.

Setting an evangelical example that is still being enthusiastically followed in our own Diocese of Albany, Hobart tripled the number of communicants in his diocese, which at the time included all of New York State. However, as a “high” churchman, Hobart also believed in the centrality of the sacraments, was a strong advocate of the episcopacy and opposed any ecumenical association with other Protestants.

Many other Episcopalians, especially those in the south and west, were more “low” church. They placed far more emphasis on evangelism than on the sacraments and believed strongly in the adult renewal of faith. They were also more inclined to work with other Protestants and to look for common ground in spreading the Good News.

During these early years both groups like all other Protestants were unabashedly anti Roman Catholic. The Pope was still considered the devil incarnate and anything that appeared “Romish” was to be shunned. Nevertheless, as the 19th Century progressed all these attitudes started to shift. While the influx of Irish and German immigrants may have made Catholicism more familiar to most Episcopalians, it was a movement that started back in England that would bring parts of the Anglican communion much closer to their Roman brethren.

During the 1830’s a group of Oxford scholars began exploring the pre-reformation English Church and as a result began to graft Catholic doctrines onto Anglicanism. They wrote a series of essays called Tracts for the Times (hence the birth of the term “Tractarian”), which argued for greater adherence to ritual and the primacy of the sacraments over the preaching of the Word.

In the United States the Oxford movement found fertile ground in those congregations with a high church tradition. On the other hand some of the Tracts challenged core Cramnerian beliefs that had up until then united high and low church Episcopalians. What started as localized conflicts (for example, evangelical New Yorkers succeeded in unseating their high church bishop, Benjamin Onderdonk , for his support of the Oxford Movement) grew to outright rebellion; (e.g. in the 1870’s a number of low churchmen were upset enough with the Tractarian influence throughout PECUSA that they broke away and formed the Reformed Episcopal Church.)

Nevertheless, most Episcopalians, perhaps being influenced by the general romantic attitudes of the age, embraced many of the themes of the Oxford movement and allowed them to take hold throughout the church. By the end of the 19th Century much of the ceremony and use of vestments that we are familiar with today had become the norm in both high and low church congregations.