A History of the Episcopal Church (Third Revised Edition). Robert W. Prichard
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу A History of the Episcopal Church (Third Revised Edition) - Robert W. Prichard страница 27
Not all were happy with the preaching of George Whitefield and the increasing religious fervor of the American religious scene, however. Sizeable portions of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches feared that zeal for personal experience compromised traditional Reformed theological formulations. These “Old Light” Congregationalists and “Old Side” Presbyterians insisted on strict adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith and continued to support the communal implications of covenant theology.22
With the exception of Lewis Jones (ca. 1700–44) and Thomas Thompson (fl. 1740) of South Carolina, most Church of England clergy outside of Virginia and Maryland rejected Whitefield by the end of his 1739–40 tour. He was not consistent in his use of the Book of Common Prayer for public worship, he didn’t subscribe to the high church version of covenant theology with its emphasis on episcopal succession, and he questioned the salvation of those who could not attest to conversion. Timothy Cutler, one of the Yale converts, summed up the opinion of many when he wrote to the Bishop of London about Whitefield’s theology: “He contradicted himself, the Church, and whatever Your Lordship has delivered. …”23 Thus, while Congregationalists and Presbyterians were divided by the Awakening, New England members of the Church of England were united in their opposition to it.
That opposition in New England had an unexpected result. While some did leave the Church of England to follow the revival, as a whole the church grew rapidly in numbers. Timothy Cutler, writing to the secretary of the SPG on behalf of laypersons in Simsbury, Connecticut, shortly before Whitefield’s third visit to the colonies (1744–47), explained his understanding of the phenomenon in this way: “Enthusiasm has had a long Run … so that many are tired of it, and if the Door were open would take Refuge in our Church from Error and Disorder.”24
In the middle colonies, the Awakening contributed to a rapid growth of the Presbyterian Church, which was already expanding as a result of Scotch-Irish immigration. The number of Presbyterian congregations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, which stood at one hundred twenty-five in 1740, doubled in the thirty-five years after Whitefield’s first visit. Many Church of England clergy in the middle colonies shared their New England counterparts’ negative estimation of Whitefield, but some of the laity, especially in Delaware and along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, were touched by the Awakening. Delaware clergymen John Pugh (d. 1745) and William Beckett (d. 1743) complained of losing parishioners in 1740 and 1741 to an awakened religious society. In Pennsylvania, William Currie of Radnor and Alexander Howie of Oxford made similar complaints.25 Yet, as in New England, Church of England congregations grew as well. In New Jersey, for example, the number of parishes increased from ten to twenty-one in the years between 1740 and 176526
One indirect result of this anti-Awakening growth was a rising concern for education. Members of the Church of England, believing that sound education could refute what they saw as the errors of the Awakening, became acutely aware of the lack of educational institutions in New England and the middle colonies. The diverse religious climate in the middle colonies made the establishment of colleges that were solely linked to the Church of England unlikely and probably unwise. Members of the Church of England therefore cooperated with Old Side Presbyterians and other who shared some of their misgiving about the Great Awakening.27 In New York, a group of interested persons secured a charter in 1753 for the establishment of King’s College (renamed Columbia during the Revolution). Church of England members were prominent in the leadership, providing two-thirds of the governors (i.e., trustees) of the school and many of the faculty. Trinity Church contributed the land.28 Samuel Johnson, one of the Yale converts, served as the school’s first president and was followed in 1763 by a second Church of England cleric, Myles Cooper (1737–85). Neither man had much sympathy for Whitefield or the Awakening.
In order to become president of King’s College, Samuel Johnson had to decline an invitation to head a second institution, the College of Philadelphia. Back in 1740, Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) and other interested persons had secured a charter for an academy and college. The school was not on strong footing until William Smith (1727–1803) joined the faculty. Smith, who had studied at the University of Aberdeen and immigrated to America to serve as a tutor for a family on Long Island, had written an essay on the appropriate way to organize a college (A General Idea of the College of Mirania, 1753). It impressed Franklin, who persuaded others to invite Smith to join the faculty. He did so in 1754 and traveled to England for ordination in the Church of England.29 (At the time most college faculty members were clergy.) Smith became the College of Philadelphia’s first provost in the following year, reorganizing the curriculum and securing a revised charter. Smith attempted to give the school a religious character similar to that at King’s College in New York. With the support of the trustees, two-thirds of whom were lay members of the Church of England, he introduced Morning and Evening Prayer, and regular instruction in the Church of England’s catechism.30 Like his counterparts at King’s College, he was deeply suspicious of the Awakening.
Members of the Church of England made gains in other educational circles as well. Between 1725 and 1748, two percent of Harvard graduates and five percent of Yale graduates entered the ordained ministry of the Church of England, figures that undoubtedly reflected the proselytizing of Samuel Johnson in New Haven and of his fellow convert Timothy Cutler in Boston. In 1754, Yale president Thomas Clap (1703–67) attempted to stem the tide of converts by forbidding students to attend Trinity Church, the Church of England parish that constructed a building in the green adjoining Yale College in 1752–53. Any success on Clap’s part was, however, short-lived. By the 1770s, members of the Church of England were numerous and confident enough to designate a chaplain for students at Yale.31
Virginia and Maryland, where the Church of England was numerically the strongest, were largely untouched by either the revivalist excitement of 1739 and 1740 or by the surge of growth resulting from opposition to it. Commissary Cummings of Pennsylvania attributed the lower interest to the established position of the Church of England; Whitefield suspected it was due to unfaith. He described Maryland, for example, as an area “yet unwatered with the true Gospel of Christ.” The lack of large urban centers in which Whitefield could attract large crowds may, however, have been as much a cause of indifference to the Awakening as anything else. The end result was, however, clear enough. With the exception of the coastal area from Savannah to Charleston, inhabitants of the southern colonies had little interest in Whitefield’s 1739–40 tour.32
Whitefield’s third (1744–47) and fourth (1751–52) visits to the colonies did little to alter this basic pattern: Most members of the Church of England opposed the Awakening or were indifferent to it. Baptists favored it and Presbyterians and Congregationalists divided into competing factions.
The Awakening in the Colonial Church of England
In the years between Whitefield’s fifth (May 1754-March 1755) and sixth visits (August 1763-June 1765), attitudes began to change, however. While many remained skeptical about Whitefield and his methods, a significant number in the colonial Church of England