to all that is handed down from the early church—teaching, preaching, worship, ordained ministry, social action—and not just to forms of ministry imparted by the laying on of hands by bishops. I also have referred to the members of the colonial church as members of the “Church of England,” reserving the term Anglican for the mid-nineteenth century and thereafter, when the term was actually in use.
Readers of earlier editions of this book have been generous with their time and have pointed to errors, which I have attempted to correct in this edition. In previous editions, for example, I incorrectly identified the parish of the first candidate for the episcopate elected in Virginia and misunderstood the lay status of Charles Miller of King’s Chapel. I hope that readers of this current edition will be equally kind in pointing to places in which the text can be improved.
Finally, I have included some information in this book of which I was aware at the time of earlier editions but which I doubted would be of general interest. My experience of teaching of the past fifteen years has led to new insights about what information is useful. I have been long aware, for example, that the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer—the edition used for the majority of the colonial period—included a rubrical change that allowed reception of communion by a person who was “ready and desirous” of confirmation but not actually confirmed. That provision made it possible for colonial Anglicans, who lacked any resident bishops, to receive communion. What I was not aware at the time of the last edition was how this piece of information, which I assumed to be widely known, came as a surprise to many, including some who write about the colonial Church of England. In a similar way, I have expanded information about Episcopal canon law, a topic that recent rounds of litigation have apparently made more interesting to current students of the Episcopal Church.
I want to confess to one idiosyncrasy on my part. In the early part of the twenty-first century, it became common for some editors and authors writing about the Episcopal Church to capitalize the initial article (The Episcopal Church). There is no doubt a complicated explanation for this practice of which I am not aware, but lacking that knowledge, I will follow the simple rules of English grammar and leave the article in lowercase within running text.1
Robert W. Prichard
Virginia Theological Seminary
June, 2014
The greater part of a decade has passed since the publication of the first edition of A History of the Episcopal Church. That first edition ended with an optimistic vision of a renewed Episcopal Church that was on the brink of a period of growth and new life. The passage of time has taught me, as it has taught generations of authors before me, that historians do a better job of describing the past than of predicting the future. The second edition, written at the end of the 1990s rather than their beginning, contains a more sober assessment of the last decade of the twentieth century.
I have rewritten the final portion of chapter 10 and have reconfigured and retitled chapter 11. I have included informa tion, such as the adoption of electronic means of communication and the need to evangelize the members of the X generation, which I certainly had not foreseen when I last wrote. I have also added an extended section on the ongoing debate over sexuality. The earlier portions of the book remain unchanged except for minor corrections.
Those who read the final chapter of the book will find that I have not given up entirely on my earlier anticipation of a period of growth and new life in the Episcopal Church, I have only postponed the expected date of its arrival. My persistent optimism may call to mind the closing paragraph of E. Clowes Chorley’s Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church (1946). Chorley, writing at the end of a decade and a half of economic depression and international war, dreamed of an era in which the various elements of the Episcopal Church would give up their feuding and cooperate with one another. “The vision,” he wrote, “may seem to tarry, but the world is very young and its most surprising songs are yet to be sung.”
Robert W. Prichard
Alexandria, Virginia
July 1999
A quarter century has now passed since the publication of the last general history of the Protestant Episcopal Church.2 The mere passage of time—twenty-five years of rapid change that have brought the ordination of women to the presbyterate and episcopate, the Charismatic movement, a rise in Hispanic membership, the publication of a hymnal and a prayer book, and the first meaningful level of racial integration—is a sufficient cause for a new look at the subject. Yet, there are other reasons as well for a new study. A flowering of new scholarship has called attention to the roles of women, minorities, and the laity in the church that had often been overlooked in previous accounts. The continuing ecumenical dialogue in which the Episcopal Church has been involved in this century underlined the importance of relating the story of the Episcopal Church to that of other American denominations. Historians with an interest in social context have provided clues to the social context in which Episcopalians lived.3 In addition, a series of recent period studies have provided new insights into ways of approaching the general story of the Episcopal Church.4
These and many other questions have influenced the way in which I have shaped the narrative that follows. It differs therefore from the histories of the Episcopal Church that have preceded it in a number of ways. I would, however, like to draw attention to five particular elements. First, I have attempted to broaden the base of the story to be more inclusive of laypersons, females, blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and the deaf. In large measure, I am relying on the excellent scholarship of others in this area.5 Second, I have come to believe that an understanding of the apostolic succession-baptismal covenant argument (the belief that ordination by bishops is a necessary part of the relationship into which God draws the redeemed at baptism) provides a key to understanding many Anglican attitudes from 1700 to the end of the nineteenth century. I have used the concept in my explanation of the success of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, of the shock caused during the Awakening by George Whitefield (who rejected the argument as invalid), and of the crisis produced by a growing Roman Catholic Church (which also had apostolic succession) in the nineteenth century.6 I believe the concept is also useful in understanding the relationship of the Episcopal Church to other denominations.
Third, my reading of the correspondence between Anglican clergy and England during the Great Awakening that is contained in the Fulham Papers has led me to suggest a new model for the understanding of the Great Awakening. Previous historians have wrestled with the mixed response that George Whitefield received from his coreligionists in the colonies. I have used a chronological device—differentiating a negative response up to 1759 and an increasingly positive one after that date—to make sense of this data. I believe that this approach allows both for a clearer description of the relationship between Episcopalians and Methodists and for the incorporation of more information about lay piety.
Fourth, the passage of time has allowed me, I think, to take a new look at the 1920s. Those historians who wrote in the thirties and forties played down the divisions in the church at that time.7 I have, in
