Samuel Seabury and George Washington (midweek)

 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message – November 14, 2012

Bishop Samuel Seabury and President George Washington

The results of the recent election have elated some of our parishioners and devastated others, just as in the general population.   The mixing of religion and politics in the campaign troubled many: many socially progressive clergy supported the President because of his endorsement of marriage equality and his efforts to expand health care; Roman Catholic bishops and Evangelical leaders urged the election of Governor Romney because of his anti-abortion positions and opposition to same-sex marriage. 

On the Episcopal Church’s Calendar, today is the feast day commemorating the first American Bishop, Samuel Seabury.  His story has several interesting points for anyone wondering about the mixing of religion and politics and about how to cope with a failure or success for the political program you believe best follows God’s will.

Before the American Revolution, the Church of England was the state-sponsored Church in several of the colonies.   There was no American Bishop.  The Church in the northern colonies tended to have “High Church” beliefs and practices, and valued Bishops, their succession from the Apostles as overseers of God’s work, and a more sacramental view of life and worship.  The Church in the southern colonies, including Virginia, tended to be more Protestant, “Low Church,” and focused more on the authority of Scripture, the role of the Presbyters (Priests) and the lay Vestries rather than Bishops. 

Though about 2/3 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had nominally been Anglican laymen, their independence-mindedness was not shared by most of the Anglican clergy serving in America.   All Church of England clergy took an oath of loyalty to the King, and only those with sufficient “Low Church” loyalties and theological flexibility actually supported the Revolution.   During the revolution, the various colonies disestablished the Church.  The Continental Congress passed laws making it treasonable to lead public prayers asking for God’s blessing on the King of England or its Parliament.

Born in Connecticut in 1729, Seabury had been ordained in 1753 a Church of England clergyman like his father before him.  Seabury took his oath to the King seriously, and saw the Bishops, who were peers of the realm and sat in the House of Lords, as the thing that linked the Church with the historical teaching of the Apostles.  He wrote a series of tracts, “Letters of a Westchester Farmer,” under a pseudonym opposing Independence and criticizing Alexander Hamilton’s tracts supporting the Revolution.  Seabury continued in public prayers for the King and Parliament.   Imprisoned briefly in Connecticut in 1775 by Continental forces, Seabury took refuge in New York (a Tory stronghold that remained under British control) for most of the war - even serving as chaplain to a Loyalist regiment.

After 5 years of war, the British surrender to Colonial forces at Yorktown in October 1781 meant that the thirteen colonies would not return to British control.  As British forces elsewhere in the colonies withdrew, Anglican clergy fled en masse to Canada or back to England.    Seabury decided to stay, recognizing that he was an American and not an Englishman, and desiring to help rebuild the Church, devastated by the loss of clergy and mainstay Tory contributors. 

In 1783, Seabury was elected by ten of his New England peers to serve as bishop over what was now being called the Episcopal Church in America.   He sailed to England, and eventually was consecrated as Bishop by non-juring bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, since as an American he could not take an oath of loyalty to the King and was thus then ineligible for consecration as Bishop in the Church of England.   He returned to America, and was instrumental in setting up the Protestant Episcopal Church of the (newly formed, in 1789) United States of America.

In 1785, a young Episcopal lay minister approached retired General George Washington for a recommendation to Bishop Seabury, so he would ordain him.   He believed that General Washington, a well-known and highly regarded Anglican, could give him a recommendation that the Bishop could not refuse. Washington's account of the meeting is as follows:

A Mr. Jno. Lowe, on his way to Bishop Seabury for Ordination, called & dined here. Could not give him more than a general certificate, founded on information, respecting his character; having no acquaintance with him, nor any desire to open a Correspondence with the new ordained Bishop.

Washington never got over his reluctance to directly engage Seabury.  As President, when one of Seabury's allies, the Reverend John C. Ogden, sent several appeals to Washington for help in a dispute between Seabury's Episcopalians and the New England Congregationalists, Washington declined to respond.

George Washington and Samuel Seabury were both Episcopalians, and fervent ones at that.  They each represented a particular experience within the Church:  Seabury High Church Apostolic succession and Washington Low Church, Scriptural authority, and lay governance.  Each let their faith bring them to opposite conclusions on the great political issues of the day:  Seabury as a Loyalist and Washington as a Continental patriot. 

The greatness of the two is found in how they each reacted to the defeat of one party by the other.  Seabury did not pack up and abandon his country or his Church when the Loyalists lost the war.  He stayed in for the long haul, rebuilding the Church from the foundations up.  He refused to rehash his former opinions once they had clearly become historical footnotes.    For Washington’s part, while avoiding direct contact with a man who had bitterly opposed him in the greatest struggle of his life, he did not work actively to undermine him or expel him, either from the country or the Church.  Washington remained a faithful Episcopalian, even under the bishopric of the one-time Tory, Samuel Seabury.    Both continued to try to pursue his duty to God and country as each saw it, and not bring too much recrimination or reproach from the past to dealings with former adversaries. 

Good examples, I think….