Samuel Seabury (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

November 15, 2017

Samuel Seabury

On the Episcopal Church’s Calendar, yesterday was the feast day commemorating the first American Bishop, Samuel Seabury.

Before the American Revolution, the Church of England was the state-sponsored Church in several of the colonies.   There was no American Bishop.  American members of the Church of England had to go to Britain to be confirmed or ordained.  There had been several efforts to consecrate an American bishop, but these had always triggered fierce opposition:  bishops were members of the House of Lords, and seen as tools of the Crown and the rule by the nobility, and possible agents of crypto-catholicism.  The Church of England in the northern colonies, a minority in a sea of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers,  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 southern colonies, including Virginia, tended to have the CoE as the established Church, but its orientation was more Protestant, “Low Church,” and focused on the authority of Presbyters (Priests) and 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.   In addition, the patriot Committees of Safety used mob violence to punish those seen as pro-crown or merely insufficient supporters of Independence: Anglican clergy were regular targets of such violence, often being tarred and feathered, beaten, and having their homes destroyed.  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 and loyalists fled en masse to Canada, the Caribbean, 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.  He sailed to England, and eventually was consecrated as Bishop by bishops of the non-established Episcopal Church of Scotland.  English Bishops would not consecrate him because as an American he could not take an oath of loyalty to the King.  The Scottish bishops asked that the American Church call itself the Episcopal Church and that its prayer book include the epiclesis, or invocation of the Holy Spirit, in its Eucharistic prayers.  Seabury accepted, and, newly consecrated, returned to America.  He 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 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. 

Grace and Peace.