USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 16
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The Baptists never ceased to harp upon the state church as a violation of personal liberty and a bitter injustice. Their leader, the Rev. John Leland, was inspired by Virginia's Jeffersonian law for religious liberty, and for years waged a relentless war for a new constitution and no state church. The Methodist captain was the Rev. ("Father") Jeremiah Stocking of East Glastonbury, whose fearless zeal and eloquence struck terror into the "Feds." Reform pleas were aided by powerful secular currents, such as democratic sentiment, the longing for a more liberal right to vote, and the demand of the poor laboring classes for tax relief.
The Federalists moaned that concessions to democracy would subject the state to the "vulgar herd." Their panic at the attack upon their sacred ark appears vividly in pamphlets pub- lished in 1804-1805 by David Daggett of New Haven, a Chief Justice of the state and an eminent politician. He rang the changes upon the stock Federalist arguments. Advocates of religious freedom were "zealous apostles of infidelity," conspiring "to throw down all the barriers which christianity has erected against vice,"5 and to destroy all religious institutions and the influence of the clergy.
Their very zeal betrayed the Federalist leaders into a series of incredibly fatuous blunders. In 1801 they defied democratic sentiment by a law requiring voters to make their choices publicly. In 1814 they carried their opposition to the War of 1812 to the verge of secession and treason in the notorious Hartford Con- vention. In the same year they drove enraged Episcopalians into the reform party by refusing to grant them, for the Bishop's Fund,
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monies resulting from the incorporation of the Phoenix Bank in Hartford. It was popularly known as the "Episcopal Bank" because Churchmen were prominent in its founding. The rival Hartford Bank was under state-church and Federalist influence, and was accused of abusing its power to promote those interests.
Churchmen were already irritated by the obstinate refusal of the General Assembly to grant them a college charter for the Episcopal Academy. Tired of being insulted and treated as second- rate citizens, they deserted the Federalist Party in droves. Their alliance with the reformers sealed the doom of the old order. In 1815 the Jeffersonian Republicans tripled their vote of the previous year, and the terrified "Feds" tried to dam the rising tide by abolishing fines for absence from church.
If they honestly believed that such a reluctant concession would appease the reformers, they were speedily undeceived. Next year a "Republican and Episcopalian meeting" in New Haven nominated an "American Toleration and Reform Ticket." Congregationalist Oliver Wolcott would run for Governor and Episcopalian Jonathan Ingersoll, an eminent New Haven lawyer, for Lieutenant Governor. The wiseacres truthfully said that it would be a red-hot election. The Episcopalian vote contributed handsomely to the first great victory for reform in the election of Ingersoll, although Wolcott lost.
This event scared the "Feds" into what they considered a noble gesture - a plan to divide among religious denominations the funds which the Federal Government owed to the state for war expenses. The result was an appalling gale of wrath. Leland and Stocking called the proposal a brazen bribe, and the dissenters united in a scathing denunciation of such an effort to buy them off.
Sheer anger in 1817 swept Wolcott and Ingersoll into office and chose a two-to-one majority of reformers in the lower house of the Assembly. The Federalist upper house for a year still stupidly blocked reform. Those reactionaries were fighting a rear-guard skirmish, and during the year lost "Pope" Dwight, whose eloquence had inspired them for many years. He would have been heartbroken by the election of 1818, when the Tol- erationists again marched to victory with an unprecedented swarm of voters.
The Assembly, dominated by reformers, summoned a con-
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vention to draft a new constitution. The prevalent temper appeared when President Day of Yale, a Congregational minister, broke a custom of generations by declining to preach the election sermon. The honor descended upon his alternate, the brilliant Harry Cros- well of Trinity Church, New Haven. He vigorously attacked the political pulpit and pleaded for toleration and truly spiritual ministers. His sermon was a vivid contrast to that of the preceding year, when Abel McEwen of New London had preached a typical Federalist diatribe against any criticism of the best government on earth.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM WINS
Another herald of the new era was Governor Wolcott's address to the Assembly, proclaiming the right of every man to worship as he liked, without interference.
The long-prayed-for Constitutional Convention met in Bulfinch's elegant State House, still standing in Hartford. It in- cluded all shades of political and religious faith, and a majority of uncompromising Tolerationists. The first heated argument arose over the Bill of Rights, which blasted aristocracy and abolished clerical privileges. Granting the right to vote to nearly all white male citizens relegated to oblivion the days when the favored few could control Connecticut for the "Family Compact." The most intense interest centered in the article on religious freedom. The Tolerationists would take nothing less than that, with separation of church and state. With Episcopalian support, they obtained what they wanted. It was a complete victory in the long battle that had begun when the Quakers defied the state church in the 1650's.
A bitter fight for adoption was still to come. The mass of Federalist voters was adamant and the verdict was close: 13,918 for, 12,364 against. Fifty-nine of the 120 towns ratified, and the narrow margin of the popular vote depended upon the liberal Federalists. Many of the favorable towns were Episcopalian strongholds in Fairfield, New Haven, and Middlesex Counties. Fortunately, Tolerationists were numerous in towns with heavy voting lists, which overcame the smaller places where desperate partisans of the old order rallied for a last stand.
Connecticut never has seen a political contest that so much
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resembled a crusade - unrivalled even by the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, or Theodore Roosevelt's campaign in 1912. The air shook with angry criminations and threats, the presses fairly spawned pamphlets and handbills, and Federalist pulpits poured out prayers to save Connecticut from "infidelity." The longing for freedom united men of widely diverse beliefs in a common cause: One the cry the lips of thousands
Raise as from the heart of one;
One the conflict, one the peril,
One the march in God begun.
(Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U. S. A., 1940, No. 394. Bernard Severin Ingemann)
In 1818 Connecticut buried the colonial era of the privileged aristocracy and the privileged church. The American Mercury of Hartford jubilated: "Connecticut has now a Constitution, founded on sound and liberal principles. The rights of all are secured; and the humble Christian is now permitted to worship his God without fearing the lash of civil persecution."6
Soon even former partisans of the old order conceded that their own churches had benefited, and that society had not sunk into a wallow of infidelity. The Episcopalian farmer of Wood- bury, the Methodist tinker, and the Baptist shipwright of Groton did not worship the Goddess of Reason in the meeting house, or dance the carmagnole and sing "Ca Ira!" on the village green. The great Lyman Beecher, who moped for days after the Toleration victory, admitted that it was the best thing ever to happen in Connecticut. Even a Unitarian need not fear anything from the redoubtable Beecher, except his supremely effective preaching.
The Congregational churches soon recovered from a fit of despondency, as revivals poured new blood into their veins. Beecher himself, who led many revivals, even laughed at his mourning over the impending "ruin of the Church of God." For the Episcopal Church also, the year 1818-1819 marked the dawn of a new era. After a depressing vacancy of six years in the epis- copate, Bishop Thomas C. Brownell in 1819 began his service of forty-six years, a period of unprecedented material progress and spiritual power. The new bishop could build upon the progress already made during the gradual revival, 1785-1813.
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GROWTH OF THE DIOCESE, 1851-1960
STATISTICAL TABLE Statistics previous to 1851 are very inadequate, because many parishes did not report
Church Schools
Baptisms
Confir- mations
Com- municants
Families
Baptized Persons
Confirmed Persons
Mar- riages
Burials 683
Teachers & Officers
Pupils
18511
757
185
535
8,917
6,738
396
18652
1,421
443
939
12,176
8,744
542
1,152
1,693
9,592
18843
1,635
380
1,333
21,283
15,043
667
1,568
1,838
15,744
18994
1,662
298
1,202
32,374
20,013
48,660
726
1,784
1,995
16,381
19155
1,902
381
1,875
45,411
27,233
63,006
798
1,934
2,214
17,301
19286
2,042
336
2,215
54,360
32,267
79,752
49,463
900
2,015
2,168
17,223
19347
1,632
293
2,264
57,766
37,861
91,041
62,163
515
1,963
2,445
19,150
19408
1,878
290
2,297
61,672
42,641
91,639
66,168
762
2,307
2,391
17,101
19519
2,700
307
2,507
69,560
50,911º
108,264
74,862
930
2,317
2,453
19,074
196010
3,261
350
3,818
78,289
54,008°
129,337
86,864
686
2,346
4,222
31,703º º
1. John Williams became Assistant Bishop. The figures for this year are not comprehensive; 19 parishes made no reports, and 35 made very imperfect reports.
2. John Williams became Diocesean, upon the death of Bishop Thomas Church Brownell.
3. Centennial of the consecration of Bishop Seabury. Williams had been Diocesan for 20 years.
4. Chauncey B. Brewster became Diocesan, upon the death of Bishop John Williams.
* Families and individuals.
5. Edward Campion Acheson became Suffragan Bishop.
6. Bishop Brewster retired; Bishop Acheson succeeded as Diocesan.
7. Frederick G. Budlong became Diocesan, upon the death of Bishop Acheson.
8. Walter Henry Gray became Suffragan Bishop.
9. Bishop Gray became Diocesan, upon the retirement of Bishop Budlong.
10. Latest parochial statistics, for the year ending December 31, 1959.
Children and adults.
Year
Infants
Adults
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DIOCESAN MISSIONS
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF GROWTH
THE RISE OF THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT
B ISHOP SEABURY returned in 1785 to a diocese that had scarcely recovered from the ravages of war. Churches were still closed, about two thousand Loyalists were exiles, and no new parish had been founded since 1771. Within the next three years one priest died, one moved to another diocese, and three sailed to Loyalist parishes in New Brunswick. But even so, in comparison with some others the diocese was in good condition. Connecticut was actually better supplied with ministers than any other state, and even as late as 1801 had one seventh of the American Episcopal clergy.
In spite of obstacles, including persistent political hostility, the Church soon recovered lost ground and began to grow. Be- fore Bishop Seabury died, there were fifteen new parishes, four- teen of which are still flourishing. The diocese profited from the enthusiasm of a fresh start, the general uniformity of sentiment, and the bishop's tireless industry in visiting parishes and in confirming.
Expansion was somewhat slower under Bishop Jarvis, not because he lacked Seabury's missionary zeal, but because intense political agitation then engrossed the public mind, and because Universalism and Methodism were attracting many dissenters from the established Congregational Church. Thirteen new parishes sprang up during the Jarvis episcopate, and old ones held their ground, in spite of heavy emigration. In 1811 the General Con- vention's report on the state of the Church commended Con- necticut's loyalty to discipline, the addition of several hundred families, and the number of new church buildings.
Such praise was welcome but the diocese was uneasily
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aware that it really had no definite missionary program, and that with organization progress would be much faster. Observant Churchmen rather enviously noticed the aggressive evangelism of Methodists, Baptists, and Universalists. They were dismayed to see large blocks of towns where people did not know how a Prayer Book service sounded. The superiority of the established church convinced them that Episcopalians must be more aggressive to survive and increase.
Quite surprisingly, the first sign of awakening came in 1813, when the diocese had no bishop and the nation was at war. The Convention ordered a committee to plan an organized effort, and after some delay accepted a constitution for the "Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Con- necticut." The diocese had shifted its strategy from merely holding the fort to mounting an attack.
The rising agitation for religious freedom soon inspired a more militant spirit. In 1818 the society was remodeled as the "Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge," with the frank intention of making converts and reclaiming careless Church- men. The "S. P. C. K." absorbed the older Bible and Common Prayer Book Society and its funds, and began its campaign with enthusiasm. In 1866 it became "The Missionary Society of the Diocese of Connecticut," embracing all members, and represented by the Diocesan Convention. It is now directed by the Executive Council of the Diocese.
Supported largely by women's associations, the Society dis- tributed countless Bibles, Prayer Books and tracts. It supported missionaries who revived languishing parishes and planted the Church's banner in new places, especially the industrial villages. It encouraged the emergence of a new type of layman, imbued with missionary zeal and intelligent piety. The benefits were far out of proportion to the very modest expenses.
The Churchman's Magazine lent its powerful support by publishing missionary reports and by soliciting funds. Bishop Brownell praised the work nearly every year in his address to the Convention, to overcome the idea that it was ineffective because it was not glamorous. "It is no region of romance," he said. "The results of our labor will not be magnified by distance nor derive interest from associations with strange manners and a foreign
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language."1 To him, a factory town on the Quinebaug River was as much a missionary field as a palm-shaded village of grass huts on the coast of Liberia. He was delighted by the increasing con- firmations and the spread of Sunday schools.
Within ten years after 1818 the rather complacent diocese seemed to have been transfigured. The Episcopal Watchman (See Chapter Twenty-Six, under Connecticut and Church Journalism) was jubilant, and quoted an accolade bestowed upon Connecticut by the General Convention's report on the state of the Church. "On the whole, the prospects of this Diocese are highly encouraging. It is believed, that in no part of our country are the doctrines of the Gospel preached with more faithfulness, or with a more sensible influence on the hearers."2
Connecticut was keeping pace with the nationwide growth of a transformed Church and theological seminaries were beginning to catch up with the need for clergymen. Episcopalians had re- covered from their unpopularity during the Revolution, and had accommodated themselves to republican and American ways. The episcopate was purely religious and spiritual, and the native-born priesthood was American in understanding and outlook. More frequent and regular episcopal visitations were producing a rapid increase of communicants. The Church profited also from the revolt against declining Puritanism, barren worship, and revivalist excesses. Improved education and the loosening of old religious ties by migration disposed people to regard liturgical services with approval.
Missions in Connecticut profited also by the peculiar local conditions, especially the rapid industrial and urban growth after 1830. The fifty-six now existing parishes and missions founded in Brownell's episcopate (1819-1865) were mostly in factory villages and in cities. In 1829 came the first instance of a second parish in a city - St. Paul's in New Haven. The 1840's were the banner decade of new parishes, including twenty that are still flourishing. The episcopate of John Williams (1865-1899) showed no slackening of the pace, and accounted for forty-four still extant parishes and missions.
The expansion indeed was too urban, and in 1836 Bishop Brownell pointed sadly to the sixty-six towns (mostly rural) without Episcopal churches, where multitudes were living "in the habitual
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neglect of public worship." Next year the Christian Knowledge Society presented a glum report on feeble parishes that needed aid. The secretary (Dr. Samuel F. Jarvis) was, however, working like a beaver, and the Society was gathering a permanent fund and calling for higher salaries to attract missionaries. A persistent roadblock to success was the lack of seemly places of worship. People had an obstinate prejudice against services in homes, district schoolhouses, and hired halls, but would flock to a decent church building.
What the diocesan missions needed was a revival of the first enthusiasm, and a complete change in the layman's attitude. In 1863 the discouraged directors spoke their minds with com- plete candor. "It remains for the Society to decide whether the present state of things requires a change in the mode of ap- proaching the laity or only a change in the hearts of the laity. Other pious objects get a ready hearing and a liberal response. A red Indian in the wilds of Minnesota awakens our liveliest in- terest. We build a cathedral to save his soul. Domestic Boards, Foreign Boards, Societies of every sort, provided only they be outside of the Diocese, find abundant support, - while this Society languishes and creeps slowly forward."3
Bishop Williams felt the same way, and in 1866 presided at an informal meeting of the clergy to promote diocesan mis- sions. His next Convention address deplored the appalling spiritual destitution, especially in the eastern industrial towns, and begged for generous gifts and a change of heart. In 1867 a special appeal inspired the delegates in Convention to give $3200 on the spot and then sing the Gloria. The Bishop was enthusiastic about small missions, and even seemed anxious to have an Episcopal church at every crossroads. Some were unsuccessful and were called his "noble mistakes," but others survived to prove the proverb, "nothing venture, nothing gain."
The obvious weaknesses of a single missionary society sug- gested a regional organization based upon counties. The "S. P. C. K." had used county agents as early as 1843, and the county clerical convocations already were acting as missionary supervisors. The Convention accepted the idea and in 1877 created six arch- deaconaries, made the archdeacons directors of the Missionary Society, and laid upon each archdeaconry the responsibility for all
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missionary ventures in its area. The result of the new system was a considerable increase of small missions before 1900.
At that time the Society took stock of its accomplishments during a half century, and found reason to be encouraged. The number of towns without Episcopal churches had declined from seventy-two to fifty-five, including thirty-one in the three eastern counties. The situation seemed less grim when one noticed that the population had decreased in thirty-two of the towns, and that all the unoccupied ones contained less than seven percent of the state's people. But twenty unoccupied towns in New Haven, Hartford, and Litchfield Counties showed how much remained to be done.
Growth in the new areas was difficult because of certain trends that were destined to persist for many years. The trolley and the automobile enabled people to go to town churches and made missions in nearby small places seem impractical. Even the small towns and the countryside were penetrated by intellectual cur- rents that ran counter to revealed religion - materialism, scientific positivism, the "warfare" of science against theology, and criticism of the Bible. Secular distractions accelerated the church's decline as a social center, and the clergy largely lost their former exclusive intellectual pre-eminence. More rapid mobility of an industrial society helped to shatter parish solidarity.
Industrialism at first brought an almost catastrophic decline of rural life. This became obvious in 1896, when the diocesan historian, the Rev. Samuel Hart, presented a list of extinct parishes, mostly in rural areas. Some had existed - sometimes briefly - in country towns like Barkhamsted, Bolton, Canterbury, Cornwall, Haddam, Hartland, Salem, and Sherman. They failed because the towns declined, or because they were not naturally favorable toward the Episcopal Church for historic reasons. Others were undermined by radical changes in the character of the population, or by the removal of a fostering minister or family. Missions enthusiastically started in small mill towns often faded when the population became heavily foreign-born and Roman Catholic, as in Moosup, Baltic, Taftville, Packerville, Sterling, Addison, and Beacon Falls.
Immigration, in fact, threatened to overwhelm the Church after the 1850's. Hordes of Irish and Germans flooded the state,
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followed by Scandinavians, and then by the vast "New Immigration" from Southern and Eastern Europe. Connecticut rapidly ceased to be an exclusively Anglo-American community. To most of the newcomers the Episcopal Church was unknown, and so it was one of the older religious groups that profited least by immigration. Even the English immigrants were largely Nonconformist, and many nominal Church of England people drifted away because they did not understand the voluntary status of the Church in America. Probably not five percent of the immigration after 1840 was Anglican, and much of that minority was lost.
Outwardly the statistics looked encouraging in the early 1900's. The Church had been growing at a more rapid rate than the population. Between 1865 and 1914 the number of clergymen and church school pupils had doubled, families and contributions had tripled, communicants had quadrupled. The proportion of communicants to the state's population had risen from two and one-half to four percent. But Bishop Brewster and many priests and laymen questioned the value of the figures, and felt that the diocesan missionary effort was lagging and needed a cold and critical appraisal. Some disturbing facts were produced by a Committee on the State of the Church, appointed by the bishop in 1914; and by a Conference on Diocesan Problems in 1915.
Declining or static parishes seemed disposed to rely on en- dowments, in complacent stagnation. Aided parishes too often showed no effort to attain independence. Parochial reports, without interpretation of local conditions, were often so inadequate as to be meaningless. Some aided places might be abandoned or com- bined under one pastor, and the Diocese should know more about the unoccupied places that could use the funds to better advantage. Many people were lost by removal, without any effort being made to trace them. Too long the Church had been contented with a slow rate of growth. These facts were printed for distribution, and laid before the Missionary Society with the implied question, "What are you going to do about it?" The result was a more de- termined effort to solve problems that Bishop Brewster had been considering for some years. The two most important ones were the rural question and "the Stranger within the Gates."
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RURAL MISSIONS
By articles in the Connecticut Churchman in 1909 and 1912, Bishop Brewster pointedly reminded his diocese that country people often were the backlog of the urban church. They had a disproportionate influence on the state government, because all rural towns were represented in the legislature. Because the Church had been negligent, many of them were in danger of lapsing into sheer heathenism, without religion, adequate recreation, or intellectual stimulation.
The Bishop's own answer to the challenge was to call a large conference on rural work, believed to be the first of its kind in the Church. It met at the Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown in the winter of 1913, and began a serious study of the problem. The report shocked the diocese by its revelation of the farmer's de- pressed economic state, the poor schools offered to his children, and the inadequate social outlook of the churches. Not one country church in six had any parish rooms.
From that time more of the clergy devoted attention to rural missions. In 1916 the Committee on the State of the Church stressed the topic, and reviewed the voluntary work already being done through visiting homes and holding meetings in schools. The rural parish was not hopeless and there was even a discernible return to the country, because of better roads and transportation and the state's policy of educational grants to the poorer towns.
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