USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 17
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Bishop Brewster eagerly proclaimed examples of what could be done by devotion, patience, and a little money. One was the venture of faith started in 1916 at Bantam Lake in Morris, in a diocesan mission house donated by a New York Churchwoman. It was conducted by Deaconess Dorothy Duffie and her assistant under the auspices of the Litchfield Archdeaconry. They reached scattered families in their homes, gathered the children for Sunday School, baptism and confirmation classes, and even offered vacations and study courses for girls and young women.
Another inspiring example was the aged but very spry William Clark Knowles, who for many years ministered to Emmanuel Church in North Killingworth and to St. James's Chapel in Ponsett, which he built. He was friend, counsellor, visitor in sickness, and pastor to innumerable Yankees and immigrants of all varieties.
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His successor was the lanky and humorous Vermonter, George B. Gilbert, author of that delightful book, Forty Years a Country Preacher. He could serve as pastor, lecturer, cook, handy- man, and even barber. When he arrived the region had several full schools. Several languid or dying churches evidently were entirely unaware of the people's real economic and spiritual needs, and were leaving the countryside to stagnate in "social starvation."
Gilbert drew the people to schoolhouse services and helped them to solve their problems. Bishop Acheson, who watched him in action, perceived the secret of his success. "His power is in the use of the gifts God has given to him and the cultivation and ex- pression of love for people and all sorts and conditions of men."4 In 1928 his work was the theme of an attractive exhibit at the Diocesan Convention.
Knowles and Gilbert brought the country church to the attention of urban Episcopalians, who had never realized the truth of Bishop Acheson's estimate of it: "The social and spiritual life of that community [any country community, he meant] is tied to that little church. It grew there, is nurtured and cared for, and from these places year by year there go out into towns and cities men and women to keep pure the blood and life of the State."5
This theme has continued to run through Connecticut's diocesan missionary work. Bishop Budlong, especially, dwelt upon the fact that the mere size of a church is no measure of its im- portance. The Diocese has accepted his view of the rural parish as a reservoir of future communicants and spiritual energy. The policy has been to place small country missions and parishes under the care of larger churches, and to encourage them to work for financial independence and their own settled pastors.
THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES
The stranger had been inside for many years before the Diocese attempted any organized effort to reach him. At first he was the Roman Catholic Irishman fleeing the "Old Sod" to escape famine, rack-renting, and dire poverty. His strong faith would have precluded any hope of missionary work, even without the hostile attitude of the native American. That inspired the anti- Catholic political "Know-nothing" movement in which some leading Episcopalians unfortunately became involved.
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After the Irishman came the German, who found in America a refuge from state churches, compulsory military service, and political oppression after the abortive republican revolution of 1848. Some "Forty-eighters" were radical freethinkers who found a substitute for church in their political, musical, and athletic clubs. But many of the newcomers were good Lutherans, who sought the Episcopal Church when they had no pastors of their own faith.
They met a kind reception in Hartford, where Christ Church in 1856 allowed them to use the chapel for Sunday ser- vices. A few years later the new Grace Chapel in suburban Park- ville had a congregation using a German translation of the Prayer Book. About 1860 Christ Church in New Haven offered regular services and confirmation in German. Bishop Williams was pleased by this and said, "I can not but hope and believe, that a work of great promise and value, is opening before us in this direction. It can, of course, never be desirable, either for our Church or our country, to perpetuate the separate nationalities of those who, from other lands, come among us. But it is also evident, that if any- thing is to be done for the present generation of these emigrants, it must be done through the medium of their own language."6
A noble example of hospitality appeared almost within sight of the Bishop's rooms at the Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown. Holy Trinity parish began a German mission about 1872 in the south end of the city, and continued it for many years at St. Andrew's Chapel. For a time it was conducted by the noted scholar, A. Douglas Miller, formerly rector of St. John's in Hart- ford, who could preach fluently in German. The congregation eventually became English-speaking and was quietly absorbed into the parish, where descendants of the original members worship today.
After the Civil War came a host of Scandinavians, mostly Swedes, who sometimes brought letters from their pastors advising them to attend the Episcopal Church if they found no Lutheran one where they settled. Some parishes cordially welcomed them, and in 1889 the Diocesan Convention named a committee to con- sider relations with Swedish and Danish congregations. Their report emphasized the sympathy between the Episcopal and Swedish Lutheran churches respecting episcopacy, the ministry,
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observance of the Christian year, the sacraments, liturgy, and ritual. They advised the Episcopal clergy to allow the Swedes to use their churches and to minister to those without pastors, but to avoid trying to convert them. This policy resulted in permanent friendly relations, and accounts for the present sprinkling of Swedish names in Episcopal congregations.
Until after 1900 relations with the "foreigner" were local and voluntary, and the Diocese had no definite plan of approach. Neither had most dioceses, which gave little help to organizations like the "Anglo-American Church Emigrants' Aid Society," in- tended to welcome British newcomers. As early as 1858 this society warned the Church not to ignore the immigrant, and un- favorably contrasted its laxity with the efforts of other churches, especially the Roman Catholic. In 1850 the 281,000 Americans of English birth outnumbered the Episcopalian communicants - and most of them already had been lost.
The outlook seemed even darker after the 1880's, when the "New Immigration" brought hosts of Latins and Slavs. They swarmed into the cities and bought up the farms, replacing the Anglo-Americans, and turned Connecticut into a cosmopolitan and multi-lingual commonwealth. By the 1930's two thirds of the people were foreign-born or of foreign parentage, and even in the rural areas the old native stock was definitely a minority. Less than one quarter of the foreign stock was of British or Irish origin, while more than one half was Southern and Eastern European. But there was hope in the fact that many of the non-English were "unchurched" - potential Churchmen, if the Church would wake up to the opportunity.
Bishop Brewster and a few other leaders decided to start the awakening, by changing the indifference of most Episcopalians. In 1907 the Bishop startled the Diocesan Convention by saying that the infusion of new blood would remedy the anaemic con- dition of depleted old American communities. The Church had a mission to reclaim the lapsed immigrant and assimilate him to American ways, by adapting its liturgy to his needs. It could bind classes and races together.
The Bishop had a powerful and eloquent ally in the Rev. J. Chauncey Linsley, who in the Connecticut Churchman pointed out the rare opportunity to win many immigrants who had forsaken
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old faiths. In 1914 the Churchman warned that the Diocese might perish unless native Episcopalians would abandon their flaccid complacency. Other churches were putting them to shame by their success with the newcomers.
Indifference slowly changed to genuine interest after the Convention requested the Bishop to appoint a special Commission on Work among Foreigners. Under Mr. Linsley's eager auspices, it began nearly twenty years of fruitful activity. One of the most effective features was its pamphlet, The Episcopal Church, a brief and attractive statement of its position, doctrine, and worship. Innumerable copies were distributed in foreign languages, often accompanied by translations of the Prayer Book. The Commission ceaselessly encouraged foreign-speaking religious workers to ap- proach the "unchurched," and to gather their children into Sunday schools, and advised parishes to offer their churches and chapels for foreign-language services.
Unexpected support came from the impact of the First World War. The nation became acutely aware of the "hyphenated" Americans, and chaplains were shocked to discover vast numbers of them with no religious attachment. The revelations inspired a flood of literature on ways to approach the stranger. Especially effective were the writings of the Rev. Thomas Burgess, who be- came secretary of the Department of Immigration in the Board of Missions. His article in the American Church Monthly for October, 1917, deplored the Church's apathy, and contrasted it with the hard and earnest work being done by others. The Rev. Henry S. Whitehead, in the same magazine for December, 1918, declared that continued indifference would be "suicidal." The approach should be based upon a real knowledge of the immigrants' traditions and not upon social service alone. Burgess was largely responsible for several guides to "foreign" work issued by the National Department of Missions and Church Extension. Among those widely read and influential in Connecticut were Neighbors (1919, 1920), Foreigners or Friends (1921), and Foreign Born Americans and Their Children (1921).
These efforts quickened the progress of much quiet work that had been going on for years. Even before the war, children of immigrants appeared in Sunday schools and sometimes were a majority in confirmation classes. Missions for Italian laborers ex-
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tended from Bridgeport to Stafford Springs. St. Paul's in Willimantic ministered to the Eastern Orthodox, and St. Mark's in New Britian opened its church to the Armenians. Swedish services were celebrated in the churches at New Milford, Danbury, and West Haven. St. Mary's in Manchester had a Bible class for people from the north of Ireland, and St. Paul's in New Haven ministered to Italians at a settlement house. Requests poured in for translations of The Episcopal Church in Greek, Syriac, Swedish, and other languages. This type of approach, rather than the organization of exclusive "foreign" missions, brought immigrants to the Church as individuals and families. This proved to be a natural, wise, and realistic method of gradual assimilation.
By 1914 it was obvious that the best field for formal mis- sions was among the numerous Italians, including many who had been living without religion. Native Americans who could speak their language discovered unexpected spiritual rewards by their association with such a charming and civilized people. The principal missionary proved to be the Italian Prayer Book. Many Italian newcomers derived from it the opinion of one of their countrymen in Winsted, who said, "the Episcopal Church is the old Catholic Church."7
That sentiment inspired the Rev. Pier F. Vodola, a former Roman Catholic Priest in Hartford who entered the Episcopal ministry in 1913. He became the first pastor of St. Paul's, which was supported by local parishes. For some years the mission ministered to spiritual and temporal needs in a hall on Grove Street belonging to the Open Hearth Mission. Later it flourished under the Rev. Paolo Vasquez, also a former Roman Catholic, who remained for over forty years with his loyal and well-instructed congregation. He was an energetic, humorous and popular pastor, completely devoted to his work. Today the descendants of his original parishioners are scattered throughout the Episcopal churches of Hartford and vicinity. In 1929 the hall was purchased and enlarged and made to look more churchly, with a cupola donated by Anglo-Americans and a bell bought by the Italians. Father Vasquez said that one gave the cage and the other gave the bird. There the people worshipped until the Diocese presented to them the former Catholic Apostolic Church on South Marshall Street, in the western part of the city.
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Father Vasquez used to visit Bridgeport and started a mission there, which was formally organized in 1917 and re- organized in 1921 as St. Michael's. The congregation wanted a resident pastor, and in 1919 made a fresh start under the Rev. Gennaro Striano. A committee from the city parishes founded a social center in a rented house, and supported it with help from the Fairfield Archdeaconry. The Italian community derived great benefit from the social, educational and Americanization work, the church school, and the Sunday services in Calvary Chapel. During the week, the children were cared for by a devoted Ladies' Auxiliary recruited from the city parishes.
Bishop Acheson took a keen personal interest in this mission and it flourished during the ministry of the Rev. Joseph Racioppi of Trinity Parish, which conducted it as a parochial chapel. Members of the congregation donated much of the labor in building the present chapel at Tunxis Hill in Fairfield. It is a tasteful example of Romanesque architecture, built of native field stone with a tile roof and a campanile with a bell.
Since 1920 there has been little other organized ministry among the foreign-born. A notable exception is the work begun among the Nestorians of New Britain in 1923, under the auspices of St. Mark's Parish and the Missionary Society. Another small Nestorian mission existed at Southport in Fairfield.
The policy of the Diocese has been not to emphasize the exclusiveness of "foreigners," but to receive them into established parishes and missions. As early as 1922 the Commission on Work among Foreigners practically declared that separate missions were useless. "These people do not want professional investigators and uplifters ... They crave Christian fellowship and there are op- portunities for the exercise of such fellowship open to every one of us."8 The wisdom of this attitude has appeared in the rapid assimilation of the children and grandchildren of immigrants, and their intermarriage with Anglo-Americans. The progress of the trend was strikingly shown in the 1940's by a census of Christ Church Cathedral Parish in Hartford, which revealed over thirty national strains.
When Puerto Rican immigrants appeared in the 1940's, Con- necticut followed the line of assimilation recommended at a con- ference with representatives of neighboring dioceses. This policy
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has been successful in Bridgeport, in cooperation with other churches. Christ Church in Guilford also has participated in interdenominational services, and in a Spanish-American club. Spanish-speaking parishioners have conducted classes and visited families, and the parish has invited Puerto Ricans to its social gatherings. For religious ministrations the Diocese follows the example of the missionary district of Puerto Rico, which presents an intelligible and spiritual expression of the Catholic faith.
Another fruitful approach to "New Americans" is through fellowship with the Polish National Catholics, the Greek and Russian Orthodox, and other Eastern churches. This strategy was suggested in 1932 by Bishop Frank E. Wilson of Eau Claire, in his widely read pamphlet, What Will We Do With It? The Epis- copal Church and Non-Anglo-Saxon Elements in the United States. The policy, he declared, should be mutual friendship, while waiting for full intercommunion.
NEGRO MISSIONS
Long before the European immigrant appeared, the Diocese became sensitive to the spiritual destitution of the free Negro. Interest quickened in the 1820's, when many church people naively hoped to solve the slavery question by colonizing Liberia with free Negroes. The colony called for missionaries and teachers, and Christ Church in Hartford responded by patronizing the African Mission School Society, to train young Negroes for work in Africa. A Trinity College student taught the school on a basis of free tu- ition and manual labor, with daily Morning and Evening Prayer under the auspices of the rector, and with the approval of the Episcopal Watchman and the American Colonization Society. Three young men were ordained by Bishop Brownell. Two served in Africa; the other, Jacob Oson, ministered as a catechist and lay reader in New Haven.
Oson died on the eve of sailing to Liberia but his brief ministry in New Haven planted the seeds of St. Luke's Parish. A few Negroes continued to worship at Trinity Church and St. Paul's, and in 1844 they were organized as a parish by the Rev. Eli W. Stokes, who had been ordained as a deacon by Bishop Whittingham of Maryland. Stokes ministered until 1846, when Bishop Brownell ordained him as a priest, and he was called by Bishop Henshaw
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of Rhode Island to be rector of Christ Church, Providence. Eventually he realized his ambition to be a missionary in Africa, where he died.
St. Luke's, one of the church's earliest Negro parishes, slowly gained in strength until in 1904 it was able to erect its present handsome brick church in the Gothic style. The congregation's influence has been far out of proportion to its numbers, for it has contributed valuable men to the ministry in several dioceses, and spread the Episcopal Church's faith through Negro students at Yale University. Among its rectors was the Rev. James Theodore Holley, who led a band of colonists to Haiti in 1861 and was a bishop in that Negro nation from 1874 until 1911. A native of the parish, whose family helped to found it, was W. E. B. DuBois, a Negro leader. He became editor of The Crisis and wrote a classic book, The Souls of Black Folk, with its famous essay on the spirituals.
One of the vestrymen, in the early 1900's, was Alonzo Johnson. After studying at King Hall, the Negro divinity school in Washington, he took charge of the Diocese's second Negro congregation, St. Monica's in Hartford. The new venture was in- spired partly by Eugene L. Henderson, the rector of St. Luke's, and partly by Connecticut's belated recognition of the spiritual needs of Negro immigrants. The Convention's committee on Negro missions, appointed in 1903 and headed by the Rev. Ernest deF. Miel, presented a thorough and challenging report. Its revelation of shocking spiritual destitution among the state's twenty thousand Negroes was not creditable to the Episcopal Church or to any other.
The committee was chagrined by the Convention's failure to grant an appropriation, but took comfort from the rapid progress of St. Monica's. Success was due largely to the Rev. James W. Bradin, rector of St. John's Parish, who had encouraged the people to worship in his church. He suggested that they should have their own church and organized them as a mission in the summer of 1904, with the assistance of Mr. Henderson. Alonzo Johnson took charge next year and in 1908 was ordained as a priest. The Missionary Society and the city parishes sustained his work loyally, and the mission prospered.
The greatest difficulty was in securing a permanent building. From St. John's parish rooms the congregation moved to the chapel
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of Christ Church, then to several other places. In 1925 they settled at last in a solid brick church bought from a Negro Baptist Con- gregation, and remodelled it for Episcopal worship and educational and social activities. Under a succession of pastors the mission has grown slowly but steadily to over two hundred communicants.
In contrast was the failure of St. Andrew's mission, or- ganized in Waterbury about 1908. For a time it seemed to prosper, worshipping in the chapel of St. John's Parish under the care of a Yale student reader, and having a Sunday school and a Woman's Auxiliary. But the work declined and died because it simply drifted from one lay-reader to another and never enjoyed the steady services of an ordained pastor.
There was no further attempt at Negro work until 1920, when St. Mark's was organized in Bridgeport as a parochial mission of Trinity Church. For its special benefit the Missionary Society secured possession of old Calvary Church. The Rev. Aaron J. Cuffee became the priest in charge in 1925. Under his care the congre- gation outgrew the old building and in 1939 erected a new one in the eastern end of the city, on land bought by the Society.
The latest Negro mission, St. John's in Ansonia, is an out- growth of old St. Luke's in New Haven. The rector, the Rev. John H. Edwards, gathered the congregation, which continued for some time as a parochial responsibility and finally was organized as a diocesan mission. After ten years of worshipping in the chapel of Immanuel Church and in a former store, the people rallied to build a church under the auspices of the Missionary Society. Gifts poured in from men, women and children throughout the Diocese, and in 1947 the attractive colonial-style chapel was dedicated by Bishop Gray.
The winning of the Negro has been slow and entirely un- spectacular, but steady and solid. One parish is entirely self-sus- taining and three missions are approaching that goal. Together they had over nine hundred communicants, nearly sixteen hundred baptized members, and over three hundred children in their church schools as of 1959.
CLAIMING NEW GROUND
The problem of "the stranger within the gates" raised another question. Did diocesan missionary work show that the
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Church was penetrating unoccupied areas? Statistically the sit- uation seemed hopeful. In 1921 the Committee on the State of the Church declared that baptisms were winning the race with the death rate. Reports of baptized persons were admittedly un- reliable, but at least they revealed many inactive people who might be reached, if Churchmen would only try. The gain in com- municants was slow because some parishes continually pruned "dead wood" out of their records. Decline in baptisms and church school pupils, due to a falling birth rate, was offset by the gain in confirmations, especially of adults. About 1940 baptisms reflected the growing number of marriages and of larger families during the return to more normal economic conditions.
Economic recovery stimulated a continuing upsurge in missionary enterprise. A slow rise of evangelism had begun in the late 1920's, when the English Church Army came to the Diocese. The young captains won popular affection, revived languid churches, and stiffened the fibre of spiritual life. Bishop Acheson said of them: "These young evangelists do not require coddling. They will sleep anywhere and be glad to receive the simplest fare."9 People were sorry to see them depart, when the regulations con- cerning transients obliged them to return to Great Britain.
There was, in fact, little ground for the easygoing assumption of the 1920's that the Church no longer possessed the missionary spirit. One contrary evidence was the continuance of church building and repair even in the depressed 1930's. A most heartening feature after 1920 was the large number of missions and aided parishes reducing their requests for aid or becoming self-sustaining. Several were in the generally weak eastern area, at Danielson, East Haddam, Putnam, Hebron, Easthampton, Plainfield, and Mystic. This trend made it possible to devote missionary funds to new work or to raising the salaries of underpaid clergymen. And the percentage of gain in communicants was greater in aided than in unaided places.
Bishop Acheson still was not satisfied with the progress of the diocesan missionary program. Bishop Budlong later pointed out that the Church could gain in numbers and yet lose territory. More recently, Bishop Gray has feared that the Church has re- peated the mistake it once made in neglecting the West. His travels about the Diocese have revealed to him area after area
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with many people far from any Episcopal church. World War II uncovered these and other weaknesses that might otherwise have passed unnoticed. In 1947 it was found that, while the total of baptized members had steadily increased, there were fewer parishes and missions than in 1922. The Diocese found itself in the em- barrassing situation of having certain areas with churches and few people, and others with many people and no churches. City people had fled to the "suburban ring," leaving old parishes to wither on the vine. They would not go downtown to church and sent their children to the Sunday schools of other denominations.
The Diocese took some time to find the solution. Bishop Acheson had noticed that archdeacons who were also pastors could not devote full time to missionary work. He recommended a salaried diocesan archdeacon. Instead, the Diocese has adopted the diocesan missionary. He is the right answer to the problem of occupying new areas and ministering to reviving country towns, mushrooming suburbs, and villages of immigrant industrial workers.
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