USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 23
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One way to make a boy choir run smoothly was to organize it as a social and athletic club, as Christ Church in New Haven did in 1894. The boys played football and baseball on nearby vacant lots. They enjoyed spring picnics, winter socials, and fre- quent birthday parties, and later brought wives, children and grandchildren to annual reunions.
Few parishes attempted a full choral service, as did the now extinct Church of the Nativity in Bridgeport. The parish was organized in 1856 by a group of High Churchmen in St. John's, who erected an attractive little church. In keeping with their ideals, the services were almost entirely choral and were the first of the kind in the city.
For improvement in music the diocese owes a heavy debt to St. John's Church, Hartford. The first rector, Arthur C. Coxe,
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encouraged the children's choir and patiently taught them to sing the Magnificat. His successor, William C. Doane, also a music- lover, encouraged the vestry to begin the long-lived institution of a music committee. The parish spent generously, and repeatedly gave the organist and the choir a cordial word of thanks.
A distinguished succession of organists and choirmasters began with James B. Gilmer. It included Henry W. Greatorex, a noted organist and composer of hymns, who had a singing school and in 1851 published in Hartford A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes. Later came Dudley Buck, a prolific composer of national fame, whose career began at St. John's and widely in- fluenced American church music. Among his well-known suc- cessors have been Denison Fish, John W. Harrison, Stanley R. Waterman, and Clarence E. Watters, now the organist of Trinity College, Hartford.
The Rev. James W. Bradin, who loved a dignified service, encouraged Ernest Peiler to train a boy choir, and won over the parish conservatives. The surpliced procession of men and boys entered the church on the first Sunday in Advent, 1886, and then began a great tradition that has endured for over seventy years. Full choral Evensong began in 1909, following the removal to West Hartford, and continued for many years, and the Easter music became a well-known feature of the parish. This church always has encouraged singing by various groups, especially in Lent, and sometimes has had three or four choirs, including the Women's Guild and the Girls' Friendly Society.
THE SINGING CONGREGATION
Reaction against musical display in the choir loft was in- evitable. As early as 1848, objection to making a concert of the singing appeared in Christ Church, Hartford. A committee found no authority for entrusting it to any particular persons, and de- clared that the organ was not "a means of display" and that the priest and the congregation were supposedly "the exclusive per- formers of the service." The choir should be simply a skillful guide, and congregational singing should prefer the familiar tunes because they were familiar and good.
"How much is the devout heart cheered, when not from one part of the Church alone, but from the whole, from all around,
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there is a swelling up to Heaven [of] the glad notes of hundreds of voices. Who at such a time is listening with the ear of a critic for some slight irregularities in his neighbor's voice? This is not a performance on the boards of a theatre, but the Christian wor- ship of Christian men."6
For many years this declaration was a voice in the wil- derness, and in many churches worship was practically taken from the people and became a sacred concert. Disapproval often came in the "High" parishes, where the clergy believed that the people should really assist at the Eucharist. One of the earliest progressive movements was in Christ Church, New Haven, which inherited the valuable library of the composer, Horatio Parker, including settings for Communion services. For some time after 1915 the curate, Roger Anderson, O. H. C., taught the people to sing the Missa De Angelis, which a parishioner donated.
Congregational singing was encouraged all over the diocese by the parochial missions favored by Bishops Brewster and Acheson. Sometimes when the expense of a choir is a burden, a parish surprises itself by getting along with only a precentor to lead the singing, and with rehearsals of hymns and canticles at monthly "hymn sings." This trend has been promoted by the new hymnal of 1940, with its edition including only the melody and with several simple settings for Communion. The present pre- ference is for a singing congregation and various choirs, with the male or adult mixed choir as the musical core in large parishes. A paid quartette would now be regarded as an antique. (See Chapter Twenty-One, under Music).
PREACHING AND PREACHERS
To the average Churchman of the early 1800's, concern about music was far less important than whether or not the rector could preach an acceptable sermon. To the Evangelicals preaching was all-important. The modern churchgoer, who complains against a sermon of over twenty minutes, would consider most of the old-time preachers perfectly insufferable. Bishop Abraham Jarvis's sermons were quite typical; they were long, and were described as "didactic, and occasionally metaphysical."7 How many Episcopalian parishes would relish such preaching now?
Bishop Alexander V. Griswold, who served as a parochial
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minister in Connecticut, once confessed that his early preaching was very sectarian and controversial. He regretted that he had stressed Episcopalian peculiarities and neglected "the essential doctrines of Christ, and the necessary duties of Christians." The usual Church manner of preaching, he thought, gave the impression that Episcopalians were formalists and bigots, "regarding the Church more than religion, and the Prayer-Book more than the Bible."8 He was an Evangelical and abandoned the "churchly" sermon, which many priests retained until far into the century.
As late as the 1860's sermons of forty-five minutes were common. They were nearly always carefully written, and ex- temporary preaching and gestures were considered undignified and too much like "ranting."
Until after 1850 preachers almost invariably wore a long black gown and black silk gloves, with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand split for ease in turning pages. Many priests pro- ceeded from the rectory to the church in gown and bands. They wore the surplice over the gown - a custom that gave them a baggy appearance in old paintings and daguerreotypes. The stole, looped to the back, was drawn out over the top of the surplice. At the close of prayers, the rector might not even go to the vestry, leaving his surplice in the desk and proceeding to the pulpit in the gown. The Rev. Louis French recalled that in his boyhood, about 1840, the surplice was even kept and put on in the pulpit. Surplices were very full and reached to the ankles. The stole was nearly always black and reached to the knees, and was six or eight inches wide, with fringed ends; but a stole embroidered with designs in gold was considered somewhat foppish.
VISITING
After services and preaching, the most important duty of the rector was visiting, and it was rarely neglected. Three times a year was considered to be reasonably frequent, and Gregory T. Bedell, a Connecticut Evangelical, strove to achieve that standard. When Bishop Griswold served three Connecticut parishes, he spent a large part of his time on horseback - visiting, attending funerals, and giving lectures. Pastoral calls were more religious and less social than later, and might be devoted to heart-to-heart talks about personal devotion.
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INFORMATION
The laity whom the pastor visited knew little about ritual, music, and vestments, but generally were well informed about doctrine. They had to hold their own against competing faiths with real intellectual and moral backbone. They did not regard matters of faith and order lightly, and often attained their con- victions by reading and study. Few parishes lacked a small library setting forth the Church's doctrines, history, and claims. Christ Church in Hartford had a typical one, started in 1812 and constantly stocked with Bibles, Prayer Books, and volumes "particularly illustrative of the ordinances and doctrines" of the Church. The rector, wardens, and vestrymen were the directors, and adopted rules which were read by the rector in church. Like many other parish libraries, this one declined in importance with the coming of public libraries and easier ways to order books.
More and more the laity absorbed information from parish newspapers, which began to appear in the 1860's. They were not mere announcement bulletins, and were frankly intended to edu- cate the congregation. The Diocese of Connecticut is believed to have had the first such newspaper in the American Church. The monthly Parish Guide of St. John's Church, New Haven, was started in the late 1860's by the Rector, Richard Whittingham. Aided by some younger parishioners, he did the typesetting and printing in his home. He used the paper to inform his people, and so successfully that thirty other parishes in Connecticut and elsewhere soon followed his example. Another typical paper was the monthly Chronicle of Christ Church, Hartford, established in 1890 by the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. In early years it was en- livened by the humor of the rector, Doctor Morgan, and held firmly to its ideal of considering general as well as parochial interests, with the rector as the leader. As the nineteenth century advanced, the rector of a parish became, in fact, more and more the intel- lectual and spiritual leader of his people. His governing power was limited by the rights of the laity, but they were generally disposed to regard his right to religious leadership as un- questionable. This attitude was due largely to the tradition of a well-educated clergy.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE CLERGY
THE COLONIAL CLERGY
T HE nearly fifty colonial priests were a distinctive group, because they led a barely tolerated minority of the people, which was regarded as a threat to the state church and the politi- cal hierarchy. Their distinctiveness reflected also their origins and education. They were predominantly native New Englanders and alumni of New England colleges. Thirty-three are known to have been natives, including twenty-six born in Connecticut. Their educational background was strongly indigenous, for twenty- nine were alumni of Yale, five of Harvard, three of King's College in New York, and one of the College of Philadelphia.
Yale was the alma mater of the early Connecticut Church. In 1730 Doctor Samuel Johnson wrote to the secretary of the S. P. G .: "One thing I have particularly to rejoice in, and that is, that I have a very considerable influence in the College in my neighborhood; and that a love to the Church gains ground greatly in it. Several young men that are graduates, and some young ministers, I have prevailed with to read and consider the matter so far, that they are very uneasy out of the communion of the Church, and some seem much disposed to come into her service; and those that are best affected to the Church are the brightest and most studious of any that are educated in the country."1
The bond with Yale steadily tightened, especially during the Great Awakening, and in 1746 four students became candidates for orders. Nine Episcopal clergymen attended the commence- ment in 1748, when ten candidates for degrees were Episcopalians. They included Johnson's youngest son and Samuel Seabury, Junior.
Yale-Yankee predominance sometimes irritated foreign- born priests, who freely accused the Connecticut clergy of nativism. English-born Matthew Graves confided his hurt feelings to the Bishop of London: "All Europeans, especially ministers, meet with
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a very ungracious reception here; and certain I am, that there is a plan already formed to extirpate us entirely."2 His Methodist sympathies only aggravated the feeling of alienation. James Lyons of Derby, a peppery son of Erin, angrily complained that the people called him "Irish Teague and Foreigner" and even boasted that they would get rid of him. Some vestrymen vowed that they would not buy a glebe unless the missionary were a native. "My New-England brethren of the Clergy here," moaned Lyons, "are so fond of their own countrymen that, were there never so much occasion for it, ... they would be at little pains to do my character justice; and in a little time they hope to get rid of missionaries that are not country born, or, at least, that no more of European education be sent."3 He soon found it convenient to move to the province of New York.
Dislike of foreigners probably was one reason for the chronic shortage of pastors, which the clergy continually lamented. It embarrassed and humiliated devout laymen, like those in New London who erected a church and then saw it closed most of the time "to the derision of its enemies, but to our great grief and discomfort."4 Similar complaints came from Danbury, and from the wardens in Guilford, who had no settled pastor after faith- fully worshipping for twenty-five years.
A more important cause was lack of a bishop, which caused many promising candidates for ordination to hesitate - as Doctor Johnson persistently reminded the S. P. G. and the English bishops. Even the preliminary steps toward ordination involved many difficulties. A candidate must undergo a period of probation, while reading prayers and sermons to test his ability. The parishioners then had to pledge £40 a year for his salary.
After surmounting these obstacles, the young man faced the heavy expenses of a tedious trip across the ocean. It cost at least £100, which was more than most parishes and ordinands wanted to pay. Candidates sometimes borrowed money and assumed heavy financial burdens at the beginning of their ministry. The S. P. G. did not warm to Doctor Johnson's repeated suggestions of a contribution toward their expenses. Some clergymen believed that the Society made it unnecessarily hard to secure ordination. The decision not to receive candidates, without permission to sail for "home," compelled established missions to wait.
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Once started on the arduous journey, the candidates con- fronted many risks and dangers. Five of the twenty-five before 1750 died, and several others were dangerously sick. Within about twenty years, St. Peter's parish in Hebron lost four candidates on the journey. The ocean's perils were tragically illustrated by the French capture and imprisonment of the Messrs. Miner and Lamson, and the death of Miner, who left a widow and children in pitiable condition. Many a priest knew how lucky he was to return safely. Ebenezer Dibblee of Stamford wrote to the Society: "My mind is impressed with a sense of the divine goodness to me in my voyage, through so many dangers as I have been happily preserved, and returned successfully to my family."5 Many promising candidates shrank from the experience, and turned aside to secular pursuits.
Parishioners often were so grateful for their young man's survival that they were eager to make him comfortable. But he soon perceived that the laity had decided to govern the churches. They insisted upon choosing their own missionaries, and the S. P. G. found it wise to indulge their humors. Matthew Graves heard his people frequently assert that the Society, the Bishop of London, and the canons had no authority over them, and that the vestry- men and the wardens could hire and dismiss ministers at pleasure.
A quaint custom, intended to secure the parson's tenure and support, was the ceremony of "induction." The church door was closed and locked from the outside, and the senior warden then declared the minister to be duly commissioned and appointed and opened the door for him. The priest entered, rang the bell, and performed the service, after which he declared himself to be the rector and swore allegiance to the Church's doctrine.
Quarrels between clergy and people were not as frequent as might be expected from the notoriously contentious and inde- pendent Yankee temper. One cause of clashes was the calling of a new missionary. St. Andrew's, Simsbury, had trouble with a faction opposed to Roger Viets, and St. Paul's in Norwalk quarrelled over the Society's choice of a pastor. Even the urbane Doctor Johnson wrestled with a "foolish contention" in Stratford, which hindered the parish's growth. Matthew Graves, who did more than his share of complaining, called his parishioners in Hebron "a knotty people," and bemoaned "continued disturbance and perplexities and abuses"
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in New London.6 But such lamentations are surprisingly rare in the missionaries' reports.
Much more frequent were worries about their small incomes. As Doctor Johnson observed, they had no worldly encouragement to take orders. The S. P. G. tried to guarantee decent support by requiring a bond pledging at least part of the salary, and a promise to buy a glebc and a rectory. Those promises werc frequently evaded, and more than one parson bccamc disgusted by his people's neglect, which also brought contempt upon the Church. Jarvis of Middletown barely survived on his small incomc, and Winslow of Stratford could not support his wife and ten children without help from friends in Boston.
Few of the clergy could indulge in any luxuries, and their dress was very plain. An old canon strictly forbade parsons to wear "any coif or wrought nightcap," or anything but "comely and scholar-like apparcl, provided that it be not cut or pinct." They must never appear in public "in their doublet and hose, without coats or cassock," or wear light-colored stockings.7
The people were not solely to blame for clerical poverty. Even when they paid in full, the parson's income might fall short because the tax collector refused to pay him the legal church "rate." The only remedy would have been a tedious and expensive law suit to recover. Another obstacle was the difficulty of obtaining the Society's salary. The missionary drew a bill upon a local or New York merchant or ship-owner, and he presented it to a correspondent in England, who in turn drew upon the Society. The transaction required months, and if the bill was protested, correspondence might drag on much longer. The parish some- times paid in depreciated colonial currency, which fluctuated considerably in value and was worth less than English money.
Fortunate was the parson who had a comfortable rectory with a glebe, as at Ripton (Shelton). In New Haven the parishioncrs spent £250, although more than half of them were "in low cir- cumstances." Other parishcs delayed for ycars, and even in wealthy Stratford there was no rectory or glebe when the church had been cstablished for twenty years. St. Andrew's, Simsbury, had a glebc but the first missionary lived in a hired house. When it was sold, he took shelter in the home of a warden. Such neglect made the Society require a rectory.
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Even without these inconveniences, the parsons' lives would not have been easy, especially in remote parishes. Their letters sometimes betray a feeling of isolation, and of being closely watched by hostile eyes. Henry Caner of Fairfield warned the S. P. G. to be on guard against misrepresentations. "The Dissenters among us are busily employed in examining into the conduct of the missionaries in order to have whereof to accuse us."8 Those who lived near Yale College were fortunate in having the use of the library, and in the companionship of other missionaries at commencements. Loneliness was occasionally relieved by voluntary conventions. Sometimes Doctor Johnson was the host, and en- livened the proceedings by his ripe scholarship and cheerful conversation.
His constant correspondence with English Churchmen and scholars helped to keep his brethren in touch with currents of contemporary thought. Their mail consisted largely of communi- cations with the Society, which often were interrupted by the un- certainties of ocean voyages. Many letters went astray and winter sometimes suspended all contacts for months. There was always a suspicion that letters were opened and read. During the pre- Revolutionary troubles, frank expression could be extremely risky because of the clergy's notorious loyalism.
The missionaries' loneliness must have been accentuated by their solitary travels. Some spent a good part of their time in the saddle, for many missions were larger than some English dioceses. In the early days Johnson and Caner rode all over Fairfield County and found it very tiring, even though Johnson reported that the roads were "generally well cleared and much used, so that travelling is for the most part indifferent good."9 Ebenezer Punderson traversed eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island, and on one trip rode nearly two hundred miles, and preached nine ser- mons to nearly one thousand people. Missionaries in Litchfield County endured great hardships on the hilly roads. Even young and husky Thomas Davies found it "almost an insupportable burden.'
Winter and spring journeys were especially trying, but did not frighten brave John Beach of Newtown. After forty years, he proudly reported that he had visited his churches in the worst rain and snow storms, even when there was no track and his horse
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nearly sank in the drifts. Once he almost perished in crossing a deep, swift river, and more than once he slept on a pile of straw. No wonder that his people were ashamed to let bad weather keep them from church!
Hardship made sickness the clergy's constant lot. The Church was planted in Connecticut by men who frequently were snuffling with heavy colds, burning with fever, and racked by pain. Caner became so run down that he sought relief in the easier berth of King's Chapel, Boston. Solomon Palmer of Litchfield suffered tortures from "grievous nephritic disorders." His doctor firmly told him to stop his constant travels, if he wanted to get well. Matthew Graves kept up the pace until he was forced to stop in the middle of the service, and could hardly pronounce the final blessing. The people could be sympathetic with sick parsons because of their own suffering from frequent and devastating epidemics, against which primitive medical knowledge was nearly helpless. St. John's parish in Stamford once lost twelve heads of families in less than a year, and such catastrophes were not rare.
Common sufferings drew closer the natural bond between pastors and people of the same stock, who understood each other. The clergy ordinarily were excellent pastors, who visited homes, taught the children, and ministered to the sick. They proved the proverb, "the house-going parson makes a church-going people."
Their spiritual influence was deeper for coming when Puritanism had become cold. Many New Englanders wanted ministers who were not brilliant, but quietly devoted, solid, and diligent. Because they offered a liberal, reasonable, humane, and yet Scriptural religion, unhappy people in the established church turned to them rather than to Deism or Unitarianism. Their simple preaching, without "enthusiasm," attracted men who were weary of revivalist excitement or bare discussion of recondite doctrine. They rarely preached without notes or a carefully written manu- script. Even Doctor Johnson, for all his deep learning and easy speech, always composed his sermons with long reflection and painstaking care, and seldom departed from his text. Richard Mansfield of Derby was a typical preacher, always grave and im- pressive, never startling, loud, or vehement, but sincere and con- vincing. Abraham Jarvis once remarked: "Night preaching and pulpit praying are two things which I abhor."10
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The doctrines which the clergy preached were cherished with unusual tenacity, and prevailed far into the nineteenth century. They were grounded upon solid reading in the eminent English theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Little diversity of doctrine appears in their letters and published sermons. In 1849 the editor of the Church Review, after a close study of their writings, remarked that "They held the unity of the faith, in the bond of peace, more strictly and thoroughly than any other set of men within our knowledge, since the primitive ages . . . "11
Although they were accused of being anti-evangelical and of lacking "experimental" knowledge of the Gospel, their sermons prove that their teaching was Scriptural and evangelical. Their basic doctrines were man's helplessness without God, his freedom and justification by faith, and the necessity of good works, out- wardly realized through the Church and the sacraments. Defense of these doctrines against continual criticism compelled them to be- come solid if not brilliant and polished scholars, able to give reasons for their faith.
THE LATER CLERGY
The later generations of clergymen were overwhelmingly of native Anglo-American stock, with a sprinkling of British, Irish, and Continental Europeans. A surprisingly large number were converts. From the Congregationalists came such mighty men as Bela Hubbard of Trinity Church in New Haven; Bishops Abraham Jarvis and Thomas C. Brownell; and three eminent rectors of Christ Church in Hartford: Philander Chase, George Burgess, and Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became the bishops of Ohio, Maine, and New York respectively. Wainwright was the grandson of the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, who had assailed the Episcopal Church. Another noted rector of Christ Church, Thomas March Clark, had been a Presbyterian, and became the Bishop of Rhode Island. Bishop John Williams came from a Unitarian family. Horatio Potter, a professor of Trinity College and later Bishop of New York, was a convert from Quakerism.
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