USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 25
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This awakening suggested a removal to New Haven, where students would have greater opportunity for parochial work, and access to the libraries of Yale University and its Divinity School. Some Churchmen regretted abandoning the site made almost hal- lowed by the teaching and personality of Bishop Williams, but were consoled by the thought that New Haven was closely associated with the memory of Bishop Berkeley, bencfactor of Yale. In the autumn of 1928, the bicentennial of his coming to America, the school moved to a new campus at Sachem and Mansfield Streets. The library, offices, and class rooms were located in old residences. The chapel was a simple "upper room" in a remodeled coach house,
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with heavy intersecting rafters. The campus of three acres included also a dormitory, a refectory, a hostel, and faculty houses.
In spite of its somewhat makeshift appearance, Berkeley was lively and full of adventurous spirit. Dean Ladd was pleased with his talented household, and the trustees rejoiced that its financial situation improved even in the midst of depression, due to the appeals for the school's "Emergency Fund." Greater income came from selling and leasing parts of the Middletown property. Clergymen flocked to the week's refresher course, begun in the 1930's in cooperation with the Yale Divinity School.
Removal seemed justified by the continual progress during the grim years of depression and war. The students were college graduates, prepared to profit by the well-balanced course. Finances became more secure, especially through the increasing number of annual subscribers. By 1941 income nearly covered operating ex- penses - "which," Bishop Budlong said, "is a rare accomplishment for a theological school anywhere in these days."18
Berkeley's modern faculty was one of which any seminary might be proud. It included the notable Old Testament scholar, Fleming James, who in 1941 was elected Dean of the Theological Department at the University of the South. Percy L. Urban, who became Dean in 1947, was Professor of Systematic Theology, and C. Kilmer Myers served as Instructor in Church History. In 1945 Edward R. Hardy, Jr., became Associate Professor in Church History and Teacher of Liturgics. Massey H. Shepherd of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge lectured in liturgics, and Doctor Elmer J. Cook became Professor of New Testament. Bishops Budlong and Gray gave lectures in pastoral theology and church organization. Faculty members raised the school's reputation by lecturing and teaching in other schools, and by publishing some notable books. Berkeley's high standard was greatly indebted also to Doctor Charles B. Hedrick, acting dean during the last illness of Dean Ladd and until 1942.
In 1942 Berkeley welcomed Dean Lawrence Rose, its guide through the trials of World War II. He introduced an accelerated course and summer sessions to maintain the supply of clergy, de- pleted by incessant demands for chaplains. Berkeley's friends, faculty, and students drew closer together in their joint meetings at commencements. In 1946 the school was formally accredited by
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the American Association of Theological Seminaries. Next year Doctor Percy Urban succeeded Dean Rose, who became Dean of the General Seminary in New York.
For many years Berkeley's friends had deplored its in- adequate buildings. With the support of the Diocesan Convention, in 1940 the trustees purchased from Yale University the spacious Sachem Hall, a former Yale fraternity house, adjoining the campus. Many Churchmen contributed the funds, and enthusiastically en- dorsed a suggestion to name it for Bishop Brewster, Berkeley's oldest alumnus. He rejoiced at the honor, while the faculty and students were delighted to have a permanent dormitory, a new refectory, and conference rooms.
The Church's postwar growth forbade sitting in contentment, and in 1947 Bishop Budlong frankly laid before the Diocese the urgent needs for more endowment, buildings, and teachers. Only two years later Berkeley had a new administration building, better lecture halls, more library space, and apartments for married stu- dents. The school refused as many men as it admitted, and enroll- ment taxed its limits. In 1949 the old chapel was reconstructed by combining the "upper room" and the lower lecture hall, and adding an outer porch, a sacristy, and a new lofty roof. In 1952 began the centennial building program.
In 1954 Berkeley celebrated its centennial, flourishing as never before, with over one hundred students. The graduating class of thirty-three, the largest on record, represented eighteen dioceses and missionary districts. On the day after commencement there was an unprecedented joint ordination of seventeen deacons in Trinity Church on the Green. Ten bishops ordained candidates from their dioceses, or for other bishops who could not attend. Bishop Gray presided, and the preacher was Bishop Herbert William Hall of Aberdeen and Orkney, a visiting lecturer.
The Centennial Convocation in October attracted repre- sentatives of more than twenty colleges and seminaries, including Trinity College in Dublin, associated with Bishop Berkeley. The Bishop of Limerick, a visiting lecturer, brought greetings from the Church of Ireland. Together with Provost Edgar S. Furniss of Yale, he paid tribute to Bishop Berkeley's patronage of learning in America.
An encouraging feature of the celebration was the announce-
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ment by President Jacobs of Trinity College that Berkeley would soon receive the first installments of one hundred thousand dollars for its Centennial Fund from the Builders for Christ Campaign. By the autumn of 1955 more than one third of the seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been raised, and next year the sum approached eight hundred thousand. Hundreds of Churchmen contributed, including many alumni.
The first step in a long-range plan to raise two million dollars gave the school a new administration and library building, and much-needed funds for endowment and further construction. The campaign has revealed Berkeley's appeal outside the Diocese, and an unsuspected revival of interest in theological education. Most of the gifts came from Connecticut Churchmen, who were inspired by their appreciation of Berkeley's vital relation to the Diocese, and its unique quality inherited from Bishop Williams.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF CONNECTICUT TO THE MINISTRY
From Bishop Seabury's first ordinations in 1785, until the middle of the nineteenth century, Connecticut contributed to the American Church a notably large share of its ministers. Before 1858 the first four bishops ordained 289 of the 2787 deacons, or between ten and eleven per cent. Seabury ordained forty-seven, Jarvis thirty-three, Brownell one hundred and seventy-three, and Williams thirty-six.
The Diocese was among the most productive of candidates for the ministry during the first century of the American Church. A census of men who entered the ministry, from one hundred and three parishes, was published in 1902 in Lucy Cushing Jarvis's Sketches of Church Life in Colonial Connecticut. Although in- complete, it comprises three hundred and twenty-seven names since 1785, an average of one for every generation in each parish. Nine- teen parishes furnished one hundred and sixty-eight, more than one half. Many of these men served in other dioceses, and sixteen became bishops:
Name Parish
Benjamin Brewster, Christ Church, New Haven
Chauncey B. Brewster, Christ Church, New Haven Frederick M. Burgess, Christ Church, New Haven
Diocese Western Colorado, 1909-1916 Maine, 1916-1940 Connecticut, 1897-1928 Long Island, 1901-1925
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Name Parish Thomas Frederick Davies, St. Michael's, Litchfield Alexander Viets Griswold, St. Mark's, East Plymouth
Abraham Jarvis, St. Paul's, Norwalk Alfred Lee, Christ Church, Norwich William A. Leonard, Trinity, Southport Benjamin H. Paddock, Christ Church, Norwich John A. Paddock, Christ Church, Norwich Charles T. Quintard, St. John's, Stamford Samuel Seabury, St. James', Poquetanuck Alexander Mackay Smith, St. Paul's, New Haven
Alexander H. Vinton, St. John's, Stamford
Edwin Gardner Weed, St. Luke's, Darien Lemuel H. Wells, Christ Church, Hartford
Diocese
Michigan, 1889-1905 Eastern Diocese 1811-1843 Connecticut, 1797-1813
Delaware, 1841-1887 Ohio, 1889-1930
Massachusetts, 1873-1891 Olympia, 1880-1894 Tennessee, 1865-1898 Connecticut, 1784-1796 Pennsylvania, 1911;
Coadjutor, 1902
Western Massachusetts, 1902-1911
Florida, 1886-1924 Spokane, 1892-1913*
A surprising number of the most eminent Episcopal clergy, in the colonial and early national periods, were connected with Connecticut. William B. Sprague's Annals of the American Episcopal Pulpit, published in 1859, contains one hundred and fifty-two biographies down to 1855. Thirty-five of the men (about twenty-three per cent) were associated with Connecticut during all or part of their ministry, were born and reared there, or re- ceived there an important part of their education. Eighteen were born and reared in the state; seventeen ministered in the colonial period, and eighteen after 1785.
A fair indication of the importance of the Connecticut clergy appears in their large proportion of the five hundred and forty-eight Episcopal clergymen in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography and the Dictionary of American Biography. One hundred and nine (nearly twenty per cent) were associated with the Diocese by birth and education, or by service in the ministry there, and sometimes in all these respects. Thirty-one of the one hundred and seventy-three bishops (nearly eighteen per cent) were related to the Diocese as its bishops, by birth or edu- cation, or by service in the ministry before their consecration. Many of these priests and bishops spread throughout the American Episcopal Church the influence of Connecticut High Church doctrine.
*For two more, see p. 375.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
OLD CONNECTICUT CHURCHMANSHIP
THE OLD HIGH CHURCHMEN
I THROUGHOUT the nineteenth century the words "Connecti- cut High Churchman" described a definite type, which was recognizable whenever a Connecticut churchman ministered, or spoke as a bishop or deputy in General Convention. Connecticut Churchmen of course were not a solid block within or without the Diocese. There were always exceptions, sometimes eminently influential in the Church; but the salient traits were clear enough to make "Connecticut Churchmanship" a familiar term.
Its characteristics descended like a striking family re- semblance from Samuel Johnson, Daniel Brown, and Timothy Cutler - the Yale converts of 1722 - and their many followers before the Revolution. They were Episcopalians not by heredity and habit but by reading and reason, and by conviction that the Church of England is Catholic - not a sect, but a branch of the universal Church. The usual reward of their faith - social ostracism and even persecution - strengthened their confidence in the Church's claims and made them "High" Churchmen. The de- scription referred not to ceremonial but to doctrine.
The first Connecticut High Churchman, Doctor Samuel Johnson of Stratford, impressed his mentality so deeply that the Diocese bears its mark today. His thoughts came straight from the great Church of England theologians in the age of Kings Charles I and Charles II (1625-85) - the "Caroline Divines." From him Connecticut High Churchmanship derived its staunch defense of the three orders of the ministry (bishops, priests, and deacons) and of the Church's authority in matters of faith. From him came Connecticut's traditional, unalterable opposition to theological or ecclesiastical innovations, and the strong emphasis upon the sacraments, particularly the Holy Communion. From him came intense devotion to the Prayer Book and a passionate love for the
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Church, her ministry and sacraments, as the appointed channels of divine grace.
Stress upon the Church and the ministry distinguished Con- necticut High Churchmen from Evangelicals. The latter con- sidered the Church as "the blessed company of all faithful people," and would welcome anybody who approached the altar in faith. To High Churchmen the Church was the mystical body of Christ, a peculiarly sacred historic institution built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, with Jesus Christ as the chief corner- stone. One group stressed the human community of the Church, the other its divine authority.
The High Churchman differed from the Evangelical in stressing the relative significance of different portions of public worship. Preaching was all-important to the Evangelical and to the "Broad" or liberal Churchman. Some in these groups even gave the impression that it was the only meaningful part of public service. The High Churchman considered it as a means of in- struction in doctrine, history, and liturgy. To him prayer was a more effective means of grace, a more immediate and intimate communion with God, an expression of Christian dependence upon Him. This explains the old Connecticut custom of opening Episcopal churches for public prayer without a sermon.
But the most distinguishing mark of Connecticut High Churchmen was their doctrine of the Eucharist, derived from Doctor Johnson, who considered sacraments as an extension of Christ's incarnation. The idea is conveyed most clearly in his own words: "By dwelling in the tabernacle of his body he hath united himself to us, and dwelleth in all mankind, especially in all the faithful who are made members of his body by baptism and are partakers of his blessed Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist."1
This peculiar churchmanship was firmly rooted in Con- necticut before the Revolution through Johnson's preaching, writing, and vast personal influence upon his many theological students. He set his seal upon such eminent priests as Jeremiah Leaming, Bela Hubbard, Abraham Jarvis, and Samuel Seabury the younger.
Seabury's father was one of the "Connecticut converts," the firmest American Episcopalians in doctrinal position. The son's convictions were strengthened by his youthful visit to Scotland. There he encountered the small and persecuted Scottish Episcopal
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Church, which cherished the views of the "Caroline Divines" and of Doctor Johnson, respecting the Church's Catholic lineage. Ever after he stood like a rock in defense of the Church as a divine institution, of the Apostolic succession, and of the sacraments as the means of grace. He was elected bishop because the Connecticut clergy regarded his type of churchmanship as more important than his loyalty to King George III during the Revolution. (For a biographical sketch, see Appendix I)
Seabury cut deeper the stamp of Doctor Johnson upon Connecticut Churchmen. He insisted upon fundamental principles, declaring that "the government, sacraments, faith, and doctrines of the Church are fixed and settled." Church government was divinely committed to bishops, who were not honorary figureheads or mere agents of parishes. In keeping with his conviction that the bishop is a successor of the Apostles, he wore a mitre - symbol of the cloven flame that came upon them at Pentecost. The same conviction inspired his emphasis upon the sacrament of con- firmation. In his first charge to his clergy he called it "the actual communication of the Holy Spirit to those who worthily receive it." Unlike other contemporary American bishops, who paid it scant attention, he always administered the rite. He stressed support of the "Holy Catholic faith," defended the sacramental and regen- erating character of baptism, and exhorted his clergy to "hold fast, and contend earnestly for, the faith as it was once delivered to the saints."2
This was some forty years before the Oxford Catholic revival in the Church of England, which had such a startling effect upon the American Episcopal Church.
Seabury's doctrine of the Eucharist most clearly distinguished him, and became his peculiar legacy to Connecticut High Church- men. He described that sacrament as "the most solemn part of our public worship," not "a mere empty remembrance of Christ's death." He repeatedly declared: "We have therefore a right to believe and say, that in the Holy Communion, the faithful receiver does, in a mystical and spiritual manner, eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ .. . " He taught that Christ's offering of himself in the institution of the Eucharist was "fully completed and ren- dered effectual in the death on the cross." Christ offered himself as a priest and communicated his priesthood to the Apostles to
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qualify them to offer this Christian sacrifice. The laity also are priests of God because they are qualified to join in offering the Eucharist.3
In his first General Convention, of 1789, Seabury strove to place in the Prayer Book the Scottish form of the Eucharist, derived from the first English Prayer Book of 1549 and the liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox churches. The resulting Communion service was more complete and primitive than the English use, and committed the American Church to a strongly Catholic teaching. It was the unhappy lot of Connecticut High Churchmen to be misunderstood after the English Catholic revival in the 1830's, because some ex- tremists insisted upon interpretations and embellishments of the service that seemed alien and unnecessary.
Fundamentally, the old Connecticut High Churchmen were mystics, basing religion upon faith, tradition, and reason. They would have been at home in the early seventeenth century, and seemed oddly misplaced in the practical, reasonable eighteenth century. They were equally uneasy in the nineteenth, between scientific rationalism and a Roman Catholicism that attracted some Episcopalians by its sweeping claims to priestly authority and its elaborate ceremonial. Somewhere a middle way would have to be found, and eventually it appeared in Bishop Chauncey B. Brewster's ideal of the Catholic faith as expressed in the joint priesthood of the clergy and laity.
In the meantime, assailed by revivalist Protestantism, secular rationalism, and a rising Roman Catholicism, Connecticut High Churchmanship was not easy to define, or for the outsider to understand. Perhaps the best description of it was written in the 1840's by the Rev. Alonzo B. Chapin, rector of Christ Church, West Haven, where Samuel Johnson had ministered. "It has been the result of sober conviction, arising from a full and fair examination of all the evidence on both sides. Indeed, the Churchmanship of Connecticut, has ever been that calm and gentle stream, which the doctrines and practices of the Episcopal Church, must ever beget among those who follow its teachings, regardless of the storms of enthusiasm, or the bursts of fanaticism by which they may be surrounded. Sober and sedate, uniform and consistent, kind and obliging, but unyielding and uncompromising."4
The definition was not always so kindly and often read
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"high and dry." The inevitable tendency of a group to become self-satisfied provoked humorous comment. A Connecticut Church- man must have winced to read the acid words of the Rev. James DeKoven, a leader of the "advanced" High Churchmen in Wis- consin. He was born in Middletown and was ordained as a deacon by Bishop John Williams in 1854. "A modern Connecticut Churchman," he said, "seems to me like a man uncomfortably astraddle of a rail fence. The fence is a high one - no mean low affair, but thoroughly respectable, six bars in the least. The rail is sharp and cuts, but the Connecticut Churchman imagines it is the most delightful of situations. With lofty contempt he looks down on either side on Puseyite [follower of the English Anglo-Catholic, Edward Bouverie Pusey] and Evangelical, perfectly satisfied with himself and his position. His self-satisfaction is the melancholy part of it."5
This view of a far-advanced Anglo-Catholic need not be taken too literally. A better figure of speech might have depicted the Connecticut Churchmen as watchmen on the ramparts of a city. That was the attitude of such continuers of the Johnson and Sea- bury tradition as Bishops Jarvis, Brownell, and Williams, Bishop Jackson Kemper of the Northwest (once rector of St. Paul's, Nor- walk), and Thomas Bradbury Chandler. The latter, born in Wood- stock and educated at Yale, became the father-in-law of Bishop John Henry Hobart of New York, a man whose clear-cut convictions were deepened by his contact with Connecticut. Through him High principles thoroughly penetrated the great Diocese of New York before the Oxford Revival of the 1830's.
BISHOP BROWNELL, MODERATE
In Connecticut those principles had settled into a mold before the episcopate of Thomas Church Brownell, who continued the tradition of Seabury. He represented the moderate High Churchmen, and during his long service "Connecticut Church- manship" became a proverbial certificate of orthodoxy. Apart from the Bishop's utterances, its practically official organ of expression was the diocesan newspaper, The Watchman. The editorials, letters, and contributed essays mirrored the Connecticut mentality from about 1825 to 1832, just before the Oxford Revival began to agitate American Episcopalians.
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THE EVANGELICALS
And yet Connecticut was not a solid block of High Church- manship, and in fact gave to the American Church its first Evan- gelical, "Low Church" bishop, Alexander Viets Griswold of the Eastern Diocese, who was confirmed by Bishop Seabury in 1795. Two other bishops from Connecticut of the same stamp were Philander Chase of Ohio and Thomas March Clark of Rhode Island, who were both rectors of Christ Church, Hartford.
Another eminent Connecticut Evangelical was Alexander Hamilton Vinton, a physician from Pomfret, who was ordained in 1835 - ironically, by the High Church Bishop Benjamin T. Onder- donk of New York. He became an outstanding preacher in Phila- delphia, Boston, and New York, and deeply influenced the great Bishop Phillips Brooks of Massachusetts, who said of him: "The movement of his words was the heaving of the tide and not the sparkling of the spray."6 Vinton was an authority on canon law and a respected debater in General Convention, where in 1871 he made a memorable reply to James DeKoven's famous speech de- fending ritualism. He was associated with the "Broad Church" movement, and presided at the first Church Congress meeting in 1873.
Of like mind was Edward A. Washburn, rector of St. John's, Hartford, in 1854-62. Phillips Brooks, then in Philadelphia, was delighted when Washburn settled in the city. "I have just had a call," he wrote, "from a capital New England man, Dr. Washburn of Hartford, who has just come here to take charge of St. Mark's Church. He is a Cambridge [i.e., Harvard] man of the best kind in our ministry. He will be a great addition to our number of in- teresting men here."7 Washburn never failed to stir interest wher- ever he went, and the same was true of Edwin Harwood, the Evangelical rector of Trinity Church, New Haven.
THE ANGLO-CATHOLIC REVIVAL
Their battle had already been waged ever since the Church in America had begun to feel impulses from a great revival of Catholic devotion in the Church of England. The inspiration of that crusade lay in various mingling political and spiritual cur- rents. The romantic movement in literature led the intellectual classes to regard the Middle Ages more favorably and to appreci-
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ate Gothic art. (See Chapter Sixteen, under The Gothic Revival). In the Church a reaction from the excessive stress upon preaching turned the mind to contemplate the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, as the binding ties of the Christian community. Eco- nomic individualism, by its frequent exploitation of people, pro- voked a return to the ideal of Christian service and charity. The sheer ugliness of the new industrial towns stimulated a longing for beauty in literature and art, and in the Church's liturgy.
Politics played a part. The religious mentality of English liberal statesmen had been moulded by eighteenth-century ration- alism, and appeared disposed to reform the established Church of England. The bishops, who voted almost solidly against the parlia- mentary Reform Bill of 1832, were warned to "set their house in order." Many clergymen and laymen, regardless of their attitude towards political reform, suspected an intention to dis-establish the Church, or to amalgamate it with the Protestant Dissenters into a "liberal" national institution. Within a year after the Reform Bill, John Keble preached his famous sermon at Oxford, attacking liberal and rational tendencies to regard the Church as the politi- cal convention of a secularized society and government. That ser- mon aroused innumerable inarticulate people to a new conscious- ness of the Church's Catholic heritage - its Apostolic ministry, doctrine, and worship. Keble said in more learned terms what Connecticut High Churchmen and The Watchman had been saying for many years.
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