USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 28
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The consequence of this conviction is an effort to achieve a liturgical church arranged for family worship. There is a golden opportunity with newly populated areas calling for churches and older parishes outgrowing their buildings. Some new churches have free-standing altars in full view of the people, with room for significant liturgical action. After or with the presentation of the alms, the bread and wine are brought forward by members of the congregation from a credence table in the body of the church.
There is a growing opinion that the celebrant should face the people, which some scholars believe to have been the original intention of the reformers in the Church of England four centuries ago. It was the celebrant's position in the early churches. The idea is that the priest is not offering the Eucharist by himself, but con- jointly with the people, as their leader. There is also a trend toward making Morning Prayer a service of preparation for Communion.
Some parishes already have remodeled their churches ac- cording to the revived emphasis upon the Eucharist. Most churches in Connecticut are intended for Morning Prayer, with the pulpit
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prominently situated outside the Communion rail, opposite the large brass lectern. In some new churches pulpit and lectern are replaced by an ambo - a turning lectern with the Bible on one side and sermon notes on the other. Another alteration removes the choir from the chancel, where it is a survival from the mediaeval monastic cathedral choirs. In a rear balcony it can be properly conducted and not be a distraction from worship centered at the altar. If the parish insists upon a procession, the choir may be placed at one side of the sanctuary entrance. The aim to pro- mote popular worship is attaining some success.
LITURGICAL CHURCHES
This liturgical movement is promoting the trend toward simpler and more beautiful churches, and toward more reverent and suitable music.
It has long been known that the Diocese possesses a treasure in its churches built between 1785 and about 1840. Some of them were defaced in the late 1800's by foolish efforts to make them ap- pear "Gothic" or "modern." The Diocese was covered with a rash of hideous stained glass, false pinnacles and buttresses, beam work, violently yellow oak pews, tasteless reredoses, and ugly brass electric fixtures replacing beautiful crystal chandeliers.
Aided by the Commission on Church Architecture, in recent years many parishes have abolished excrescent decorations. Gloomy interiors have recaptured their original grace and lightness. Such was the transformation of a fine country church that was opened before 1820. The window blinds were flung wide to welcome the sun and banish the musty odor of country churches, which are closed during the week. The interior was cheerfully repainted, a crystal chandelier was repaired and cleaned to sparkling brightness, dark paintings were banished from the chancel and replaced by light paneling. The sanctuary assumed a new dignity, with antique chairs and a red damask dossal under the freshly cleaned palladian window. The result is a chaste and elegant simplicity - "neither too mean, nor yet too gay." This transformation was achieved by the generous gifts of members, some of whom earned the money by their own labor. One, a carpenter, executed the cabinet work for the new organ and made the paneling.
Another parish wrought a similar miracle with a stone
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church erected in the earlier phase of the Gothic Revival. The complete remodeling cost only $4,000, because much of the labor was contributed by members. Along with badly needed repairs, they installed new lighting and removed a decorated Gothic reredos to reveal a fine rose window, and replaced it by a dossal curtain. They painted the walls, ceiling and seats in pastel shades, sanded the floor and carpeted the aisles, then refloored, repainted and receiled the vestibule. The rectory became a more cheerful and convenient place to live in. A shower of memorial gifts provided new furnishings for the altar, pulpit and lectern, and equipment for the sacristy. The church attracts people from parishes of vari- ous faiths to see what can be done for a comparatively small cost and with real cooperation.
A persistent problem in restoring old churches is bad and sometimes irrelevant stained glass. The original idea of "storied windows richly dight" was to teach the Faith pictorially, by relat- ing the Bible story in carefully chosen incidents from the Creation to the Resurrection. In the nineteenth century this intention was largely ignored in the eagerness for memorial windows with little or no relation to each other.
The teaching ideal has been humbly demonstrated in one small church. A vestryman, assisted by a college student, made six small Gothic windows of glass painted with transparent lacquer. For the dedication the parish issued a descriptive leaflet which takes the reader on a spiritual pilgrimage through the history of the Church as illustrated by the windows. The glass is not a mere ornament to shed "a dim religious light," but depicts the principles and symbols of the Faith.
MUSIC
The ideal of employing the teaching resources of music in- spired the formation of a Diocesan Commission on Church Music, in 1951. A study of reports had revealed that about two-thirds of the parishes spent less than $400 a year for music. The aim is to help such congregations, especially where the problem is left to the rector or to laymen with inadequate training. (See Chapter Seventeen, under Music)
The Commission immediately swung into action, led by the priest-musician, William E. Soule of Christ Church in Quaker
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Farms. One of its first efforts was to encourage institutes of church music on Sunday in various parts of the diocese. The first, in Octo- ber 1951, attracted about one hundred persons. The lectures covered such topics as the organ in hymn accompaniment, the resources of the hymnal, and directing the choir of a small church.
Another inspiring and effective approach is through many local hymn sings and lectures, usually on Sunday evenings. The Commission has advised many parishes on the choice and salary of an organist, the purchase, rebuilding or repair of the organ, and the problems of new or unskilled organists and choir directors. One of the chief difficulties is to guide a good secular musician who does not comprehend the requirements of the Church service. The chairman acts as interpreter, when the rector knows what he wants but has not the knowledge to talk with the musician in his professional language.
Probably the Commission's greatest accomplishment has been the choir festivals. The first meeting, in the spring of 1952, attracted one hundred and seventy-five choristers from twenty parishes, who sang a complete service of choral evensong with two anthems suitable for parish churches. The Music Institute is an annual event, with permanent committees to promote festivals throughout the diocese.
Local institutes have heard addressses by distinguished or- ganists, choirmasters, and teachers of music from parishes and schools within and outside the diocese. They welcome musicians, directors, choristers, and clergy, and the layman who wants to par- ticipate in the service. The lectures and discussions cover the whole field of liturgical music. Intermissions in the program are occasionally enlivened by playing recordings of Anglican chanting and Communion services.
The festivals provide an opportunity for stimulating fellow- ship, and enable smaller choirs to sing in large choruses under skilled direction. They introduce new music for use in routine work, and afford the experience of singing music more difficult than many choirs would usually attempt. One of their thrilling and memorable occasions was the festival of thirteen boy choirs at Christ Church Cathedral in 1955. The gathering was then host to the choir of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, and the service was a full choral evensong, with several anthems.
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At other meetings the music has included compositions by modern composers and by such old masters as Palestrina and Bach.
The festivals have been immensely successful and enjoyable, and have raised parish music to a standard which nobody would have considered possible.
CATHOLIC PARISH LIFE
As Bishop Brewster often said, Catholic devotion begins in the parish, in cordial fellowship between the pastor and the laymen who call him. Parishioners, he held, should avoid "lay popery," dictation to their pastor, and they should choose him with an appropriate and reverent deference to the Bishop's rights and wisdom. Increasing respect for this ideal has brought greater recognition of the Diocese as the true unit of Church life. Bishop Brewster's influence through the laymen's Church Club resulted in a growing debt of the parish and the Diocese to laymen for giv- ing their time and ability. The men gradually have begun to rival the women's traditional self-sacrifice.
Their services as lay-readers have been inestimable. Fol- lowing Bishop Brewster's suggestion, the Diocese has made more and more use of readers, who sometimes for long periods have sus- tained small parishes and missions without resident pastors. The Diocese has become more careful to renew their licenses annually, and has introduced training courses ending in a solemn service of induction. Some readers have served as preachers and evangelists, especially through the Church Army. But there is still too much failure of laymen to act as priests in maintaining regular family worship.
Parish financial support has steadily improved since 1915, when Bishop Brewster pointed to the Every Member Canvass as a way to fulfill the lay priesthood. The results have been not only enlarged income, but also reawakened interest and enthusiasm, and stiffened determination not to lean upon questionable money-mak- ing schemes. In the hard 1930's the laity supported Bishop Bud- long's blistering condemnation of raffles, games of chance, and bingo - "methods which seek profits from people's hope of getting something for nothing."7 A more earnest spirit has supported churches in summer resorts, by sending names of vacationers from home parishes to the pastors.
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Promotion of Catholic parochial life received new vigor in the 1940's from Bishop Gray. He frankly admitted that in every parish regular worshippers, servers, and givers are a minority. To strengthen parochial devotion, in 1947 he helped to organize arch- deaconry conferences of clergymen, vestrymen, and executive com- mittee members. The program assumed that the great missionary fields are inactive members and "unchurched" areas.
Perhaps no expression of lay stewardship has been more obvious than the growing concern for church buildings, which often had been painfully lacking under the old parochialism. It expresses an emerging conviction that the good name of the Dio- cese is injured by inadequate and untended buildings. A high standard has been maintained by the Committee on Parochial Architecture, which holds many meetings and reports annually to the Convention. Its tireless chairman for many years, the Rev. Nelson R. Pearson, of St. Paul's in Woodbury, has traveled thou- sands of miles and held innumerable advisory conferences. The effect is evident in a vast general improvement of church property and an increased community of Diocesan interests.
DIOCESAN CO-OPERATION
The new spirit in churchmanship gained headway rapidly through the Diocesan Conference, which first met in January 1915 at Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown. Clergymen, laymen, and students heard addresses on the work in prisons and jails, Church and State agencies for dependent people, diocesan missions, minis- try to the foreign-born, relations to the Church's educational agen- cies, and the devotional aspect of the clergyman's life and work. Sectional conferences considered the apportionment of financial support, the diocesan paper, Sunday Schools, work among men and boys, and the Brotherhood of Saint Andrew. Despite criticism of its crowded schedule, the meeting inspired a hope of annual repetition, and a longing for greater Diocesan solidarity.
Slowly the new spirit permeated the Diocese. Among its best effects was an increasingly intelligent participation by the lay priesthood in furthering Diocesan and general missions. For many years Connecticut had struggled against a heavy roadblock of pa- rochial indifference to regular contributions, especially for external missions. Few parishes had been willing even to hear a missionary,
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and too many had persisted in cake and rummage sales to raise the funds. Even as late as 1929, Bishop Acheson bluntly warned that holding back money would force the Diocese to borrow for the general mission quota and even the stipends of Diocesan mission- aries. He and Bishop Budlong never stopped exhorting, and in spite of depression and war aided parishes and missions have made gradual, steady progress towards self-support.
This would have been impossible without the unflinching, hard work of diocesan lay organizations, especially during World War II. The Diocese is proud of its incomparable Woman's Aux- iliary, which guaranteed the success of campaigns in behalf of the Bishop Rowe Memorial Fund for Alaska, the Church Mission of Help, Aid to British Missions, the Army and Navy Chaplains' Fund, the Presiding Bishop's Plan, and the revived Connecticut Churchman. Not far behind were the tried and true Daughters of the King, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Diocesan Altar Guild, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and the Young People's Fellowship.
The long darkness of depression and war was brightened by a dawning spirit of greater mutual helpfulness and brotherhood. In the 1930's the Diocese gave sympathy and aid to the flood-torn parish of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, and contributions to re- build burned churches at Brookfield and Northford, and to repair the tower and spire of Christ Church in Stratford after a furious gale. When the devastating hurricane of 1938 seriously damaged some twenty churches along the Sound, the Diocese generously re- sponded to Bishop Budlong's pastoral letter requesting help. Church schools gave their Advent offerings to build a parish room for St. John's, East Hampton, and the Bishop successfully appealed for money to erect a new building for St. Mark's, Bridgeport. The sacrificial spirit benefitted the Diocesan Chest, the Association for the Preservation of the Glebe House, the Episcopal Church Home in Hartford, and the Berkeley Divinity School.
The same period witnessed a new zeal among the clergy for religious, educational, and civic undertakings. They success- fully sponsored weekday classes for religious education in many parishes and missions, and encouraged the Camp Washington Con- ferences for representatives of the Young People's Fellowship. In the New London and Middlesex Archdeaconries they took turns for Sunday services in vacant parishes and missions. Quiet days
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for clergymen and laymen have become more general, especially in Advent. Clerical interest in secular social work and education has realized Bishop Brewster's ideal of religion penetrating and spiritualizing contemporary life. Priests have served as chaplains in state institutions, and have participated in establishing better relations between labor and management. A few have emulated the rector of St. George's, Bridgeport, who in 1938-1939 conducted a non-sectarian "Institute of Cultural Subjects."
These trends toward Diocesan unity have been strengthened by the personal relations of the bishops to the clergy and the peo- ple. After Edward Campion Acheson became suffragan bishop in 1915, the Diocese became accustomed to an annual confirmation in each parish and mission. The Bishops have accepted as many invitations as possible to preach at special services. They attend meetings of clerical associations, archdeaconries, and district or- ganizations of the Woman's Auxiliary, and keep in touch with members of other communions and with secular colleges and schools. Bishop Budlong sincerely regretted that he could not ac- cept half of the invitations to meet his people, but believed that he served the Diocese better by reserving more time to talk privately with priests and laymen about their problems.
THE CONNECTICUT CHURCHMAN
The bishops have tried to knit the ties with their flock through the Connecticut Churchman, which is the latest in a suc- cession of papers and magazines that have mirrored the character and interests of Connecticut Church life. For some time Connecti- cut had no diocesan paper. The brief and unsettled careers of its predecessors did not suggest a long life for the new Connecticut Churchman, which Bishop Brewster hopefully established in 1906. For years he had dreamed that it would unify the Diocese, which to him seemed to be a loosely-bound collection of parishes without community spirit. Launched as a one-year experiment, the paper soon encountered the usual financial trials of religious periodicals. And there was the perennial question whether it should appeal to the clergy or be a budget of parochial and diocesan news for the layman. The first editor, the Rev. George T. Linsley, aimed at the latter ideal and strove to make the paper also the Bishop's official organ, and to avoid controversy and partisan spirit. To him and
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to his successors, the Rev. Doctor Fleming James and the Rev. Louis I. Belden, the Diocese owed a heavy debt of gratitude.
The Churchman languished in spite of their efforts, and by 1921 was so feeble that the Convention appointed a committee to recommend a remedy. They must have wondered whether they were performing a diagnosis or an autopsy, and finally handed the patient to one doctor - a capable editor. Bishop Brewster pressed the clergy to drum up subscribers and even suggested that ves- tries should buy and distribute copies. His help, Bishop Acheson's usual zeal, and hard work by the committee and the Church Club saved the paper from beseeching the Convention to pay a deficit. Next year the committee aimed at a copy for every Churchman - a grandiose ideal that has never been attained. Parishes dragged their feet in getting subscriptions, and editors did not usually survive long.
Although Bishop Budlong was eager to continue the paper and besought the Convention to help, shrinking budgets during the Great Depression made it a fifth wheel on the wagon. In 1932 the Convention appropriated only fifty dollars, and passed the bur- den to the Executive Council, which evidently was expected to read a sentence of execution. Bishop Budlong stayed the heads- man's arm by calling The Churchman "indispensable." After great effort, by 1936 the subscribers had grown from a pitiful ninety to eight hundred, which still did not meet the costs.
Although the editor and his staff made it more interesting, the paper still reached hardly one-half of one per cent of the homes, and Bishop Budlong anxiously looked for somebody to con- ceive a brilliant plan to get it into every house in the Diocese. The laity did not rush to give advice, and as late as 1945 the Bishop was startled to meet people who had never even heard of The Churchman. Better contents, prompt publication, and increased circulation resulted when the Rev. Ralph D. Read and Mr. G. B. Reynolds Meade took charge in 1941, backed by the Church Club, the Woman's Auxiliary, and the Girls' Friendly Society, which sub- scribed for every member. With its more eye-catching format, the paper is now one of the best diocesan publications in the nation.
The Connecticut Churchman has been a channel of com- munication between the Bishop and his people, and a promoter of religious causes.
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PART FOUR
THE SOCIAL OUTLOOK
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EDUCATION
PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
TN colonial times few Episcopalians favored the S. P. G. schools, which bore the stigma of charity to apprentices, servants, and slaves. They usually patronized the common schools managed by town "school societies," but they still resented the virtual control of such schools by the Congregational parishes. In 1738 the Episcopalians vainly opposed a law that deprived them of a share in the school funds derived from the sale of public lands. As late as 1798 the Assembly refused to permit them to form their own school societies.
When the democratic reformers began to demand better schools, many Episcopalians supported them. In 1830 the Episco- pal Watchman threw its powerful influence behind the campaign, advocating morally sound and adequately educated teachers and improved schools for better citizenship. Episcopalians often fol- lowed the Churchman's advice to read the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe's classic report on primary education in Europe.
The editor of the magazine shared the concern of numer- ous Churchmen about the increasingly secular character of the public schools. In 1838 the General Convention ordered a com- mittee to consider more effective provision for education, especial- ly in parochial schools. But in 1840 Bishop Brownell publicly op- posed such schools as superfluous, and endorsed the public sys- tem as useful "in destroying party and sectarian prejudices, and in promoting the general union and common welfare."1 A committee of the Diocesan Convention agreed with him, but warned parents and clergymen against sectarian and secular teaching.
Episcopalians were disturbed by the widespread rumors that some public schools used textbooks hostile to their Church. In 1846 the Convention appointed an investigating committee, and next year the suspicion was aggravated by a violent quarrel about
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alleged Congregational bias in Plymouth. The rector of St. Peter's hotly charged that public funds were used to promote anti-Episco- pal ideas. The offending books were not withdrawn and the incident excited intense irritation.
The Convention's committee believed that local vigilance and legislative action would correct such conditions, and con- sidered parochial schools as impractical because of the expense of equalling public instruction, for which Churchmen paid taxes. The clergy and the laity should promote improved, non-sectarian com- mon schools and encourage Christian education in home and church. This attitude was entirely acceptable to Bishop Brownell, who emphatically repeated his endorsement of public education.
Many Churchmen still believed that Sunday and public schools could not give adequate religious training. Some even as- serted that secular public schools were in effect anti-religious. This small but ardent parochial school movement was led by several bishops, including George Washington Doane and Jackson Kem- per, who had ministered in Connecticut. They were encouraged by the Episcopalian Journal of Christian Education, edited by the influential Rev. Benjamin O. Peers. The General Convention and the mass of Episcopalians were never convinced. By the 1870's the movement was declining, except in states which had not established good public schools.
In Connecticut zealous friends of the movement established a few parochial schools. A typical one flourished in St. John's par- ish, Hartford; the rector, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, earnestly wanted it. In 1845 the wealthy merchant, William T. Lee, a founder of the parish, endowed a small school for girls. It offered "the elements of a truly Christian education," under the auspices of the rector and an English teacher, Mary Vallant.
The Diocese displayed very slight inclination to follow this example. The Church Review in 1854 warmly praised Connecti- cut's higher and secondary schools. Trinity College, the Berkeley Divinity School, the Episcopal Academy and several private semi- naries were flourishing, but there were few parochial schools. In 1915 the Committee on the State of the Church reported no such schools in the Diocese.
Recent years have seen a revival of interest in private day schools, especially for young children. The motive is a conviction
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that public schools are overcrowded and lacking in personal at- tention, and that Sunday instruction is too brief to be effective. The new movement is represented by three schools - the Abbie Loveland Tuller School in Fairfield, St. Paul's Day School in River- side (non-parochial), and a parochial school in St. Thomas's parish, New Haven. But the Sunday church school remains the mainstay of religious education.
SUNDAY SCHOOLS
The Sunday school was the distinguishing characteristic of religious education in the early nineteenth century. It was almost unknown until the 1780's, when Robert Raikes of Gloucester, Eng- land, secured hired and volunteer instructors to teach reading, writing, and elementary religion to neglected children. The idea fired the imagination of Church people for it solved the problems of religious variances in public schools and frequent parental neglect of religious training.
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