USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 31
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EARLY MINISTRY TO THE NEEDY
Resumption of friendly relations encouraged Connecticut Churchmen to help the Board of Missions in alleviating the eco- nomic and religious destitution among Negro freedmen. This was one aspect of a growing general concern for the poor, dependent, and depressed classes, which began much earlier. Among its first evidences were the Episcopal Female Charitable Society, founded in New Haven in 1815, and the many women's guilds to sew for the poor, like the ladies' Sewing Society of St. John's Church, Hartford. The same parish's Benevolent Society was organized in 1851-52 to help immigrants and strangers. Urged by the Episcopal Watchman, in the 1830's Churchmen began to display more interest in the education of the deaf and dumb, humane treatment of the in- sane, and reformation of alcoholics. Churchmen were prominent in the establishment of hospitals, notably the Hartford Hospital, which began in the 1850's as the Home for the Sick.
The pitiful fate of many orphans and elderly widows stim- ulated a movement to found homes for them. In 1860 Holy Trinity Church, Middletown, established St. Luke's Home, and four Hart- ford parishes founded the Widow's Home, in accordance with a bequest by George Beach. Two years later came Trinity Church Home in New Haven, promoted especially by the rector, Edwin Harwood, a leader in religious philanthropic and reform causes. The city's second parish followed by starting St. Paul's Church Home for Older Women.
Hartford has the Church Home, the Widow's Home, and "Armsmear," created by a bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth Hart Colt and
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housed in her former home. Norwich has the Eliza Huntington Memorial Home. In 1885 Lemuel J. Curtis, a senior warden of St. Andrew's parish, founded Meriden's Curtis Home and Infirmary for aged women and orphaned or destitute children. Two years later the oldest parish in Stamford opened St. John's Church House to care for sick, injured, aged and infirm persons and orphans. The medical service was abandoned after the opening of a local hospital. The Church in Connecticut now has only one hospital, Saint Luke's Convalescent Hospital in Christ Church Parish, Greenwich.
These benevolences have given the Diocese an enviable reputation for the care of the dependent. They have provided help, education, and religious ministrations for thousands, including many outside the local parishes or even the Episcopal Church. Innumerable parishioners have served as trustees and in the women's auxiliaries, and many priests have ministered as chaplains. The homes express local and personal generosity and depend upon gifts, subscriptions, and endowments. Their care is devoted mostly to women, but recently the Ridge Road (Wethersfield) Residence of the Church Home of Hartford has begun a new ministry. It ad- mits retired clergymen with their wives as residents, in rent-free apartment cottages.
The problem of needy men has troubled Connecticut Churchmen for many years. Efforts to solve it have advanced social concern into the broader field of general urban welfare service. One attempt with wide influence is the Open Hearth Mission of Hartford. It was founded on the poor "East Side" in 1884, largely by William Ford Nichols, rector of Christ Church and later Bishop of California. He inspired the youths of St. Paul's Guild to help destitute men who haunted saloons and cheap lodging houses. The mission was maintained by his successor, Floyd W. Tomkins, who secured its incorporation with a board of Episcopalian trustees. One longtime superintendent was John H. Jackson, who became rector of St. Andrew's parish. Under his administration, in 1908, the mission erected a combined chapel and dormitory, which later sheltered St. Paul's Italian Church.
The Open Hearth has given lodging, meals, clothing, reading, and recreation to innumerable men, and employed them in the woodyard and the garden. It has welcomed many just released from jail, and restored them to their homes, families, and friends.
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In summer the playground has been a haven for mothers and children, and the clothing bureau has given free garments to needy families. The superintendents have held morning and evening services, visited prisoners and the sick, consulted with the troubled, preached from a "gospel wagon," and conducted children's services and outings.
This example inspired similar missions. One was the Holly- wood Inn, founded in 1901 by Edmund Guilbert, rector of Trinity Church in Southport. Supported by parish patrons and sub- scriptions from Townspeople, the inn furnished a restaurant, a library, and recreation. For years it was a home for many lonely or unemployed workingmen, whose only other resort was the saloon.
SOCIAL AWAKENING
Efforts to reach the poor expressed an uneasy feeling that accompanied the growth of urbanism and industry after the Civil War. Homes and parochial charity were not enough; the Church had to abandon parochialism and exclusiveness and penetrate society. This change of heart occurred in the full current of the Social Gospel movement from 1877 to 1914.
A hint of the revolution appeared in the 1850's, in a heated controversy about the abolition of pew rent in favor of free seats. Essays in the American Quarterly Church Review, in 1856-1860, stirred the Church from coast to coast and were widely read in Connecticut. One of the most outspoken free-church champions was the Hartford City Missionary, Charles R. Fisher. "Father" Fisher's church on the poor "East Side" was the forerunner of others founded to reach those who could not afford cushioned pews. Leading pastors vigorously promoted the city missions by essays in Episcopal magazines, and praised particularly the St. Paul's Church City Mission in New Haven. They criticized the neglect of evangelism in the poor wards and among immigrants and Negroes, and demanded free mission churches and schools to be supported by wealthy parishes.
The Civil War was a painful awakening to philanthropists, who met wage-earners in the army and perceived the Church's failure to affect them. Their remarks inspired the Board of Missions to appoint a committee on means to remedy the neglect. The report
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granted Episcopalian generosity to homes, hospitals, and missions, but bluntly pointed out "a want of adaptation" to working men and youths, and a lack of cordiality to the poor. The committee's sug- gestions anticipated many later approaches, including special at- tention to housing, household economy, recreation and reading, trained clergymen to cope with bad living conditions, seminary courses to acquaint the young clergy with social realities, and specially educated lay workers and teachers.
This was a more comprehensive program than most Epis- copalians then would accept. Many believed that emancipation of slaves had solved the nation's chief social problem. They did not perceive that the war had enormously accelerated urban in- dustrialism and the growth of corporations and labor organizations. Mushrooming cities meant poverty, slums, and vast hordes of im- migrant laborers. Radical foreign political doctrines threatened a "class war" and violent revolution.
Old-stock Americans, including most Episcopalians, were confused and appalled by these trends. Their fears were aggravated by economic depression in the 1870's, and by savage railroad strikes in 1877, which brought some regions to the verge of civil war. The unrest persisted, punctuated by flares of violence like the Hay- market bombing in Chicago and the ugly Pullman strike of 1893. Social discontent exploded in the radical Populist movement, and encouraged a steady and ominous rise of the Socialist vote.
Intelligent Episcopalians perceived these menacing ten- dencies and troubled consciences kept their pens busy. Church magazines after 1875 teemed with essays on democratizing the Church, and on labor unions, working conditions, slums, the mini- mum wage, socialism, and the just treatment of the immigrant. These articles were read by rectors of city churches, seminary teachers, and students. Through them a new social consciousness gradually penetrated to the man and woman in the pew. One of the interested young rectors was Chauncey B. Brewster of Brooklyn, New York, who was destined to become Bishop of Connecticut.
The Church was poorly prepared to apply the Social Gospel. Most clergymen thought in theological rather than social terms, and the middle and upper class laity had little contact with social evils. They were offended when political reformers and labor leaders criticized the churches as fashionable clubs, and organized
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religion as soothing syrup. They knew nothing of economic history, and could not comprehend the desperate fear of a few religious leaders: that unrestrained industrialism would dehumanize people and lead to materialistic communism and "collective" tyranny.
Most laymen did not realize that the Social Gospel was, as Shailer Mathews said, "the application of the teaching of Jesus and the total message of the Christian salvation to society, the economic life, and social institutions ... as well as to individuals."2 It was not a foreign importation, but had deep American roots in the Puri- tan and Quaker ideal of Christ's Kingdom upon earth. It was nurtured by democratic idealism, and by Christian insistence upon the dignity of man and the good life. The leaders were nearly all Anglo-Americans. One was Frederick Dan Huntington, the Boston Unitarian who became an Episcopalian and eventually Bishop of Central New York. Another was Bishop Brewster, a descendant of the Pilgrim Elder, William Brewster. Their ideals were strengthened by the influence of Evangelical social reformers in the Church of England, and by the writings of Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley, the English Christian Socialists.
Episcopalians began to speak boldly on the "condition of the people question." Among them was Edward A. Washburn, rector of Calvary Church, New York, and formerly rector of St. John's, Hartford. His sermons, The Social Law of God, condemned un- healthy working conditions, crowded tenements, child labor, a- dulterated foods, and false advertising. William S. Rainsford, rector of St. George's in New York, found his church withering from the migration to more fashionable streets. He made his parish elevate the neighborhood by becoming a spiritually directed social center. Among his youthful curates was Ernest deFremery Miel, who in 1893 became the rector of Trinity Church, Hartford.
Miel's arrival, and that of Bishop Brewster a few years later, speeded the progress of the Social Gospel. Within a few years the Diocese was throbbing with the zeal of clergymen and laymen like them. They were encouraged by several national religious reform organizations, to which some of them belonged.
Moral and intellectual support came from the Church Con- gress, said to have been the first semi-official group in a major American denomination to emphasize the discussion of social questions. It was founded in 1874, with the sympathy of Bishop
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Williams and the Rev. Edwin Harwood of Trinity Church, New Haven. The meeting to discuss organization gathered in Harwood's parish. The first formal meeting set the tone by hearing a paper on "Mutual Christian Obligations of Capital and Labor." Connecticut priests and laymen appeared prominently in the reports, as lecturers and participants in discussion. Among them was Mr. Miel, who later became the head of the diocesan Commission of Social Service.
Connecticut Churchmen caught the Social Gospel spirit also from popular novels with religious themes. Many read Winston Churchill's The Inside of the Cup, portraying the struggle of an Episcopal rector to practice social religion. They shuddered at Upton Sinclair's The Jungle - on the sordid conditions in the pack- ing industry - and Frank Norris's The Octopus - dramatizing the injustices of railroad monopoly. Many priests and some laymen were deeply affected by the bold books of the Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch, particularly Christianity and the Social Crisis and The Social Principles of Jesus.
Connecticut Episcopalians who demanded social justice re- ceived practical support from the national Church. As early as 1877 a committee of the General Convention studied the alienation of the laboring classes, and their report emphasized the social obligations of propertied and cultured people. The result was a widespread movement for Church workingmen's clubs.
Many years of voluntary action culminated in the General convention's official recognition of the Social Gospel. The session of 1901 appointed a standing commission on relations between capital and labor. In 1910 this became the Committee on Social Service, which grew into a department of the National Council in 1922. Over the years the General Convention passed many re- solutions asserting the Church's right to discuss controversial social questions.
Official recognition coincided with Bishop Brewster's episcopate and with the Progressive political reform movement headed by Theodore Roosevelt. The latter's admiring followers included many eminent Churchmen and he knew and respected leaders of the Social Gospel, like William S. Rainsford, Washington Gladden, and Lyman Abbott. The Progressive Convention that nominated Roosevelt for President in 1912 sang hymns and wore the aspect of a religious crusade. Religious and political reform
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movements converged between 1896 and 1920, when the Diocese became deeply concerned with urban and rural missions, the foreign-born, and social service. The effect was an astonishing outburst of spiritually inspired social concern, far broader than the parochial philanthropy of the period 1860-1885.
The new spirit found its voice in Bishop Brewster's address to the Diocesan Convention in 1907. "The added weight of em- phasis to-day upon social service is the pressure of the finger of God, the insistence of the Spirit of the living God, guiding men into more and more of the truth. . . The mission of the Church as re- gards the social relations of men is a broad subject, whether you consider the things the Church may not wisely interfere in, or the things she may not in loyalty to her Lord ignore."3
Five years later Bishop Brewster summarized the new social creed in his widely read book, The Kingdom of God and American Life, a collection of addresses, sermons, and magazine essays. The Bishop proclaimed his faith in the solution of economic and political problems through ethical reform. He regarded the Church as the instrument to introduce the Kingdom of God upon earth, a uni- versal democratic brotherhood devoted to the common welfare. He repudiated Marxian Socialist materialism and class warfare, which would lose their appeal if Christians socialized their religion.
ORGANIZATION
The bishop's book gave intellectual vitality to the Social Gospel movement. His address of 1907 gave it practical expression, inspiring the Convention to follow General Convention's re- commendation, by empowering the Bishop to appoint a Commission of Social Service and Social Research. Vigorous action could be expected from the clergymen he named: Ernest deF. Miel, John N. Lewis, and James DeWolf Perry. Norris G. Osborn, one of the laymen, was an expert in penology and a director of the State Pris- on. Schuyler Merritt of Stamford, a Republican political leader, knew the key man in the legislature. Judge L. P. Waldo Marvin of Hartford possessed the economic and legal knowledge to define what the Church could honestly and wisely recommend.
Constantly supported by Bishop Brewster, the Commission soon began to influence social legislation. Its policy favored local study of particular needs, and action to meet them without dupli-
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cating the work of existing agencies. The Church's mission was to be to lead society in Christian service. Upon a motion by Henry E. Rees, one of Mr. Miel's parishioners, the Convention endorsed this strategy, which is still being followed.
The Commission held several meetings a year and con- centrated upon general evils. Cooperating with other churches, within a few years it helped to achieve many long overdue reforms. Among them were a state juvenile reformatory, restriction of child labor, better inspection of public welfare institutions, working men's compensation, employer's liability, better laws for sanitation and tenement housing, and regulation of the sale of alcoholic beverages. In 1912 the Convention supported the Commission's policy, and upon motion by Mr. Miel authorized cooperation with the Con- necticut Federation of Churches "in all matters relating to the social welfare of the State and the community."4
Bold action was criticized by people who believed that the Church should not "interfere" in social and economic affairs. Bishop Brewster loyally backed the Commission, continually pointed to menacing social evils and insisted upon the Church's right to bear witness against injustice and oppression. In his Convention address of 1914 he said: "The Church has a mission to proclaim a truce to class war and to make itself unmistakably seen and felt as the catholic commonwealth of man."" He received a deserved honor, when General Convention in 1913 elected him as chairman of the Church's permanent Joint Commission on Social Service.
By that time the urban clergy were preaching on social service, serving on welfare committees, and organizing social study classes. Many parishes reported members engaged in such work, and lent their buildings to welfare work and community service. The Committee on Rural Work was united with the Commission, which urged cooperation between city and country churches. An encouraging example was the summer home for sickly city children, conducted for many years by the Rev. A. P. Chapman, rector of Trinity Church, Northfield. Another was the summer camp of Grace Church, Hartford, during the ministry of the Rev. F. F. H. Nason. City churches helped young working people to secure de- cent lodgings and associations.
The Girls' Friendly Society organized its own social service department, which studied how to improve child labor laws, factory
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sanitation, household economy, protection for travelers, hygiene, and vocational guidance. The Society offered vacations for girls at its lodge in the hills of Canaan, and worked constantly with the Consumers' League, the Travelers' Aid Society, and the Camp- fire Girls.
In 1914 Mr. Miel took a well-earned rest by resigning the Commission's chairmanship to the Rev. George L. Paine. Miel's policy continued, with special emphasis upon temperance, an annual conference on social service, prison and jail work, ministry in public welfare institutions, and work among boys and young men. Tireless pressure helped to establish a home for the feeble- minded in Mansfield and a home for inebriates in Norwich. And those victories were won by busy men without a paid agent. Their regular reports in the Connecticut Churchman kept the Diocese alert to social needs, and Mr. Paine's watchful eye followed hearings on proposed social legislation, at which commissioners frequently appeared.
Some cherished ideals never were attained. The Diocese continued to lag in providing adequately for the aged, the sick, and the helpless. The Bishop was eager to found a home for elderly men and couples, to begin more care of orphans, and even to found a hospital. His investigating committee hoped that benevolence would meet these needs, but their plans have remained largely unfulfilled.
The real cause of failure was lack of social education, which Bishop Brewster sought to remedy by an Institute of Applied Christianity to train laymen for competent volunteer social work. This goal was reached, largely by the efforts of Floyd S. Kenyon, rector of Christ Church in West Haven, a leader in youth ministry. In 1917 he and several other priests and laymen founded a camp for social and educational welfare and recreation, which has evolved into the Diocesan Conference Center and camp at East Morris. (See Chapter Twenty-Four, under The Evolution of Camp Washington. )
While this battle was being won, the Church seemed to be losing another one. The temperance cause had always attracted some Episcopalians, while it stressed voluntary abstinence, and diocesan conventions were persuaded to pass temperance res- olutions. That was enough for most Churchmen, who rejected
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prohibition as coercive, an abandonment of confidence in individual responsibility. In 1881 a small band founded the Church Tem- perance Society, which the General Convention approved as "this admirable and blessed agency for the cure and prevention of one of the most menacing evils of the day."6 But in 1892 the House of Bishops rejected a prohibition petition by the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
In Connecticut the temperance cause found a determined chief in George L. Paine, and in 1911 the Diocesan Convention appointed a committee to study the problem. Its only achievement was to request the clergy to preach on temperance, and to dis- tribute information on the evils of overindulgence. Almost with a resigned sigh, the members finally shifted responsibility to the al- ready burdened Social Service Commission.
World War I gave the prohibitionists a golden opportunity to push their cause on the grounds of moral control in a crisis. The Church Temperance Society swung over to them, only to regret it when prohibition proved to be a dismal failure. The Diocesan Convention surrendered - for a time - and quite meekly passed Paine's resolution urging prohibition for the period of the war and demobilization. The action was justified as an aid to national health, economy, and morality, and as an example to our allies - who were not in the least disposed to follow it.
Church leaders enjoined obedience to the prohibition law, and the Convention authorized the Social Service Commission to conduct an educational campaign, "to bring about the abolition of the liquor traffic" and "to conquer this modern slave trade."7 But before long most Churchmen realized that prohibition did not express their convictions. Their easy attitude toward evasion of the law alarmed the Commission, which prodded the Con- vention to appeal for the support of temperance. Bishop Brewster added a few pointed remarks on the majesty of law. But the repeal tide was already racing, and in 1927 a questionnaire revealed a strong sentiment among the clergy in favor of modification. By 1933 repeal was in sight, and Bishop Acheson called upon the Diocese to face the inevitable and appealed to individual re- sponsibility to avoid excess. "To make people abstain by force of law has proved to be a failure; it is now our task to make people temperate by example and persuasion."8
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A potent example soon arose in "Alcoholics Anonymous," dedicated to redeeming chronic drinkers. Another effective ally is the Yale University Summer School of Alcohol Studies, which has held annual conferences of clergymen and laymen. Its work is associated with the Diocesan Department of Christian Social Relations, and with the State's Commission on Alcoholism, which supervises clinics and a hospital. Some of the conferences have met at Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford, and representatives of the Diocese attend the annual Conference on Alcohol Studies at North Conway, New Hampshire.
World War I brought a serious curtailment of the Social Service Commission's work. Several vigorous members left the Diocese and Mr. Miel and Mr. Paine served as chaplains. Postwar problems revived activity under the chairmanship of Dean William P. Ladd of the Berkeley Divinity School. The addition of women members provided a closer contact with the social problems of women and girls. The Commission helped to compile a widely circulated survey of proposed social legislation, which Churchmen urged upon the attention of legislative committees.
An incessant campaign of education placed the Diocese in the front rank of the Social Gospel movement. Doctor F. C. Lauderburn, the commission's tireless educational secretary, aroused the Church's conscience by his courses on the social implications of the Gospel. One notable accomplishment was the creation of the State Child Welfare Commission, headed by Dean Ladd and including several other Episcopalians. Other achievements were an investigation to improve almshouses, and the movement in favor of a juvenile court law and a children's bureau.
Early in 1922 came the long-desired elevation of the Com- mission into the diocesan Social Service Department, headed by Floyd S. Kenyon. A special committee cooperated with the Church Club, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Daughters of the King, the Knights of Washington, and the Brotherhood of Saint Andrew. The Department at once advocated a diocesan home for the aged and promoted more extensive work among young people, Camp Washington for boys and men, and the Church Mission of Help for young women and girls. Bishop Brewster supported this ambitious program, and in 1922 renewed his plea for industry dedicated to human needs and common welfare, and repudiated the communist
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