USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 37
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In the "Gilded Age" after the war, social maladies began to awaken the Church's conscience. (See Chapter Twenty-Three, The Social Gospel) Prominent among them was the increase of divorce, which Bishop Williams excoriated as "sapping every foundation of domestic virtue and happiness."1 He blamed the situation upon the prevalent view of marriage as a purely civil contract. At his suggestion, many Churchmen petitioned the General Assembly to change the lenient law, which he considered as "a disgrace to any Christian community" and a threat to "the divine institution of the family."2
The Diocese cooperated with other churches to secure re- form, and their united efforts persuaded the Legislature to adopt provisions for longer delay and greater publicity. Even these did not eliminate the notorious newspaper notices of "Divorces legally and quietly obtained, can pay by instalments."
FIGHTING SOCIAL EVILS
Many years later the Diocese was still wrestling with the problem. In 1904 Bishop Brewster defended the family as the very foundation of society, and praised the progress of interstate cooperation to secure a uniform law and to prevent hasty divorces. The Church's canon recognized remarriage for the innocent party in the case of adultery, but the Bishop favored abolishing the exception in the interest of social welfare. The only real remedy, he held, would be to teach the sacredness of human love, home, and family, and the sacramental character of marriage.
The Social Gospel movement shockingly revealed the disasters of divorce in broken homes and juvenile delinquency. In 1911 Bishop Brewster said: "The import of the Family to our social and national life it is impossible to overstate .. . Where should we be without it? Society and the nation cannot afford to let this institution go. In the fight to maintain it almost every-
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thing to be valued is at stake."3 Next year, to his great satisfaction, the Convention instructed the Social Service Commission to con- sult with other churches in preventing hasty marriages.
It proved to be incredibly hard to fashion a canon to protect the sanctity of marriage and yet do justice to people trapped in intolerable situations. The Bishop strove to explain that the canon did not "penalize" seekers of relief. It was found safe to trust those who felt justified in remarriage outside the Church and seriously wished admission to the sacraments. In 1940 Bishop Budlong de- clared that he recalled no resentment among persons who realized that in most cases they could not be remarried after a civil divorce, because the Church considered their ultimate welfare.4
Divorce was only one aspect of the social uneasiness that pressed heavily upon the Church's conscience. Bishop Brewster seriously doubted that the Diocese was bearing a bold enough witness for a sounder social life. The Church should not rely upon organization, but teach a faith with doctrinal backbone and enough moral power to uphold the family and purify civil life. The Diocese should be proud that two leaders of the crusade against electoral corruption were a devout priest and a vestryman who was a party chairman. The disease of greed had tempted church members to corrupt legislators, violate sacred trusts, and crush competition ruthlessly, and yet a Churchman had helped to expose scandalous abuses in business practice.
Bishop Brewster upheld the ideal of civic duty in a de- mocracy. He gloried in the Church's part in securing the Great Charter of liberties from King John of England in 1215. Later association with the tyranny of the Stuart kings and with corrupt oligarchies had caused a deserved loss of influence. By alliance with genuine liberty the Church could regain the loyalty of the masses, who had been alienated by ecclesiastical obeisance to political and social reaction. "The clergy," he said, "will by no means engage in the wicked work of exciting or arraying class against class. But above all they will take good care that they do not even seem to be retained in the interest of any particular, privileged class."5
The Bishop repeatedly declared that the Church's social serv- ice should promote fellowship and brotherhood. It must stress the ethical aspects of economics and the commonwealth of all men.
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It seemed to him hardly foolish to dream that "the iron age of the last century is destined more and more to give way to an age comparatively golden because at least somewhat nearer that King- dom of God ... " He suspected that the chief characteristic of the twentieth century might be a struggle to maintain the sacred value of human life against the domination of materialism, which inspired class warfare. He saw signs of promise in the transition from lawless competition to cooperation, a recognition of the common interests of employer and employee, and the ideal of mutual inter- dependence rather than socialistic regimentation.6
His sincerity and eloquence converted many Churchmen, when leaders of the Progressive political reform crusade were voicing the same ideals. The new current of thought among en- lightened Churchmen was part of the tide setting against crass materialism. To them it bore the challenge to a genuine revival of faith and spiritual living.
Convincing evidence of the new mentality was an increasing interest in international cooperation. The Convention of 1911 ac- cepted the Bishop's recommendation of a Committee on Inter- national Arbitration, and by resolution urged the Congress of the United States to ratify the Treaty of Unlimited Arbitration between the United States and Great Britain.
WAR: THE CHURCH TESTED
The Diocese was in this idealistic mood when the eruption of war in 1914 struck the nation and the Church in stunned sur- prise. One of the few persons who grasped its real meaning was Bishop Brewster, who foresaw "the break-up of an old order and the incoming of something other than has been." He was convinced that the cause of militarism was materialism, and hoped that the new era would bring "some reign of universal law." The Church should take a worthy part in building a better society upon "the absolute authority of the standard of right."7 The Bishop had no illusion that the nation could stand aloof, and in 1916 he began to warn against complacency while others paid a bloody price for defending freedom.
When war came to America, the Diocese proved worthy of the occasion. Many rectors strove to keep in touch with young parishioners in the armed forces and to comfort their families.
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Some served as Red Cross workers or as chaplains. The people supplied them with equipment and visited the open churches to pray for the anxious and the bereaved. The Diocese compiled a register of several thousand service men and women and an honor roll of the dead. The Bishop appointed a War Commission and a special clergymen's War Work Commission. The women helped girls in war service, especially through the Girls' Friendly Society.
While the Convention by resolution assured President Wilson of its support for his ideal war aims, the Bishop pleaded against hatred and revenge. He deplored, particularly, abuse of the foreign- born and the repeal of laws to protect women and children in in- dustry. He warned against the hypocrisy of proclaiming a holy war against militarism while undermining democracy at home. Church- men must set the example of patriotism and unselfish service, and crusade to preserve civilized values and respect for humanity. Throughout the war he advocated moral and social reform to make the nation worthy of international cooperation.
BETWEEN CRISES
The postwar era would have disappointed anyone with less solid ideals than Bishop Brewster's. Reacting against its own crusading spirit, the nation turned a deaf ear to the President's ap- peal for the League of Nations. But the Bishop never let his diocese forget the ideal of an international covenant for peace, and the Church's duty to uphold "its own Catholic ideal of a human fellow- ship transcending national and racial limits."8
Between wars the Diocese attempted to honor at least the spirit of his vision. Dean Colladay's sincere devotion persuaded the Convention to advocate a reduction of naval armaments. An- other resolution urged joining the World Court of Arbitration and the League of Nations. The Convention passed the Rev. Floyd S. Kenyon's motion deploring "settlement" of disputes by war, and favoring the League or some other effective association. Bishop Acheson discerned the futility of demanding disarmament without genuine brotherhood, and encouraged youth groups to discuss the Christian view of war, peace, and international comity.
Cultivation of international good will began where it should - at home. Urged by Bishop Brewster, the Convention requested the United States Congress to protect Alaskan natives against
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fishing practices that destroyed their food. On motion by Dean Colladay, President Coolidge was thanked for opposing the Japanese Exclusion Bill as a "needless offense to a friendly nation" - an expression that proved to be ironic. The Diocese responded generously to an appeal for funds to rebuild Saint Luke's Hos- pital in Tokyo, destroyed by earthquake and fire. And many parishes gave for the relief of flood sufferers in China.
While Bishop Brewster lived, Connecticut Churchmen never became forgetful of their obligations to the world. In 1919, the year of the bitter steel strike, he deplored in the Church "the listless complacency of a comfortable club." Braving the accusation of "radicalism," he announced The Church and Industrial Relations as the topic for discussion at the men's Convention dinner. At the same time he deplored an overconfidence in the secular methods of reform.
Four years later the Bishop attacked social and religious intolerance, particularly anti-Semitism and the Ku Klux campaign to "smear" Roman Catholics and destroy their parish schools. In 1928 the Bishop branded as "a sinister menace to genuine de- mocracy" the attacks upon the Roman Catholic faith of Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic candidate for President.º His tolerance did not condone lawlessness, for he deplored flouting the Prohibition Amendment as a threat to the stability of democratic government and the supremacy of law.
It was hard enough to appeal to idealism in the full tide of prosperity. In 1932, deep in the bog of depression, it was even harder for Bishop Acheson to ask for a vote of confidence in the future. The Convention was in a mood to cut the budget and re- frain from new enterprises.
Three years later Bishop Budlong challenged the Diocese to rededicate itself to a gospel of social redemption. Programs and propaganda would be useless without increasing demonstrations of faith and the more frequent use of the sacramental means of strengthening grace, he proclaimed. What folly to deplore the efforts of dictators to stamp out Christianity, while winking at a departure from Christian standards at home! A renewal of faith would, he felt, inspire good works in time, treasure, and energy, to bring others to a knowledge of the redemptive gospel.
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THE SECOND CRISIS: WORLD WAR II
Within a few years Connecticut was summoned to test it- self by that standard. The outbreak of war found Churchmen not as unprepared as in 1914, but still seemingly without definite ideas of their duty. Like Brewster, Bishop Budlong declared that they should help to conserve the precious spiritual values that the world would need when peace came. A few months before the disaster at Pearl Harbor, he deplored the indifference and de- featism. It was folly to be complacent, he said, when evil forces were determined to deprive men of God-given, inalienable rights. "With heartache and shame we must admit that what is happening in the world today proves that the Christian witness has been inadequate."10
Once the nation was committed to fight, Bishop Budlong de- precated all war for national aggrandizement. War had come, he insisted, because Bishop Brewster's vision of a community of nations had not even been tried. The cause of failure had been the impulse to retreat into our private lives and to avoid patient effort and sacrifice to win the peace. When invasion of the Nazi stronghold approached, the Bishop called for special prayers and warned Churchmen not to see selfishness only in the war aims of others.
Clergy and people unstintingly gave themselves and their means. So many priests enlisted as chaplains that maintenance of the parochial ministry became a vexing problem. The chaplains made a gallant record; one, Hamilton H. Kellogg, became Senior Chaplain of the First Army in Europe. Contributions poured in for the Chaplains' Fund to provide equipment and discretionary funds. Such sacrifice was more than worthwhile, for the chaplains were so devoted that their percentage of casualties was greater than in any other branch of the services.
By 1944 the Diocese had about five thousand members in war service, and their absence crippled every phase of parish life. Bishop Budlong wrote to hundreds of them and sent messages of sympathy to relatives of those who died. Both bishops and the Church Club mailed innumerable Christmas books and cards.
Spiritual care of service people was the special mission of Bishop Gray. He performed it the more sympathetically because of his memories of being a lonesome soldier on cold sentry duty in World War I. His Diocesan Army and Navy Commission became
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the clearing house for correspondence and special assistance, and helped all diocesan chaplains during and after the war. Its in- numerable contacts with service personnel revcaled their unsus- pected loyalty to the Church, and their appreciation of the interest of their homekeeping fellow Churchmen.
A ministry demanding really deep Christian conviction was the care of the conscientious objectors. Bishop Budlong willingly cooperated with the General Convention's special committee to aid them, and appealed to his people to help and to forget their natural disapproval. He realized how difficult it was to understand the at- titude of the "C.O.," but wanted to spare his Church the embar- rassment of letting the burden of care fall upon other communions. The response was small but it revealed some change in attitude since World War I, when the "C.O." had been a social pariah.
The Diocese continually tried to relieve distress among the hosts of defense industry workers. Churches lent their parish houses for recreation and as temporary homes. The people wel- comed strangers and some busy rectors visited all newcomers, re- gardless of religion. Many parishes worked with the churches of other faiths and with public welfare agencies in ministering to confused and unhappy families.
War chafed the painful bruise of race relations, when the demand for labor attracted many Negroes. Many Jamaicans made a satisfactory religious adjustment because they were members of the Church of England. But hosts of the native-born had no social tie outside the temporary home. Friction over housing and recre- ation inspired the Governor to appoint an Interracial Commission, of which Bishop Gray became the first chairman. He gladly helped to study the situation and make recommendations to promote harmony. He believed that the Church's part in the delicate task would clarify her teaching that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the whole earth." The experience shaped his policy toward the reduction of interracial and religious tensions after the war.
Preoccupation with war concerns did not prevent Church people from deepening their spiritual life, and their sense of re- sponsibility for other branches of the Anglican Communion. Visits to war shrines to pray for loved ones in the armed forces helped to strengthen the spiritual fibre. And for the first time many realized
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their membership in a worldwide church, when they contributed to aid British missions on distant continents.
Immediate war problems did not deflect Bishop Budlong's thoughts from the future. He was determined that the Church should not repeat its failure, in the First World War, to make adequate advance plans for leadership and service. Connecticut Churchmen must help to extend home missions among Negroes, and to sustain overseas fields where myriads were holding out their hands to the Church.
POSTWAR OPPORTUNITY
The vast tasks ahead began to loom up in 1944, when Arch- bishop Cyril Foster Garbett of York visited the United States. He spent much of his time discussing Christian cooperation and re- construction with leaders of the Episcopal Church, the Federal Council of Churches, and the missionary societies. The Diocese welcomed him with a service in Trinity Church, New Haven, and a reception at the Berkeley Divinity School, which awarded him an honorary degree. His ideal of the necessity of Christian unity left a permanent impression.
Even while he presided at a Victory Day service in the Cathedral, Bishop Budlong was burdened by thoughts of the Church's duty to the world. To the Convention of 1945 he pro- claimed its responsibility to feed and clothe the destitute and to cooperate in securing a permanent peace. Churchmen must eschew arrogance in victory and rededicate their lives to God's service, so that youth should not have died in vain.
When rising international suspicion began to recall the sad aftermath of World War I, the Bishop felt that what the world and the Church needed was common allegiance to a personal God. "May it not be," he asked, "that God permitted man to smash the atom and unleash atomic energy ... to force upon man the reali- zation that without the development of moral and spiritual stature commensurate with our scientific attainments ... the outcome - the end - is self-destruction and death?"11
He did not let the Diocese forget this during the immediate need to aid and instruct returning chaplains and to advise de- mobilized service people. In 1947 he and Bishop Gray devoted most of their addresses to spiritual preparation for a new era and
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to missions, the Reconstruction and Advance Fund, and the Pre- siding Bishop's Fund for World Relief. They underlined the necessity of a spiritual revival to approach the uprooted, the lapsed, and the indifferent, and to combat the growth of divorce and juvenile delinquency. Revival must be founded upon the good example of personal religion, to be stimulated through the Presiding Bishop's plan for parish visits.
The Convention in 1947 requested the Bishop to name a special committee to foster this effort. The plans included study and discussion of the Church's faith and practice by local groups, the Laymen's Conference, and the fall Clergy Conference. The well-planned program extended from September, 1947 until the diocesan corporate Communion on the following Whitsunday. It comprised regular worship and Communion, parish visitation, and ministry to the "unchurched." The guiding idea was that the world's salvation lies in the cultivation of individual spiritual strength. Bishop Gray recalled Lord Halifax's saying that if Christians had been as enthusiastic for truth as the Nazis had been for error, the world would not have been wrapped in fear.
The Convention expressed the new attitude toward the world in 1948 by petitioning the Lambeth Conference to summon men and nations to withstand war-breeding evils, and to approach international problems with good will. A resolution urged the President and the United States Congress to suggest amendments to the Charter of the United Nations, to curb aggression and establish international law and order.
It was easier to pass general resolutions than to practice fellowship. Bishop Gray's addresses in 1949 and 1950 pointed to the futility of talking about "brotherhood" while barring Negroes from churches and conventions. How could anyone cry "peace" and accept a materialism that regards man as an inevitably warring animal? Or "charity," and yet ignore the plight of persons rotting away in prison camps? He scored the nonsense of "containing communism," if Churchmen continued to offer a spiritual vacuum to its penetration. One could not have democracy without roots in Christian conviction, nor the "good life" without godliness. Heathen living at home would not convert the "heathen" abroad, especially while Christians remained divided.
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CHURCH UNITY BEGINS at HOME
For many years the Diocese had been concerned about remedying the scandal of a rent Christendom, including the branches of the Anglican Communion. Bishop Seabury and a few later leaders, like Doctor Samuel F. Jarvis, had maintained cor- respondence with the Scottish Episcopal Church and with English friends. British Churchmen occasionally had visited the United States and written reports and books on American religion. Bishops Chase of Ohio and Hobart of New York, who had ministered in this Diocese, had visited England in the 1820's to secure financial help. Chase was immensely popular; people flocked to see a back- woods bishop who cultivated his own farm. A few years later Bishop George W. Doane of New Jersey (once a teacher in Trinity College) became the first American bishop to preach in an English cathedral. Such relations were entirely personal for there was not even a semi-official bond until after the Civil War.
Foreign missions brought increasing American contacts with the Church of England and tightened bonds already woven by visits, by British generosity to the American Church, and by the international Catholic revival. A few leaders began to dream of drawing the scattered branches of Anglicanism closer together.
Their ideal approached reality in 1865 when the Church of England in Canada requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to favor "one General Council ... gathered from every land." After long deliberation, he fixed the character and policy of the Lambeth Conferences by calling a consultative meeting of bishops without power to bind any branch of the Church.
A new era opened on Washington's Birthday in 1867 when Archbishop Longley invited the American bishops to attend a conference of all Anglican prelates at Lambeth Palace in Lon- don, in the following September. Many years later Bishop Brewster amusedly recalled the "tumult of apprehension" the circular letter excited in this country. It aroused dormant anti-British prejudices and suspicions that the Mother Church wanted to clamp authority upon her scattered children. Many English Churchmen disap- proved, and Dean Stanley of Westminster even refused to allow the bishops to hold a service in his historic abbey.
No such feelings bothered Bishop Williams when he de- cided not to attend. He would have appreciated fraternal worship
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and consultation, and longed to visit the mother country. But without an assistant he could not forsake his diocese for such a long time. He was content merely to express "the hope that the blessing of God may rest upon the conference, and make it the instrument of great good to his Church."12
As the Archbishop admitted, the meeting was "experimental," because there was no custom to guide its proceedings. Seventy-six bishops, including nincteen from the United States, discussed the Church's position and the authority of its governing bodies, and issued a greeting to its members throughout the world. The im- pression of unity prepared the way for a more effective meeting, which was encouraged by the hearty approval of the General Convention in 1868.
The call for the second Conference was published by the Canadian Church in 1872 and was gladly seconded by many leaders in the United States. Four years later the Archbishop of Canter- bury issued invitations to a meeting in 1878. The replies over- whelmingly favored a longer session for greater accomplishment. The Archbishop suggested discussion among the branches, their conditions and needs, and closer relations among their missions. This program became the model for all later meetings. Since that time Conferences have been held at intervals of about ten years, and have immensely promoted cooperation and sympathetic under- standing. The proportion of attending bishops has stcadily in- creased, and Americans have participated prominently in the dis- cussions and important committees.
No bishop could have worked harder for its success than Chauncey B. Brewster. Remembering the first Conference, he rejoiced to sce suspicion and doubt gradually yield to friendliness and confidence. He pleasantly anticipated the sixth Conference, and perceived the humor in the invitation to hcar a sermon in Westminster Abbey - by the Dean! He headed one of the most important committees and the discussions included subjects hc cherished: reunion with other churches, Christianity and inter- national relations, and the Church's duty in industrial and social questions. One of his own addresses advocated a League of Nations and the bishops endorsed his sentiments. He brought home a pro- found impression of the Conference's trust in prayer, and of the meeting's replacement of platitudes by action.
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