USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 5
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The General Association of Connecticut ministers no doubt took a dim view of Chauncy's liberal theology, but they agreed with his criticisms of revivalist excesses. The Association repeated- ly condemned Whitefield and his friends by name, discouraged ministers from admitting him to their pulpits, and warned the people not to hear him. Yale College disowned his conduct and methods, and expelled students who attended revival meetings. Magistrates, pressed by the clergy, took vigorous action to suppress disorder by fining and imprisoning ministers and people for un- licensed preaching and meetings. Benjamin Pomeroy was mauled by a mob, and James Davenport was arrested in Hartford for dis-
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turbing the peace and sent by ship to his Long Island home. In- truding ministers from other colonies were escorted out of Connecticut and warned never to return. Justices of the peace, who declined to execute the laws against irregular preachers and congregations, were summarily dismissed.
Episcopalians were appalled by the torrential rantings of self-appointed and illiterate exhorters, intrusions by "rambling" ministers, and the hysterical convulsions of the "awakened." Letters from missionaries poured into the S. P. G. office, vividly depicting "the Extravagancies of enthusiastick Teachers," including "Tay- lors, Shoemakers, and other Mechanicks, and even Women, Boys and Girls."7 Doctor Johnson felt that his parish in Stratford was an island of calm in a sea of "dismal Outcries" and "surpriz- ing Convulsions," which sometimes affected the minds of mere spectators, and even of opposers. Punderson of North Groton mourned that "Enthusiasm" was undermining his best efforts by making people despise "all sober and steady Principles" and "in- stituted Means of Grace." Episcopalians usually felt an almost physical repulsion toward "Enthusiasm," which they interpreted as madness or frenzy.
Of course, there were exceptions among the clergy, like Matthew Graves of New London, who later alienated the affection of his colleagues by ardently sympathizing with evangelists. He had been inspired by Methodist revivals in western England, and was suspected of "Enthusiasm" by some of his parishioners, who even accused him to the S. P. G. The Society cautioned him against too much fraternizing with dissenters by visiting and preaching to them, and advised him not to let his zeal outrun orthodox bounds. The parson's admiration for Whitefield reached adulation, and broke into almost ecstatic effusions in a letter to "my D(ear) George." Graves begged him for a letter, and prayed that his life might be "crowned with many more Souls." He requested to be remembered to evangelists in England, and concluded with "Yr most sincere Friend, most humle Sert & most affectionate Brother, alas! unworthy Brother in Jesus Christ."8
A HARVEST OF CONVERTS
If the Episcopal clergy imagined that many of their parish- ioners would write such letters and follow the revivalists, they
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were quite mistaken. The crowd, in fact, ran the other way. Emo- tionalism disgusted many Puritan churchmen into friendly and sober consideration of the Church's quiet ways. Disinterested ob- servers noticed that trend, as one controversy after another rent the established church. The brilliant Doctor Alison, a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, warned the Rev. Ezra Stiles, a future presi- dent of Yale College: "I am heartily grieved from the Contentions and divisions that are like to prevail in Connecticut: I highly esteem that Church and people, and had almost determined to make it the retreat of my old age; but am vexed that they bite and devour one another. Nothing can be more fatal to their piety, morals or liberty; they will be swallowed up by the Episcopal Church, who envy them their prosperity and will avail themselves of these di- visions."9 Some Episcopalians said truly, even if somewhat cyni- cally, "If these dissenters will but confute one another, it will save us the trouble."
The feeling of many disillusioned Puritans is quaintly re- vealed in a petition to the S. P. G. for a missionary in 1744, from a group of converts in Northbury (Plymouth). They had all been born and educated in Connecticut and were strongly prejudiced against the Church from the very cradle. But they were appalled by the "flood of confusion" caused by the revivalists' "insufferable enthusiastick whims and extemporaneous jargon." Disgust com- pletely changed their minds, already prepared by reading to take the last step into the church. They fairly fled to her for safety, hoping that the purity of their hearts and lives would be "conform- able to her excellent doctrine."10
The five men who signed that declaration were speaking for innumerable converts during the next thirty years. Reports of many conversions from all parts of the colony belie the assertions that the Great Awakening caused the Episcopal Church to decline into a small aristocratic minority dependent upon imperial officials. There was no British officialdom in Connecticut, where the government was entirely in Puritan hands. Nobody had any worldly advantage to gain, and anybody might suffer heavy loss, by becoming an Episcopalian.
Far from declining or stagnating, the Church gained so fast that the established religion became alarmed and resorted to bitter acts of persecution. Many of the missionaries' letters praised the
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loyalty of old members and rejoiced in the startling flow of con- verts. As early as 1741, Doctor Johnson thanked God that his parish had benefitted from the conversion of three or four entire families because of the "Distractions." Punderson was sought out by people who longed for peace in the confusion of tongues. He fortified their spirits by giving them books sent by the Society, particularly The Englishman Instructed in the Choice of His Religion, and Trial of the Spirit of Mr. Whitefield.
As later evangelistic outbursts kept Puritan parishes in tur- moil, reports from all over New England assured the Society that people flocked to the Church for quiet and order, and "more Ra- tional Doctrines." Doctor Johnson wrote in 1743 that in Connecti- cut there was not a large town without many converts, and that churches were being erected in the hope of services and of aid from the Society. Later Henry Caner reported numerous converts with "a serious Sense of Religion" in Norwalk, Ridgefield, and Stamford. He remarked that where excitement had been most intense people sought peace in the Church as their ardor cooled. In 1748 a letter from New England missionaries expressed their pleasure "to see in all Places the earnest Zeal of the People in pressing forward in- to the Church ... insomuch that now they think nothing too much to do to qualify themselves for the obtaining of Missionaries from the Society."11 The Society assured its patrons that "Enthusiasm" prevailed less in places near its missions.
The final effect of the Awakening was not to drive Episco- palians into mere reactionary opposition, but rather to inspire a more positive and aggressive loyalty to their faith. Reaction from revivalist extremes increased their devotion to gradual Christian nurture. That was a familiar idea to Episcopalians, generations be- fore it was expounded by Connecticut's liberal Congregational minister, Horace Bushnell of Hartford, a critic of revivalism. A typical Episcopalian attitude toward emotional evangelism was voiced in 1760 by Churchmen in Stratford and North Stratford. They praised the missionaries who had preserved them "from the Extravagances and Confusions of Enthusiasm, and taught them to have a very high Esteem and Love for the Worship of the Church of England."12 Congregational ministers who disliked Whitefieldi- ans were similarly grateful for the Church's defense of order and dignity.
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THE BATTLE FOR TOLERATION
Such benevolence did not save Churchmen from the storms of abuse which broke upon all dissenters from the established re- ligion, as the frightened government tried to save the old order from dissolution. Letters from missionaries teemed with complaints against tax collectors who forcibly dipped into their parishioners' shallow purses, and magistrates who imposed fines for absence from "meeting" or jail sentences for not paying contributions. The authorities bore down especially hard upon recent converts, and all justices of the peace who became Churchmen were dismissed. Gibbs, the Simsbury missionary who went insane from persecution, declared that the government's aim was "to ruin the Church in these parts."13 Missionaries often suffered financially through an unwillingness to expose their people to abuse by asking for their rates. Many cases of hardship were reported to the Bishop of Lon- don, and to the Society, which indignantly blasted the persecu- tion as directly contradictory to Connecticut's original religious principles and to the Charter.
Churchmen were infuriated by a mean persecution of their sons at Yale College in 1753-54. President Clap refused to permit two sons of Ebenezer Punderson to attend services at their father's church in New Haven. The Episcopal clergy were up in arms, and Doctor Johnson bluntly reminded Clap of the importance of liber- ty of conscience. They argued that the college had accepted gifts from Churchmen, particularly Bishop Berkeley, and from parents of Episcopalian students, and hinted that the royal government might annul the charter. The General Assembly overruled the overbearing faculty, and Yale enjoyed religious freedom before Episcopalian Oxford and Cambridge.
Episcopalians did not fight alone for liberty. They had powerful allies in the Separate or Strict Congregationalists, a mi- nority who believed in converted membership and rejected state control of the church. They were largely humble and earnest folk, who claimed to be the real Congregationalists and believed in en- thusiastic evangelism. They established their own churches and elected and ordained ministers in defiance of the laws, and then claimed exemption from parish taxes. Their strength in the eastern towns partly explains the persistent weakness of the Episcopal Church there.
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The Separate secession and a rapid increase of other dissi- dent groups frightened state and church into a persecution mania, which made the quest for liberty a prolonged battle. Its full fury crashed upon the detested Separates, who were regarded as ene- mies of public order and as social outcasts. They were forbidden to organize churches or ordain ministers, and were mercilessly harassed by arrests, fines, imprisonment, and taxes. Their minis- ters were denounced by associations, arrested for preaching, and treated as vagrants, and their sons were expelled from college. So brutal was the repression that the British government and other colonies were shocked. Trumbull, the historian of the state, indig- nantly branded this persecution as "an outrage to every principle of justice, and to the most inherent and valuable rights of the subject."14
Baptists also had little hope of mercy, and they received none. At any moment they might suffer the fate of the fourteen who in 1744 were arrested in Saybrook for holding meetings with- out legal authority. They were arraigned, tried, fined, and in the dead of winter were forced to walk twenty-five miles in snow and mud to the jail in New London. There they pined without food, fire, or bed until their brethren came to help them. Outraged Bap- tists complained to the Committee of Dissenters in England, and popular disapproval forced the General Assembly to allow the Say- brook and Killingworth Baptists to meet and worship as they pleased.
Intense interest followed the trial of the Stafford Baptists who attended a church in Willington. They refused to pay taxes for a new meeting house in Stafford, and saw their goods sold at auction to pay the collector. Their counsel claimed that they were Baptists sentimentally, practically, and legally, while the prosecu- tion insisted that they had not ordinarily attended their meeting. Tradition says that the Episcopalian judge inquired how long a sentimental, practical and legal Baptist must skip meeting to lose his faith - and the Baptists won the case.
Many such courageous protests gradually breached the for- tress of religious privilege and forced the state church to retreat from its uncompromising intolerance. Episcopalians sent copies of the oppressive laws to the Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping that he would persuade the British government to intervene. The Bap-
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tists passed resolutions, wrote pamphlets, and besieged the As- sembly with petitions. The Separates sent agents to petition Parlia- ment for liberty, and they returned with a letter from the chair- man of the "Committee for the Dissenters," censuring the Connecti- cut government. Ebenezer Frothingham, pastor of the Separate church in Middletown, risked persecution in 1767 by publishing his Key to Unlock the Door, attacking the state church as a denial of liberty, and rejecting the idea of civil authority over religion.
The authorities gradually realized that dissent had come to stay. They feared that continued intolerance would displease the British government and endanger their precious charter. They also wanted to court the support of non-Episcopal dissenters in oppos- ing the project for a colonial bishop. The result was a series of grudging concessions to religious freedom. The General Assembly granted privileges to Baptist churches and special favors to Episco- palians, including permission to vote for church taxes in town meet- ing and to lay a special tax upon themselves. The new attitude appeared when Matthew Graves sued to recover taxes. He was so surprised by the impartial and civil treatment he received from the judges and lawyers that he wrote a letter to the S. P. G. about it. Even the despised Separates were freed from state-church taxes, if they could prove that they supported their own worship, and were finally permitted to hold conventions without interference.
A revision of the statutes in 1750 dropped the acts curbing Separatists, and restored the law of 1708 recognizing the right of dissenters to organize churches. In 1770 all conscientious dissenters were excused from worship in the established church, if they at- tended their own, and the estates of all ministers were exempted from taxation. Fourteen years later another revision of the laws quietly omitted the Saybrook Platform. But there was still a long way to genuine religious liberty; church and state were still united, the established ministers enjoyed tax support, and lax attendants could be fined.
While Episcopalians were joining the struggle for liberty, they were becoming far too numerous and influential to be ig- nored. A religious census in 1774, even with some large towns omitted, revealed at least 10,000 Churchmen in a population of less than 175,000. They steadily assumed a larger share in social and political life, appearing in the General Assembly and on the judge's
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bench. As some of the clergy wrote to the S. P. G., the name of "Churchman" was ceasing to be pronounced with a hiss.
The struggle for freedom of worship had taught Episco- palians charity and cooperation with others. Their Church in old England bore an unenviable reputation for persecuting, and they had to bear the ironic twist of fate that made them mere "sober Dissenters," fighting for bare legal recognition. The grim humor of history chose as their allies the very sectarians whom the privileged Church of England despised. The staid Churchman with his gilt- lettered Prayer Book became the political bedfellow of Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and the half-literate exhorters of the Sepa- ratist conventicle. That experience was a necessary lesson in toler- ance and ecumenical fellowship. It gradually drove home the idea that an episcopal church could prosper without legal establishment, and with a purely spiritual bishop who would have no court, no coach, and no comfortable seat in Parliament. Upon that idea the Connecticut clergy acted in electing a bishop after the Revolution, and upon it the American Episcopal Church was organized in 1789.
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CHAPTER FIVE
YOUNG CHURCHES IN ACTION
A GREAT HALF-CENTURY
I N 1725 Episcopalians were a small and despised minority; fifty L years later they were the second largest company of Christians in the "Land of Steady Habits." Connecticut's steadiness was due partly to their conservatism, and partly to disgust with emotional extravagances, which was a chief cause of their astonishing in- crease. The Church appealed to moderate persons who recoiled from the cold philosophy of "enlightenment" and from the tend- ency to regard religion as a series of spasmodic revivals. Such peo- ple wanted to steer a course between intellectual snobbery and the emotional pietism which insisted on nervously feeling its own spiritual pulse.
As converts flocked around and fruitful old families multi- plied, the Church branched out. One of the parent stocks was Christ Church in Stratford, which became a mother of many par- ishes. Its venerable pastor, Doctor Johnson, was considered the dean of the clergy and certainly would have been a bishop, if there had been a colonial diocese.
FAIRFIELD COUNTY
The Awakening found him the beloved pastor of more com- municants than he had discovered in the whole colony less than twenty years before, and of over six hundred baptized persons in Stratford and nearby places. People missed him on the village street when he took long horseback tours to plant the Church in other towns. They were forlorn when he left them to become the first rector of King's College, New York. But they were pleased with his successor, Edward Winslow, the eldest son of a rich Bos- ton merchant, who persuaded his Congregational father to favor his youthful ambition to become a priest.
Winslow continued Johnson's noble ministry and rejoiced
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that the parish held its ground in spite of "a restless Spirit of Op- position."1 It even gained converts, while showing deeper spiritual conviction and true Christian living, and increased attendance at the monthly communions. In 1763 the people joyfully welcomed the return of Doctor Johnson to a "retirement" which proved to be an astonishing career of preaching and teaching. After Winslow went to Braintree, Massachusetts, the vigorous patriarch took charge of Stratford and Milford, until his health declined and he named Ebenezer Kneeland as his assistant and eventual successor. He died in 1772, "with all the calmness and resignation of a primi- tive saint,"2 leaving a grief-stricken parish surrounded by flourish- ing churches which he and his pupils had planted.
He had lived to see Christ Church depleted by constant emi- gration to new settlements. One of the earliest swarmings moved northward to Ripton (Shelton and Monroe ). After more than thirty years of Johnson's fostering care, the parish became a mission under one of his pupils, Christopher Newton, a son of Yale.
The zealous young priest inherited growing congregations in Stratfield (Bridgeport) and North Stratford (Trumbull). The latter shocked his sensibilities by its frontier manners but warmed his heart by its affection. Newton made pastoral visits to all three places until the Revolution, always rejoicing in their "Seriousness, Peace and Charity." It was a hard life of riding over bad roads in the hot and cold ferocities of New England weather.
Newton helped to root the Church more firmly in Milford, where James Lyons of Derby visited as early as 1744. Nearby mis- sionaries ministered when they could, and Samuel Andrews occa- sionally rode down from Wallingford. Hopes for a separate mission faded and Milford finally was annexed to Stratford.
Within thirty-five years, the Church occupied the whole ex- tent of old Stratford, where a tiny company had welcomed George Muirson and Colonel Heathcote in 1705. Before Johnson died, he saw the rewards of his apostolate in four churches and the promise of another in Milford, an old bastion of Puritanism.
A similar growth carried the Prayer Book throughout Fair- field, including part of Bridgeport (Stratfield), Easton (North Fair- field), Weston (Norfield), and Greenfield. The town was only slightly affected by the Awakening and the Church's growth was quiet and steady. This mission at first was no easy berth because
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it comprised all the western part of Fairfield County, until Nor- walk and Stamford became missions. Exposures in travel caused frequent colds and other sickness and forced Henry Caner to cur- tail his journeys. After nearly twenty years of effective service, he accepted an appointment to King's Chapel, Boston. He had found twelve communicants and he left two hundred. His successor, Joseph Lamson, put in the sickle and reaped a handsome harvest of converts, baptisms and communicants. At his death in 1773, he had one of the largest parishes in New England.
Caner's missionary zeal watered the seeds of faith that had been germinating in the western towns since Muirson's journeys. His brother Richard gathered promising congregations in Norwalk, Ridgefield and Stamford, and worked successfully to increase them until he moved to Staten Island in 1745. The three places were convulsed by "New Light" controversies, and swarmed with people whose spiritual restlessness sought a haven in the Anglican liturgy. Young Caner stretched out his hand to many who floundered in deep waters and pulled them into the boat.
Norwalk soon had more communicants than any other parish except Stratford, and could not keep pace with the demand for services in the rapidly growing churches nearby. Ridgefield cried for more care and joined with Bedford, Northcastle and Rye in New York to become a mission under Joseph Lamson. He gave one-third of his time to Ridgefield, and visited there even after his removal to Fairfield to replace Henry Caner. Norwalk and Stam- ford were then made a mission under Ebenezer Dibblee, who re- sided in Stamford and ministered in Norwalk until the Society established a mission for Norwalk and Ridgefield under Jeremiah Leaming. The latter became so overburdened that Ridgefield and Ridgebury were constituted as a mission with Salem, New York.
Meanwhile, the missionaries were watching a favorable trend in Danbury, where many Congregationalists disapproved the peculiar views of their minister and invited Leaming to preach. Nearly thirty families soon seceded, and were visited occasionally by Leaming and other priests. As Danbury was his native town, Dibblee paid special attention to them, dedicated their new church, and was pleased to see some eminent Dissenters in the congrega- tion. Although he strenuously urged the erection of a new mission, the Society was too hard-pressed to afford it.
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Dibblee already had more than he could handle in Stamford and Greenwich, but was compelled to spread his ministry even thinner to plant the Church in Stanwich, Middlesex (Darien) and New Canaan. Throughout his mission heads of families were con- verted and so his services were crowded. He needed his uncom- monly good health to keep up with his duties as old age crept upon him, and he should be forgiven for a little boasting about it.
Another brave Christian warrior who spread the Church far and wide was John Beach of Newtown. His fifty years of intense devotion established the largest parish in Connecticut. He was one of those incredibly wiry men who never get around to dying until supposedly healthier ones have been in their graves for many years. Decade after decade he read the services alternately in New- town and Redding, and in forty years missed only two Sundays, although he had to endure over nine miles of wretched roads and constantly complained of "cholic."
His people became almost passionately fond of him, and were dismayed when it was proposed to send him to Trinity Church, Newport. He insisted that his health forbade a heavier burden, although in the 1760's his parishes exceeded the established churches, with over four hundred families and nearly three hun- dred communicants. By the 1770's, more than half of their voters and population were Episcopalians, and the Congregational meet- ing in Newtown was only half as large as the Church. Increase in numbers was accompanied by a steady gain in moral character, and in the intellectual grasp of religion through reading and study. As Beach neared the end of his long road, he felt rewarded by the piety, virtue and loyalty of his flock. Their great increase en- couraged a large migration, which planted churches all over Litchfield County.
LITCHFIELD COUNTY
As late as the close of "Queen Anne's War" in 1715, the northwestern hill country was mostly wilderness, but four years later the residents of Hartford secured permission to settle Litch- field. Pigot and Johnson occasionally visited Woodbury as early as the 1720's and converts increased in the next decade, because of a notorious controversy between Johnson and John Graham, the Con- gregational minister in Southbury. In 1740 Beach organized a
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