USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island Episcopalians 1635-1953 > Part 6
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However, this new kind of Churchman was soon to be added to the three varieties already present in the Diocese, Evangelical, Broad, and old-fashioned High. In 1885 George McClellan Fiske became rector of St. Stephen's, Providence. He introduced daily Matins and Evensong, as well as daily Mass and the Sisters of the Holy Nativity. Morning Prayer, however, long remained the norm at the eleven o'clock service. In time St. Stephen's became, for a short period, the largest parish in the Diocese. It has been a citadel of Anglo-Catholicism, both in the Diocese and in New England as a whole. Bishop Clark, as well as the Diocese, soon came to have a deep affection and respect for the new leader.
Such, in brief, has been the history of the Diocese under Bishop Clark. Its five-fold increase in communicants in nearly fifty years, its rise to a first position among the non-Roman communions of the State -all took place under his vigorous leadership. On September 7, 1903,
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the end came to one of the most notable episcopates in the history of the Episcopal Church. Bishop McVickar gives us the story in his 1904 Con- vention address :
"The sad and signal event of the year just closed, our hearts need no reminder, has been the death on 7th September last of our venerated and beloved Senior Bishop. Quietly and without struggle he passed away at his home in Newport,-so quietly and peacefully at the last, though after a protracted period of physical weakness, that it might be said of him as of the early Christians, 'he fell asleep'. The long day of earthly life, so full of noble purpose and work, to the very end was over, -- and the Master-workman, who had 'waited the setting of the Sun', with tools folded away, gratefully answered the summons to rest awhile. He was buried from Trinity Church, Newport, on the afternoon of 10th Septem- ber, where a throng of sorrowing friends, most of them his own spiritual children, with ten Bishops and about sixty of the clergy, had gathered to pay their last tribute of respect and love to their dead friend. The service was touchingly sweet and simple, just as he would have had it -solemn and yet with its keynote that of victory and triumph-summing all up in the words of that hymn of ecstatic vision:
I heard a sound of voices Around the great white throne, With harpers harping on their harps To Him that sat thereon:
"Salvation, glory, honor!" I heard the song arise, As through the courts of heaven it rolled In wondrous harmonies.
And then his body, all that could die of him, was tenderly laid away in St. Mary's beautiful churchyard at South Portsmouth."
To this we may fittingly add the memorial adopted at the 1904 Convention:
"Since we met in Diocesan Convention we have been called to bear a great loss and a great sorrow in the death of our aged and beloved Bishop, Thomas March Clark, D.D. At the time of his death he was not only the Bishop of Rhode Island, but also the presiding Bishop of the American Church and the oldest Bishop by consecration in the whole Anglican Communion.
"We have lost a personal friend. There was not a man or woman in the Diocese who has had anything to do with him personally, who does not feel that a kind and sympathetic friend has been taken away. To go to the Bishop was to be sure of attention and thoughtfulness and aid. To the Clergy of the Diocese, especially to the older among us, to whom he was so revered, the memory of his friendship will be sacred.
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"We have lost a faithful preacher of the ever-lasting gospel. Once he was an orator, winning attention from pulpit and platform as he presented in a new way the living truths of revelation. Later he was a pleader in our churches for the plain, simple message of sin's power and sin's need and sin's redemption. From his retirement he still preached from printed page the love of God and the sacrifice of Christ with the evangelical fervor of one whose last words must penetrate beneath everything to the inmost hearts of men.
"We have lost a good and a great Bishop. Of his piety there is no question. It deepened with his advancing age as he became both penitent and saint. He was a Bishop with statesmanlike insight, with sane and reasonable judgment in the many controversies that disturbed his later years. He will be remembered among Bishops for his calm, dignified, patient work for the whole Church's interests.
"Such a friend, teacher, Bishop, we mourn today. In the peaceful rest of Paradise, in the illuminating presence of our Lord and holy souls in the ever-progressive meetness for Heaven, may he await with joyful anticipation the rewards of a long, happy, useful life."
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CHAPTER V. The Episcopate of
William Neilson McVickar
Coadjutor Bishop 1898 to 1903 Bishop of Rhode Island 1903-1910.
The Right Reverend William Neilson McVickar
I.
Bishop McVickar was born in New York on October 19, 1843, and was named William Neilson after his maternal grandfather, a leading insurance man of the city. The Bishop's great-grandfather came to New York from Scotland shortly after the Revolutionary War, became a leading merchant, and from 1801 to 1812, a vestryman of old Trinity Church in Wall Street. John A. McVickar, the Bishop's father, was for fifty years a leading homeopathic physician. William Neilson McVickar inherited wealth and never married. One of his two sisters was wedded to an aristocratic Englishman. The other, Miss Eweretta C. McVickar, kept house for her brother at 10 Brown Street, the Episcopal residence given to the Diocese and endowed by Mrs. Hope Brown Russell. The Bishop McVickar House at 66 Benefit Street was left by Miss McVickar to the Diocese as a memorial to her brother and as a diocesan head- quarters. Is is now a house for retired clergymen of the Diocese, endowment for which came from a large legacy left by the Reverend Levi B. Edwards, for many years rector of the Church of the Trans- figuration, Edgewood.
Young McVickar went to private school in New York City and graduated from Columbia in 1865. He attended the Philadelphia Semi- nary for a year, and then completed his last two years of theological study at the General Seminary in New York. He served as an assistant for a while to Stephen H. Tyng at St. George's Church, when that doughty Evangelical was nearing the end of his career. After ordination to the priesthood, he started a new mission, with eight communicants, at 125 Street and Fifth Avenue, then on the outskirts of the City. In seven years a large congregation and Sunday School had been gathered, and Holy Trinity Parish launched on its notable history.
In 1875, when only thirty-two, Mr. McVickar was called, as a near successor to Phillips Brooks, to Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, where he served for twenty-two years. Then heavy pressure was successfully brought on him to accept an unsought election as Coadjutor Bishop in Rhode Island. His work in this great parish, together with his interest in foreign missions and social service, had made him one of the leading presbyters of the Church. Rhode Island was to be a repetition of Philadelphia.
Bishop McVickar was consecrated in his own parish church, where many Bishops managed to come for the ceremony. The consecrator was Bishop William Croswell Doane of Albany; the co-consecrators, Henry C. Potter of New York and Thomas A. Jaggar of Southern Ohio. The preacher was Bishop Randolph of Virginia, and the presenting Bishops, his diocesan, Whittaker of Pennsylvania, and Lawrence of Massachusetts. Bishops Coleman of Delaware, Satterlee of Washington, Scarborough of New Jersey, and Hare of South Dakota also had a part in the service.
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Almost every shade of Churchmanship among the Bishops was thus represented. The comprehensive consecration was a prelude to a compre- hensive episcopate.
II.
Like his three predecessors in the see of Rhode Island, Bishop McVickar was an eminent preacher. He spoke with all the earnestness and deep sincerity of Griswold, Henshaw and Clark, and not without a touch of the old Evangelical oratory. A man of massive frame, like his close friend Phillips Brooks, he attracted attention by his mere rising up to speak. A rich and melodious voice enhanced his wealth of thought and expression. As a conservative Broad Churchman, he did not fear that the new in philosophy, science and Biblical study would undermine the essentials of the old faith. Jesus Christ would remain the same yesterday, today and forever.
What was new in his preaching, as compared with the old time Evangelicalism, was the emphasis on social service and social conscience. Thus Professor William F. MacDonald of Brown University, spoke of the Bishop, the day after his death: "The Bishop, was in many ways our most distinguished citizen. He was courageous in championing reforms of all kinds, even when they exposed him to criticism or misunderstanding. He did more than any one else to get men of different denominations to work together and to cooperate in religious work. He was a great aid to the Rhode Island Federation of Churches, and, in fact, to every good cause in City or State."
More specifically these areas of leadership included, besides the presidency of the Rhode Island Federation of Churches, the presidency of the New England Watch and Ward Society, and the Rhode Island Temperance League. The Bishop fought by word and deed for better control of the liquor business and for stricter laws on marriage and divorce. One result, at least, of the Federation's efforts was that Rhode Island ceased to be the notorious Gretna Green it had been. The Bishop indeed seems to have seen Rhode Island as deeply infected with both public corruption and private sin. Of this last a walk after dark in down-town Providence, he felt, would be evidence enough. As a con- sequence, he sallied forth to fight both evils, clad in the armor of Sir Galahad.
What the Standing Committee of the Diocese said in their minutes on Bishop Clark's death could well have been spoken also of his suc- cessor: "Not only as prelate and pastor was the Bishop illustrious, but also as a citizen. A true patriot, he watched with conscientious solicitude the course of Civic affairs around him, and until the last his voice was lifted up on behalf of social purity and righteousness. We do not unduly
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exalt him when we say that he was unquestionably, the first citizen of Rhode Island, attracting unanimous respect and veneration.'
What did Bishop McVickar feel was the true function of the modern Church and the kind of success it should seek? We have his ideas in his 1904 Convention address: "There was a time and a phase of thought to which these questions were easy to answer. The Church was a divinely appointed refuge into which individual and repentant souls were to be drawn, and so saved, out of a hopelessly doomed world . .... The Church's successs for any year or term of years was reckoned by the number of those who heeded its warning and gathered within its shelter. It had no message to the special time or conditions, for they were of the world and outside its ministrations .... All honor to the heroism and sacrifice which the old order called forth. All honor for its yearning for and devotion to the individual soul, which the present order now less demands." Neverthelesss, "we are thankful that there has come to the Church a nobler idea of its relations to the world, and to the individual a less selfish and more Christlike thought of his own place and part." In brief, the new evangelism called for salvation of the world and of the men in it, not salvation from a world doomed from the beginning.
The Church, therefore, has a message to the times. Its success must be measured, even if not too exactly, by the strength of its influence over both Churchman and the conditions in which he lives. What is the present trouble with the world? There the Bishop's answer has a familiar and contemporary ring: The world's trouble, more specifically, America's, is the worship of success, no matter how achieved, of the dollar instead of the divine. What is this doing to America? It is "secularizing, vulgarizing, and wrecking the higher life of the multitude." The situation calls for "special and emphatic treatment at the hands of the Church."
False estimates of life, double standards, one for business and another for private life, pleading fatigue as an excuse for not attending God's worship-all these are deadly. Better, however, than the witness of the preacher would be "the exalted witness of the lives of her members, without which her message will be indeed of little or no avail." Granted a recapture of the oldtime consecration and spirituality, "who can doubt that the Church will cease to be discredited, that the world will respond to her unanswerable, irresistible appeal?"
Bishop McVickar was an important figure not only in the Diocese and in the State, but also in the General Church. He was sought for as a preacher far and wide, and on many occasions. He was Chairman for a long time of the China and Japan Committee of the old Board of Missions. Everywhere his enthusiasm for foreign Missions was con- tagious. Like Bishop Clark and Phillips Brooks, he lent prestige and power to the relatively new Broad Church movement.
Yet the episcopate of this great spiritual leader cannot be said to have been statistically striking. Like the short one of Bishop
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Henshaw (1843-52) and the recent decade of 1940 to 1950, gain in num- bers was very slight. Communicants increased about twelve percent between 1900 and 1910, while the population of the State grew twenty- five percent. In this decade Rhode Island's increase in communicants was just about half of that of the Church in the rest of the country, retarded as that was as compared with growth before 1900.
The main reason for this proportionate lag in the growth of Episcopal membership in this State in the first decade of the century was immigra- tion from southern and eastern Europe and from Quebec. Polish and Ukrainian Jews fleeing persecution, Armenians fleeing the Turk, Italians fleeing overcrowding in Italy, French Canadians fleeing poverty in Quebec-all poured into Rhode Island.
This flood of immigration, and the vast expansion of industry which these new workers made possible, has changed the economic, social and political complexion of the State. The sons of the immigrants now control the erstwhile Commonwealth of the "Mill Barons". Roman Catholics have a near monopoly of all political, judicial and educational offices, even if no more than 435,000 of the State's 796,000 population, or 55 percent, were claimed by that Church in 1950. Such leadership as Bishop McVickar exerted at the beginning of the century would now be difficult. Catholicism without the Episcopal Church ( and within it) is too powerful and inhibiting.
This 1900-1910 decade was not without considerable additions in building and beautification. Thus, near the beginning of this period, St. Stephen's, Providence, acquired a parish house; at the end of it, Trinity Parish, Pawtuxet, built its present Church. In between, the Church of the Messiah and All Saints Parish in Providence erected their parish houses. Also tentative beginnings of work in new areas were made in Phillipsdale, Fairlawn, Darlington and Meshanticut Park, under the vigorous leadership of the Reverend Levi B. Edwards, the diocesan Missionary. Finally, steps were taken for further organization of the Diocese in Christian Education and Social Service. Again, Bishop McVickar envisioned old St. John's, Providence, as a Cathedral Church, twenty-five years before the actual accomplishment under Bishop Perry. The vigorous and forward-looking life of the Diocese was, then, one stepping stone to the large numerical increases to come in the next decade.
On May 17 and 18, 1910, Bishop McVickar presided over Convention for the last time. He opened his Address with a note of thanksgiving to God who had brought him through a year of intermittent illness "to this bright day of reunion, with its assurance for the future of complete health and vigor." Two weeks later he came down from his summer home in Beverly, Massachusetts, to address the graduating student nurses at the Homeopathic Hospital (now Roger Williams). On his way back he contracted a severe cold, which developed into bronchitis and pneu- monia, then a formidable disease. At 4:30 P.M. on June 28 death came
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to this valiant soldier of the Cross. That night the bells of St. John's, Providence, tolled sixty-seven times, once for each year of the Bishop's life.
The next day, over three pages of the Providence Journal were devoted to comment and tribute. The sudden death was a shock both to Diocese and State. Four eminent Roman Catholics, clerical and lay, gave their words of tribute to this great Christian and citizen. Mr. Kent, the minister of the Westminister Unitarian Church remarked: "I am too deeply shocked to express much more than my sense of loss in the death of our good Bishop. As a member with him of a little club of clergymen I came to know the great and genial heart that beat in his breast." Governor Pothier said: "His whole-souled interest in mankind and the public welfare brought him the affection of the people and the respect of men of affairs." Many others, including Rathbone Gardner, Warden of Grace Church, who was to be so instrumental in determining the next Episcopal election -- all had words to the same general effect. "He was Bishop not only of the Episcopal Church, but of all the churches." The resolutions of various diocesan organizations, as recorded in the 1911 Convention Journal, all echo the general feeling that a Mighty One had fallen in Israel. The tribute of Doctor Fiske of St. Stephen's, Providence, a man like Bishop McVickar in many ways, though of an entirely different theological outlook, might sum them all up. "He was one of the most conspicuous, useful and influential of our Bishops. His character was saintly."
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CHAPTER VI. The Episcopate of James DeWolf Perry, Jr. 1911 - 1946
C
The Right Reverend James DeWolf Perry, Jr.
I
On September 21, 1910, a special Convention met at St. John's, Providence, to elect a successor to Bishop McVickar. Seven ballots were cast before the choice was finally made. In the first formal ballot, the beloved rector of St. Stephen's, Providence, George Mcclellan Fiske, received nineteen out of the thirty-one votes needed for election by the clergy. This number even rose to twenty-six in a subsequent ballot. In none of the seven ballots, however, was more than a quarter of the lay votes cast for Doctor Fiske. Several eminent presbyters in the Church, such as Doctor Alexander Mann and Doctor Leighton Parks of Boston, and Dean Hodges of Cambridge, as well as Bishop Brent of the Philip- pines and other missionary bishops received a few votes. Several of the clergy in the Diocese likewise were complimentarily remembered.
On the second ballot the Reverend James De Wolf Perry of New Haven received three clerical and six lay votes. That marked the turning of the tide. Doctor Bradner, rector of St. John's, the Reverend Arthur Washburn, and Rathbone Gardner, Senior Warden of Grace Church, Providence, all urged Mr. Perry's election. On the third ballot he received eighteen clerical and eighty-one lay votes to the twenty-three and forty- six cast for Doctor Fiske. On the fourth ballot, Mr. Perry obtained a lay majority, but it was not until the seventh ballot that he received two" votes more than the twenty-nine needed, in that ballot, for choice by the Clerical Order. The election was, thus, as close and even more protracted than the McVickar election of 1897. On the motion of Doctor Fiske, the choice was made unanimous, and a low Church liberal was once more elected Bishop in Rhode Island.
The story goes that Doctor Fiske, on his way home up College Hill, was asked by a friend whether he believed that the Holy Spirit had operated in this particular Church Council. His reply was: "No! It was Rathbone Gardner." It would seem, however, that Doctor Fiske, then sixty, did play some part in the future theological development of James De Wolf Perry, then not quite thirty-nine. The Cause did not lose in the end.
II
On the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1911, James De Wolf Perry, Jr., was consecrated the seventh Bishop of Rhode Island in St. John's Church, Providence, which nearly twenty years later was to become the Cathedral of the Diocese. The consecrator was the vener- able Presiding Bishop, the Rt. Reverend Daniel Sylvester Tuttle. The co-consecrators were Bishop Lines of Newark and Vinton of Western
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Massachusetts. The presenters were his last diocesan, Bishop Brewster of Connecticut, and Bishop Greer of New York, a former rector of Grace Church, Providence. One of the attending presbyters was the ordinand's father, James De Wolf Perry, and the preacher was Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts, a former teacher and his first diocesan. Bishops Tucker of Virginia and Courtney, once of Nova Scotia, joined in the laying on of hands. The few Broad Church bishops of the day were, thus, mostly present.
Mindful of the fact that the young bishop was to succeed two leading figures of the Episcopal Church, Bishops Clark and McVickar, Bishop Lawrence closed a comprehensive sermon on the duties of the Episco- pate with these words of encouragement: "If you are given the strength and wisdom partially to meet them, are not these duties great and ever enlargening opportunities? And why should not strength and wisdom be given? You are not responsible for your situation. A Diocese that knows why they have so chosen has elected you, the whole Church through her representative body has commended you, the Presiding Bishop and his co-consecrators are ready to ordain you . . .. In and through this ordination we hope and believe that God will bestow upon you added gifts of the Spirit. . . .
"Then as you take up the work, how familiar and happy it will all seem to you. Your fathers for generations have dwelt in this Common- wealth. You are physically, mentally, and spiritually a partial product of Rhode Island. Moreover, they have been devoted members and active workers in this Diocese. You will be attended to the altar by one (the father ) who gives you an illustrious example of able, faithful ministry in the Church. You are in full sympathy with the traditions of the Diocese and of your predecessors in the Episcopate. You have the cordial support of the whole people, who through their representatives in Diocesan Convention elected you; and though still young, you have behind you years of happy, efficient and successful service in the Ministry. Where you have worked you have been beloved for the same qualities that make a true Bishop."
"We thank God that we are assured that in all gladness and con- fidence, albeit in all humility and quiet hope, you will so faithfully fulfill your course that at the latter day you will receive the crown of righteousness.'
James De Wolf Perry, Jr., was born October 3, 1871, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where his father had a memorable ministry of over forty years as rector of Calvery Church. The father had been born in Bristol, Rhode Island, a scion of the De Wolfs and Perrys, noted naval and com- mercial families of that seaside town. He had been ordained, and had served some years in his native State, before going to Germantown. There for many years he could be seen going from one parish call to another, on a bicycle, with his long coat tails flying behind him.
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The future bishop graduated at twenty from the University of Penn- sylvania, and like other Philadelphians of his day, went on to Harvard for a second bachelor's degree. Then he entered the Episcopal Theo- logical School in Cambridge, where the great neighboring luminary was Phillips Brooks. Some of the atmosphere of that day is recaptured for us by Bishop Perry in his last Convention address in 1946. "This was the time of religious fervor well remembered by those of us who in schools and rectories and family pews watched and listened and took heed. The figures of Bishop Clark and Phillips Brooks and others here, in Boston and Philadelphia, stirred vast congregations by their elo- quence. The immediate result was electric, illuminating for a moment or for a lifetime, the souls of individuals and releasing spiritual currents in the multitudes who felt the irresistible contagion.'
One result of Bishop Perry's year at Harvard was to make him eligible, as it were, later in life for election to that select body known as the Overseers of Harvard College. As a proper Rhode Islander, who had known enough to go to Harvard, he succeeded that proper Bostonian, Bishop William Lawrence.
At Seminary, James Perry was thrown in contact with other out- standing men who had been drawn to E.T.S. by the influence of Phillips Brooks. He seems to have been a leader, and, according to E.T.S. tra- dition, a ringleader in the student (and faculty) rebellion against the . colored stoles introduced by Dean Lawrence's successor, George Hodges. The new dean, vesting once for Chapel, found a reference to Acts pinned to his colored stole. The passage was: "And so we went to Rome."
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