USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island Episcopalians 1635-1953 > Part 7
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The Brooks influence remained with the future Bishop until the end, that is, religiously and, to a slight extent, ritualistically, but not ecclesi- astically. In the Anglo-Catholicism of his middle and later episcopate, the word Ministry was seldom heard, but Faith and Order, Episcopate and Priesthood, rang out regularly in public utterance.
The young theologue's first clerical post was a curacy at Christ Church, Springfield, Massachusetts. There the long illness of his rector, Dr. Cotton Brooks, left him in practical charge of that important parish for a year and a half. So it came about that, at twenty-five, he was called to the rectorship of another large parish, Christ Church, Fitchburg, where he won all hearts. His fame travelled to New Haven, where St. Paul's, the city's largest parish, called him. In another seven successful years he seems to have become virtual Dean of the ministers of New Haven. This cooperative attitude toward Non-Conformity lasted through the early years of his episcopate. Later he was to become more reserved.
Two personal events of these New Haven years are of interest. One of his teachers in St. Paul's Church School was a Yale senior, Henry Knox Sherrill, later to become Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. The other event was the young rector's marrriage to Edith Weir, daugh-
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ter of a Yale professor, who was to be his gracious and able helpmeet for forty years. Two sons, one a prominent rector and the other a doctor, were the surviving children.
Bishop Perry died in Maryland on March 20, 1947, while on his way to a Lenten Church service. He was buried from the Cathedral of St. John in Providence. Later a chapel in the Diocesan House and a memorial altar in the Cathedral were consecrated by his successor, the Rt. Rev. Granville Gaylord Bennett.
Thus shortly after relinquishing his See, James De Wolf Perry, a great Christian gentleman, passed to his reward. His nigh thirty-six years as Bishop saw an immense strengthening of the Episcopal Church in the State. A letter addressed to him from his last Convention succinctly sums up both the work and the man:
"Your devoted clergy and friends of the laity, in Convention assembled, heard this morning with deep regret your letter of resignation as Bishop of Rhode Island. Through thirty-five years of your episcopate you have become bound to us by strong ties of affection and fellowship.
"We are deeply grateful for your leadership, warm personal sym- pathy, and spiritual strength upholding us through the sorrows and difficulties of two wars and a world-wide depression. Despite these conditions you have led us forward.
"The number of people on whom you have laid your hands in Confirmation has more than doubled the communicant strength of the Church in this Diocese. We rejoice with you in the new schools that have come into being, the development and adornment of our Diocesan homes for the young and for the aged, and the spirit of unity which prevailed among us and found its outward and visible expression in the establishment of the Cathedral.
"Happily there are still some months during which you will continue to be our beloved Diocesan. However, we want you to know that you will always be to us a Father in God and a close personal friend, and we pray for God's blessing to rest upon you in constant benediction."
III
The episcopate of Bishop Perry stands in much the same relation- ship to the Clark-McVickar period as the years of Bishop Henshaw do to the times of Bishop Griswold. It was a day of integration and closer organization, along with substantial increase. Bishop Henshaw made the beginnings of a real Diocese in Rhode Island. In the Clark-McVickar
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period of nearly sixty years, the number of parishes trebled, and the communicants increased by sixfold, but organization had not greatly advanced. It was the accomplishment of Bishop Perry, in his first ten years, to establish the closely articulated unity present today, crowned somewhat later by a Cathedral, which, in this small State, is a real center. The first ten years, incidentally, is the period of greatest communicant increase in the whole episcopate, 44 per cent as against only 11.4 per cent in the State's population. In the twenties the diocesan growth of 15% barely exceeded the population increase of 12.7%. In the thirties the ratio was much better, 18% to 3.8%. Since 1940, communicant growth, due in part, to smaller Church Schools and the cessation of English immi- gration, has not quite kept pace with the population.
The first ten years of Bishop Perry's administration, then, stand out as most fruitful in many ways of the thirty-five. Besides the 44 per cent increase in communicants, the Diocesan Council, with the various departments was organized. Further, St. Andrew's School obtained a large new building, McVickar Hall, soon after Bishop Perry's arrival, and, somewhat later, St. Paul's, Providence, its church building. St. Andrew's, Providence, likewise built its large parish house. Also several new mis- sions, particularly in the suburbs and rural areas, were developed, along with a small beginning in Italian work. Later this was abandoned, partly because of the lack of workers in the Episcopal Church for such enter- prises, and partly because of the unwillingness of the parishes involved to encourage Italian membership. Methodists and Baptists have taken over where the Episcopalians missed an opportunity.
The period from 1921 to 1931, true perhaps to the materialistic trend of the times, was more fruitful in building than in communicant increase (only 15%). Then, St. George's Parish, Central Falls, erected its noble stone church. St. Luke's, Pawtucket, did the same. St. Martin's Parish in Providence acquired a beautiful church and parish house. St. Thomas' Church, Providence, built a sizable parish house. Several smaller build- ings saw the light here and there. St. Andrew's School, due largely to its energetic rector, the Rev. Albert Crabtree, obtained its fine dining- hall building, Bishop Perry Hall. Missionary contributions in this period rose from $73,189 to $94,645.
The next sixteen years may be divided into two periods of about eight years each. For, from 1930 to 1938, Bishop Perry was, in addition to his diocesan duties, Presiding Bishop and President of the National Council. While these depression years record no building of consequence, and show a considerable decrease in giving, communicant growth took another upward jump, 18 per cent, or four times the depression rate of increase in population.
From 1940 on, the financial picture brightened considerably. The total receipts of all parishes in the year 1929 were $866,296.21. In 1946 they were $1,148,694.02. This 28 per cent increase in contributions must be set against a 35 per cent increase in these seventeen years in com- municants. As the value of the dollar was less in 1946 than 1929, it is
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evident that per capita giving had decreased somewhat absolutely, and considerably more relatively. In other words, up to 1946, the Diocese had not entirely recovered from the depression declines.
Here we might mention two general features of the bishop's adminis- tration. The first was his attitude toward candidates for the Ministry and toward canonical examinations. Having profited in Seminary from both Hebrew and Greek, Bishop Perry was very chary of dispensations from the Greek New Testament. He had kept up his Hebrew through the first decade of his own episcopate, and felt very strongly that every young candidate should at least study New Testament Greek. Only the demonstrably incapable ever got a dispensation. This Biblical bent of mind made him a frequent participant in oral questioning of candidates in this subject, as well as in various others. His conscientious attendance at the canonical examinations was much appreciated by the examining chaplains. Moreover, he never favored ordaining poorly educated lay readers simply because they were doing well in some parish or mission. Nor was he at all eager to accept ministers or priests from other com- munions. He apparently rather doubted that adaptability and real happi- ness would go with such a fundamental change. As he once told the present writer, really to be an Anglican, you must be born one.
This remark reveals the real nature of the Bishop's later Anglo- Catholicism. His Anglicanism might be described as right of center, like that of his close friend, Archbishop Temple. He gladly wore a mitre where it was de rigeur, but seldom elsewhere, nor did he ever become adept in the ways of the ritualistic restorers. He tried to set a norm for the Diocese in the services of the Cathedral, some ritual, but not too much, reverence but not genuflection.
The bishop's conversion from low church liberalism to mild Anglo- Catholicism is traceable in his early Convention addresses and in the gradual change in the ecclesiastical complexion of the Diocese, a change not always appreciated by the old-timers among the clergy and laity. The suggestion which he reportedly once made to the Vestry of a big low church parish, that it ought now to be ready for somewhat more advanced Churchmanship, fell on stony ground. The Clark-McVickar tradition was retained. In other instances, however, low church parishes and missions were transformed into ones outwardly, at least, Anglo-Catholic. However, the two long-time strongholds of advanced Churchmanship in the Diocese, St. Stephen's, Providence, and St. John's, Newport, did not, for. a variety of reasons, grow in forty years. On the other hand, the two big downtown parishes of the Diocese, Grace Church, Providence, and St. Paul's, Pawtucket, representing a quite different type of Churchman- ship, have, in this forty year period, trebled their communicant lists. However, in spite of growing theological differences, the Diocese still maintained its former harmony.
Statistically, as of 1946, the year of Bishop Perry's retirement, twenty- two parishes and missions had Anglo-Catholic rectors or vicars in place of the four of 1911. Graduates of the Episcopal Theological School,
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which the Bishop began to disapprove of from 1918 on, remained prac- tically stationary in number in a slowly growing clergy list-22 out of 71 in 1911, and 21 out of 88 in 1946. Rhode Island, however, did not become as yet an Anglo-Catholic Diocese, despite all the gains of the movement. Bishop Perry, in one of his later Convention addresses, complained that the first question a Vestry asked concerning an Episcopal nominee was not about his qualifications, but "Is he High-Church?" This, apparently, replaced the usual question, "Is he over forty?"
This change in Churchmanship resulted on the Bishop's part in decided cooling of enthusiasm for any movement toward Christian unity which would turn the Episcopal Church in a Pan-Protestant direction. The Bishop fought hard to help defeat the proposal for Episcopal and Presbyterian union, which was before General Convention in 1943 and 1946. Union, he felt, should be an organic one of the basis of Catholic Faith and Order. How all this differs essentially from the Roman ulti- matum of unconditional surrender is difficult, of course, for a Protestant to see.
The outstanding features of Bishop Perry's administration, then, apart from a considerable change in diocesan Churchmanship, were a doubling of communicants, many new buildings in parishes and insti- tutions, heavy increases in endowments of all sorts, the founding of St. Michael's and St. Dunstan's Schools in Newport and Providence, as well as the Seamen's Institution in Newport, and the establishment or reestablishment of eleven missions. Ten missions reached self-support in these thirty-five years, nearly all of them in growing areas such as Cranston, Warwick Neck, Pawtucket, Riverside and North Providence.
Although Bishop Perry wrote excellent sermons and Convention addresses, he was not an outstanding preacher, as were his predecessors, Griswold, Henshaw, Clark and McVickar. It was only after his return from a supervisory chaplaincy in World War I that he discarded written sermons. Leadership by public speech was not his.
Leadership in other ways, however, was abundant. Thus he was one of the moving spirits in the founding of the Church War-Commission during World War I, and of the National Council after it. He introduced modern office methods into the Diocesan Office and organized the Diocesan Council with its six Departments. He brought in as Executive Secretary of the Diocese a prominent layman, Lewis D. Learned, who for fifteen years attended to the details of Diocesan administration and finance. It was his misfortune that, for the eight years of his service in the Presiding Bishopric, he was obliged to command a strategic retreat. When the signal for Church advance was once more sounded, the command was given to younger hands.
The net result of Bishop Perry's constant absence from the Diocese in the years 1930 to 1938, absences not merely in New York, but also in Asia and Europe, could have resulted in a considerable slowing down in the tempo of the Diocese. Such, however, was not the case.
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If communicants increased in the Diocese from 1930 to 1940 by eighteen per cent, while population increase was less than four per cent, one reason was the splendid support Bishop Perry had from his assistant, Bishop Bennett, an eminent preacher and public speaker. Another reason, doubtless, was the fact that men seek God more in adversity than in prosperity. The lean years of the Great Depression did not bring a spiritual depression with them, at least not in the Diocese of Rhode Island.
When Bishop Perry came back in 1938 from his term as Presiding Bishop, the exhausting years had taken their toll. Things national and ecumenical, however, as well as things diocesan, occupied his attention, often far into the night. Though the Diocese dragged its feet somewhat in these last eight years, they were not ones of retrogression. Communi- cants increased somewhat, and three new Missions in Scituate and Rumford came into being. The financial losses of the Depression were largely restored.
The overall accomplishments of the Perry episcopate were thus large and important. To that let the words of his successor, Bishop Bennett, in his first Convention address, bear witness: "For the first time in thirty- six years this Convention meets without the leadership of Bishop Perry. Into the mold of those full years he poured without limit his faith, his amazing energy and leadership and his constant kindness. Such a heritage is left to but a few dioceses, and we thank God for the life of this great Christian gentleman, whose influence will be felt in the whole Church, in the Diocese and in the lives of many individuals long after most of us have gone."
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CHAPTER VII. The Episcopate of Granville Gaylord Bennett 1946 -
The Right Reverend Granville Gaylord Bennett
I
Bishop Perry presented his resignation to the Diocesan Convention in May of 1946 and to the House of Bishops at General Convention in the autumn. As soon as the House of Bishops had accepted it, plans were made in Rhode Island to search out and elect a successor. Two different committees went to work on the matter and investigated the qualifications of various presbyters.
One obvious candidate was Bishop Bennett, who had many friends in the Diocese and had served fifteen years as auxiliary bishop and suffragan bishop in the Diocese. His friends thought that he had earned his right to the succession. A considerable number of the influential clergy and laity of the Diocese felt, however, that a younger man, with a new policy, should be chosen, particularly since Bishop Bennett would remain permanently in the Diocese as suffragan. We should have two bishops instead of one.
After canvassing many possibilities, a group of clergy, headed by several rectors from the Blackstone Valley, presented the name of the Reverend Victor E. Kennan, a moderate Anglo-Catholic rector in Balti- more, to the Convention. Another group, composed chiefly of the Providence and Bristol County rectors, sponsored Bishop Bennett. Before the election the clergy seemed almost equally divided, with many of the younger and more advanced Churchmen on one side, and many of the older and more moderate Churchmen on the other. However, the vote was far from being on party lines or on the basis of youth versus age. On the election day itself the laity, as expected, voted two to one in favor of Bishop Bennett, while the clergy vote was thirty-nine to thirty-one. The election was thus settled on the first ballot, something not too com- mon in episcopal elections, and, as usual, it was immediately made unani- mous. Once more Rhode Island had elected an Evangelical with liberal leanings. Ironically, the "young" candidate died suddenly some three years after the election.
II
Granville Gaylord Bennett was born in Deadwood, South Dakota, on November 28, 1882, where his father was a lawyer, a judge, a member of Congress, and a good Presbyterian. Bishop Bennett looks back with gratitude to the religious influences of his home. He is the second Bishop of Rhode Island to come into the Church from Presbyterian up-bringing, the other being Bishop Clark.
The Bishop's early education was at private academies in New York and Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1903,
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and from the Western Theological Seminary in 1907. He was made deacon in 1906 by Bishop Graves of Western Nebraska, whose daughter, Margaret, he married on June 7, 1907, and in whose jurisdiction he also worked for four years. Two married daughters, one living in Rhode Island and one in California, came of this marriage. The first Mrs. Bennett died after some twenty years. In 1933 the Bishop married Miss Mary Roswell Horr of Duluth, Minnesota. His young son is named Peter.
After four years in Nebraska, Granville Bennett served for seven years as rector of two different churches in Montana. Then came a promotion to St. Paul's Church in Minneapolis, where the future Bishop's preaching talent became widely known. After two years, in 1920, he was elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Duluth, which was later reunited, in 1944, with the Diocese of Minnesota. Bishop Bennett's con- nection with Duluth ceased in 1933, after two years as assistant, in Rhode Island, to Bishop Perry, then Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. In 1939, after Bishop Perry had served his term as Presiding Bishop, Bishop Bennett was elected to a permanent position as suffragan. It was the active undergirding of the assistant that had made possible, without damage, the frequent absences of Bishop Perry from his Diocese.
III
Although only seven years have elapsed (in 1953) since Bishop Bennett's election as Diocesan, and though his episcopate, by canon, must come to an end shortly, considerable advance has been made, particularly in the Missions. The ceaseless activity of the new Arch- deacon, the Venerable Anthony R. Parshley, resulted in the founding of four new and apparently permanent missions in the first two years of the new episcopate. These are the Church of the Messiah in Foster, St. Mark's, Hoxsie, Church of the Holy Spirit, Shannock, and St. Thomas', Alton. The mission in Arcadia, long a pet project of Bishop Perry, was reluctantly given up to cultivate the more responsive areas around Shan- nock and Canonchet, a little farther to the south. For the third time in 135 years a mission was started in the village of Chepachet. If it had been possible to have a morning service there, instead of an evening one, and to establish a Sunday School, this mission might have taken root. Another mission, which lasted several years, was one in the Tiogue section of West Warwick and Coventry.
Another significant advance in the missionary parishes has been the assumption of self-support by six missions of long standing, namely: St. Barnabas, Apponaug, St. Thomas', Greenville, Holy Trinity, Tiverton, St. Andrew's, Providence, Grace Memorial Church, Phillipsdale, and St. David's, Meshanticut Park. Most of these parishes have profited greatly from the movement from the cities to the suburbs which is taking place all over the country.
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A third aspect of progress has been the erection of several new church buildings by loans underwritten by the Diocese, but payable by the parishes themselves. Thus the Mission of St. Michael and All Angels in the Rumford section of East Providence has acquired a good rectory and the costly basement of a new church. A new church building, on drier ground, was started late in 1953.
The Church of the Holy Spirit in Shannock has likewise acquired a rectory and a roofed-over basement, with the burden of debt already much reduced. St. Mark's Mission, in the fast-growing part of Warwick known as Hoxsie, has a sizable basement church, erected in 1949, as well as a new rectory.
The colored church of The Saviour, after many tribulations, has acquired a church and a parish house on North Main Street, Providence, not far from the erstwhile building of the Church of the Redeemer, sold long ago to a Polish parish. However, even if the location and growth of the colored work could have been foreseen forty years ago, funds would have been lacking to buy this particular building for the Diocese.
Another church to get a fine building, without too great a debt, is the thriving Trinity Church Mission, founded in 1943, in rapidly growing Scituate. Trinity Church, St. Timothy's, South Scituate, and the Foster Mission had in 1953 nearly 180 Church School children between them and about 200 communicants. This section of Rhode Island, with Pascoag, further north, is perhaps the most promising area of diocesan missionary effort, except, possibly, Hoxsie and Norwood.
Last, but not least, is the fact that the Mission of the Resurrection in Norwood has, after twenty-five years of waiting, built a good-looking church structure on its basement foundation. The debt here is relatively heavy, but is being steadily amortized.
This represents, in brief, the encouraging story of the advance of the Missions in the Diocese between 1946 and 1953. What of the established and self-supporting parishes? These have held their own in the cities, with some advance here and there, and with some recovery from the slump in Church School enrollment which set in after the depression years. On the whole, the self-supporting parishes, at least the larger ones, have done well enough for themselves, though the income of almost no parish can be said to have kept pace with the rise in prices. Grace Church, Providence, has added considerably to its parish house facilities, at the cost of $275,000 raised among its constituency and friends. St. Paul's, Pawtucket, All Saints, Providence, St. Martin's, Providence, and the Church of the Transfiguration, Edgewood, and Trinity Church, Paw- tuxet, have spent $20,000 to $50,000 on improvements and enlargements. Two well-appointed parish houses have been built at Wickford and Wakefield.
Several more things, material and spiritual, of these few years may be mentioned. One of these is the new Conference Center on the large
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lake near Pascoag, an estate left to the Diocese by the will of Judge Samuel Harris. This has proved itself of great value for all sorts of gatherings, social and religious, day camps, camps for small overnight groups, parish picnics, etc. If more money were available, the usefulness of the Center could be greatly increased. In 1953, for the first time, it was possible to hold a Diocesan Young People's Conference here.
Two new ventures of a financial nature came to success early in 1952. The first, an Episcopal Charities Drive for the benefit of the Diocesan Institutions, made an encouraging first-year beginning, with some $35,000 gathered. The second was a drive of a more specialized variety for a new building for St. Dunstan's School. Some $130,000 was raised for this purpose from people within and without the Church. The Rev. John S. Higgins, D. D., of St. Martin's, Providence, now Coadjutor Bishop, in whose former parish the St. Dunstan Choristers sing, was prominent in this venture, as well as being the head of the Charities Drive. In this connection, we might also mention the $500,000 bequest made to Trinity Church, Newport, by Mrs. Wilks, the daughter of the famous Hetty Green. With a further legacy of $300,000 from Mr. Coddington of New York, a descendant of Newport's first settler, Trinity parish now has an endowment of over a million dollars, the largest, perhaps, in New England. It has just given $16,000 for a dormitory at the Conference Center.
Another item of interest is the expansion of educational effort for adults as well as children under the auspices of the Department of Christian Education. This work grew greatly in both scope and vigor during this episcopate, under the promotional hand of the Reverend Doctor C. Lennart Carlson, rector of St. James' Church, North Provi- dence, former head of the Department. The aim was to follow, as far as possible, in the new paths opened up by the corresponding department of the National Council.
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