QUESTIONS OF THE DAY
My questions missed the anniversary of the
consecration of Bishop Samuel Seabury on November 14 by a couple of
weeks. In 1784, the Rev Samuel Seabury, rector of St Peter's Church,
Westchester, NY, was consecrated first
Bishop for the Church of Connecticut by the Right Rev. Robert Kilgour,
Bishop of Aberdeen and Primus of Scotland, the Right Rev. Arthur Petrie,
Bishop of Ross and Moray, and the Right Rev. John Skinner, Coadjutor
Bishop of Aberdeen, Scotland, in Bishop Skinner's private chapel.
Would it be accurate to say that the Scottish Episcopal Church is the
mother church of the Episcopal Church in the US, rather than the Church
of England? The Church of England is the mother church of the Scottish
Episcopal Church, so would the Church of England then be the grandmother
church of TEC in the US?
I think that makes sense, Mimi. It would make Rome Great Grandma :>)
ReplyDeletenij
Nij, I assume you read on Facebook Kelvin Holdsworth's objections to calling the Church of England the mother church of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Kelvin is Provost of St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland.
DeleteDon't pin too much to Sam Seabury. He was a loose canon, of sorts. I look to William White as the real "father" of our branch of the communion. The one really good thing Seabury got out of the Scotland deal was their request that the Episcopalians follow their lead in name and use of a more fulsome eucharistic prayer than the impoverished version in the English BCP. Perhaps the C of E is our mother, and the nonjuring bishops of Scotland our stepmother. England didn't want to have anything to do with us after consecrating White and Provoost, and washed their hands of us once that deed was done. Maybe both England and the Scottish bishops are more like crazy aunts?
ReplyDeleteOne loose cannon is likely to attract another. Not that I'm a canon... I am pleased that the Scottish prayer book made its way over to the US. Family relationships are indeed complicated.
DeleteYou know, I never thought of this conundrum till you brought it up. It all sounds very Southern, in a way - Little Mama, Big Mama, Grand Mama.
ReplyDeleteThe wanderings of my mind are likely to produce a good many oddities. Most of the time, I keep them to myself.
DeleteBut it's the oddities that make this whole blog interesting! Share more, please. :-)
DeleteMarthe, oddities there will be. You can count on them.
DeleteRuss, I would like to "Like" your comment. ;-)
DeleteI think it's a bit more complicated. Prior to the Revolution, I assume that the churches in the colonies were part of the Church of England, not the Scottish Episcopal Church. On the other hand, the only way at the time for the former colonial churches to continue as Anglican was to get their own bishop consecrated (there was none in the colonies) and that could not be done in England, since the candidate would have to swear allegiance to the Crown. Perhaps the Scottish Episcopal Church might be considered our stepmother after we "divorced" our English mother. Another thing we got from the Scots was much of our Book of Common Prayer, as Seabury was urged to use the Scottish liturgies (especially the Eucharistic Prayer) as the basis for the American prayer book. Our Scottish roots are the reason there is a Saint Andrew's cross in the field of the Episcopal Church flag and shield.
ReplyDeleteBill, one conclusion I drew from the diversity of opinions in the comments on Facebook is that the family relationships are complicated. We are kin in one way or another. As I've said, I'm grateful for the liturgies from the Scottish Episcopal Church.
DeleteI guess it depends on whether you think a church derives its maternity through its first bishops or through its first worshippers and missionaries. Certainly the Episcopal Church had worshippers and missionaries for decades - a century, maybe? - before it had its own bishops. Where did they come from? I don't know enough about U.S. Episcopal history to know. But I certainly wouldn't want to give bishops more significance than the early pioneer missionaries.
ReplyDeleteI assume the Anglican missionaries in the US colonies were from the Church of England and subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury. One thing is certain that when the Revolutionary War ended, the Anglicans in the colonies wanted their own bishops.
DeleteIt's my understanding that the first American priests were trained and ordained in, and the founding of parishes directed from, England by the CoE, and the only actual contribution from the Scots was the original ordination (and later ordinations were performed by CoE bishops, weren't they?). So to me that makes CoE the mother church; perhaps we can call the Scottish Episcopal Church (somehow the abbreviation SEC doesn't seem right during football season) the godmother church? And that would make Rome the grandma church.
ReplyDeleteKishnevi
Anglican priests in the colonies were trained and ordained in England. I assume (but I don't know for sure) that missionaries from Scotland were Presbyterian.
DeleteBoth the Scottish and the English churches claim, with justification, independence from Rome in their earliest histories, with encroachment by Rome coming in later centuries.
If I had phrased my one statement in the form of a question, "Is the Church of England is the mother church of the Scottish Episcopal Church...?" I'd have been home free. The spirited thread of comments to my identical post on Facebook covered a lot of territory, and there was even SHOUTING, though the shouting was not mean-spirited.
ReplyDeleteLiving without "benefit" of Facebook, I don't know what was said there, but the history of Anglicanism in the American Colonies is fairly clear. Originally the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was founded in 1701 and in 1702 sent George Keith and John Talbot as its first missionaries to the New World. Anglicans were generally a minority here, given the population by dissenters in New England and general disaffection with the mother country. Even in colonies with an established religion (Virginia and Maryland), colonial levies were insufficient to support the clergy in place, and so the SPG supplemented the incomes of almost all clergy. The Bishop of London had nominal jurisdiction over the church in North America, but because of distance generally only could refuse ordination to prospective clergy and had little control over them once ordained. Lacking bishops, the colonies had no basis for organizing dioceses. English bishops wanted to ordain bishops for the colonies but were prohibited by Parliament, which feared that indigenous bishops would foster independence, and other colonists objected, lay Anglicans because they felt bishops would reduce their existing control over churches, and dissenters because they feared that bishops might gain temporal authority. Other than getting Seabury ordained, I am aware of no influence in the colonial era by the Scottish church at all comparable to the influence of the S.P.G., which still holds title (as trustee) to some of the church lands at least in New Jersey.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the history, Paul. I stand corrected about the authority, since it was the Bishop of London rather than the ABC. After the war, it was necessary to have bishops in the colonies if the US church was to remain hierarchical.
DeleteI seem to remember Bosco saying that there wasn't that much difference between the 1662 Prayer Book and the Scottish Prayer Book except for the longer 'prayer of consecration'.
ReplyDeleteTim, the longer prayer of consecration is what many of us like.
DeleteOh, I understand that. It doesn't make for a hugely different book, though, which is the impression I get from hearing some people talk about it.
DeleteActually, the 1662 revisers misunderstood Cranmer's original intention. 1662 put 'Amen' after the second, 'Do this in remembrance of me', giving the impression that the prayer was over at that point, before the act of communion. But what Cranmer actually did was to move the act of communion into the middle of the prayer of consecration to discourage speculation about what was on the 'holy table' (as he would have put it). He had the priest say the prayer up to the second 'Do this in remembrance of me', then the act of communion, then the priest finished the prayer. But 1662 gave the impression that these were two different prayers - hence Tobias' comment about an 'impoverished Eucharistic prayer'.
Tim, it isn't just the rearrangement, but the omission of such things as the oblation, from the 1549 version (which is basically what the Scots retained) that impoverishes the 1662 rite. It isn't just Cranmerian verbosity (length) but content, that is at issue. I think if you set the 1789 American BCP version of the Eucharistic Prayer next to the 1662, you will see the differences more clearly. If you do the same with the 1549, it is even more obvious.
DeleteTobias, on the contrary, as I explained, the oblation is retained in the 1662 rite, but it appears in what is then obviously a 'prayer after communion' (pp.257-258 in the current English 1662 BCP). It has become a separate prayer in 1662 by the addition of the word 'Amen' after the second 'Do this in remembrance of me'. but in 1552 it was not a separate prayer. As I said, Cranmer did not shorten the eucharistic prayer; he simply moved the act of communion into the middle of it.
DeleteNo, Tim. You misunderstand me. The form of the epiclesis in 1549 "with they Holy Spirit and word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these they gifts and creatures of Bread and Wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ" is altered in the later versions to a receptionist form "that we receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine... in remembrance... may be partakers..." As to the oblation, the 1549 reference to making and celebrating and making "with these thy holy gifts the memorial which thy Son hath willed us to make" is omitted from the transposed section. All that remains is the "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving." The _personal oblation_ of oursel(f), our souls and bodies as a reasonable holy (I've heard that somewhere) living sacrifice remains... but then the epiclesis on the people is also sorely truncated, omitting the lovely mutual indwelling "he in them and they in him".
DeleteI don't have the 1559 version at hand... so I don't know how much of what is in 1662 is his amendment. But it was 1662 that was in use in 1785 -- and it is what the Scots objected to. The form we got in 1789 very closely reflects the 1549 version.
OK, now I get what you mean and I'm sure you're right. It's part of what MacCulloch calls 'the Anglican communion's long march away from Thomas Cranmer's Eucharistic theology'. I, of course, feel very much at home with Cranmer's Eucharistic theology, so I like the 1552 order, and regret that in North America today you can't actually find a contemporary Anglican rite that expresses Cranmer's theology, not even as an option.
DeleteThanks for a good exchange.
The Scottish rite included the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit. For the Eastern Orthodox and for people like me this is essential and any rite without it (and this means most western rites including Roman) are defective in an essential element. Of course, I believe God acts whether we say the right words or not. I believed in the Real Presence when I was a Baptist and grape juice was used and the gathered folks thought it was just a memorial. To me, Jesus was faithful and present. Online tests show my belief system more aligned with Eastern Orthodox than Roman, Anglican, or (shudder) Protestant. lol
ReplyDelete"I believed in the Real Presence when I was a Baptist and grape juice was used and the gathered folks thought it was just a memorial. To me, Jesus was faithful and present."
DeleteAmen, my friend.
You know, I don't think it matters.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, child or grandchild, you have to grow up and be a person of your own - sometimes the child is much better than the parent.
Mark, you' you are correct. My questions reflect the wanderings of my mind which I sometimes make public.
DeleteI know. I trust you to know that, but it depresses me to see so much in the Church that I now recognize as "thinking like a child." Even in liberal circles, we have to desperately contort scripture and tradition to justify reason. The conservatives bleat about "having no anchor." What it really means is "Tell me what to do so that I'll know I'm right and be safe and without consequence." That's not grown-up life, though. It's nice to have backing, but you've got to make your own choices, at some point.
DeleteThe Episcopal Church was in defensive mode far more than I cared for during Rowan's term as ABC, but I believe the church leadership learned its lessons. Whatever you think about Justin Welby's leadership, he has not criticized and interfered in the affairs of TEC as did his predecessor.
DeleteAs I see it, TEC remains a thinking church, despite the best efforts of those desperate for certainty to corral the members into acceptance of their concept of the requirements laid down by scripture and tradition.