The leaders of the Church of England were agreed that the need for American bishops was pressing, on both pastoral and administrative grounds, and the 1740s and 1750s witnessed two proposals for their creation which were supported by virtually the whole bench of bishops. To do so, it examines the failure of attempts, especially those of the 1740s and 1750s, to create an anglican episcopate in the American colonies. This article explores the problems and attitudes which underlay the absence of major structural reform of the Church in this period. The eighteenth century is traditionally seen as an interlude between two vigorous movements of church reform. Up until the early 1760s, the progress of the Church of England in New England was beginning to look like a success story rather than one with in-built failure. It argues that in some respects the Church in New England was in fact becoming rather more popular, more indigenous and more integrated into New England life than both eighteenth-century Congregationalists or modern historians have wanted to believe, and that the Church was making headway both in the Puritan heartlands, and in the newer centres of population growth. By contrast, this paper explores some of the successes enjoyed by the Church of England in New England, particularly in the period from the 1730s to the early 1760s, and examines some of the reasons for the Church's growth in these years. The position of the Church of England in colonial New England has usually been seen through the lens of the ‘bishop controversy’ of the 1760s and early 1770s, where Congregational fears of the introduction of a Laudian style bishop to British North America have been viewed as one of the key factors leading to the American Revolution. A Blessed Company demonstrates that, by creatively adapting Anglican parish organization and the language, forms, and modes of Anglican spirituality to the Chesapeake's distinctive environmental and human conditions, colonial Virginians sustained a remarkably effective and faithful Anglican church in the Old Dominion. In addition to its religious functions, the parish provided essential care for the poor, collaborated with the courts to handle civil disputes, and exerted its influence over many other aspects of community life. As such, they were subject to its levies, its authority over marriage, and other social and economic dictates. All colonial Virginians - men and women, rich and poor, young and old, planters and merchants, servants and slaves, dissenters and free-thinkers - belonged to a parish. Drawing on extensive research in parish and county records and other primary sources, Nelson describes Anglican Virginia's parish system, its parsons, its rituals of worship and rites of passage, and its parishioners' varied relationships to the church. Challenging previous characterizations of the colonial Anglican establishment as weak, he reveals the fundamental role the church played in the political, social, and economic as well as the spiritual lives of its parishioners. The important role of the parish in the lives of early Virginians In this book, John Nelson reconstructs everyday Anglican religious practice and experience in Virginia from the end of the seventeenth century to the start of the American Revolution. The chapter thereby addresses the relationship between religion and politics in the American Revolution, at the level of individual experience and in the larger political disputes. It analyzes the phenomenon of Loyalist martyrdom, asking what Loyalist martyrs hoped to achieve. The chapter then considers their political allegiance during the Revolution, explaining why some chose the Loyalist side. It surveys colonial Anglicans’ longer history, showing how their conflicted and paradoxical identity produced a martyrological tradition. In considering Loyalist martyrdom from both religious and political angles, it sheds light on Americans’ efforts to distinguish between “religion” and “politics.” The chapter explains why so many Anglican clergymen can be found playing the part of Loyalist martyrs during the Revolutionary War. This chapter examines Loyalist Anglican clergymen such as John Sayre to consider a larger issue: the intertwined phenomena of religious and political martyrdom in the Revolutionary era.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |