Evangelicalism in the [Protestant] Episcopal Church of the USA: The mid-19th and early 21st centuries contrasted

Students of the history of the PECUSA to World War I face many fascinating facts. One such is that in 1850 conservative Evangelicals made up as much as fifty per cent of the house of bishops, clergy and parishes of the Church, and, by the arrival of World War I, they had virtually completely disappeared. There was no evangelical party as such in the PECUSA from then until the 1970s when it was re-introduced (howbeit in a changed form) from Britain and Australia (with the setting up of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in PA and other organizations).

Looking back, the evangelical school of the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the mid-nineteenth century may be characterized in six ways, by its commitment to:

• Conversionism – expecting repenting, believing sinners to have an experience of conversion;
• Activism – showing evangelistic energy and busy pastoral work;
• Biblicism – committed to the final authority of the holy Scriptures for faith and conduct;
• Crucicentrism -- preaching the message of Christ crucified and teaching the centrality of the Atonement at Calvary;
• Churchmenism – loyal members of the national Church and committed to its Formularies as evangelical Churchmen; and
• Anti-Ritualism – opposed to the emerging agenda in liturgy and doctrine of the anglo-catholic movement.

In the 19th century USA Evangelicals founded three seminaries (in Alexandria VA, in Gambier, OH, and in Philadelphia, PA), published newspapers (Episcopal Record and The Episcopalian) and ran evangelistic and educational societies (e.g. the Evangelical Knowledge Society). They were in mid-century a force to be reckoned with!

Yet, by 1914 this school or party was gone and the reasons for it cannot simply be attributed to schism which led to the formation of The Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873, for this schism only took a small proportion of the evangelical clergy and laity out of the PECUSA.

For too long insufficient academic effort has been devoted to seeking to establish the reasons for the total demise of the evangelical party in PECUSA. However, with the publication of the essay “The Strange Death of Evangelical Episcopalianism” by Professor Gillis J. Harp in Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol LXXIV, No 2, 2005, pp/180 ff. a wrong has been righted and we are well on the way to discovering what happened to the Evangelical School and its institutions, parishes and organizations.

I urge the serious-minded to read this essay, if for no other reason that it is a “cautionary tale” from which modern Evangelicals can possibly learn. (I will return to its thesis in a further e-mail essay.)

The introduction of Evangelicalism into the (now) ECUSA in the 1970s is easy to explain for it was basically an implant, although there were those within ECUSA (a) of the more hearty Low Church School and (b) who had been influenced by the Charismatic Movement (via Dennis Bennet, Terry Fulham et al) who were most welcoming of the new religion. This new Evangelicalism shared the characteristics of conversionism, activism, Biblicism and crucicentrism. Yet it did so in what we may call a generic evangelical way (being much influenced by the strong, general evangelical movement of the period). Regrettably, it was not specifically committed to the historic formularies of the Church (for in the ECUSA these were removed in the 1970s) and it was more than content to use the new forms of liturgy and new paraphrases of the Bible then being pressed on parishes by their bishops, for these new creations were seen as being relevant, accessible and simple because in contemporary language. Further, it was happy to work within a basic ritualism (which liberal Catholicism had introduced with the new forms of liturgy) and to call its clergy “Father” – because it was not conscious of or perhaps interested in the doctrinal questions involved (see Peter Toon, Evangelical Theology 1833-1856, A Response to Tractarianism, 1979, UK & USA).

If we look at the Evangelical movement now in the ECUSA as found for example in The Network we can see that it is the true continuation of that which was begun in the 1970s. It does not seriously question anything that was in place in the ECUSA when it was started and it only protests against innovations that it has seen emerge during its own lifetime – e.g., forms of extreme inclusive language; the requirement that all office holders agree to the ordination of women, and most obviously the blessing of same-sex couples and the ordaining of persons in such partnerships.

Thus its members find somewhat irrelevant the calls from some quarters (e.g. the Prayer Book Society of the USA) for the restoration of the historic and classic Formularies as the standard of Faith for the Church, and the making of the 1979 Book to be what it actually is in its content, a Book of Alternative Services. They are, however, more sensitive to the calls for a restoration of marriage discipline for in their sober, reflective moments they know that the present situation of the right of any divorcee to remarriage in church and the high percentage of divorced and remarried clergy are scandalous – as is also the culture that allows abortion as a means of birth control.

My own hope is that the present Evangelical (and also Charismatic) school that dominates The Network’s membership will make time to look seriously at the Evangelical Movement in history and will be prepared to add to its zeal for evangelization and church growth a zeal for true and proper foundations in Scripture and the historic Formularies for the Anglican Way. I hope it will discover a genuine hearty and zealous form of Reformed Catholicism as the true religion of the Anglican Way, which on this sure foundation, is a truly comprehensive Way, allowing for a variety of churchmanship and theological emphases!

petertoon@msn.com December 15, 2005