tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3043728.post7129247439421142832..comments2023-05-06T04:37:23.233-05:00Comments on The Prayer Book Society: News: Questions facing American Anglicans and The Common Cause Parternship: The Anglican Way as the Church-type or Denomination-type but not Sect-typeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3043728.post-42147302255412565562007-10-15T11:06:00.000-05:002007-10-15T11:06:00.000-05:00As the Episcopal Church in the newly independent U...As the Episcopal Church in the newly independent United States began to organize it had three historical models at hand. One was the established church model of Virginia,Maryland, and the South. A second was the dissenting sect model of Massachusetts and Connecticut. And the third was the one-among-many model of Pennsylvaia and Rhode Island. <BR/><BR/>In Virginia from the early 17th century, in Maryland after the Glorious Revoultion of 1689, and in the southern colonies of South and North Carolina and Georgia from various times in the 18th century, the Church of England was supported by a local tax. In Virginia the tax was set by the local Vestry, a body appointed by the colonial legislature with authority to levy a per person tax for the support of the poor, building churches, and paying ministers. The amount of the tax varied with the needs of the community but typically was 30 pounds of tobacco per working person (white males 16 and older and slaves 13 and older). One worker could make between 1000 and 1500 pounds of tobacco depending on the kind of tobacco and the fertiity of the soil, so the tax was about 2 - 3 percent of income. That's about the present national average bu those who give. Every worker paid the tax for himself and his dependents. <BR/><BR/>North Carolina was first serttled by Quakers and others who objected to the tax, but later a local establishment was imposed by royal governors and provincial assemblies. Similar schemes were tried from time to time with more or less success in the other southern colonies.<BR/><BR/>As time went on and the number of dissenters increased opposition to the establishment also increased, and the early revolutionary assemblies stripped the vestries of the power to tax. <BR/><BR/>So the establishment model was not really available to the post-Revolution organizers of the Episcopal Church.<BR/><BR/>In Massachusetts and Connecticut the provincial legislatures authorized the towns to levy a tax for the support of the town minister, the town meeting house, and the poor. From the late 17th century on immigrants from England objected to this Congregational establishment and secured the right to have their tax paid for the support of the Church of England minister. In 1722 the President of Yale College and three other Congregational ministers declared at the college commencement that they were convinced of the invalidity of presbyteral ordination in opposition to episcopal. They went to England to be ordained in the Church of England and came back to serve Church of England congregations. One of these clergy, Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, trained many young men, graduates of Yale and Harvard Colleges, for the ministry of the Church of England. But the New England Anglicans were largely a sect of immigrants through the colonial period. Their clergy were generally supported by grants from the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), forunded in 1702. <BR/><BR/>New York had its own form of establishment. The legislature thought it was setting up a system to provide tax support for the Dutch Reformed, but the royal governor (Queen Anne's cousin) interpreted it to include only Church of England clergy. <BR/><BR/>In Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, no church was established. Church of England lay people, aided by the SPG, organized churches and vestries. So did Presbyterians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Moravians, and many others. Royal governors gave what support they could or wanted to. <BR/><BR/>The authority to issue marriage licenses and the fees that accompanied that power in England exercised by the church in America were considered part of the royal prerogative and exercised by the governors. When in the 1760's the Church of England clergy in New England and the middle colonies began to agitate for an American bishop they were opposed by the governors, the New England Congregational establishment, and by the non-Church of England clergy and merchants. <BR/><BR/>The context of the early Episcopal Church was more complex than Dt. Toon states.<BR/><BR/>Tom Rightmyer in Asheville, NCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com