St. Peter's Church: Faith in Action for 250 Years

Chapter 3: The Churches Disunited

In the years after the American Revolution and the establishment of the Episcopal Church, the United Churches of Christ Church and St. Peter ’s continued under the leadership of Bishop William White. In 1809, with the westward movement of church members in the city and the increasing demand for a new church, St. James was opened on Seventh above Market Street, joining the two other churches under the direction of one vestry and White. But the inevitability of changing times and an aging rector strained the relationship. ἀ e vestry minutes of the United Churches in the last half of the 1820s provide clues about why the three churches chose to go their separate ways. Deborah Gough, author of Christ Church, Philadelphia, explored the situation in detail and wrote that a complex set of problems brought about the separation of the three churches, starting in the 1820s. ἀ ere was the declining population in the area around the first two churches as people moved to the west and other churches opened. ἀ ere was also the increasingly bitter theological divide between evangelical Episcopalians and the traditionalists, a divide that began at St. Paul’s on ἀ ird Street and spread throughout the diocese, affecting the long-held moderate approach of the United Churches. But perhaps the most insidious problem was systemic. White had turned seventy in 1818, and while he remained active, he was nonetheless overextended and overworked. ἀ ree churches would be enough for anyone, but White was also head of the diocese and presiding bishop of the national church, and traveled widely to open parishes and consecrate bishops. Frequently the vestry minutes suggested that White should reduce his duties (he tried to visit all three churches regularly and preside at all funerals) and give more responsibility to his assistants, including the elderly James Abercrombie. ἀ e assistants were used as Sunday school teachers and preachers; they were not asked to take on duties such as regular visits to parish families or ministering to the sick. Furthermore, White would not assign to any of them the responsibility for an individual church, leading to a debilitating lack of connection between the congregants and their clergy. White was set in his ways, and those ways had been set in colonial America. ἀ e three churches remained theologically and liturgically aligned with England following the Restoration, while the rest of the diocese and large Alan J. Heavens and Elizabeth S. Browne The Churches Disunited 3 68 St. Peter’s Church: Faith in Action for 250 Years portions of the American church had moved on. Preaching and worship remained the chief endeavor of the ministers of the United Churches, whereas many growing congregations began working among the poor and destitute, caring for bodies as well as souls. ἀ e more activist and evangelical Episcopal churches thrived, while the financial health of the United Churches suffered, as reflected in the large numbers of empty, unrented pews. Gough noted that “the number of pews rented at Christ Church decreased from 816 in 1813 to 666 in 1820 to 497 in 1828.” ἀ e growing divide between the evangelicals and the traditionalism of Bishop White is reflected in the controversy over the election of an assistant bishop to become bishop after White’s death. According to the biographer of Dr. Jackson Kemper, an assistant minister and later missionary bishop, the controversy convulsed the diocese of Pennsylvania and its convention in the years 1826 and 1827, and in fact, sounded the tocsin of party spirit throughout the church at large. ἀ e strife began with the nomination of William Meade, a partisan low-churchman of Virginia ; and something in that name and the propaganda of its adherents made it distasteful to Kemper for the remainder of his days. [Kemper] was teller at the time of the final vote, and announced the election of Henry Ustick Onderdonk; but the divisions were not healed. Other causes conspired with these to make him anxious to leave the diocese: the bishop was now fast set in his ways and harder to please, and Kemper realized that the term of his greater usefulness in Philadelphia was over. (From An Apostle of the Western Church by Greenough White, 1900) According to the vestry minutes, the first plan of separation of the three churches was introduced in 1826 and was William White’s chamber clock, made by ἀ omas Parker of Philadelphia. In 1803, Parker provided a chronometer for the Lewis and Clark expedition. ἀ e clock is in the St. Peter’s collection...