Revolutionary Anglicanism. The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the American Revolution (review)

Revolutionary Anglicanism. The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the American Revolution. By Nancy L. Rhoden. (New York: New York University Press. 1999. Pp. xii, 205. $40.00.)

Nancy L. Rhoden's Revolutionary Anglicanism examines the history of Church of England clergymen in the American colonies before the Revolution and their responses to it. It begins by investigating the condition of the church in the different colonies, stressing its problems. One of these was the lack of a resident, directing episcopate, but the possible creation of colonial bishops was highly controversial—an ecclesiastical equivalent of British taxation policies. Unsurprisingly, some of the most prominent supporters of a colonial episcopate later became loyalist exiles. With the coming of the Revolution, the Anglican clergy's principles of passive obedience and non-resistance—though admittedly modified after 1688—stood in stark contrast to fervent patriot ideas, bolstered by dissenting resistance traditions. Clerics split into loyalists, neutrals, and patriots (the last, using Professor Rhoden's figures, constituting only 28% of the total). The loyalists often described the conflict as "unnatural"; the revolutionaries turned "Faith into Faction, and the Gospel of Peace, into an Engine of War and Sedition," stated Charles Inglis (p. 85). Loyalist clergymen could suffer harassment, assault, the threat or reality of imprisonment, and exile (useful tables detail the number of clerical exiles or deaths from 1775 to 1783). Local circumstances determined whether or not clergymen could continue their ministry. The Revolution led to the depoliticization of the Anglican clergy; during the conflict, calls for "peaceableness" were widespread. Fast days approved by Congress, however, proved a "Tryal by Ordeal" for clerics (p. 105), since a sermon might prove a political shibboleth. From 1789, the Protestant Episcopal Church, organized so as to be acceptable to the conflict's victors, "preserved its ecclesiastical heritage and simultaneously laid a republican foundation for its future development" (p. 147).

Although this is a short book, it is based on a considerable amount of research. The author has traced the careers of over three hundred Church of England clergymen—listed in the appendix—working in the American colonies between 1775 and 1783. She calculates that 123 were loyalists, 107 neutrals, and eighty-eight patriots. She has consulted a range of primary sources from archives on both sides of the Atlantic, and a wealth of secondary literature (it is a pity that there is no bibliography). The book is efficiently organized, and the chief themes are clearly delineated. This is also a study with many nuances: Professor Rhoden, for instance, emphasizes the divergent religious traditions in the different colonies, and their effects during the Revolution, and, when discussing the clergy's depoliticization, notes exceptions. She also has a good eye for poignant, or telling, episodes and quotations (in 1775, the Rev. John Wiswall, from New England, declared bitterly that, given the Revolution, "the further I go from... [America] the better" [p.127]). Above all, Professor Rhoden sympathetically reconstructs the outlook of Anglican clergymen, and particularly their spiritual predicament during the Revolution, stemming from their oaths respecting George III, and their fears about their own souls' well-being and the salvation of their flocks. Some loyalists might see their sufferings as analogous to the early Christians' persecution; former loyalists and patriots could argue that the church, once separated from the state, might resemble the primitive church more faithfully. None the less, for most clergymen, the Revolution was traumatic—and particularly for those in the six colonies where, hitherto, the Church of England had enjoyed established status.