Chapter XII: Reprisal from the Church of England
XII
Reprisal from the Church of England
On October 25 of 1760, George II, king of England, collapsed from an aneurysm while sitting in his water closet and died within minutes. Whitefield had praised this king as the “nursing father of the church.” His reign had empowered Parliament to a large extent and provided a stable climate in which Whig interests influenced British politics. His support of religious freedoms had allowed Protestant denominations in the British Empire to flourish, unmolested by Church of England actions against them.
His twenty-two-year-old son George III succeeded him to the throne, the same King George from whom the colonists would declare their independence in 1776. Over the next decade, the young George instituted sweeping changes in the government’s management of both America and Britain. Determined to regain control of the country from Parliament and the Whigs, George III instigated division within the Whig ranks and bought off key people through appointments and pensions. He also cultivated and used a class of administrators lovingly called “sycophants”—self-seeking, parasitic yes-men, who often abused the powers of their offices. The “reform” efforts of George III were successful, and Whig influence in the nation declined.
The American colonists, who had grown used to managing their own affairs under a Whig-run system, began to suspect the new Tory-led administration of plotting to undermine their liberties. But to extend power over the colonies, the Tories needed the Church of England to regain supremacy from the other denominations, which were increasing their numbers through the series of revivals. The mind of the people was the grand prize. By regaining supremacy in religion, Tory leaders felt they could increase their influence in the larger society.
Whitefield stayed loyal to George III, but flattering acclamations and praise he had declared for his father George II were conspicuously absent. He spoke of loyalty to George III out of obligation, rather than love. By 1764 he would be opposing the Tory plots against liberty, especially where the church was involved. He had plenty of opportunities as the Church of England tried to slow methodism in England and increase their presence and power in the colonies.
Up to this point, the Church of England missionary organization, known as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, or the SPG, focused its missionary efforts on settlers of the American frontiers and toward converting Native Americans. They largely steered clear of the towns founded by New England Puritans and areas settled by other Protestant groups. The Church of England’s desire to bolster membership in America was hampered by the lack of leadership—namely, an American bishop with the power to ordain new ministers and make other high-level decisions. Talented young men seeking ministry positions within the Church of England had to travel to England for ordination. Occasionally, aspiring priests were lost at sea. All important decisions had to be made in England as well. The distance and time to send letters back and forth slowed down everything they tried to accomplish. The SPG was seriously handcuffed.
After George III ascended to the throne, Thomas Secker, the powerful archbishop of Canterbury, decided the time was right to bolster their formal organization in America. The Church of England began to press the issue of appointing an American bishop. By design, the SPG turned its efforts increasingly away from the Native Americans and back toward established areas, welcoming excommunicated Puritans and converting people from all denominations to the Church of England. Understandably, the Puritan ministers became alarmed.
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The Church of England arrived in America a bit later than the others church groups. They had been tolerated in the colonies as long as the institution was weak. Puritans and other groups had originally immigrated to the colonies to escape their oppression. But these new aggressive actions brought back bad memories of England before the Act of Toleration was put into law. The Church of England intruded into the colonial world with SPG missionary activity right in their midst. Colonists feared the establishment of an Episcopal system. Their chief objection was that the church would become empowered through a marriage with the colonial governments. American ministers from all denominations believed that the Church of England was grasping for control of colonial affairs in both civil and religious spheres. The bishop became the focal point. Just as the Old Lights had suspected a New Light plot to take civil control in 1745, fifteen years later, the Christian community of Old and New Lights suspected another conspiracy. They feared that ecclesiastical courts, mandatory tithing, and Anglican political appointees would follow the bishop. Each of these practices were standard fare in England and smelled like “arbitrary power” for the colonial leaders.
To Whitefield’s satisfaction, the moderates among American ministers continued to define themselves by seeking an increasing degree of colonial unity between New and Old Lights. A dedicated Old Light Whig from Rhode Island, Ezra Stiles, called for the Protestant churches of America to form a voluntary “consociation” to protect religious liberties of all Americans. Stiles published an influential sermon entitled “A Discourse on the Christian Union,” which spelled out his ideas for the construction of an organization of ministers to oppose the Church of England. He appealed for unity by pointing out that the enthusiasm of the Awakening was “honestly intended, and proceeded from a zeal for the cause of God.” Additionally, the Awakening brought 150 new churches to New England, born from the conversion of new believers rather than people moving from old churches to new ones. Stiles argued that most doctrinal disputes were founded more upon “jealousies” and “mistake” than practical differences. Whitefield had to be delighted to see such ideas coming out of New England. This was the kind of unity he sought throughout all denominations. His ideas had been taken up by others and found their own legs to travel through the colonies.
As republican ideas about self-rule continued to grow in the colonists, no distinction was made between civil and religious liberties. The American churches started a public controversy that dwarfed the arguments about the Awakening fifteen years earlier. Jonathan Mayhew, a young Boston Old Light, emerged as the leader against the establishment of the Church of England’s efforts to build an episcopacy in America. He spearheaded resistance to the church’s schemes throughout the period, urging American colonists to watch for encroachments on their civil and religious liberties.
In America, the fear that the Church of England might wrest control from colonial churches was not viewed as just an encroachment on religious liberty, but on liberty in general. The church wanted colonial taxes going to them rather than the Puritans of New England. Middle and southern colonies had an assortment of denominations, so the establishment of religions there was more complicated. But they too feared that the Church of England would move in and take over, getting a share of the tax money from every colony.
To digress for a moment, the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States was intended to address this issue of a state-supported church: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This amendment was no big deal to colonists. In the colonial period, the term “establishment” was commonly taken to mean “financial support through taxes.” Religion had not been “disestablished” yet in America in the 1760s, meaning that the colonial state governments gave tax money to their preferred churches. After dodging a bullet with regard to an episcopacy in America in the 1760s, the founders chose to ensure that no church would ever become as powerful as the Church of England. To ensure a genuine freedom of religion, the financial advantage enjoyed by establishing the Anglicans in England could not be allowed in America. Even the churches that received government funding were willing to support the amendment if it meant that there could never be a national church of any denomination. Today, supporting any preferred church with taxes would require the passage of a law by Congress. The first amendment neatly prohibits this possibility since “Congress shall pass no law …” All churches were disestablished, forcing them to compete with one another for the financial contributions of colonists. Even though several state governments did support specific churches with state tax money long after 1776, like the Puritans in Massachusetts, all state-level support was eventually ended.
After the Treaty of Paris had been signed in 1763 ending the French and Indian War, Archbishop Secker stepped up efforts by the Church of England to establish the American episcopacy. But Mayhew and his New England associates effectively frustrated them at every turn by informing the citizens of their plans and organizing public resistance. They published pamphlets, penned newspaper articles, and generally made sure that everyone knew what was going on and what the stakes were. When an agent of the Church of England began building a large home in Boston that he hinted would house the coming bishop, Mayhew sounded off, dubbing it the “Bishop’s mansion” to anger the public over the extravagance the church would provide, through New England tax dollars, to the new bishop of Boston.
The Tory and Church of England bids for increased power were two sides of the same coin. As colonists recognized the menace posed by the plans for a bishop, and as Ezra Stiles was calling for a Christian union, politically minded writers endeavored to expose initial instances of arbitrary power and tyranny in America in the political realm. The barrage of criticisms against England by colonial writers flourished as the decade wore on. The suspicion of British leadership was energized by the new perspectives of the Awakening—that corrupt or unqualified leadership isn’t just a bad idea, it is a plot from hell to enslave the people of America. Tellingly, these writers employed arguments invented by Whitefield and empowered by the us/them logic template of the Awakening. Both New and Old Lights had been arguing for two decades that ministers who were appointed by friends in high places rather than called by God, or ministers who abused the privileges of their office, were unqualified to lead a church. This logic—that one’s qualifications for office depended upon one’s ability and faithfulness in the execution of duty to the people—empowered anyone who wished to lambast political leaders who were suspected of being corrupt. Arguments generated by this template sought to uncover all sorts of corruption, not just among unconverted ministers, but public servants as well.
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As both Whitefield and Mayhew had argued, even a king was subject to the duties of his office, and arbitrary power on his part was condemned. Immediately, the new perspectives made possible by this logic template pointed out problems in politics. In particular, the behavior of colonial judges emerged as the initial issue that inflamed Americans to call for justice. Officeholders who abused their power would eventually be identified as the enemy, one of the tyrants, along with all the spiritual meaning that this derisive label carried. Writing to enlighten the Americans was Joseph Galloway in 1760.
Galloway, a Philadelphia lawyer and a friend of Franklin and Whitefield, published a pamphlet entitled A Letter To the People of Pennsylvania, in which he accused Parliament of undermining the judicial system. Galloway was the first to explain why real freedom required a state to elect, rather than appoint, judges. The issue was Parliament’s overturning of a Pennsylvania law that required judges to serve as long as their conduct was proper, rather than at the king’s pleasure. Pennsylvanians were incensed. Parliament was guilty of a double standard. Judges in England were elected but colonial judges were appointed, which made the colonists feel cheated. Galloway points out the hypocrisy between “us” the Pennsylvanians and “them” the British, a use of pronouns that shows increasing self-awareness as a people. The elements of Galloway’s argument extend the logic that Whitefield had been using lately. George III, Parliament, and judges who limit freedom go hand-in-hand with the pope, Roman Catholicism, and their bishops who oppressed Christians. The patterns were clear and showing up everywhere. The Church of England had been appointing unconverted ministers who misused their office and imposed religious tyranny. The king was appointing corrupt judges, guilty of exercising arbitrary power. Pennsylvania wanted elected judges who would be virtuous (converted), leading the nation toward liberty (freedom from sin). Just as the Holy Spirit was the common privilege of all believers for Whitefield, the rights of Englishmen were to be common to all British subjects. Galloway argued that anyone who claimed that the colonists were British subjects, but that they did not possess the same rights as natural born Englishmen, were guilty of arbitrary power and were enemies to English liberty. In his effort to protect civil liberty, Galloway was simply echoing fifteen years of continuous New Light preaching, plugging in new people to the old logic template.
Whether we are talking about judges or bishops, the root issue was always liberty or oppression. The criticism aimed at Parliamentary meddling and the Church of England aggression was propagated to the public through pamphlets displayed side by side at booksellers. Excerpts of the most insightful writing were reprinted in the colonial papers. Whitefield’s publications would be among the best sellers, reinforcing the logic that was now finding widespread usage. John Adams later emphasized the connection between Parliamentary aggression and the fear of the episcopacy:
If any gentleman supposes this controversy to be nothing to the present purpose, he is grossly mistaken. It spread an universal alarm against the authority of Parliament. It excited a general and just apprehension, that bishops, and dioceses, and churches, and priests, and tithes, were to be imposed on us by Parliament. It was known that neither king, nor ministry, nor archbishops, could appoint bishops in America, without an act of Parliament; and if Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England, with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and tithes, and prohibit all other churches, as conventicles and schism shops.
Although it was still too dangerous to criticize the king openly, politicians were warning about Parliament, and the ministers exposed the plots of the Church of England. With strong friendships, partnerships, and dinner parties among the church and political leaders, there was no confusion on their part that the political and religious plots were connected.
As the decade progressed, the “judge issue” quieted down, but the possibility of an American bishop continued to be a bone of contention. Historian Carl Bridenbaugh explains that a long string of events carried out by Church of England missionaries were rightly seen as part of the conspiracy by the suspicious colonists. This string of events led to the Stamp Act. While connections between religion and politics in this conspiracy were clear to the colonists, modern historians have tended to overlook the connection. But the fact that thirteen Church of England bishops were members of the House of Lords who pushed for passage of the Stamp Act sheds light on their shared interests. Although he had remained rather silent (in print) for several years, very soon, Whitefield was on his way back to America with a renewed mission.
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As the French and Indian War came to a close in 1763, George III’s administration sought to raise funds from the colonies to ease the national debt. George replaced the Earl of Bute with George Grenville as the new prime minister. To bolster the national budget, Grenville promptly began a program of taxation known as the Grenville Program. England hoped to recover the costs of the war from the colonists, whom they viewed as the central beneficiaries of the victory. Soon, the colonists faced a two-headed threat that challenged colonial self-rule in both the religious and civil spheres, a threat that quickly ushered in social unrest. As Carl Bridenbaugh explains, “To long-standing religious grievances fresh civil ones were now added, and it was the conjunction that produced the crisis.”1 Colonists, who had been struggling against the Church of England, saw the new taxes as further violations of their freedom. In their view, liberty was simultaneously assaulted on at least three fronts: by power-hungry bishops, by a faulty judicial system with a Parliament who refused to allow Americans to fix it, and by the Grenville Program that levied new taxes without the consent of colonial legislatures. In a land where civil millennialism influenced thinking, and where republican ideas of self-rule were strengthening, the assault took on Armageddon-like proportions.
After the war, Whitefield recognized the renewed threat to religious liberty from his own denomination. The threat was not just to the colonies where the Church of England was active. Persecution had largely ceased in 1744 after the trial and Whitefield’s two pamphlets, with the exception of the Long Acre affair. But once George III took the throne, the Church of England resurrected efforts to stamp out the methodist movement in London as they were trying to appoint an American bishop.
While still in England, Whitefield joined in the struggle. His next move was what got the attention of the American activists. Whitefield directly opposed his own denomination. Whitefield claimed that the Church of England’s efforts to suppress the methodists in England would cross the Atlantic and oppress all other churches of America if a bishop were appointed. He defined the Church of England as the new “them” who would impinge on religious freedoms. For the Americans, his redefinition of the enemy from Roman Catholics to the Church of England, served as an essential step in the progression that led to the Revolution.
The trouble in England started when William Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, published a pamphlet accusing the methodists of spiritual error and political subversion. Warburton claimed that the Holy Spirit did not operate among men today the same way that it did in the book of Acts. Instead, he claimed that the Spirit had been withdrawn. Taking the role of an advocate, Whitefield faced off with Bishop Warburton, first on theology, next on politics.
Whitefield’s opinions were already influential in America, and since he was a Church of England priest with well-known connections in England, many Americans believed that he had inside information regarding British designs—and he did. Whitefield had to express himself carefully to keep out of trouble with the Church of England leaders in Britain, but he wished to take a public stand. He cleverly accomplished this by opposing Warburton, his own local bishop, on theological and practical grounds. Whitefield published his views in a pamphlet entitled Observations on Some Fatal Mistakes, and he had it promptly printed in London, Edinburgh, Philadelphia, and Boston.
Whitefield described himself as a reformer whose interest was in promoting “true Christianity” and resisting those who were not genuine Christians, even if they were Church of England leaders. Whitefield applies the us/them distinction directly to his own denomination, identifying those who suppressed religious freedom as out of God’s kingdom. As usual, he opens by justifying the need for his publication, pointing out that as Paul and Jesus opposed the Pharisees, professors of a dead religion, the same should be opposed today:
Hence it is, that when they come to touch upon the internals and vitals of Christianity, they are quite grappled, and write so unguardedly of the all-powerful influences of the Holy Ghost, as to sink us into a state of downright formality; which, if the Apostle Paul may be our judge, we have need as much to be cautioned against, as of fanaticism, superstition, or infidelity itself.
Here Whitefield says the dead “formality” of the Church of England was every bit as dangerous as infidelity. Evidencing his moderate theology, the mature Whitefield does not promote the enthusiastic version of the Holy Spirit, of which he approved during the Awakening, but describes a version much closer to that explained by the Old Light Samuel Quincy. He establishes the nature of a true Christian, that it is defined by one’s belief regarding the Holy Spirit. Whitefield excludes from God’s kingdom the so-called Christians who have not had a conversion, making them members of the devil’s kingdom. He echoes Paul in accusing leaders such as Warburton of “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof,” and warns true believers:
From such, turn away; and to use the words of our LORD, Publicans and harlots enter into the kingdom of GOD before them.
He could not have more explicitly declared that the bishop was unconverted! Whitefield further clarifies the spiritual condition of the bishop:
Surely, was the Apostle Paul to rise from the dead, and read over, or hear of such strange positions, his spirit, as once at Athens, would again be stirred in him; to see a writer thus attempting to erect an altar for the public worship of an unknown GOD: I say, an unknown GOD.
Here Whitefield forcefully emphasizes that in his view Warburton does not even know God. He goes on to declare that “he is not a real Christian, who is only one outwardly; but he alone is a true Christian, who is one inwardly.”
Next, Whitefield points out Warburton’s inconsistency—that the bishop relies on God’s spirit to discern that the Spirit has been withdrawn from man. Whitefield asks sarcastically, since human reason (in Warburton’s view) is all you need to understand spiritual matters, why, in all the oaths of ordination, does the Church of England call upon God’s spirit for wisdom and guidance if it is no longer needed? He criticizes Warburton for establishing an “external rule of faith” to replace an internal indwelling of the Spirit. His consistent use of phrasing that contrasted his theology with Warburton’s endows the pamphlet with an eloquent and powerful voice.
Turning to attack Warburton’s character, Whitefield quotes the bishop, “truth is never so grossly injured, or its advocates so dishonoured, as when they employ the foolish arts of sophistry, buffoonery, and personal abuse in its defence.” Then he exclaims, “By thy own pen thou shalt be tried, thou hapless, mistaken advocate of the Christian cause.” Referring to Warburton’s attempt to connect the methodists with the Puritan-backed revolution of 1644, Whitefield compares the bishop to the “witch of Endor.” He describes how Warburton falsely accused the “good old Puritans,” of being subversive rebels. Whitefield also charges the bishop with spreading “heraldic, genealogical fiction” and asserts that he would prefer the zeal of the Puritans to the current Church of England leadership. In a subsequent letter to an American friend, Whitefield points out that he defended the Puritan tradition in this pamphlet, indicating that he mentioned the good old Puritans to appeal to his American readers.
Next, Whitefield accuses the bishop of two-faced motives, saying, “The design our author had in view in drawing such a parallel, is easily seen through. Doubtless, to expose the present Methodists to the jealousy of the civil government.” Whitefield’s countermove is to assure the British government that methodists and other non-Anglican church members are not seditious, and that they should be allowed to practice their religion without restraint. These were the same arguments he used in the controversy in 1744. Finally, in classic polemical fashion, he judges Warburton, “My dear friend, if this is not gibetting2 [sic] up names with unregenerate malice, to everlasting infamy, I know not what is.”
Not coincidentally, Warburton was active in the Church of England’s effort for the American bishop and was accused of misrepresenting the history of America to justify the need for an American episcopacy. To discerning readers abreast of the bishop issue, Whitefield aligned himself with Mayhew and the Americans, and he would directly state his views upon his arrival in America. Perhaps recalling the assassination attempt last time he published a pamphlet against the Church of England’s leadership, Whitefield wisely slipped out of England as his pamphlet against Bishop Warburton was going to press.
Concerning the appointment of an American bishop, Whitefield’s name was actually under consideration. Ironically, it was a post for which Whitefield was perhaps best qualified, and one for which many Americans supported his appointment, even though the suggestion irritated the Church of England in America. However, Whitefield makes no mention of desiring the post in his own writings, and from this point on in his ministry, he continually argued with various Church of England leaders and worked to advance American political interests.
Understandably, being an Anglican himself who always made public appearances in his priest’s attire, Whitefield was not the opinion leader on the bishop issue in America. Yet by siding with the Americans, he encouraged a bandwagon effect and confirmed colonial suspicions of what the Church of England was really planning. By attacking Bishop Warburton as a representative of Archbishop Secker and tyranny in general, Whitefield damaged the church’s public image by implying that the American plan really would serve to oppress churches in the colonies. Here was a Church of England priest with friends in high places accusing the Church of England of what American writers had suspected all along.
Fighting to protect the liberties of churches was essential to maintaining the Whig’s ability to increase the spread of republican politics. Warburton was not the only Tory to dredge up memories of the 1644 revolution to rebuke the Whigs. Samuel Adams reveled in being called names like “Roundhead” by Tory propagandists later in the decade. As the bishop issue led to another conflict, Whitefield defined the sides in unequivocal terms by providing evidence that the highest Church of England leaders could and were exercising arbitrary power, which by now was equivalent to manifesting the antichrist. But while the uproar raised at the establishment of an American bishop was intensifying, forthcoming Parliamentary legislation overshadowed the issue. George III and George Grenville, began implementing their taxation program with the first of several new taxes.
When the Grenville program began to unfold, Whitefield, who had his finger on England’s political pulse, became even more deeply involved in opposing British domination of Americans. He landed in America in 1763 and promptly published his critique of Bishop Warburton in Philadelphia and Boston, letting British Americans know exactly how he felt about anyone who would challenge liberty. In a church-state society, even the casual reader could not miss the deeper political meaning of the religious conflict.