laudable Practice

I continued, as did all of us, to pray for the king, until Sunday (inclusively) before the 4th of July 1776. So said William White , supporter of the Patriot cause and chaplain to the Continental Congress. It is a reminder of the complexities and nuances of Anglican allegiances and identities in North America during these years. Similarly we might also point to the Loyalist parson Jonathan Boucher's critique of the Administration in Westminster in a 1774 sermon: Their whole conduct, indeed, has been so utterly devoid of counsel, that I seem to have no right to tax those persons with being superstitious, who ascribe to it a preternatural infatuation ... That they wish for a reconciliation, we cannot but believe: yet every step they have taken, since the dispute began, has, through their folly, or our perverseness, or both, tended only to widen the breach; tended to make new enemies and lose old friends. Boucher also admitted, in his farewell sermon the following year to his parish i...

To the Pulpit, the Puritan Pulpit, we owe the moral force which won our independence. The famous words of John Wingate Thornton are quoted at the outset of the weighty volume Political Sermons of the American Founding Era . The introduction to this collection similarly points to The History of the American Revolution by Massachusetts pastor William Gordon and his claim that it was the clergy of New England who spoke "boldly for the liberties of the people", against "the parson" who taught the people "slavishly to bow their neck to any tyrant".  The posts over the past few days, exploring the political sermons of Anglicans aligned to the Patriot cause, suggest a rather different account.  The preaching of Anglican political theology was shaped by the Revolution of 1688 with its commitment to constitutional liberties and obedience. It expounded (and understood itself to be) a 'middle way' between ancien regime absolutism and an over-zealous emphasi...

On 9th December 1775, Crown forces engaged Patriot troops in the Battle of Great Bridge. It was the first engagement of the Revolutionary War in Virginia. Only weeks later, on 1st January, the Royal Navy bombarded Norfolk, Virginia, with British landing parties being confronted by Patriot militia. The confrontation resulted in the town being burnt to the ground. On the eve of the shelling of Norfolk, and ending the tumultuous year of 1775, David Griffith - then rector of  Shelburne Parish in Loudoun County, northern Virginia - entered the pulpit of Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg.  Griffith had previously publicly indicated his support for the Patriot cause. Now from the pulpit, amidst the realities of armed conflict and political confrontation, preached on a scriptural text at the heart of Anglican political theology, and often invoked by Loyalist clergy, Romans 13:1&2:  The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth ...

On 12th June 1775, the Second Continental Congress - weeks after Lexington and Concord, and only days before Bunker Hill - issued a proclamation calling for the inhabitants of the American colonies to observe 20th July as "a day of public humiliation, fasting, and prayer", seeking the "gracious interposition of Heaven" in order to aid "a speedy end ... to the civil discord between Great Britain and the American colonies, without farther effusion of blood". And so it was on 20th July that the members of the Continental Congress gathered in Christ Church, Philadelphia , to hear Jacob Duché - Rector of Christ Church - preach on a text from Psalm 80, "Turn thee again, thou God of hosts, look down from heaven: behold, and visit this vine". The sermon's title identified the vine: ' The American Vine '. As with the vine in the psalm, the American Vine was blessed with goodly roots and soil, allowing it to flourish: Our sober Ancestors broug...

In the week of 4th July last year, laudable Practice considered how English, Irish, and Loyalist Anglicans responded to the 'American War' , perceiving it as an unjust rebellion against the liberal constitutional order secured by the Revolution of 1688. This year, in the week leading up to 4th July, we turn to those colonial Anglicans who sided with the Patriots. Their understanding of the Revolutionary War was encapsulated in a resolution of the Maryland Provincial Convention on 25th May 1776 : Whereas his Britannic majesty King George has prosecuted, and still prosecutes, a cruel and unjust war against the British Colonies in America, and has acceded to acts of parliament, declaring the people of the said colonies in actual rebellion: and whereas the good people of this province have taken up arms to defend their rights and liberties, and to repel the hostilities carrying on against them ... As the resolution continued, it demonstrated how it had a particular relevance for A...