King's Chapel - Anglicanism

This location was New England’s first Anglican church. This was the official religion of Britain and so Anglican priests enjoyed the protection of the government and were supported by tax money even in the colonies. Citizens who fled to the colonies to escape religious persecution were unfavorable to Anglicans in their new territory, particularly in the Puritan Northern colonies, imposing stiff legal restrictions in these areas. Nevertheless, by the revolutionary period the Anglican Church had a presence in every colony and was the legally established religion in 5 of the 13 colonies.

Throughout Western Europe, civil governments gave support to one Christian denomination. They granted them special powers and privileges, and persecuted men and women who held other religious views. When the first settlements began, Anglicanism was the established religion in England; in Scotland, Presbyterians had the highest status; the Dutch Reformed Church was the favored church in the Netherlands; and the Roman Catholic Church dominated in France and Spain. During this time, most believed that close alliances between religion and government benefited both the church and the state. Together, they could better promote morality, social harmony, and political stability.

The problem was that those who held different religious beliefs became political dissenters by default. For British Anglicans this included Puritans/Congregationalists, Baptists, Catholics, German Priests, Lutherans, Methodists, and Quakers. Many of these groups persecuted each other once arriving in the ‘new world’.

England was continuously at war internally or externally and needed money to maintain their military base and political power. The prevailing economic theory at the time was Mercantilism which is why the colonies were built to begin with. This way more resources would be generated internally and there would be more exportation than importation with other countries. However, the first volunteers to these colonies were investing businessmen, criminals, and those religiously persecuted by political elements within England. Which means most had already challenged religious authority. This may have led to the mentality of challenging political authority when it was deemed inappropriate.

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Starting in the 1530s where King Henry VIII repudiated papal authority and transformed the Church of Rome into a state Church of England, people saw their monarch question beliefs and started to do the same, and this was known as the English Reformation. It led to more factions and divisions religiously amongst the people, as well as persecution if they chose a path outside of political support. Catholic Queen Mary I sent some dissenting protestant clergymen to their deaths and others into exile.

Anglicanism got its start when Queen Elizabeth I replaced Mary as queen and re-established Protestantism as England’s official religion. It eventually became known as Anglicanism and was distinguished by the fact that the king of England was the official religious leader as well as the head of state. Under Elizabeth people in England were fined for not attending Protestant church services but they were not persecuted. This created an uneasy peace as the Anglican church continued to fracture and grow.

In the 1750s, the British tried to strengthen their political control over the colonies through religious means that involved the Anglican Church such as funding and sponsored more than 300 minister missionaries until the coming of the Revolution. Despite this, Anglican churches were few and far between, and priests to serve them were even rarer. The feature that most set Anglicans apart from other American Protestants was the presence of bishops as religious leaders. The general populace found it difficult to feel connected to the ministers. Why? A few reasons.

Many Anglican ministers put their material interest before the spiritual needs of their parishes, limiting their influence. Anglicanism was among the most hierarchical of early American religious groups, with individual congregations or parishes run by a priest, who was answerable to an English bishop. Finally, recruiting better clergymen was made harder because every Anglican priest had to be ordained by a bishop in England. The long and expensive journey to London was possible for only a relatively few men.

Anglicanism was intimately connected to Britain’s effort to shape an empire out of the individualistic American colonies. Most people considered church and state to be mutually supportive and believed that one could not exist for long without the other. This idea was fundamentally challenged by the American Revolution, which ended with the separation of church and state. That meant that during the Revolutionary War religion was an important factor in deciding which side people supported.

The American Revolution inflicted deeper wounds on the (Anglican) Church of England in America than on any other denomination because the King of England was the head of the church. Anglican priests, at their ordination, swore allegiance to the King. The Book of Common Prayer offered prayers for the monarch, beseeching God "to be his defender and keeper, giving him victory over all his enemies," These ‘enemies’ in 1776 were American soldiers as well as friends and neighbors of American Anglicans. Loyalty to the church and to its head could be construed as treason to the American cause. It was particularly unpopular in Massachusetts as Puritans pushed out all other denominations aside from their own including Anglican, Quaker, Methodist, and Baptist. Patriotic American Anglicans, loathe to discard so fundamental a component of their faith as The Book of Common Prayer (second picture), revised it to conform to the political realities. Most Anglican clergy, who have sworn loyalty to the King in their ordinations, stay loyal and had to evacuate to Britain or Canada on March 17,1776 which became known as Evacuation Day.

What fruitage did these spiritual leaders produce? Mt 7:15-20. Consider John 17:16 vs Acts 20:29, 30. What would Jesus have said seeing this?

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For the building itself, the original wooden church was built in 1688 and this stone church was built around it later. The bell was made by Paul Revere in 1816. After Evacuation Day the minister and loyalist church members fled north to Canada and the building was used for patriot and unitarian purposes.

-Source Links-

http://www.kings-chapel.org/revolution.html

https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDanglicans.htm

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/anglicanism-and-revolution

https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/lessonplan/churchstate.html

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1726/religion-in-colonial-america/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Episcopal-Church-in-the-United-States-of-America

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/who-we-are/history-episcopal-church/timeline/

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html#obj098 (Revised Book of Prayer to be compatible with the rising democratic nation and no longer include reference to the King) The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered. William White. Philadelphia: David Claypoole, 1782. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress