the scottish episcopal church
A New History, by gavin white
3 - Seabury
Samuel Seabury was consecrated bishop in Aberdeen in the year 1784 for what was to become the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Connecticut; his consecrators were Robert Kilgour of Aberdeen, John Skinner his coadjutor, and Arthur Petrie of Moray. The circumstances were unusual. There had never been bishops in the American colonies, where their possible or even probable civil powers would have been intolerable to the Congregational establishment in New England, not to mention a good many others. Candidates for ordination had to make their way to England, a tenth of them being drowned, seized by pirates, or killed by the plague. After the War of Independence the church was in a bad state, many of its clergy and laity having sided with Britain, and many of them subsequently going off to the wilds of Canada. It was obvious that bishops must be had for America if the church was to continue. Seabury was sent to London to seek consecration, did not find it, and so went to Scotland where, in a phrase much used, a "free, valid, and purely ecclesiastical episcopacy" was conferred upon him. The incident itself was of little importance, but the legend attaching to itself meant a great deal to Scottish Episcopal self-understanding, or self-misunderstanding. In an age when churches were involved with states, the Scottish Episcopal Church, which was not involved with a state, though it had sought to be so, gave a pure episcopacy to Americans, and so set the latter on the right path for evermore. (1)
The truth was, as usual, somewhat different. In the Scottish Guardian of 1934, an editorial stated that "the leading men of our Communion had espoused the losing side in the Revolution. Seabury was a strong loyalist. His goods had been spoiled and his person arrested, and at the time of his election to go to England to seek consecration he was chaplain to the King's American Regiment." That was why the ten clergymen who selected him dared not notify the laity, lest the latter should inform the American government which would regard the consecration as "the forging of a new link to bind the States again in subjection to England." Which was what at least some of those fourteen probably intended it to be. (2)
For Seabury was a political rather than a clerical figure, and his selection (the word "election" implies too much) was a political rather than an ecclesiastical event. Seabury's nineteenth century biographer has described his pamphleteering as "more in the style of a violent partisan than of a discreet and godly clergyman." It is said that the Connecticut circle of Loyalist clergy who chose Seabury, after their first choice declined the offer, did so as he was that rarety, an American clergyman with an Oxford D.D. That degree was given as Seabury had "stood with rare fidelity and unshaken fortitude in behalf of the King and the Church against the seditious contrivers of pious frauds." And his twentieth century biographer has made no bones about his failures as a parish priest. Furthermore, Seabury had served not only as a chaplain, but as an "intelligence officer", drawing maps for raiding parties. He had been rewarded with a half-pay pension which he drew for the rest of his life, that being equal to the stipend which the S.P.G., the Church of England society, had previously paid him. That he was still in British pay was naturally held against him by American Episcopalians of a later day, though the statesman-like Bishop White of Pennsylvania managed to convince the critics that "the half-pay was for services rendered long ago, and did not prevent him now being a good citizen of Connecticut." (3)
And this was a matter for concern at the time. George Berkeley the younger wrote that, "If the Church of England was to send a bishop into any one of the United States of America, the congress might, and probably would, exclaim that England had violated the peace...". Furthermore, Seabury's selectors knew what they were doing. Daniel Fogg suggested that if Seabury were not re-admitted to America, he should reside in Nova Scotia, so that "it would be an easy matter for any other gentleman who was not obnoxious to the powers that be, to be consecrated by him at Halifax." It was mainly for fear of not being allowed to return to Connecticut that Seabury sailed from Britain to Nova Scotia where he could see how things stood. It was this fear which caused the English bishops, in the words of an American historian, to hesitate in case "they would have on their hands a churchless bishop." And in July of 1783 Seabury wrote home that his greatest fear was of his mission "becoming public" lest the American government should be prevailed upon to act against it. If this cannot be squared with Seabury's complaint that if the Archbishop of Canterbury had asked for "the concurrence of the laity last autumn, it might easily have been procured", then so be it. (4)
For the English did refuse, and wisely so. They could not dispense from the oath of allegiance, which could only be overcome by Parliament, and Parliament would not act. Had they acted, they would rightly have been accused of interfering in American affairs, with the implication that the Episcopal church in America was going to be a Loyalist body with its heart outside the new state. One of the objections raised by the English, that Seabury could give no evidence of support at home, was used by later polemicists to suggest that the English expected any bishop to live in a palace, but it meant open election. As soon as properly elected candidates arrived in London, with the American representative in London declaring that his government had no objections, they were consecrated. (5)
Once back in America, and welcomed by the Episcopalians of Connecticut, Seabury set about being a bishop. But bishop of what ? The Episcopal church in that state, or the Episcopal church in all the states ? That he should have felt a responsibility for those seeking ordination from other states was natural; he could hardly send them to England. But he made no attempt to assert his claims to be "Bishop of All America", as he sometimes signed himself. He made no complaint when the Episcopalians to his south organised themselves in conventions, elected bishops, and sent them to London for consecration. But after the London consecrations of 1787 Seabury could either hold aloof, or try to make peace. At first he held aloof, and asked the Scottish bishops to consecrate Abraham Jarvis and perhaps another to create an American hierarchy entirely independent of the English-consecrated bishops to the south. But Skinner refused, and suggested that Seabury should come to terms with Bishop White and his colleagues. (6)
This Seabury was obliged to do; he might have found himself with as little influence as the two English Non-Juring bishops who had found their way into the colonial church before him. But if he did come to terms it was not without a good deal of hesitation. It was the opinion of Samuel Wilberforce that Seabury, who would have wrecked the prospects for uniting Episcopalians if given a free hand, was helpful when restrained by White the Presiding Bishop. And if there were serious reservations amongst some Episcopalians about accommodating this political parson who had achieved consecration without due process, White and others smoothed the way. Not all Loyalists had left the United States; not all had been in a position to do so. It was essential that they should be made to feel at home in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and for Seabury to be a bishop in that church might re-assure them. (7)
Two more things must be said, or, rather, unsaid. One is that Seabury was responsible for the American Prayer Book with its Scottish-style Eucharistic rite. Seabury had signed a concordat with his Scottish consecrators agreeing to use such a rite, but he
Chapter 17 - Women
There were attacks on the Brontes, "those three drab, gawky, and apparently colourless sisters, the perfect type, to all appearances, of negative, bloodless womanhood." By 1932 it was being written that "women on the Church's Boards, in Public Councils, in the High Court of Parliament, are entirely out of their element, and comparatively futile." And next year Stephen P. Ross, the pseudonym of a clergyman who wrote letters of advice to retired colonels, Highland lairds, and others whom he considered to be appropriate targets for clerical advice, had his say on divorce. His letter urged a noblewoman not to divorce her erring husband, not for reasons theological, but because, "A woman who cannot hold her husband is a pathetic object at any time, but the woman who deliberately confesses her inability to attract the man she herself chose is worse than pathetic, she is contemptible." In the following year an editorial on the "Daughters of Heth" violently opposed a Women's Parliament and referred to suffragette resistance to the law before the First World War "by which the way was prepared for Communism and Fascism". Furthermore, this body had "demanded divorce on easier terms, even such as an allegation of habitual drunkenness". Instead, the law should be changed to protect young men from "nymphomaniacs or the less pathological seducers of boys." There was one reply to this; Helena Normanton, a pioneering woman jurist, objected to being called a law-breaker in the editorial. It was grudgingly conceded that she may not have actually broken the law, though by association with ambitious women she was probably guilty anyway. And the subject of women's place in society kept bubbling up in editorials, letters, and comments. (2)
In 1936 there was a long editorial on marriage, which was mainly aimed at Presbyterians, for "what differentiates a wedding at Gretna from a marriage in the minister's study or parlour does not readily appear." Two years later there was reasonable concern about a bill to recognise formal marriage alone in Scotland, since "in large areas of Scotland and in numerous and widespread social classes prenuptial fornication is the normal entry into the married state." This was intended to protect women, in case men should back out of arrangements if these no longer had status in law. But that was too much for some readers of the Scottish Guardian. A letter from a chaplain suggested that, "In very many cases the seducer is the young woman. Anyone who has served in the armed forces as a company officer or chaplain knows how often undesirable females spoil the lives of impressionable young men who are coerced into marriages after being lured into indiscretions." And there were milder responses of the same sort. But as the 1930s wore on there was more recognition of women sometimes having right on their side, and a 1943 article on divorce was generally humane and sensible, assuring Episcopalians that the courts could "see through the outraged wife who spins very exaggerated tales", so that this bogey might be put to rest. Yet the overall impression was that men were being harried by women. (3)
If women made up most of the worshippers they also did most of the work of the church. In 1920, and probably in all years, the Church Women's Missionary Association raised three-quarters of the funds for foreign work, which was said to be "almost exclusively in the hands of women", as in other denominations. Some congregations seem to have enrolled almost the entire active female membership in the C.W.M.A; in 1941 Old St. Paul's in Edinburgh had 268, while St. Margaret's in Glasgow had 230. This supported the Chanda mission in the diocese of Nagpur, in India, from 1871, and of the diocese of St. John's, in the Transkei, South Africa, from 1872. And if this is compared with the work of other denominations, it is probably true to say that the support was about average for the day. If, on the other hand, there were racist ideas involved, there was also an awareness of racism which might not have been been there without these contacts. (4)
And there was the Mothers' Union. The Scottish Mothers' Union had been formed when the Onward and Upward Mothers' Union, founded by Lady Aberdeen, with five thousand members, joined together with an Episcopalian body being organised by the Countess of Glasgow in 1889. The result was ninety per cent Church of Scotland in membership, but largely run by Episcopalians, and "the general atmosphere created was distinctly Episcopalian." As Dr. Cox, Joint Principal Clerk of the General Assembly, put it in 1936, the Episcopalians were "forcing their own denominational views of marriage upon the majority. They have not played the game...". And he advised members of the Church of Scotland to switch to societies, usually Women's Guilds, in their own church. A reply to Dr. Cox by Bishop Darbyshire of Glasgow was not helpful. (5)
In fact the Scottish Mothers' Union was caught up in a larger battle. The London-based Mothers' Union had secured a Royal Charter in 1926 since "a dangerous situation could arise if at any time the Dominions should decide to alter the Objects or break away from the Principles", by which they meant not just opposition to divorce but banning the divorced from membership. After Dr. Cox had advised Church of Scotland members to switch to Women's Guild branches of the Mothers' Union it seems most of them did so, which left the Scottish Mothers' Union largely Episcopalian in membership as well as leadership. Nonetheless, the London-based Mothers' Union was introduced into Scotland in 1949, and largely supplanted the native body. The motive for this, as Bishop Warner told the Edinburgh synod, was so that "this important work amongst married women and for family life is henceforth officially connected with the Church; and also that we are linked in prayer and aim with the Mothers' Union throughout the Anglican Communion...". It is hard to see why a new body was necessary to achieve these aims. (6)
But the strict control exercised in Scotland could not be applied overseas, despite the Royal Charter. When Canadian and New Zealand Anglicans allowed the divorced to re-marry in church under strict safeguards, Mothers' Union branches in those countries were expected to ignore their own churches and adhere to Church of England discipline. Instead virtually all branches broke with London. It was only after 1973 when the Mothers' Union in Britain, expressing the overwhelming good sense of its membership, and led by Susan Varah, who in this work was as significant as her husband in founding the Samaritans, threw out the old membership restrictions. This opened the way for the overseas contingents to re-affiliate on their own terms, while the remnant of the Scottish Mothers' Union was absorbed into the London-based one in 1984. (7)
But the history of the Scottish Mothers' Union was not as simple as that. The Women's Guild of the Church of Scotland had its own Mothers' Union branches, which had existed from 1887, but these disaffiliated form the Scottish Mothers' Union in 1932. There were various reasons for this; one was that "certain acts of the Union" were unacceptable to the Church of Scotland, and probably this refers to Anglican influence. But until 1929 the Scottish Mothers' Union had been an interdenominational body which included mothers from both the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church, which were heading to union. It was desirable that the Scottish Mothers' Union should encompass members of both churches. Once they had achieved union, there was no reason for them to have a Mothers' Union which was not linked to the Church of Scotland, and which was over-influenced by Episcopalians, with whom no union likely. There was, however, the larger fact that society and church were moving apart, and it could no longer be taken for granted that any organisation for mothers' would naturally want to be associated with religion. There was a dividing line drawn between those who would clearly be church, and that meant a particular church, and the others who wanted either a vague and undenominational religious basis for the work, or none at all. It was these latter who left the Scottish Mothers' Union to form the Scottish League of Wives and Mothers. This illustrated a basic change of function; the Scottish Mothers' Union was not originally a body for church women, but a good work for women in general, led by church women. It then became the mothers' movement within the church, not the church movement for mothers outside the church. Much of the conflict would have occurred even if the London body had not been so hostile to the divorced, whom they confused with divorce itself. But this may have had little effect on the Mothers' Union at local level. There it did much good and transformed lives, even while the leadership at Mary Sumner House was losing touch with reality. (8)
Of course women sang in choirs, or rather, they used to sing in choirs. New views of what was proper then pushed them out of choirs in favour of boys' voices, but with church decline and a shortage of boys, women were allowed to creep back in. But not without controversy. They should not vest and join in processions, they should not, if possible, even be seen; innocent worshippers should be allowed to believe that they did not exist. Some women were unhappy about this, and a letter to them, in 1927, replied, "The type of women who declines to give her services, or considers herself ill-used, unless she is allowed to sit in the choir, and dressed as she fancies, should be compelled to sit in the back seat, arrayed in sackcloth and ashes." (9)
With the general views of women which were held in those days, and particularly in the Episcopal Church where the moving spirits felt themselves threatened by women, the ordination of women was not likely to get much of a hearing. It was the threat of women which was uppermost. Though not with all; the bishops, perhaps because they were of a different caste and thus not threatened, generally tried to see the matter on grounds of principle, and so did some others. When Bishop Maclean of Moray told his diocesan synod in 1919 that he did "not see how this claim could ever be admitted by those who believe in historic Christianity", he was arguing from tradition. But in 1931 an Aberdonian wrote, "Our clergy usually say, when the subject comes up, that if our Lord had meant women to become priests, He would have included them in the Twelve to whom He gave the task of developing the Church", which was "a very weak answer, for it is obvious that in those days when woman was still man's chattel, the fact that women were among the leaders of the 'New Religion' would have damned it from the beginning." "It seems a perfectly sensible suggestion that just as God through many centuries prepared the Jewish race for the coming of the Messiah, so he may have prepared women through the long history of their emancipation to serve him in the highest of all occupations - the priesthood." But this was to argue for development. In 1944 an editorial attacked the whole idea which it related to "the puzzling persuasion of some that the Church of the New Testament did not know its own mind about its own business." In these two quotations we see two answers to the question of whether Christ left his church with a faith once delivered to the saints, and with a certain givenness about Christian life, or whether he left his church with the Holy Spirit to lead it into all truth, as each generation struggled with new issues. But these theological reflections were rare. Usually references to women were slighting, and even the 1944 editorial went on to announce that, "Many women are at heart individualist...", and therefore unable to understand the faith. (10)
The complaints were about women doing anything at all. In 1918 it was about the word "ordination" being used for deaconesses, in 1920 it was whether women could belong to the Representative Church Council and Dean Christie trumpeted, though it must be admitted he trumpeted about everything, usually wrongly, that this was "a question of life and death to the Council", and some acted "as if there was no guidance whatever in the Scriptures", though Christ had said to his Mother, "Woman, what have I to do with thee ?" Despite this the admission of women to the Council was carried overwhelmingly, perhaps because many congregations found it impossible to get men to attend. And well into the 1970s there were still parish vestries which were restricted to men. In 1921 Bishop Deane gently urged councils to include women, while avoiding the question of ordination. And in 1926 it was suggested that women only wanted ordination for "working off some fancied disfavour". A year later the objection was to deaconesses being thought to be in holy orders, while by 1931 it was suggested that "many women, outwardly conservative, secretly thrill at the chance of manifesting apparent independence of spirit". Furthermore, the Church of Scotland was storing up trouble in its General Assembly "when the women, headed by a 'noble lady', will claim admission to the Ministry." The columnist then described Lady Aberdeen and her companions as sirens, and was duly rebuked for so doing. In the mind of the average Episcopalian, the nobility were on the side of stability and right thinking, and beyond criticism. (11)
The question continued to sputter away in the church press, but it really took off when Miss "Daisy" MacDonald of All Saints, Jordanhill, seconded by a Mrs. Gresham of St. Cuthbert's in the East End of Glasgow, brought the matter before the Representative Church Council in 1933. The daily press gave this full coverage, the Glasgow Herald headlining it, WOMEN CANNOT BE PRIESTS, quoting Canon C.L.Broun as saying that if they accepted women they could exclude "nothing on heaven or earth" (loud laughter). "Why should the mere fact", asked Miss MacDonald, "that a woman was physically and psychologically, if they liked, different from a man, prevent her exercising spiritual gifts ?" The motion to proceed to next business was passed by 124 to two. In fact the debate was not as silly as reported. There was dispute over whether the R.C.C. could even discuss such a matter, and it was about excluding nothing on heaven or earth from discussion that Broun spoke. The Bishop of Moray, A.J.Maclean, expressed sympathy for women's aspirations, though the Bishop of Argyll, Kenneth Mackenzie, was opposed as the matter could only be decided by some future re-united Catholic church. And Miss MacDonald had brought wrath on herself by comparing learned women of some years with young "snivelling curates". But later references to the debate deplore the "disgraceful" behaviour of some members of the Council, and probably many thought the thing was rather a joke. However, Miss MacDonald saw this as one of the high points in her life, and it was duly remembered in the General Synod debate of 1994 which accepted the ordination of women. (12)
If the question of women's orders was never out of mind in the years that followed, the most telling event occurred in 1935 when the English Archbishops set up a commission which decided against it. The reasons were the usual ones of the Church of England not acting alone, and of tradition appearing to be against it, but they added, "the psychological and physiological considerations which were brought to our notice appear to us to be irrelevant...". This was a major step forward, but it was a step too far for the Scottish Guardian which produced an editorial concentrating on what a certain Professor Grensted had to say on the psychology of women, though, "His candour may be embarrassing." As the psychological and physiological were beginning to be disregarded elsewhere, they were still the main reasons for opposing the ordination of women in the Scottish Episcopal Church. (13)
When a separate Scottish Episcopal calendar was prepared, the woman included was Lucy Menzies. The daughter of a Church of Scotland minister who became professor at St.Andrews, she was an associate of the spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill, and also wrote books of her own. She was a "slight, self-effacing person with wistful eyes looking out through tinted glasses", and a "soft husky voice", according to Bishop Barkway. Yet Lucy Menzies combined with the Underhill view of God present everywhere, spread gently over everything, a sharp edge which cut through to the heart of things, and in some of her writings was rather a maverick. When she died at St.Andrews in 1954 the local paper described her "sitting in her little ancient house like a very benevolent and non-predatory spider, radiating long filaments of kindness and friendship in all directions." (14)
Looking back at changing views of women in the Episcopal Church, it is possible to detect a pattern. Until after the First World War there was very little interest in the subject and very little mention of women at all. If women were first allowed into choirs and then put out, this was not due to changing views of women but to changing views of choirs. But after 1920 it began to dawn amongst church people, women as well as men, that things were changing. Women were demanding new roles, and were taking their place, however slowly, in public and professional life. And this was a threat, because church people believed that women were constitutionally different from men, and if they tried to think or to act on their own they would fall apart. It is most unlikely that any Scottish Episcopalians ever read C.G.Jung, but they would have agreed with him that when a woman "has made a concession to masculine psychology by establishing herself as a visible member of society", she went against her "psychic nature". And if they had known what an animus was, they would have agreed that, "When the animus breaks out in a woman, it is not feelings that appear, as in a man, but she begins to argue and rationalize." A woman who thought was showing evidence of mental instability, just as a man showed similar evidence by not thinking but only feeling. And it was the psychological need of women to have an intimate relationship with the male which meant that unmarried sisters such a