Lord Howick and Colonial Church Establishment

1974 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Burroughs
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Special Position ◽  
British North America ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The Church ◽  
Civil Government ◽  
Colonial Church

Because the Church of England traditionally formed part of the British constitution, Englishmen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often discussed the importance of extending the Established Church to settlements overseas. Yet nothing constructive was done in North America before the Revolution to complete the constitution of the colonial Church or reinforce its special position as the partner of the civil government. There were no bishops in America, and the remote bishop of London was left to supervise as best he could an institution that enjoyed few privileges and displayed an inveterate tendency towards independence. After the American Revolution, however, imperial administrators and colonial churchmen appreciated the need to buttress and reinvigorate the Church of England in British North America. In official circles at least, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies was attributed to the growth of a democratic spirit which a debilitated Church had been powerless to check. British administrators consequently agreed that the dangerous development of republicanism and religious dissent might be thwarted in the remaining colonies by strengthening the position of the Church as the ally of government in the task of preserving colonial loyalty.

REFASHIONING PURITAN NEW ENGLAND: THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA,c. 1680–c. 1770

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 85-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
New England ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Success Story ◽  
British North America ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACTThe position of the Church of England in colonial New England has usually been seen through the lens of the ‘bishop controversy’ of the 1760s and early 1770s, where Congregational fears of the introduction of a Laudian style bishop to British North America have been viewed as one of the key factors leading to the American Revolution. By contrast, this paper explores some of the successes enjoyed by the Church of England in New England, particularly in the period from the 1730s to the early 1760s, and examines some of the reasons for the Church's growth in these years. It argues that in some respects the Church in New England was in fact becoming rather more popular, more indigenous and more integrated into New England life than both eighteenth-century Congregationalists or modern historians have wanted to believe, and that the Church was making headway both in the Puritan heartlands, and in the newer centres of population growth. Up until the early 1760s, the progress of the Church of England in New England was beginning to look like a success story rather than one with in-built failure.

North America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Bell
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Early America ◽  
Charles I ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
The Church

In step with the gradually unfolding imperial policies of the successive governments of King Charles I and later monarchs, the Church of England was extended to the northern part of the Western hemisphere between 1662 and 1829. Under the supervision of the Board of Trade and Plantations until 1701, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from that year, decade after decade an increasing number of men of differing origins and places of collegiate education in Britain came to serve missions of the Church in early America. The ranks included natives of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies, who were supported by the SPG or the legislatures of the provinces in which the Church was established. Development was shaped by imperial policies and administration over 160 years amid rising populations, changing political situations, and the consequences of war and diplomacy.

English Christianity and the Australian Colonies, 1788–1860

1977 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-385
Author(s):  
J. D. Bollen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
New South ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
British North America ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Home

In the England of 1840, as Professor Chadwick observes, the idea of mission pertained to the lapsed at home as well as the heathen overseas. This article, in discussing connexions between the English Churches and the Australian colonies, deals with a third meaning: colonial mission. The seventeenth-century association of religion and colonisation is well known. The bearing of religion (heathen missions excepted) on the imperialism of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, and the response of English Christianity to settlement colonies in this period, have occasioned less discussion. Most familiar are the points where religion was drawn into imperial policy, as in British North America after the Revolution. Promotion of the Church of England was part of an overhaul of imperial administration in New South Wales as well. But in the new century this method of achieving political and social stability ran into difficulties at home. In Australia it was ineffective and little more popular than in the Canadas. By 1830 religion was ceasing to be an instrument of imperial policy. The new bearers of British Christianity overseas, the evangelical missionary societies, had been founded with the heathen in view and generally avoided other engagements. The missionary fervour of the post-Napoleonic period thus coincided with indifference to the religious needs of emigrants and colonists. A response came in the 1830s in the form of colonial missionary societies and a quickening of the older Church societies. Though never a match for the home and heathen enterprises of Victorian Christianity, the colonial missions had roots in the nation's past. They expressed the various aspirations of the home Churches and were part of the phenomenon of empire.

Mitre Without Sceptre: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revilution

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-371
Author(s):  
Frederick V. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Parent Body ◽  
The State ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Religious Body ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

The American revolution caused the Anglican churches in America to separate from their parent body: the Church of England. This threw the Episcopalians upon their own resources to rebuild their church. In the process of reorganization, the former Anglicans accomplished an ecclesiastical revolution in respect to episcopacy. For the first time since the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Episcopalians in America made a bishop of a major religious body the elected official of a convention of clergy and laymen. In the second place, the office of bishop in a major denomination was completely separated from the state for the first time since Emperor Constantine officially recognized Christianity in 313 A.D.

The Anglican Church in Maryland: Factors Contributory to the American Revolution

1950 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Nelson Rightmyer
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
The Other ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
The Church

The causes of the American Revolution were many and varied; not least among these was the legal position of the Church of England as established by law in Maryland as well as in some of the other colonies. Under this system men were taxed for the support of the Church and the ministry but were denied any part in the appointment of ministers or relief from priests who failed to fulfill their office to the satisfaction of the taxed. At least some of the cases of supposed neglect of duty may be considered from the standpoint of the legal aspects of the case entirely apart from the character of the individuals involved.

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