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To outsiders, Anglicanism must appear a bit eclectic. Not for nothing has a pundit described it as Lutheran in origin, Catholic in polity, Reformed in its Articles of Religion, Pelagian in preaching, and Augustinian in liturgy. But there is one phrase that such commentators would never add: evangelical in ethos. The popular mind has identified Anglicanism with restrained emotions, a cultured clergy, an affluent laity, sumptuous sanctuaries, and rites drafted in Shakespearean prose. As a youth, this reviewer mentioned the possibility of receiving a superb education at Trinity College, Hartford, an Episcopal institution. His Baptist Sunday school teacher snapped, "I'd think you'd prefer an evangelical institution!"
Yet, thanks to the labors of Diana Hochstedt Butler and Allen C. Guelzo, we can establish how strong the evangelical movement was in American Anglicanism. Both books are well written, intensively researched (and indeed have both received prizes from the American Society of Church History); both tell a story that resonates with late twentieth-century developments.
One must begin by noting that by the end of the American Revolution, New World churches in general were in what historian Sidney Ahlstrom calls religious depression. In 1790, there were only 200 Anglican clergy in all the American colonies, while hardly more than one out of 400 people was a communicant. A decade later, the grand total of Episcopalians was about 12,000. Membership was largely limited to the privileged, or as a rector in Boston put the issue, "The Episcopal Church is a place for ladies and gentlemen." Moreover, the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church was forced to rely upon voluntary contributions rather than the traditional subsidies from England. Despite the introduction of bishops, for many Americans a symbol of alien rule, the church acted as a loose confederation of dioceses, not as a single body.
This very slump, however, opened the door for a movement based upon deep conviction of human sin, experience of New Birth, and a warm personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Unlike many groups that placed a similar emphasis on conversion, the evangelical Episcopalians downplayed momentary experience in favor of a life-giving commitment.
Originally, the evangelicals' main rival was the entrenched High Church party, led by a man whom Ahlstrom suspects was the greatest leader the denomination has ever produced—Bishop John Henry Hobart of New York. This body stressed the real presence in the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration (which involves a moral change in the recipient), the apostolic succession, and the church as the body and bride of Christ. It defined true faith in terms of right doctrine, not vital experience. The Bible alone was not the final basis of authority, for Scripture must be interpreted by the witness of the primitive church.
The evangelicals found their own Hobart in Charles Pettit McIlvaine (1799-1873), bishop of Ohio from 1831 until his death. Quite wisely Butler organizes her study around his life. McIlvaine attended the staunchly Calvinistic Princeton College (technically the College of New Jersey), whose influences never left him. Before becoming bishop, he was rector of a church in Washington, D.C. (during which time he was briefly chaplain of the U.S. Senate), chaplain of West Point (where he led an "unseemly" revival among the cadets), and held a parish in Brooklyn. He would ask his Brooklyn confirmands, "Have you fled to [Christ] and committed your soul to him as all your refuge and righteousness?"
As bishop of Ohio, McIlvaine showed himself a dynamic leader, preaching often, building parishes, supervising the budding Kenyon College, writing theological position papers, and in the process cooperating with Presbyterians and Methodists. He drew the line, however, on the revivals led by Charles Finney and the sectarianism he saw embodied in Alexander Campbell, a founder of the Disciples of Christ. Such Protestantism, he said, manifested the "spirit of reckless innovation, contemptuous insubordination, formal fanaticism and fanatical informality." At one point, he went so far as to claim that "Episcopacy is the only form of Church-order contained in the Scriptures and manifested from ancient authors" (emphasis his).
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