Seabury, Anglicanism and the American Republic

More than a via media has, at times, been harsh in its criticism of aspects of the life of the Episcopal Church in the United States. ECUSA's failure to pay heed to fellow-Anglicans across the globe and the Christian tradition across the centuries has impaired communion in a manner that has undermined Anglicanism's common life and witness.

That, however, should not be taken to mean that I am uncritically critical of ECUSA. I and my family have happy memories of the hospitality, fellowship and orthodox faith and worship of ECUSA parishes in New York city, Massachusetts and Maine. I find it an unremarkable pastoral necessity that Anglicans in San Francisco should have a different approach to same-sex relationships than Anglicans in Nigeria. And I think it necessary that the populist Protestantism and ethnic Roman Catholicism that dominate much of the religious life of the American Republic are balanced by an American expression of Anglicanism's liturgical and pastoral traditions.

Friday past provided me an opportunity to give thanks for my experiences of ECUSA. It commemorated the consecration of Samuel Seabury in 1784. During the colonial era, the political sensitivities of Dissenters stopped the Crown from providing bishops for Anglicans in the Americas. Political sensitivities re-emerged post-independence, this time on the other side of the Atlantic - English bishops would not consecrate a bishop who did not take the oath of allegiance to the Crown. Which led American Anglicans to turn to Scottish Anglicans, who had been Non-Jurors, refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Hanoverians. Seabury received the order of the episcopate from 3 Scottish Episcopal bishops on 14th November 1784 in Aberdeen Cathedral.

That Scottish link proved to be influential. The Scots bishops requested that Seabury use his influence to ensure that American Anglicanism model its eucharistic practice and theology on the Scottish reliance on the 1549 and Non-Juror liturgies. And that is what Seabury achieved. As a result, the rich eucharistic theology of the first reformed Prayer Book and the Non-Jurors passed into the Anglican mainstream. Seabury went on to give expression to that eucharistic theology in his 1789 An Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Communion:

"For the command, 'This do in remembrance of Me,' relates not barely to eating bread & drinking wine in remembrance of Christ, as the Socinians teach, and some ill-informed Christians suppose, but to the whole transaction. By it the Apostles were enjoined, when they administered the Holy Communion, to do as Christ then did - take bread and break it, and offer it up to God, by thanksgiving and prayer, consecrating it to be His mystical Body - the memorial or representative of that Body which Christ in the institution willingly offered up and devoted to God, a sacrifice and propitiation for the sin of the world; and which, in consequence of His offering, was soon after slain upon the cross for our redemption - the Body of Christ in virtue and efficacy. They were then to distribute it to the Christians who attended the Holy solemnity, as Christ distributed it to them. Likewise they were to take the cup, and offer it up to God, by prayer, thanksgiving, and blessing, consecrating it to be the sacramental Blood of Christ - the representative, or memorial of His Blood which Christ devoted to God to be shed for sin - the Blood of Christ in virtue and efficacy to all worthy receivers. They were then to give it to all the Christians present to drink of it in remembrance, or for a memorial of Christ. So that all they who received the sacramental Body and Blood - i. e. the bread and wine thus blessed and consecrated by Christ's authorized minister - with true penitence and faith, might, at the same time, receive, in a spiritual and mysterious manner, the life-giving Body and Blood of Christ".

The collect provided for 14th November in ECUSA's 1979 Prayer Book is a reminder that episcopacy is meant to serve local and national churches by uniting them with the catholic tradition over space and time. And that is how Seabury served Anglicanism in the seemingly unwelcoming context of a new American Republic suspicious of authority and tradition:

"We give you thanks, O Lord our God, for your goodness in bestowing upon this Church the gift of the episcopate, which we celebrate in this remembrance of the consecration of Samuel Seabury; and we pray that, joined together in unity with our bishops, and nourished by your holy Sacraments, we may proclaim the Gospel of redemption with apostolic zeal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen".