Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880-1950 9780773569034

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Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950

In Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 William Katerberg shows how evangelical, high church, and liberal Anglicans used contradictory ways of appealing to the past to make sense of their place and purpose in a North American culture of competing identity choices. Scholars and other cultural commentators have often debated the extent and meaning of secularization in modern societies. Katerberg takes a different approach by emphasizing that people’s religious commitments have become one of many competing identity choices in consumer cultures. He describes the life and work of five leaders in the Anglican Church in Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States who came of age in the late nineteenth century and served their religious communities until the mid-twentieth century. As clergy and educators they hoped to root the faith of modern Anglicans/Episcopalians in past traditions to provide a compelling spiritual purpose and identity for the present and the future. Their attempts to articulate a historical basis for Anglican unity and Christian ecumenism often had contradictory and even sectarian results. Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 offers historians and scholars of religion and culture in North America a comparative perspective and a new way to understand how a previous generation looked to the past to address the dilemmas of an uncertain present and future. william h. katerberg is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

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m c gill-queen’s studies in the history of religion Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. series two In memory of George Rawlyk Donald Harman Akenson, Editor Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640–1665 Patricia Simpson Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience Edited by G.A. Rawlyk Inifinity, Faith, and Time Christian Humanism and Renaissance Literature John Spencer Hill The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada Charles H.H. Scobie and G.A. Rawlyk, editors Labour, Love, and Prayer Female Piety in Ulster Religious Literature, 1850–1914 Andrea Ebel Brozyna Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900 John-Paul Himka The Waning of the Green Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 Mark G. McGowan

Good Citizens British Missionaries and Imperial Stares, 1870–1918 James G. Greenlee and Charles M. Johnston, editors The Theology of the Oral Torah Revealing the Justice of God Jacob Neusner Gentle Eminence A Life of George Bernard Cardinal Flahiff P. Wallace Platt Culture, Religion, and Demographic Behaviour Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace, 1750–1870 Kevin McQuillan Between Damnation and Starvation Priests and Merchants in Newfoundland Politics, 1745–1855 John P. Greene Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 William Katerberg

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series one G.A. Rawlyk, Editor 1 Small Differences Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815–1922 An International Perspective Donald Harman Akenson 2 Two Worlds The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario William Westfall 3 An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839–1918 Marguerite Van Die 4 The Dévotes Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France Elizabeth Rapley 5 The Evangelical Century College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression Michael Gauvreau 6 The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods James M. Stayer 7 A World Mission Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for an New International Order, 1918–1939 Robert Wright 8 Serving the Present Age Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada Phyllis D. Airhart 9 A Sensitive Independence Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881–1925 Rosemary R. Gagan

10 God’s Peoples Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster Donald Harman Akenson 11 Creed and Culture The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750–1930 Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, editors 12 Piety and Nationalism Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850–1895 Brian P. Clarke 13 Amazing Grace Studies in Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States George Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll, editors 14 Children of Peace W. John McIntyre 15 A Solitary Pillar Monreal’s Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution John Marshall 16 Padres in No Man’s Land Canadian Chaplains and the Great War Duff Crerar 17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America A Critical Analysis of U.S. and Canadian Approaches P. Travis Kroeker 18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917–1981 Robert K. Burkinshaw

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19 Through Sunshine and Shadow The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 Sharon Cook

23 Evangelism and Apostasy The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico Kurt Bowen

20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844–1994 Brian J. Fraser

24 The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827 to 1905 Eldon Hay

21 The Lord’s Dominion The History of Canadian Methodism Neil Semple

25 Methodists and Women’s Education in Ontario, 1836–1925 Johanna M. Selles

22 A Full-Orbed Christianity The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau

26 Puritanism and Historical Controversy William Lamont

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Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 w i l l i a m h . k at e r b e r g

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2001 isbn 0-7735-2160-7 Legal deposit second quarter 2001 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for its activities. It also acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Katerberg, William H. (William Henry), 1966– Modernity and the dilemma of North American Anglican identities, 1880–1950 (McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of religion) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-7735-2160-7 1. Anglican Church of Canada – History. 2. Episcopal Church – History. 3. Anglican Church of Canada – Clergy – Biography. 4. Episcopal Church-Clergy – Biography. 5. Modernism (Christian theology) – Anglican Church of Canada. 6. Modernism (Christian theology) – Episcopal Church. I. Title. II. Series. bx5600.k38 2001 283′.71′09 c00-901434-9

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in 10/12 Palatino.

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For all my teachers

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Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

1 Introduction: An Antique or an Anchor?

3

2 Anglicanism in North America to the Mid-Nineteenth Century 20 3 Dyson Hague: Modernity, Tradition, and the Piety of the Past 37 4 North American Anglicanism at the Turn of the Century 64 5 W.H. Griffith Thomas: Anglicanism, Fundamentalism, and Modernity 79 6 William T. Manning: Apostolic Order and Evangelical Truth 107 7 Anglicanism in North America, 1920–1950

135

8 Carl Eckhardt Grammer: Things That Remain in Liberal Anglicanism 152 9 Henry John Cody: Modernity and Mediating Anglicanism 181 10 Conclusion: The Modern Project, Fragmentation, and Anglican Identity 210

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x Contents

Appendix: Church Membership Notes

227

Bibliography Index

303

277

225

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Acknowledgments

One theme in this study is the fragmentation of communities, culture, life, and identities in modern societies. On occasion the writing of this book also felt fragmented. In the midst of it, I moved from Queen’s University, where I earned my phd, to the University of Maine in Orono, St Thomas University in Fredericton (New Brunswick), and Calvin College in Grand Rapids (Michigan). These schools have provided me with a livelihood and with students on which to inflict my historiographical idiosyncrasies. I have missed old friends, family, and colleagues (who quite selfishly remained in Ontario), but I have enjoyed the company of new colleagues, friends, and communities. The late George Rawlyk supervised the ma and phd theses on which much of this study is based. Jane Errington, of the Royal Military College in Kingston, one of his former students, took over the final stages of that supervision after his car accident and subsequent death in late 1995. At Queen’s, Klaus Hansen, Ian McKay, and David Lyon read my phd thesis and offered constructive criticism. My external examiner, Alan Hayes of Wycliffe College, gave me pages of notes and questions that made this book a better study than the thesis. Most of all, Marguerite Van Die pushed me to reconsider and reinterpret much of what I had said in the thesis and to reconceptualize the whole project. Anonymous readers at McGill-Queen’s University Press and the Canadian Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme helped polish the final work and agreed that the thing was worth funding. Thanks as well to Roger Martin and Donald Akenson at McGill-Queen’s.

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xii Acknowledgments

I would have liked to say that all the blunders in the book belong to the people listed above and all the insights to me. But wiser heads have prevailed. Any errors of fact or questionable judgments that remain are mine. I did put in long hours and years. But, as with all scholarship, credit is due to the community of scholars whom I have been fortunate to know, through their writing or personally. Librarians and archivists at Queen’s University, Wycliffe College, the Public Archives of Ontario, the Diocese of Ontario, the Diocese of Toronto, the General Synod Archives of the Anglican Church of Canada (acc), the Diocese of New York City, the General Theological Seminary, and the Dallas Theological Seminary provided material and helpful suggestions about where to look for more. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided funds, in the form of doctoral fellowships, to complete the bulk of this project. Queen’s University and the Pew Charitable Trusts contributed funds for travel and research. And the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme provided a grant that allowed McGill-Queen’s University Press to publish this book. However nice and practical money is, in the long run the company has been more important. My own background is immigrant Dutch and Reformed rather than Anglican. Over the years I have had numerous occasions to attend Anglican churches and participate in services of worship. During my year in Maine in 1996 and 1997 I attended weekly services at St James Episcopal Church in Old Town. My thanks to that community for its welcoming kindness. Similarly, for three weeks in 1994 the Episcopalian sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit in New York provided me with a place to stay. I am grateful. Colleagues and students at Queen’s, Maine, St Thomas, and Calvin also reminded me why I enjoy academic life (at least a little bit more often than I find it aggravating). And friends and family, far too many people to name individually, sustained me through personal and academic adversity. Special thanks to my nieces, Katie, Rhianna, and Allie. They continue to remind me that while books are sometimes fun to read, swimming and playing on swing sets are the real stuff of life. Perhaps fortunately, I did not meet Simona until the book was all but completed. I have been surprised, delighted, and humbled to find so much distracting conversation, friendship, and much more in one person.

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Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities

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1 Introduction: An Antique or an Anchor? The empty self … is an analytic concept, a limit toward which we tend, but not a concrete reality. A completely empty self could not exist except in the theory of radical individualism. It is theoretically imaginable but performatively impossible. The constituted self is also an analytic concept, a limit that is never quite reached. It is true that we are all children of specific parents, born in a particular locality, inheritors of those group histories, and citizens of this nation. All of these things tell us who we are in important ways. But we live in a society that encourages us to cut free from the past, to define our own selves, to choose the groups with which we wish to identify … So we live somewhere between the empty and the constituted self. Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (1985)

At the turn of the second millennium ad, religion and culture in North America are in flux. William Butler Yeats said it well in 1921 in a much-quoted line: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Though not uniquely so, perhaps, ours is an age of fragmentation for Christian churches and other faith communities and perhaps one of reconfiguration.1 The ubiquity of so-called “postmodern” rhetoric and culture in the 1990s, even if overused and imprecise, suggests that North America and much of the rest of the world are going through a difficult and often painful time of transition, not only socially, economically, and politically but culturally and religiously as well. Whether the signs of the times today herald progress or decline, the beginnings of a new era or random change, remains to be seen.2 As might be expected, given these broader patterns, the Anglican Church in Canada (acc) and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (pecusa) are experiencing their own transitions. The Anglican Church in Canada faces the possibility of its demise in the next few decades, some observers claim. Recounting the serious decline suffered since the 1960s – in membership, piety, morale, and finances – the Canadian sociologist Reginald Bibby predicted that the acc will disappear midway through the twenty-first century if current trends continue.3 Citing endemic discord and disorder in

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the church, and the lack of a commonly accepted sense of purpose, Rev. William Hockin (then of St Paul’s Church, Toronto) called Anglicans to some serious soul-searching. “We must be prepared to ask ourselves if [our] Church really does have a continuing role to serve in our culture,” he said in 1994. “Do we really have anything to say that affects people’s lives? Is it worth the effort to keep the doors open and struggle on? Are we really an anchor for people’s lives, or perhaps just an antique, something highly valued by some, but stored on a shelf to be dusted off on special occasions?”4 Some evangelical Anglicans went further, saying that they have often felt like aliens in their own church. They also wondered whether there would be a place for them in the acc in the future.5 Even renewal movements in the acc – involving a loose coalition of evangelicals, charismatics, and high-church traditionalists – do not offer hope without considerable ambiguity.6 Recent general synods of the acc have dealt with conflicts over issues such as gender-neutral language for God in the new hymn book and the church’s stand on homosexuality. Michael Pountney, principal of Wycliffe College in Toronto, observed in 1995 that if “the middle ground of centrist opinion is disappearing, then it is likely that the growing polarization of the church between a liberal majority and a conservative minority whose apparent function can only be reactive will continue to divide [Anglicans].”7 Canadian Anglicans can point to evidence of revitalization, but they have cause for pessimism. In the United States the Episcopal Church has somewhat better prospects, claim Richard Kew and Roger White, authors of New Millennium, New Church (1992). In response to pessimists who fear that the pecusa has abandoned the Bible and Christian tradition, they admit that if “you pick and choose your facts, you can paint a pretty miserable picture of any human institution, especially ours.” Even so, they assert, the pecusa’s decline in numbers reached a nadir in the 1980s, and since then theological renewal has been occurring in various forms across the denomination. American Episcopalians thus should “gird up their loins and face the future with excitement and enthusiasm. These could be vintage years for our grand old Church!” With a like-minded, but strained, optimism Edmund Browning, the presiding bishop of the pecusa, reported in 1990 that a Gallup poll had shown that the pecusa was not “suffering from a major crisis of identity” and had a “fairly clear sense of direction and mission.”8 Assertions about an end to declining numbers and a renewed sense of direction and calling are debatable. Issues such as the ordination of homosexuals divide Episcopalians, as they do in the acc.

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And the liberal-modernist theology of deliberately provocative leaders like John Shelby Spong, bishop of Newark, New Jersey, cannot easily be reconciled with the “post-liberal” orthodoxy of the Baltimore Declaration of 1991, a statement of faith made by a group of Episcopalian priests seeking theological renewal.9 Even if not suffering from a life-threatening crisis of membership or identity, as the acc allegedly is, the pecusa has been stagnant numerically and fragmented theologically. In various dioceses and parishes in both churches, pockets of growth and vitality doubtless can be found. Liberals, high-church traditionalists, evangelicals, post-liberals, charismatics, and conservatives (among others) are trying to promote theological and spiritual renewal and find new bases of common mission and direction.10 The situation in the acc seems more urgent, but such relative distinctions are difficult to draw conclusively. For the moment, despite the worldwide Anglican Communion’s decision to designate the 1990s a “decade of evangelism,” neither the acc nor the pecusa has a unified sense of identity and purpose. Though shaped by centuries-old conflicts going back to the Reformation in England, these unprecedented ecclesiastical, spiritual, and theological dilemmas are the result of the Anglican encounter with modernity in North America.11 Or does this negative report say too much? Implicit in it is an old story of decline, of secularization, during the modern era. According to this story, as classically told, religion became marginalised in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in North America and Europe – buffeted by the Enlightenment, Darwin, and historical criticism, shunted aside by the separation of church and state, and overmatched by entertainment and leisure industries.12 Unable to adapt, religion became a private matter, church membership and personal piety slowly withered, and Christian societies became secular nation-states. Were Anglican dilemmas in the 1990s the result of such universal secular trends towards the dissolution of religion in modernized societies? No. This one-dimensional negative assessment ignores evidence and theory. A historical case can be made that North American Anglicans adapted effectively until the 1960s. Theoretical reflection raises questions about whether institutional decline and theological fragmentation are necessarily bad. Are modern-style religious denominations and theological homogeneity the sole standards of measure? Or can spirituality and religious practice flourish in other settings and in diverse ways? Put simply, scholars should not read Anglican institutional decline since the 1960s backwards, into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And they should

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not assume that the diversity of Anglican church parties – even party conflict and fragmentation – by definition were signs of ill health. These historical and theoretical considerations also demand some forethought about “modernity” and variations on the term “modern,” a slippery but unavoidable concept, given its ubiquity in contemporary parlance. Much can be said about this, but for the moment it is enough to note several features. Between 1750 and 1950 in Europe and North America, powerful centrifugal and centripetal forces worked on modernizing societies and nation-states. In the United States and Canada, federal governments consolidated power and promoted unified national identities, and international labour migration movements led to heterogenous populations that hindered such efforts. Similarly, industrial capitalism integrated global markets and contributed to the fragmentation of social life in both rural districts and urban centres.13 These kinds of totalising (or consolidating) and atomising (or fragmenting) trends had distinct consequences for religious and cultural identities. First, modern institutions and daily life more and more were segmented and differentiated – notably, the state was separated from the churches and the market. Second, people and culture increasingly were “disembedded.”14 This point is crucial. Modern people began moving between rural communities, cities, regions, nations, and continents, generating patterns of trans-Atlantic migration on a scale previously unimaginable.15 Diverse people and cultures uprooted and transplanted themselves. Culture, religion included, grew increasingly commodified and marketable as churches, the state, entertainment and leisure industries, labour unions, fraternal and ethnic organizations, and other voluntary societies competed for people’s time, allegiance, and money. Local communities continued to root people in face-to-face relationships, albeit serially, but these processes fostered the diversity, transiency, and fluidity characteristic of modern life. Living in “imagined communities” and coexisting with “strangers” became familiar aspects of modern people’s lives and identities.16 Premodern traditions that once had located people in specific times and places often became disembedded commodities that individuals could choose and carry with them – or abandon. This outline of modernity suggests the dilemmas of identity faced by late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglicans in North America. On the one hand, they were part of a transatlantic, Anglo-American culture and a globalizing communion, given the spread of the Church of England to Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Asia. On the other

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hand, North American Anglicans confronted the transiency and diversity of modern life and choices. By the late nineteenth century, being an Anglican was less a matter of descent than of personal choice and consent. Anglican identity had definite social consequences in both English Canada and the United States, as the acc and pecusa were part of the unofficial wasp cultural-religious establishments (“shadow establishments,” in David Martin’s phrase).17 But the acc and the pecusa were denominations – voluntary institutions – rather than established churches, and Anglican traditions were part of a religious and cultural marketplace and thus were disembedded and mobile. As matters of choice, traditions became “reflexive,” demanding consideration of what it meant to choose to become an Anglican – and of why one did so – rather than choosing another religious or cultural tradition. Amidst this growing social-cultural pluralism and transiency, Anglican evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and liberals alike contended and evolved, constructing church institutions and religious identities.18 Using a series of intellectual biographies and narrative chapters this study explores modernity and the dilemma of identity by analysing the relationship between anglo-catholic, liberal, and evangelical forms of Anglican piety and theology. It examines how and why the encounter with modernity in North America divided Anglicans into diverse and often antagonistic factions. Anglican church parties all developed Romantic forms of experiential piety – and in effect accepted one facet of modern culture somewhat uncritically – but they responded differently to critics who challenged the authority of scripture, the church, and historic Christian theology. Broad-church liberals embraced most modern intellectual trends, such as biblical criticism and the idea of progress, though not uncritically. Highchurch anglo-catholics emphasized the sacraments, the beauty and holiness of ritual, and episcopal authority (i.e., the unbroken succession of bishops from the ancient church). Finally, evangelicals stood fast on the infallible authority of the Bible, Christ’s atonement on the cross, and personal conversion. Varied approaches to scriptural authority and the eucharist especially reveal these differences. Though representing something new, none of these movements was without precedent. Evangelicals appealed to the protestantism of Thomas Cranmer, the author of the Book of Common Prayer in the 1540s and a martyr during the restoration of Roman Catholicism under Queen Mary in the 1550s. They drew support from moderate Puritanism and other protestant traditions. Anglo-catholics of various stripes built on the high-church legacies of Archbishop Laud and the seventeenth-century Caroline Divines. And, broad-church

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liberals revitalized the ethical impulses and rationalist theology of eighteenth-century latitudinarians. Nevertheless, the unprecedented challenges of modernity – i.e., urbanization, industrialization, political reform, consumerism, Darwinism, and historical criticism – often gave these movements eschatological urgency. Not just supremacy in the Church of England, for one party or another, but the very existence of Christianity was at stake. As the previous paragraph suggests, the encounter between modernity and tradition and the often unwitting attempt to use the past to respond to or accommodate modernity shaped the ideological dilemmas endemic in Anglicanism in the past century and a half. The need to adapt to changing cultural circumstances was not new.19 That has been a constant feature of Christianity. Nevertheless, the fluidity of modern culture and the tendency for traditions to become objects of consumption and self-conscious manipulation led to historic challenges for North American Anglicans.20 Beyond the general challenge of modernity, disestablishment in the United States during the Revolutionary era and in Canada during the early nineteenth century meant that a specific bond that had once bound Anglicans together no longer existed in North America. Though the Church of England’s erastian state connections weakened during the nineteenth century (with the end to religious tests for protestant dissenters and the emancipation of Roman Catholics), it remained established and privileged, for good or ill, bound to the English state. In contrast, even as a part of the unofficial wasp establishments of English Canada and the United States, New World Anglicans found themselves cut loose from state support, mere voices among the influential protestant churches.21 Scholars such as William Westfall, Curtis Fahey, and Robert Mullin have shown that this momentous change forced North American Anglicans to reinvent themselves.22 Together, modernity and disestablishment (part of the same historical process) forced factions in the acc and the pecusa to compete with each other and formulate new identities during an era of great anxiety, change, and hope for North American Christians.23 This process is often called secularization. But as I have previously noted, it is better described as a competition for identities in a pluralized, modern social and cultural setting. The distinct roads taken by evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and liberals in the modern era often led to bitter fraternal conflict, the hardening of theological positions, and, on occasion, the breaking of common bonds that had endured in Anglicanism despite ongoing strife from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. A desire for cultural, theological, and intellectual stability also underlay

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these trends. Divisions among the protestant, catholic, and liberal wings in the English Church had long existed. Many Puritans had left the church in the seventeenth century, as had the non-juring high-church bishops who seceded in 1689–90 rather than accept the rule of William of Orange. However, although Anglican divisions had been comparably fluid before the nineteenth century, after 1800 the Church of England split into three major camps. While significant variety existed in each, they typically dealt with and rebuked each other as if they were cohesive, organized parties. As often is the case, opponents’ labels and self-definitions both shaped Anglican party identities: evangelicals, or low churchmen; anglo-catholics, high churchmen, ritualists, or tractarians; and, liberals, latitudinarians, broad churchmen, or modernists.24 In short, modernity and the difficult, uneven process of adapting the Church of England to North American culture eroded ties of common identity and purpose and encouraged major divisions in the acc and the pecusa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most obvious example of these divisions took place in 1873, when a group of evangelicals seceded from the pecusa and formed the Reformed Episcopal Church (rec).25 The intellectual biographies and narrative portions of this study examine the evolution of these divisions in Canada and the United States from the 1880s to the 1950s. They also analyse the underlying connections between anglo-catholic, evangelical, and liberal forms of spirituality that continued to shape the piety and theology of people such as H.J. Cody (evangelical, liberal, and catholic), William Manning (anglo-catholic and evangelical), and Carl Grammer (liberal and evangelical). That such individuals and movements could embrace diverse strains of spirituality while controversies threatened to fracture the Anglican and Episcopal churches as institutions helps explain both the complex patterns of church party politics that contributed to the North American Anglican identity crisis during the mid-late twentieth century and the potential for reconfiguration that remains today. This point cannot be over-emphasized. Both fragmentation and centralization, localism and globalization, characterized modernity. In North America, competition and party conflict weakened common bonds among Anglicans but did not lead to the splintering of either the acc or the pecusa during the period under study here – aside from the rec secession of 1873. Moreover, as part of the unofficial wasp establishments of English Canada and the United States, Anglicans contributed to what has been called mainline or consensus protestantism and the consolidation of the nation-state.26 This book

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10 Anglican Identities

thus emphasizes the need to view the history of North American Anglicanism in terms of unity as well as fragmentation, though the emphasis here is on the latter. The patterns of Anglican fragmentation in North America analysed in subsequent chapters highlight modern divisions that have permeated and cut across each other. Even as evangelicals and anglo-catholics fought one another, liberal wings developed within each party, finding much in common with broad-church liberals and inspiring conservative opposition. These conflicts and cross-currents both stemmed from and fostered the dilemmas of identity and purpose faced by North American Anglicans since 1800. From the party conflicts of the 1850s to the Anglican mosaic of the mid–twentieth century, high- and low-church lines blurred and liberal and conservative divisions took shape. At the heart of these developments was a debate among various factions in the acc and the pecusa over their mission and a typically modern inability to agree on what it meant to be Anglican – and modern.27 Before discussing the individuals portrayed in this book, and outlining its temporal parameters and structure, it is necessary to summarize the broad historical context of ritual, theology, and ecclesiology in the Church of England. Conflicts in the Anglican Church in Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States make little sense without some knowledge of the contested history of the English church. The parties competing for control in modern Anglicanism appealed to the past to justify themselves. Both the events themselves and partisan use of the past indelibly shaped the spirituality and identities of evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and liberals. In short, Anglicans took their history seriously and in partisan fashion. English and North American Anglicans from the various church parties wrote fundamentally different histories to suit their needs. Whiggish religious historians, who typically favour the rise of ecumenism, have often viewed denominational conflicts brought from Europe to the New World as insignificant. The story of Anglicanism in North America indicates that far from being irrelevant, history was unavoidable in the acc and the pecusa. Indeed, without a stable historical identity in which to root themselves and without the support (and constraints) of an age-old religious establishment, New World Anglicans floundered. As modern culture became increasingly fluid, Anglicans tried to find solid ground in the past; however, the more they tried, the more that ground gave way under them. A brief look at Anglican history, then.

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11 Antique or Anchor?

Though its roots stretch back into ancient, Celtic, and medieval Christianity, the English Church as a distinct institution was born of political manoeuvring in the sixteenth century.28 Henry VIII had been named Defender of the Faith by the pope for his theological critique of Lutheranism. Nevertheless, in 1534 he separated the English church from Rome and made himself its head. This largely political change gave Henry the freedom to divorce his first wife, Katharine, remarry, and centralize authority in the English nationstate. He expelled Roman authorities from his realm and raised money for wars with France by closing English convents and monasteries and seizing church property. Though a notorious opportunist, Henry was conservative in theology and intended no major reforms of liturgy or church government. His protestant-minded advisors (e.g., Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury) encouraged him to require all parishes to have an English Bible on hand for people to read, but religious reforms did not go much further during his reign. After Henry’s death in 1547 his son Edward took the throne. Edward’s advisors and regents, many of them protestants, enacted greater reforms in the English Church. The Prayer Book of 1549, written and edited primarily by Cranmer, was a compromise between moderate Calvinism and medieval Roman Catholicism. Under pressure from English and foreign reformers, Cranmer reissued the Prayer Book in 1552. The edition of 1552 was more thoroughly protestant and controversial and did not last. When Edward died in 1553 his half-sister Mary inherited the throne, restored Roman Catholicism and appointed new bishops. Her reign was brief and bloody. Some of the leading reformers escaped from England to the continent, but many others were killed, including Cranmer, who was burned at the stake. When Mary died unexpectedly in 1558, her half sister Elizabeth took the throne. Elizabeth was a moderate in religion and politics. She rejected Roman Catholicism and extreme reform, appointed a new slate of bishops (this time moderates), and restored the Prayer Book, following Cranmer’s mediating edition of 1549. While Elizabeth reigned in the second half of the sixteenth century, scholars and church leaders such as Richard Hooker and John Jewel set down a basis for Anglican theology, ritual, and church order. They defended the Anglican middle way from Roman Catholic charges of schism and protestant condemnation for not taking reform far enough (i.e., for adopting superstition and heresy as political conveniences). Leading churchmen like Hooker and Jewel contended that the ThirtyNine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer effectively blended the best of catholic tradition and protestant renovation. Nineteenth century

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12 Anglican Identities

evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and liberals thus could and did claim to be the true heirs of Hooker and the Elizabethan divines. During the turbulent seventeenth century, under the aegis of James I, Charles I, and the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, the Church of England swung in a high-church direction. Laud imprisoned clergy who refused to follow his strict high-church interpretation of Anglican worship. Charles I, citing the divine right of kings, was equally obdurate with a protestant-dominated parliament. More constructively, the Caroline Divines, a talented group of clergy and scholars, promoted catholic theology and ritual. Their work, which would be rediscovered and celebrated by anglo-catholics in the nineteenth century, was interrupted by civil war. During the Puritan revolution of the 1640s and 1650s (for Anglican monarchists, the Interregnum) the Church of England and the Prayer Book were outlawed. But after the Restoration of 1662, both were reinstated relatively unchanged, perhaps allowing for more ritual than in the sixteenth century. The Glorious Revolution of 1689 brought William of Orange, a Dutch Calvinist, to the throne but did not reshape the Church of England in the long run, except to advance toleration for protestant dissenters. After the endemic religious wars of the seventeenth century, most Puritans left the Church of England. The remaining Anglican parties were exhausted by conflict. This left the English Church to moderate protestants, high-church catholics (who remained aggressive during the early eighteenth century) and a growing number of “latitude men,” who were disillusioned by the intemperate conflicts of the previous century. Major party conflicts would not begin again until the Great Awakenings and the advent of the evangelical Anglicanism. The latitudinarians included orthodox trinitarians, such as John Locke, John Tillotson, and Joseph Butler, and deists like John Toland and Matthew Tindal. They downplayed both high-church Anglican ceremony and Puritan biblical literalism. Instead, they promoted rationalist forms of theology and stressed the ethical implications of Christian faith and the Bible. There is some debate among historians about the health of Anglicanism during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (e.g, over the quality of parish life and the clergy). According to later critics when the enthusiasms and controversies of the 1600s died down, the English church was left “high and dry,” controlled by highchurchmen and rationalist latitudinarians. Some Anglicans, such as the mystic William Law, responded by exploring experiential forms of piety. Two of his books, Christian Perfection (1726) and A Serious Call to Holy Life (1728), would influence people like John and Charles Wesley, who would transform Anglicanism in the next few decades.29

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As a distinct movement, evangelical revival in the Church of England began in the 1730s. Early leaders, such as the Wesleys and George Whitefield, worked outside normal church structures, taking to meeting halls, the streets, and the fields, because church authorities refused to cooperate with them. One result was that many Methodists left the Anglican fold at the end of the century, when John Wesley (who did not leave) reluctantly ordained a group of missionaries for the colonies. By this time Anglican evangelicals had established themselves in regular parishes. Lay leaders and clergy such as John Newton, Thomas Scott, Joseph Milner, Lady Huntingdon, William Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, and Henry Venn established pockets of evangelicalism in various regions of the church. An activist movement, evangelicals also promoted missions and political reform, especially abolition. By the early nineteenth century, evangelicals in the Church of England had struck what they considered a balance between Anglican forms of worship and personal piety. They had also institutionalized: bishops, periodicals, and mission organizations, and a general consensus on theological and ecclesiastical standards gave the evangelical party permanence and order. And, although willing to cooperate with other protestants, they were well established, if not universally welcome, in the Church of England as its most dynamic wing, until the Oxford Movement of the 1830s.30 A combination of identifiably modern factors ignited the Oxford Movement: political reform that allowed non-Anglicans to influence the Church of England, low-church neglect of episcopal authority and catholic tradition, and a fear that Anglicans had become spiritually dry and morally indolent. Through a series of notorious tracts, the Oxford Conspirators attempted to reform Anglicanism by championing church order and catholic worship.31 Like evangelicals, the tractarians (some of whom had been raised as evangelicals) wrote pamphlets to encourage personal holiness, religious authority, and Romantic forms of experiential piety. By this time, some liberal and anglo-catholic historians claim, the evangelical revival had lost its dynamism and had begun to harden theologically into low-church dogmatism. Furthermore, apologists for anglo-catholicism said that evangelicalism’s suspect doctrine of the church and its narrow interpretation of the Book of Common Prayer had revealed the need for a uniquely Anglican revival. The tractarians thus attacked a perceived lack of catholic piety in the Church of England, promoted devotionalism and holiness, and defended traditional catholic doctrines of apostolic succession and the sacraments. In so doing, they championed the theologians of the ancient church, lamented the protestant Reformation, and revered the high-church divines of seventeenth-century England.

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Taking tractarianism a step further in subsequent decades, ritualists advocated high-catholic forms of worship – the full aesthetic flower of incense, processions, kneeling, crossing, bells, and the like. Moreover, during the 1840s and 1850s key anglo-catholic leaders, such as John Henry Newman and Edward Manning, left the Church of England for Rome. These highly publicized developments confirmed evangelical suspicions and inspired them to harden and retrench their position. Evangelicals argued that they were the rightful successors of the reformers of the sixteenth century, the true Anglicans. By locating religious authority in tradition and the episcopacy, anglo-catholics threatened to take the church backward, down a road of superstition to Rome. From a third viewpoint, liberal Anglicans criticized what they saw as the medieval superstition of the anglo-catholics and the repressive biblical literalism of the evangelicals. Rather than look backward, liberal Anglicans believed that their church needed to move forward and adapt to the intellectual, political, and social challenges of the modern world. As a loose coalition, broad-church liberals tried to avoid party labels. They argued that the Anglican heritage was a middle way rooted in ecumenical cooperation and tolerance of unimportant theological differences. In 1860 they outlined the liberal Anglican program and defined the broad wing of the church, publishing Essays and Reviews, a volume of theology and biblical scholarship. Ironically, Essays and Reviews united many evangelicals and anglo-catholics on one issue – the menace of “modernist” ideas in the church. In short, by the 1860s Anglicans had divided into several large camps that can be described as anglo-catholic (tractarian and ritualist), evangelical, and broad-church liberal. At the unstable centre remained moderate high-church Anglicans.32 Given opportune circumstances and the right issue, such as opposition to liberal theology, conflicting groups might cooperate temporarily against a more immediate and dangerous common foe. Nevertheless, as the century wore on, broad-church ideas and liberal theology began to find support among members of the evangelical and anglo-catholic parties, making a confused picture more enigmatic. North American Anglicans took this heterogeneous English legacy to the New World. With the historical evolution of the Church of England as a backdrop, this book explores the development of Anglicanism in North America from roughly 1880 to 1950. A broad survey remains impracticable given the limited (albeit slowly growing) scholarship available on Canadian and American Anglicans. Instead, the book uses intellectual biographies and narrative chapters to analyse the diversity

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15 Antique or Anchor?

of Anglican theology, ecclesiology, and piety. The individuals examined here represent many of the forms of Anglicanism in North America but do not exhaust the variety. They range from seminary professors and parish clergy to the bishop of a large diocese.33 None of them was an intellectual on the cutting edge of scholarship at the time or a cultural figure who regularly commanded national audiences. However, each was a forceful popular communicator, an “organic intellectual” devoted to bridging the gap between educated leaders and ordinary people in church pews.34 As the novelist George Eliot once described her characters, though not “widely visible” and having “no great name on the earth,” their influence was “incalculably diffusive.” The world is “partly dependent” on the “unhistoric acts” of people who lived “hidden” lives and “rest in unvisited tombs.”35 While not well known today, the individuals portrayed in the chapters that follow were bellwethers in an era of change and conflict. These organic Anglican intellectuals include an Englishman, William Henry Griffith Thomas (1861–1924), who was a conservative evangelical and early fundamentalist.36 Thomas began his career in a London parish. After some time as principal of Wycliffe Hall, the evangelical college at Oxford, he moved to Canada. From 1910 to 1919 Thomas taught at Wycliffe College in Toronto, edited the Canadian Churchman, and was a popular public speaker. He moved to Philadelphia in 1919 and later helped organize the Evangelical Theological College in Dallas. Through it all, Thomas authored a small library’s worth of pamphlets, books, and essays. The Canadians in this study also had strong ties to Wycliffe College. Henry John Cody (1868–1951) spent much of his career at St Paul’s Church in Toronto, taught at Wycliffe, was the minister of education for Ontario in 1918–19, and served as president of the University of Toronto in the 1930s and 1940s. A broad-minded man in his theology, Cody was a liberal evangelical who won the respect of colleagues from other church parties.37 He played a vital role in the evangelical party by counselling young clergy and finding parishes for them across the dominion. Dyson Hague (1857–1935) served parishes in Brockville, Halifax, Montreal, London, and Toronto but had his widest influence as a teacher at Wycliffe and a prolific author of books, pamphlets, and newspaper columns. He was a conservative evangelical in theology and churchmanship.38 The Americans are a mixed lot. Carl E. Grammer (1858–1944), a liberal, typified the pastor-scholar figure. He had parishes in Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and edited the Protestant Episcopal Review. He taught church history at the pecusa seminary in Virginia, wrote or edited numerous pamphlets and books, and was

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president of the Evangelical Educational Society in Philadelphia. He was also a member of the Episcopal Evangelical Fellowship, a liberal evangelical group dedicated to coming to terms with the findings of biblical criticism, historical theology, science, and comparative religion.39 William T. Manning (1866–1949) described his ministry as evangelical in faith and apostolic in order. His family emigrated from England to the United States in 1882, going first to Nebraska, then settling in California. He had parishes in various parts of the United States. In 1921, while he was rector at Trinity Church in New York City, the local diocese chose him to be its bishop. Manning was active in ecumenical ventures, the social gospel, and reform work. His faith was resolutely high-church but had intriguing evangelical elements.40 In their own right these people are worthy of study for their prominence among North American Anglicans and in several cases for their influence in broader religious, social, or political circles. But they are not entirely representative of the acc and the pecusa. This study includes no lay men or women. The Americans spent most of their careers in Philadelphia and New York and the Canadians in Ontario, all of them associated with Wycliffe College. This leaves the Maritimes and the West unrepresented. Finally, no liberal catholic is included, a notable absence given the movement’s prominence at the turn of the century. Intellectual and cultural biographies inevitably suffer from this sort of problem, even books that focus on a large number of individuals. To represent all church parties and balance clergy and laity, region, and gender would require several long volumes. Consequently, before highlighting the major themes of this study, it is necessary to say what it is and what it is not.41 Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities is not a synthetic study or a survey. Rather, it is a series of intellectual biographies that address a particular problem. In modest fashion its empirical foundation expands the scholarship on religion in North America. If it also provides insights into how to think about Anglicanism, Christianity, and religion more broadly – in relation to modernity, secularization, and cultural identities – then it will have accomplished what I set out to do. Several broad themes run through the book: the relationship between evangelicalism, liberalism, and anglo-catholicism, the impact of modernity on historic Anglican forms of spirituality, comparative perspectives on Canada and the United States, the evolution of Anglicanism as a North American phenomenon, and a critique of the secularization model in favour of thinking about religion in North

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17 Antique or Anchor?

America in terms of modernity and competing cultural identities. The biographical chapters at the heart of this study explore in depth some of the varieties of Anglican spirituality. The narrative chapters that support them discuss the historical context and theoretical concerns surrounding the evolution of Anglicanism and Christianity in North America. Together, the biographical and context-theory chapters provide layers of narratives, without trying to draw strict and detailed causal linkages between context and biography. The first narrative chapter sets the stage by describing events in Canada and the United States from the colonial era to the 1870s. It deals with evangelical revivals, the emergence of anglo-catholic and broad-church movements in North America, and the roots of Anglican party conflict in the mid–nineteenth century. The chapter on Dyson Hague (chapter 3) depicts the continuity of classic evangelical Anglicanism into the twentieth century in Canada and highlights Hague’s selective protestant reading of Anglican history. The following narrative chapter (chapter 4) compares turn-of-thecentury developments in Canada and the United States, preparing the way to look at fundamentalist reactions to modernity. Biographical chapters on Thomas (chapter 5) and Manning (chapter 6) focus on the ways that Anglicans appealed to disparate traditions in their history (evangelical and high-church) to defend the faith against modernity’s acids. They stress the paradoxes of fundamentalism, suggest underlying ideological links between Thomas and Manning, and explain how these antimodern reactions reworked the lines of identity that divided and united Anglicans. The last narrative chapter (chapter 7) fleshes out the context of Anglicanism in North America during the interwar years and beyond and leads into the chapters on Grammer and Cody (chapters 8 and 9). A combative liberal low-churchman, Carl Grammer maintained strategic evangelical ties in his bitter war on anglo-catholicism. Cody was an archetypal Canadian, an irenic liberal evangelical who accepted elements of anglo-catholic ritual. For him the struggle of modern identity was being both a Christian and a prominent man of the world. The concluding chapter (chapter 10) returns to locating modernity and the Anglican dilemma of identity in a wider theoretical and historical framework. The key theme of the book – and the place where it ends – is the fragmentation of historical consciousness and of religious and cultural identities in the modern era. The question is whether such fragmentation is necessarily negative. The book thus closes with the tangled dilemmas and opportunities lurking in historical and spiritual identities.

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18 Anglican Identities

A self-referential question remains. Why tell the story of Anglicanism in North America in terms of modernity and the dilemma of identity? “Modernity” and “identity” are much-debated scholarly and political constructions. But when the complicated issues of culturalpsychological origins and political usage are suspended, for a moment, the value of identity as a framework of analysis is clear. Consider the implicit questions that cultural identities address for individuals and their communities and institutions – Who am I? Where am I? Who are they? What is wrong? What is the remedy?42 These questions suggest that as cultural constructions, identities locate people in relation to the past and the present. They address contemporary problems, dangers, and opportunities, shape people’s perceptions of their enemies and allies, suggest solutions, and give people hope and direction for the future. Identities thus are both positive and negative. In exploring how North American Anglicans confronted modern dilemmas of identity, I am not trying to explain their decline; rather I am trying to study how Anglicans made sense of their changing church and cultural traditions amidst a world of diverse and competing identity choices. I am also questioning the standards by which such “decline” should be measured. This framework is one that my Anglican subjects likely would not have recognized. Scholars did not make wide use of “identity” as a concept until after World War II.43 By using “identity” to reread conflicts over what it meant to be Anglican, I am trying to let my subjects speak in their own voices and, at the same time, recast those voices to address wider issues. Anglicans, like other modern people, tried to construct stable, unifying identities. In the process their identities became fractured and fluid rather than fixed and unified. This experience may be an enduring one, but this dilemma of identity is acutely modern. That it is a modern dilemma and that such identity questions are at least implicitly religious, or spiritual, reveals the limits of the secularization paradigm. Whether or not people address their identity questions in religious institutions or movements, the questions themselves do not go away, and people continue to look for answers to them individually and collectively. The basic identity questions I have outlined also indicate why theology and ecclesiology need to be addressed. Identities are not universal; they are particular and relative. What did it mean to be an Anglican rather than a Roman Catholic, a Methodist, a Jew, or merely a “good person”? Benedict Anderson’s analysis of nationalism indicates that, as imagined communities, nations must be sovereign and limited.44 “Humanity” as a whole is an abstraction. As individuals, we do not experience the world or encounter other people in unmediated

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19 Antique or Anchor?

fashion; we do so through languages and cultures and as members of diverse, overlapping communities. Much the same is true of spirituality and religious experience. Students of religious studies, historians, and theologians, eager to look at the past from “the ground up,” want to escape the intellectual abstractions they find in theology and recover ordinary people’s personal, immediate experiences. But ordinary people and spirituality themselves are abstractions – apart from particular cultures, languages, ideologies, and theologies in specific times and places.45 “People growing up in communities of memory not only hear the stories that tell how the community came to be, what its hopes and fears are, and how its ideals are exemplified in outstanding men and women,” according to the authors of Habits of the Heart; they “also participate in the practices – ritual, aesthetic, ethical – that define the community as a way of life.” These practices of commitment define “the patterns of loyalty and obligation” that keep communities alive. “And if the language of the self-reliant individual is the first language of American moral life, the languages of tradition and commitment in communities of memory are ‘second languages› that people use “when the language of the radically separate self does not seem adequate.”46 This rivalry of languages is at the heart of the dilemmas of modern identity faced by North American Anglicans. My theoretical stance does not assume that preachers and teachers determine the experiences of ordinary folk in the pews. It does not mean that lay people, women or men, cannot make their own cultural traditions. It is intended, rather, to explore how such organic intellectuals in a specific religious tradition worked to instill a cultural framework, a common sense of religious language and ideology, that would generate an identity and purpose for the communities in which they lived and served. They were looking for languages to bind themselves together and set themselves apart as a distinct people with a special purpose.

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2 Anglicanism in North America to the Mid–Nineteenth Century

Whether they bless or curse the fact of it, English Canadians have often regarded the Anglican Church as a traditional cornerstone of their society. From school texts images of Bishop John Strachan come to mind – of the prelate working doggedly and imperiously to establish the church and proper society in the “howling wilderness” of colonial Upper Canada. Ironically, Anglicanism’s history is older in the United States. The Church of England did not have a vital presence in what became Canada until about 1750, when British settlers arrived in Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland became a resident colony.1 Even then, colonial Anglicans had to get along without a bishop until 1787, when Charles Inglis was consecrated bishop of Nova Scotia to care for the newly settled Loyalist population.2 Meanwhile, the Church of England had existed in the American colonies, albeit also without a bishop, from the seventeenth century. In purely temporal terms, then, there is no more American branch of Christianity than Anglicanism: while the Church of England was a latecomer in the Canadian colonies, Roman Catholicism had much older roots. This chapter situates the evolution of Anglicanism in North America in its social, cultural, and political context, and in terms of religious movements and institutions, to the 1860s. It focuses on the early development of Anglican church parties – through the anglo-catholic, evangelical, and liberal movements – and argues that from the beginning in the New World, although they fought it, circumstances forced Anglicans to reinvent themselves in disestablished denominations. They did so in the United States during the Revolutionary era and

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21 Anglicanism to the Mid–Nineteenth Century

after and in British North America beginning in the second decade of the 1800s. And they did so at the same time that Anglicanism was facing growing internal party divisions. The dilemma of Anglican identity thus had both internal and external sources. The history of North American Anglicanism is as old as the first settlements along the Chesapeake Bay during the early seventeenth century, almost as old the Church of England itself. Unlike the church at home, however, colonial Anglicans started from scratch. Historians have often written off the colonial Church of England as a failure. Compared to the efforts of the Puritans or the Baptists and the Methodists, Anglican efforts to field clergy, sustain communities of the faithful, and organize institutions seemed anaemic. Recently, scholars have revised this tale of woe, showing that Anglicans successfully transplanted their church in some regions – early on in Virginia and later in parts of New England and the middle colonies. Moreover, many historians now agree that no colonial denomination, New England’s prolific Puritans included, began to organize effectively until the mid–eighteenth century.3 Fundamental to the long-term goals of Anglican clergy in the American colonies was the official establishment of their church, as in England. At one level, establishment meant social prestige, control of education, access to the halls of political power, and support through public monies. At another level, that of historic identity and spiritual purpose, religious establishment meant that the church was not merely “a voluntary body of people” that contributed “to the settled order of the good society.” In essence, it was that order.4 Lay Anglicans in wealthy Southern vestries controlled by planters often had misgivings about this vision because they enjoyed the power that devolved on them when clergy were scarce and the nearest bishop resided in London. Moreover, this vision of Anglican order was likely to fail because ethnic and religious pluralism in the colonies, imperial disinterest during much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the opposition of colonial assemblies all militated against it. Indeed, in the 1760s Anglican efforts to secure a colonial bishop aggravated the discontent that led to the Revolution. Colonial critics judged bishops – monarchs in the church, in their eyes – to be a danger to colonial democracy akin to that of George III and his ministers.5 The Revolution was thus a defining moment for Anglicans in the Thirteen Colonies and the new American nation. It shattered the dream of establishment, and some Anglicans, especially in the North, wondered whether their church would survive. There was

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22 Anglican Identities

less concern in the South, where most Anglicans had supported the Revolution. American Anglicans ensured the continuation of their denomination by having three bishops consecrated in Britain in the late 1780s, thus becoming independent of the English Church, and reorganizing as the Protestant Episcopal Church. Its raison d’être gone, the pecusa had to redefine itself as one denomination among many. This change freed evangelical Anglicans to participate with other protestants in a “righteous empire” of revivals, missions, reform work, Bible and tract societies, and the like, but it was considered a disaster by most high churchmen. The first American bishop, Samuel Seabury, dismissed non-Anglicans as mere “Conventicles of Hereticks & Schismaticks, who, whatsoever they pretend, are really no part of the Catholick Church … They are like a Gangrened Member of the Body which receives no Nourishment from the head” and consequently forfeits “all Title to the promises of the Gospel.”6 In Loyalist Nova Scotia during the late 1780s, the new bishop, Charles Inglis, helped implement a counter-revolutionary program that was designed to prevent a similar calamity from occurring in what remained of Britain’s North American colonies. Governor John Graves Simcoe and Bishop John Mountain led similar efforts in Upper and Lower Canada. In a deliberate attempt to recreate organic ties between loyalty and faith – between church, society, and state, as existed in England – colonial authorities worked to establish the Church of England in the Maritimes and the Canadas.7 They did so, but not easily and never entirely. The decades before and after Inglis became bishop saw revivalists spread the evangelical gospel in the towns, outports, and countryside of the Maritimes. Following migration from New England, and building on awakenings there, revivalists promoted dissenting religion and spread protodemocratic practices before Anglican institutions could be established anywhere but in garrison towns such as Halifax. A similar pattern emerged in Upper Canada in the 1790s, where various revivalist groups got the jump on Anglican missionaries. Governor Simcoe’s fear that the “field [would] be thus open to the incursions of every enthusiast, & the dangerous influence of some in a Country where there are already itinerant Methodists” was justified.8 A profusion of ethnic-religious groups arrived before and after the War of 1812: Anglicans, Quakers, Dunkers, Moravians, Lutherans, First Nations groups, Free Church and Kirk Presbyterians, free blacks, Mennonites, and more. In response to this pluralist disorder, the colonial elite in British North America supported the Church of England with state funds to educate clergy, pay salaries, and build parishes. Despite these efforts,

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23 Anglicanism to the Mid–Nineteenth Century

Loyalists with “American” ideas, American migrants seeking free land in the 1790s and early 1800s, growing evangelical communities, and other religious and ethnic groups, all meant that the Church of England in British North America would face the same kinds of religious, political, and cultural diversity that previously had subverted the Anglican establishment in the American colonies. Unforeseen changes within Anglicanism from the early to mid–nineteenth century would make the task of creating an Anglican establishment infeasible. The entirely predictable failure of Anglican hegemony and the unexpected fragmentation of internal Anglican unity in Canada and the United States thus need to be examined in greater detail.9 Summarizing the status of the Church of England in Canada during the 1850s, Curtis Fahey concluded that it was in “intellectual disarray.” What with formal disestablishment and the imposition of religious voluntarism, Anglicans had come to realize that their church “could no longer hope to act as the guardian of the social and political order.” An alternative identity put forward by some Anglicans – that is, “a vision of an independent church primarily concerned not with guiding the course of political life but with meeting the needs of its own members” – overlooked the emerging problem of “disunity within the fold.” Conflicts between anglo-catholics, evangelicals, and liberals meant that “the church would have difficulty evolving into a spiritual society as long as its own clergy and laity were divided.”10 The politics of the emerging church parties thus shaped the way Anglicans regarded their place among the other Canadian churches and in government and society. The identity and purpose of Canadian Anglicans had disintegrated at the same time that their church had fractured along party lines. The first half of the century thus witnessed the partial unravelling of the ironically named United Church of England and Ireland in Canada. Nonetheless, growth in the number of members and of Anglicans institutions made the Church of England the largest single denomination in Upper Canada during the 1840s. The timing was somewhat different in the United States, where disestablishment happened in the 1770s and 1780s, but the effect was roughly the same. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, American Episcopalians (no longer Anglican, as even their name had to change in the wake of the Revolution and the creation of a new nation) reformulated their purpose and identity at the same time that party differences began to divide them. They did so while building parish and diocesan institutions, as well as colleges and seminaries, in an American nation whose territory and population were expanding rapidly.

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24 Anglican Identities

Both sides of this story – institutional growth and church party conflict – need to be recognized to understand Anglicanism in North America during the nineteenth century. This is true also for the Church of England – in England – which was dividing along party lines at the same time that it was constructing modern church structures and extending, along with the British empire, into Asia and Africa, making Anglicanism a world-wide communion.11 The roots of modern party divisions lie in the late colonial era, when evangelical revival in the English Church spread to North America. At first, during the awakenings of the 1730s and 1740s, most colonial Anglican clergy opposed the evangelical movements and criticized the upstart revivalists. Many even banned the well-known Anglican revival preacher George Whitefield from their parishes. In response to this resistance, some Anglican clergy and lay people became Methodists and Baptists. Later on, in the 1760s and in the South especially, Anglican revivalists like Devereux Jarrett began to promote the evangelical impulse in the colonial church. By the time of the Revolution, people such as Jarrett had spurred new growth in the colonial church and ignited the enthusiasm of many long-time communicants. As a result, some Anglican clergy and lay people embraced revivalist innovations and began to practise them in their parishes.12 In Loyalist British North America during the 1790s and the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Anglicans feared the appeal of evangelical revivals. Leaders among the clergy, such as Bishop Inglis in Nova Scotia and John Strachan in Upper Canada, opposed the “new measures” vigorously. The democratic, anarchic impulses in revivalism threatened not only good order in the Church of England but also law and order in society and politics. Causing further worry, frontier conditions meant that evangelical movements were able to spread faster than the established church. Requiring no formal education of their itinerants and eschewing such luxuries as church buildings, Methodists like Nathan Bangs spread revival circuits into countless newly settled communities. The Church of England thus was weak, and evangelical revivalism dominated the religious culture of the region at least until the War of 1812. After the war, fear of American ideas and settlers reinvigorated efforts to establish Anglicanism. In addition, an influx of new immigrants – including numerous virulently low-church evangelical Anglicans from Ireland – raised the stakes considerably.13 Until mid-century at least, the Canadian church survived only through the support of missionaries and money from England, especially through the support of the Society for Promoting Christian

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Knowledge (spck) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (spg). Slowly in the 1830s and 1840s English missionaries and money, the tireless work of John Strachan, and the energy of Bishops Mountain and Stewart in Quebec promoted the growth of the Church of England in the Canadian and Maritime colonies. Part of that growth was among evangelical Anglicans. They became a substantial presence in the Church of England in British North America during the early to mid–nineteenth century, when English and Irish migration brought large numbers to the Canadas (and some to the Maritimes).14 Evangelicals made their presence felt through clergy sponsored by the Church Missionary Society in England and through nondenominational organizations, such as the Religious Tract Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society. Evangelical Anglicans joined these pan-protestant societies to protest the exclusiveness of the Anglican spck and spg and to counter their own weakness as a movement, and also because they considered their church a protestant body. The early evangelicals were lay men and women predominantly, with only a few clergy. They did not effectively contest church politics or elect a bishop until 1857, but their numbers increased gradually over the next half century.15 During the 1820s, a number of them settled in Quebec, where Bishop Charles Stewart had some sympathy for evangelical principles. In Upper Canada scattered Church of England institutions and growth in frontier regions allowed Anglican evangelicals to accumulate influence in settlements around and in Toronto and London. Numerous immigrant evangelicals came from Ireland, bringing a strain of virulently anticatholic protestantism. The Irish Anglicans not only hated and feared the Irish Roman Catholics who accompanied them in great numbers to the new world at mid-century, they also had a keen nose for Romish trends in their own United Church of England and Ireland. Conflicts with traditional high-church clergy caused problems enough, especially in the Diocese of Quebec. The Oxford Movement would raise the stakes significantly. News of tractarianism came to Canada during the mid-1830s. Bishop Strachan even corresponded briefly with John Henry Newman. But the Oxford Movement did not have a widespread impact on the church in Canada until the 1840s, 1850s, and later, partly because high-church leaders like Strachan approached the movement with care, accepting some of its moderate tenets but rejecting extreme tractarianism (and later ritualism) as too controversial. Furthermore, conflict over the religious establishment and clergy reserves, particularly in Upper Canada, distracted Anglicans somewhat from more spiritual and theological

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matters such as the Oxford Movement. Nevertheless, led by strongminded Irish clergy like Benjamin Cronyn and inspired by conflict in England and the United States, Anglican evangelicals quickly attacked anything that smacked of Roman doctrine and practices. Their numbers also continued to grow. In 1857 evangelicals elected Cronyn bishop of the newly formed Diocese of Huron. A few years later they founded Huron College in London, Ontario, to perpetuate their principles. At the same time, tractarianism and ritualism spread in some dioceses, particularly among clergy but also among lay women and men. Moreover, bishops in key regions, such as John Travers Lewis in the Diocese of Ontario (the Kingston region, 1862–1902), promoted the renewal of high-church Anglicanism by appointing tractarian clergy to important parishes and influencing diocesan colleges. Conflicts between evangelicals (still, more often than not, lay-led) and highchurchmen festered in Toronto and Ottawa and in some Maritime dioceses. The increasingly bitter party conflict gradually brought together a diverse anglo-catholic coalition of high-churchmen (traditional highchurchmen, moderate tractarians and ritualists, and small groups of radicals). Though moderate and radical anglo-catholics quarrelled at times, as the century wore on they began to view each other as allies in the dominant wing of the church. Evangelical Anglicans certainly viewed them this way. The result was a struggle for control of the Church of England in Canada at an inopportune time. The timing was unfortunate for the Church of England because from the second decade of the nineteenth century to the 1840s political reformers and protestant dissenters steadily undercut Anglicanism’s status in English Canada as the established church. In the Maritimes the struggle began in the second decade of the nineteenth century when Presbyterians tested the Anglican monopoly on higher education in Nova Scotia, founding the Pictou Academy as a rival to King’s College in Windsor. The process continued in 1819 when nonconforming protestants campaigned for the right to perform marriages. Battles over public funding and the admission of students from all denominations to the Anglican King’s College in Fredericton marked politics in New Brunswick during the 1820s. The political emancipation of Roman Catholics in Britain in 1829 meant that Maritime Catholics could hold political office (they had been able to vote since 1789 in Nova Scotia and since 1810 in New Brunswick). The result of these conflicts in the Maritimes was that by 1840 the Church of England monopoly had ended. Non-Anglicans could partake fully in the political process, and all denominations had won the right to incorporate, perform marriages, and build institutions of higher education. When Nova Scotia and New Brunswick overturned their acts of establish-

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ment in 1851 and 1854, they were merely putting the dead letter of the law to rest. Prince Edward Island would wait until 1879 to do the same.16 The same process began later and took longer in the Canadas. In Upper Canada the growing Church of Scotland pressed for the privilege of coestablishment with Anglicanism, that is, for a transfer of its status as the established Church of Scotland from the Old World in Britain to the colony. Free Church Presbyterians, as well as Methodists, Baptists, and other dissenters, championed voluntarism and the abolition of all direct state support for Christianity. Conflicts focussed on the clergy reserves – land set aside for the use and financial support of the Church of England – as well as funding for education. Would public schools be Anglican or “secular” (in effect broadly protestant)? For Anglicans the bleeding began in 1829 with Catholic emancipation and the right of all churches to incorporate; it continued in 1831, when non-Anglican churches were granted the power to perform marriages. In 1840 the Anglican monopoly of the clergy reserves ended, as they were divided among the leading protestant churches. A few years later, the reserves were turned over to the state, to be used for the public school system (i.e., for protestant, not Anglican, schools). In addition, by that time the provincial University of Toronto had been secularized. Along with the other denominations, Anglicans were left to form church-affiliated colleges or start their own university. Though the change had taken several decades, the Church of England no longer defined cultural order in the colonies, it merely contributed to that order.17 The secularization of the clergy reserves did not herald the decline of colonial religion, however. Indeed, the state, reform movements in civil society, and the churches maintained tangled, unofficial ties that spread steadily into the twentieth century.18 However, Anglicans were hamstrung, at least in the short run, since official religious disestablishment created a two-fold crisis. It left them short of funds to construct churches, build colleges, pay salaries, and support frontier missions. Some money continued to come from the spg and other English organizations, and they sought more.19 But Bishop Strachan and other leaders had to turn to the laity for voluntary support of their church. This demanded a new vision of Canadian Anglicanism. Instead of public predominance and support through organic ties to the state, Anglicans had to become a worshipping community of believers who supported each other. A reformation was needed – to provide a renewed sense of historic identity and spiritual purpose and draw growing numbers of members and their financial largesse. Anglicans began moving in this direction in the 1830s and 1840s, just as

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28 Anglican Identities

party strife took hold.20 Their establishment identity was lost and a new identity had been given little time to develop before controversy began to divide Anglicans. The story of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States follows similar lines, though the timing was different. As early as the 1790s Episcopalians in the young American republic confronted modernity – that is, a society defined by official disestablishment and religious voluntarism. In rethinking their historic identity and sense of spiritual purpose, they subdivided the historic legacies of the Church of England. Evangelicals, in effect, reinvigorated the erastian heritage of Anglicanism by participating eagerly in the protestant campaign to reshape and reform American society, culture, and politics, all in the name of God-ordained democratic progress. High-church Episcopalians, on the other hand, abandoned secular callings for the pursuit of purified catholicism. For them, the pecusa would embody the faith and order of Anglican tradition in America by promoting the authority of apostolic succession and the liturgical order of the Book of Common Prayer. More than any other group, evangelicals energized the re-formed Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, becoming its most dynamic wing during the early years of the new republic. They also began to exercise leadership.21 While the first few Episcopal bishops were not evangelicals, by 1820 several had been consecrated: Alexander Griswold in New England, William Meade in Virginia, and Philander Chase in Ohio. The evangelicals gained momentum in the 1820s and became a powerful force in the their church in the 1830s. During this decade and the next, the pecusa chose several more evangelical bishops, notably Charles McIlvaine (who succeeded Bishop Chase in Ohio). Evangelicals also founded institutions in order to safeguard and perpetuate their cause. These included the Protestant Episcopal Seminary in Virginia and periodicals like The Episcopal Recorder and The Chronicle. In addition, the influence of evangelical Episcopalians transcended their church, as many eagerly participated in the interdenominational, evangelical protestant empire that predominated in religious, social, and cultural life in the United States during the mid–nineteenth century. Other protestants recognized the potential influence of evangelical Episcopalians on American society. During the summer of 1830 a Presbyterian observer told an Episcopal acquaintance that he could see nothing that would hinder the pecusa “from becoming the dominant Christian body in this country before the close of the next half century.” This observer, George Washington Bethune, did

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not mean numerical dominance. Instead, he admired how evangelical Episcopalians combined fervent protestant piety with catholic tradition.22 Evangelical activism inside and outside the pecusa greatly disturbed high-church Episcopalians. They wanted to maintain the catholic character of their heritage and expand its influence in the American nation by remaining above the tumult of political conflict and social change. During the early part of the century, John Henry Hobart, who had been consecrated Bishop of New York in 1811, worked to revitalize high-church Episcopalianism. As highchurchmen in Canada would do two decades later, he redefined Episcopalian tradition along voluntary lines. The pecusa could remain a truly catholic church, he believed, only if it dissociated itself from the worldly (social and political) pursuits that had preoccupied it during the colonial era and continued, with great fervour, to influence many evangelical protestants. Making a virtue of necessity, Hobart and high-church Episcopalians like him defined their identity in opposition to American evangelicalism, drawing on catholic and Anglican tradition to counter the society around them. In some ways they anticipated the tractarians in England, who feared that continuing church-state ties might allow non conformist protestants, secular liberals, and other dangerous politicians to have authority over the Church of England. Though Hobart’s own faith was intellectual and rationalist, rather than experiential and aesthetic, his apolitical emphasis on worship, piety, and episcopal church order fit loosely with the goals of the Oxford Movement and ritualism a few decades later.23 In the 1830s and especially in the 1840s evangelicals and moderate Anglicans in the United States faced a resurgent high-church movement embodied in tractarianism. As in Canada, news of the Oxford Movement spread to the United States quickly, but tractarianism did not have a significant impact on high-church Episcopalians until the 1840s. Militant low-church evangelicals like Bishop MacIlvaine considered it a disaster nonetheless. The strident evangelical response radicalized both factions in the conflict and forced many moderate high-church Episcopalians to choose sides. As in Canada, they usually chose to ally with moderate tractarians and ritualists. The Oxford Movement thus provided a high-church alternative that competed with evangelicals for the allegiance of Episcopal Church members and fundamentally challenged central doctrines, including the evangelical view of the essential nature of their church. In the United States, Episcopalian evangelicals saw themselves as a part of the unofficial evangelical protestant “establishment.” To them,

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30 Anglican Identities

tractarianism seemed undemocratic and un-American. They also feared that the vigorous catholicism of the Oxford Movement would alienate the Episcopal Church from other protestants. It did. In 1840 George Washington Bethune, the Presbyterian who ten years earlier had speculated about the ascendancy of Episcopalian influence, now told his acquaintance that the success of the Oxford Movement meant that the pecusa had, in effect, chosen to be a religious preserve for wealthy Americans rather than a national evangelical influence.24 The submission of several American priests to the Roman Catholic Church, as had happened in England, only confirmed evangelical fears that the road from Oxford led to Rome.25 Evangelical leaders thus began a pamphlet war attacking the Oxford Movement and organized societies to defend against the anglo-catholic menace. Some American historians have argued that, as in England, evangelical teachings about the gospel became encumbered with party issues and that, as a result, evangelicals grew increasingly narrowminded, defining themselves in opposition to tractarianism, ritualism, and other Romish threats to the gospel. In defending the letter of evangelical church order and theology, they lost the positive spirit that had once made them a dynamic force in the pecusa.26 Whether or not this viewpoint is correct, with well-established seminaries and bishops in key dioceses, evangelicals maintained a significant presence in the pecusa until after the Civil War. Ironies abound in the reactions of Episcopalians to the modern, capitalist society emerging rapidly in the United States after the Revolution. In the name of tradition, high churchmen such as Bishop Hobart tried to abandon the temporal role historically played by the Church of England. Tractarians and ritualists, to defend catholic heritage and oppose modernity, promoted a form of experiential, aesthetic catholicism that clearly reflected the influence of Romantic sensibilities – a modern counterpoint to utilitarian rationalism. Likewise, although they would define themselves in opposition to intellectual forms of modernism (as well as anglo-catholicism), evangelicals championed democracy, individualism, and Romantic piety. In Canada, British influences on political and intellectual life produced cultural differences, but similar dilemmas of identity manifested themselves there among Anglicans during the mid to late nineteenth century. Various groups of Anglicans in North America thus opposed particular aspects of modernity. Yet they could not avoid accommodating to modernity in some form; indeed, in their own ways evangelicals and anglo-catholics both celebrated aspects of modern culture. Evangelicals promoted individualism and often

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31 Anglicanism to the Mid–Nineteenth Century

democracy; they idealized conscience and used innovations in technology and popular culture. Both anglo-catholics and evangelicals embraced Romantic forms of spirituality. Even in their antimodern reassertion of Anglican tradition, anglo-catholics were “modern” in their reflexive traditionalism. Their traditionalism was not simply lived, unconsciously, but was a self-conscious ideological reaction to modernity.27 There was more accommodation to come. During the 1860s liberal Anglicanism (a loosely defined “broad” church movement) and religious modernism led to the formation of a third party in the Canadian and American churches. In 1860 Essays and Reviews woke Anglicans to the new movement. A higher critical study of the Pentateuch by John Colenso, bishop of Natal in South Africa, had the same effect. In England conservative evangelicals and high churchmen responded in print and politically with efforts to excommunicate Colenso and the authors of Essays and Reviews. In Canada and the United States conservative Anglicans used the same tactics when confronted by liberals in their dioceses and seminaries. This was not a uniquely Anglican phenomenon. All the mainline protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church had to deal with liberal theological movements and conservative opposition, first in the 1860s and increasingly in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s.28 Nevertheless, liberal Christianity may have challenged Anglicanism to a greater degree because the pecusa and the acc had previously been shaken by the collapse of their establishment status and endemic conflicts between evangelicals and anglo-catholics. By itself this portrait is one-sided, however. Despite party strife, the acc and the pecusa grew rapidly during the nineteenth century, as did other protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church. From frontier conditions in many regions at the beginning of the century and with few clergy North American Christians constructed effective, even hegemonic, networks of denominational and transdenominational institutions and movements. A spirit of postmillennial, progressive optimism flourished from the 1830s well into the twentieth century, especially among mainline protestants and their associated reform movements.29 As part of this milieu, by the 1860s Anglican programs, institutions, and parishes were well rooted in many parts of Canada and the United States. Both the acc and the pecusa were growing with the general population and would do so until the 1950s. In particular, the acc would expand rapidly between 1900 and 1914 with a boom in immigration from England.30 Finally, party conflict in the early to mid–nineteenth century can be overemphasized. As Robert

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32 Anglican Identities

Pritchard has argued recently, in the 1790s and early 1800s Bishop William White of Philadelphia and other Episcopalian leaders promoted a loose theological consensus (albeit a fragile one) that both high churchmen and evangelicals could affirm. Amidst the sound and fury of party conflict, it is easy to overlook high-church and latitudinarian moderates.31 It is also easy to neglect the social basis of parish life. For the day-to-day life of Anglican communities in Canada and the United States, the creation and expansion of new, modern parish machinery was essential. Between 1790 and 1850 the role of women in North American life was transformed, as a “separate” women’s sphere emerged, dividing society into public-male and private-female realms.32 In this context religious communities provided a public social forum for women, one legitimated by cultural assumptions that women were more naturally pious and moral than men. Consequently, women invented much of parish life during the mid–nineteenth century, organizing social circles, guilds, benevolent societies, sewing societies, Sunday schools, mission agencies, bazaars, and more. In rural areas, isolated frontier regions, and small towns, local churches were often the only regular basis for social life. Indeed, in a few frontier regions men paid money to join women’s societies (men’s societies were started in churches later, often in response to this perceived “feminization”).33 Money that women raised helped to pay for church buildings, parish halls, schools, social-reform efforts, hospitals, orphanages, and foreign missions. During the last third of the nineteenth century, women organized parallel structures, such as women’s auxiliaries, at the diocesan and synodical levels. These separate, “auxiliary” institutions reinforced women’s subordinate status but also legitimated a socially acceptable independent religious space for women to organize and wield influence. “Women’s work” also helped to modernize church institutions in North America, the acc and the pecusa included.34 Parish organizations, especially those created by women, raise questions about the relationship between Anglican party divisions, parish life, and lay people. How did parish women, doing “women’s work” in the church and creating a social and material basis for their communities, regard competition and conflict between evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and liberals? Especially in isolated regions, did denominational identity and church parties matter? Was the social need for community life enough to tie diverse Anglicans, other protestants, and Roman Catholics together, at least until they could organize separate institutions? The sources needed to answer these questions are rare. Records from women’s societies focus on what women did and seldom explicitly discuss the character of their piety. A recent study

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33 Anglicanism to the Mid–Nineteenth Century

has seen anglo-catholicism as a “female movement,” women being drawn to its aesthetic sensibilities and the revival of women’s orders it inspired.35 Gender conventions may have led women to view theological conflicts as beyond their purview, as matters for men to deal with. Or women may have considered party conflicts unimportant to their piety and devotion. Finally, they may have discussed such issues but not recorded them in official minutes. Records from malerun vestry meetings raise some of the same questions about the importance of theological conflict to parish business. In general, records of any sort are scarce for nineteenth-century parishes.36 Despite the paucity of sources, a number of links between party identity and parish life seem likely. The need for people in isolated rural areas and small towns to band together, despite denominational differences and intramural Anglican divisions, may have encouraged pan-protestant identities and blunted the appeal of anglo-catholic identities. Even so, whether a parish in the pecusa or the acc was anglo-catholic, evangelical, or liberal made a difference in practical terms. Would its clergy and lay women and men participate in interdenominational projects, from Bible and tract societies to charities, missions, and reform agencies? Or would they insist on separate institutions? Whose Sunday school material would they use? Would they join in local revival events? Could Anglicans celebrate holy communion with other protestants? Could Anglican clergy exchange pulpits with clergy from other denominations? The influences could run in either direction. Practical ecumenical cooperation might reconfigure individual or parish party identities, and, in turn, party identities defined the basis on which Anglicans might cooperate with others. In short, embracing or rejecting a “mainline” protestant identity made a difference for Anglican identities both in cultural terms and in the social activities of parishes. For this reason, as anglo-catholics and evangelicals both recognized, an Anglican consensus and a protestant consensus were not easily compatible. Questions about the relationship between religious identity, conflicts over church order and theology, and parish life also point to one of the key issues relating to modernity – the ways in which people and cultures are “disembedded” (see chapter 1). The cultural, institutional, and social bases of parish life likely both embedded and disembedded Anglicans. The centrality of religious institutions, especially in isolated areas with few alternatives, certainly could root people in a community. But the mobility of the frontier, rural communities, small towns, and urban centres throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in North America could leave people uprooted. Parishes might remain, and the kinds of people who joined them probably

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34 Anglican Identities

remained constant, but the particular individuals and families likely changed repeatedly.37 Similarly, as frontier regions became mature communities, people from different churches who once had worshipped and socialized together out of necessity could organize separate congregations and parishes. Identities changed, therefore, as people migrated and populations grew. And the religious identities that bound Anglicans and others together – and set them apart – thus were fluid, culturally and socially. This was all the more so for Anglicans, because internal differences among evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and liberals influenced how they related to other Christians as well as to each other. The “practices of commitment” – social, ethical, ritual, cultural – that define communities and embed people in them thus did so in ambiguous ways. This admittedly speculative analysis suggests that to fully understand North American Anglicanism between 1800 and 1870, two trends must be recognized. On the one hand, diverse Anglican and Episcopalian institutions grew steadily, organizing their members in large numbers, as in other denominations. On the other hand, despite the creation of parish and diocesan machinery and sources of Anglican consensus, by 1870 the acc and the pecusa had cracks in their foundations. A reasonable case can be made for both consolidation and fragmentation, though the emphasis here has been on diversity and division, and not on consensus. During the 1870s Anglican party conflicts would reach new heights. In 1873 a group of evangelicals seceded from the pecusa to form the Reformed Episcopal Church. In Canada during the 1870s, evangelical Anglicans founded the Evangelical Churchman and the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School (the peds was renamed Wycliffe College in the 1880s) to promote their party and defend their interests in Toronto and the dominion. If some sort of consensus did continue to exist during the 1860s, it was being threatened. Evangelical–anglo-catholic strife and the rift emerging between liberal Anglicans and their opponents demonstrate the inability of Anglicans in the mid–nineteenth century to agree on a historic identity and spiritual purpose. These party divisions were exaggerated by the end of religious establishment in the United States and Canada (in the 1780s and 1830s respectively). Thrown into the marketplace of religious voluntarism, members of the acc and the pecusa struggled to find their place. Generally, high-church Anglicans set themselves apart from North American protestants, while evangelicals and liberals participated in pan-protestant social-reform projects and missions.38 If this much can be said, questions still remain.

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35 Anglicanism to the Mid–Nineteenth Century

How can conflicts between the Anglican church parties be measured against institutional growth and the evidence of consensus, however solid or fragile? Is it a matter of ideological and literary proclivity?39 And if the acc and the pecusa were growing more heterogenous, were such divisions necessarily harmful, and are they evidence of decline? Party conflict and competition certainly preoccupied many Anglican leaders, both lay and clergy. Whatever the case, diversity in the acc and the pecusa meant that Anglicans, in groups and as individuals, could set themselves in opposition to mainstream protestantism, or they could identify with it. The traditions that held Anglicans and Episcopalians together – and divided them – thus did so in kaleidoscopic fashion, in relation to each other and to other Christians. Finally, it is necessary to acknowledge some Canadian-American differences. Despite similar trajectories, the acc and the pecusa diverged in significant ways and would continue to do so at least until World War II. The open frontier and immigration from England left Anglicanism in Canada with more room to grow during the early twentieth century. These circumstances were a burden and an opportunity. Anglicans in Canada relied on financial support and clergy from England, especially in the North, but frontier conditions and immigration provided space for the competing parties to develop regional niches, perhaps blunting the short-term potential for conflict. The American church would not have another major growth spurt but would grow with the general population into the 1950s. The comparably immature social evolution of Canada meant that problems of fragmented identity happened there during intermittent periods of growth. As suggested earlier, practical matters may have fostered a climate of cooperation and moderation in the acc, as in Canadian Christianity generally, compared to the more fractious American scene. Though not an inevitable result of demographics and geography – the continued influence of British Christianity, political culture, and social values contributed too – Canada’s irenic religiosity clearly was rooted in pragmatic concerns. With thousands of people to bring into parishes and vast spaces to cover, institutional demands meant that competition characterised Anglicanism in Canada. In a more crowded religious marketplace, Episcopalians in the United States faced the greater likelihood of conflict.40 The next chapter turns from the general to the specific, to an indepth analysis of evangelical Anglicanism in Canada and its place in Anglo-Canadian Christianity and culture. The chapter does so

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through the life and work of Dyson Hague, a flamboyant teacher and clergyman who promoted an unyielding evangelical protestant vision of Anglican identity and purpose. Despite worries about the trials of “ritualism” and “rationalism” in a rapidly modernizing Canada, Hague forged ahead, confident that history was on the side of evangelical Anglicans like him. In so doing, he typified the Anglican use of tradition to respond to modernity and party competition.

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3 Dyson Hague: Modernity, Tradition, and the Piety of the Past [The] members of this vestry … desire further to give Expression to their love for their pastor and their Perfect Confidence in and agreement with his thorough Christian and Evangelical Preaching and teaching. Vestry, St Paul’s Church, Brockville, Ontario, April 1886, to Dyson Hague1

In September 1929 Dyson Hague of the Church of the Epiphany in Toronto looked back on his generation of evangelical Anglicans. It was passing on, “leaving gaps and places” that seemed “impossible to fill,” and he prayed that young men would carry on the cause of “Evangelical Churchmanship,” as had generations of faithful Anglicans in the past. Evangelicals should be ardently protestant, loyal to their principles without hesitation or compromise, but unfailingly charitable towards people with whom they disagreed.2 Hague had taken to reflecting on the future of the evangelical movement in Canadian Anglicanism more and more near the end of his life. Though he read the future of the church with the “ebb and tide” of history in mind, he had become troubled in the 1920s. The Canadian churches appeared to be weakening and Hague called on evangelicals to hold firmly to the truth. In an address in 1927 to Wycliffe College alumni, he described evangelicals as “born again propagandists” and charged them to fight for the Christian faith. “Take up the task eternal and the burden of the Gospel,” he commanded. “Anointed with fresh oil, inflamed with fire, go out to a new and mightier world … Champions, oh champions! On and on; on through battle; through defeat; ever moving, never stopping, single or together … Truth is with us, God is for us.”3 And in 1931 in the Canadian Churchman Hague wrote of the need for revival. “A new Pentecost alone will shake and serve a materialistic world,” he told his readers.4 At heart he was a preacher of revival and could not go long without calling for action and moving forward in Christian hope.

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Hague’s mood characterized the reaction of many evangelical Anglicans in Canada to changes in their church and nation during the early twentieth century. His passionate oratory and mixed feelings indicate his ambivalence towards modernity (a concern for the present, but abiding hope for the future). Hague’s temperament was common in Canada, where evangelicals sometimes criticised modern changes but rarely became fundamentalists, as often happened in the United States. In most cases they avoided extremes, rooting themselves in the past and upholding “mediating” forms of the Christian faith.5 Hague’s championing of one strand of Anglican tradition preserved pockets of evangelicalism and contributed to the diversification of his church as a whole. His use of history to encourage evangelical piety promoted a religious identity that was comprehensively protestant but sectarian in its Anglicanism. The potential for fragmentation in the acc would have concerned Hague, but more important than peaceful unity was the preservation of a faith that was truly evangelical and Anglican. The Holy Spirit and the ebb and tide of history would preserve the church. The details of Hague’s life are sketchy. Born in 1857 in Toronto to Sarah Cousins and George Hague, he was raised in the wide network of evangelicals living in southern Ontario. His father was a banker, one of the wealthier members of a middle-to-upper-class group of Anglicans and the author of Practical Studies from the Old Testament.6 In October 1884 Hague married Jemima May Baldwin, a granddaughter of the Honourable Robert Baldwin, thus joining a prominent Ontario family. He later served in the Diocese of Huron under Bishop Maurice Baldwin, another member of that family. Hague was educated at Upper Canada College, University College (ba, ma), and Wycliffe College (dd). Ordained a priest in 1883, he ministered to parishes in various regions in Canada and taught occasionally at Wycliffe for over three decades.7 He helped revise the Canadian Hymn Book (1905–8) and took part in the Canadian adaption of the Prayer Book during the second decade of the twentieth century.8 The simple evaluation of his life given in the Toronto Synod Journal of 1935 complements these mundane details. “The death of Dyson Hague, ma, dd,” it records, “removes from us the figure of one the best known clergymen of our generation.”9 Well-known among Canadian Anglicans, Hague also had ties to the larger protestant world. Indeed, evangelicals like him were a bridge between the Church of England and other protestants.10 For example, they supported the work of the Evangelical Alliance, an organization dedicated to protestant unity in the Anglo-American world. As late as

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39 Dyson Hague

the 1930s the Alliance met in Hague’s Toronto parish, the Church of the Epiphany.11 Anglicans also contributed to fundamentalistmodernist debates. In the second decade of the twentieth century Hague wrote several essays for The Fundamentals, a moderately conservative defence of evangelicalism that predated the famous conflicts of the 1920s. Hague’s written work clearly illustrates the English roots of his evangelical Anglican faith. Only circumstantial evidence suggests the personal ties he had to English churchmen, but his studies of Anglican history acknowledged a large debt to nineteenth-century evangelical scholars in the old country. Moreover, evidence indicates that some of his books were published and reviewed in England.12 In addition, in the 1890s Hague wrote a column in the Evangelical Churchman on issues and events in England. It is impossible to measure how concerned most members of the Church of England in Canada were with the old country, but clergymen-scholars like Hague kept up trans-Atlantic connections and historical identities. In an address at Wycliffe College in 1927, Hague described his spiritual lineage. He urged his audience to hold fast to the example of their nineteenth-century ancestors and reminded them that the present foundations of evangelical Anglicanism in Canada had been laid more than fifty years before by the founders of the college. These foundations rested on the “rock of the Bible” and were fortified by the company of the sixteenth-century reformers. Contemporary Canadian evangelicals also depended on the “study of history and scholarship” undertaken by such nineteenth-century Anglican luminaries as J.B. Lightfoot and B.F. Westcott. In the troubled times of the 1920s, Hague reminded his listeners, “The great names of Berridge, Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, Cecil, Romaine, Venn, Goode, Bickersteth, Ryle, Moule are as silver trumpets; calling us, summoning us in the face of drifting tides to stand fast, to stand, and having done all things to stand.”13 Hague thus encouraged evangelical Anglicans to find their resolve for the future by identifying themselves with the heroes of the past. They were part of a community of memory whose future was dependent on people in the present carrying on the work of previous generations. Hague wanted to keep evangelical Anglicans “embedded,” standing fast against modern trends that uprooted people and cultures from the past. Evangelicals often were archetypically modern in this regard, rejecting historic creeds, theological heritages, and denominational allegiances in favour of pan-evangelical identities. Hague’s colleague and friend, Thomas O’Meara, the principal of Wycliffe College in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, once

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said that he was Anglican only as a matter of convenience.14 Hague rejected this separation of evangelical and Anglican identities and insisted that other evangelicals needed the depth of tradition and order embodied in Anglicanism. The evangelical heritage – in the Church of England – defined his faith. He valued the work and faith of believers from other denominations and, along with other Anglicans, cultivated interdenominational ties and international cooperation to build God’s kingdom, but at root he identified himself with an evangelical Anglican heritage that had evolved in England since the sixteenth century and in Canada since the early nineteenth century.15 Hague’s personality also shaped his piety. Colleagues described him as a party loyalist and at times a loose cannon. When Frederick Steen from Christ Church in Montreal asked Henry John Cody to find someone for a position at the cathedral, he advised Cody that he needed “a good churchman of moderate views.” Steen was anxious not “to get an extremist, either High or Low” and warned that the “Hague type of evangelical, however good, would never do.”16 Another associate protested Hague’s polemical style. Frustrated, he implored Cody: “I read with regret Dyson Hague’s diatribe about [the] Bible Study. Can’t you teach him that he has no right to say that earnest, devoted [churchmen] are ‘assailing’ the Bible, because their conclusions may be erroneous?” Even the Archbishop of Rupert’s Land, S.P. Matheson, was not safe from Hague’s occasional diatribes. In 1918, in a letter to Cody about an upcoming meeting of the committee revising the Prayer Book, he noted ruefully: “I am glad that you did not object to my prayers and Pastoral. I sent them also to Friend Hague, and got such a hot blast back from him about one of the prayers which I took from the authorised forms in England for August 4th, that I almost dread presiding at the meeting on [the] 9th. His letter spoiled my New Year’s Day, for it made me feel that I am an unsafe heretic.”17 Whatever the complaints about him, Hague was more than a strict partisan. Colleagues considered him a good man, capable in his work. Shortly after Hague moved to Bishop Cronyn Memorial Church in London in 1901, Cecil Owen of Vancouver related reports he had heard about Hague, saying: “I think he may be particularly useful in the diocese, and be a great strength to the Bishop.”18 Wycliffe College colleagues remembered that Hague “read the liturgy with beauty and drama, and preached with power and clarity.” He also earned the affection of students, as they told apocryphal stories about him. One such legend had Hague warning the Anglican General Synod that only three people in Canada were competent to edit the new hymn book. Asked to name them, he allegedly answered: “Well, myself for

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one, and – I’ve forgotten the names of the other two.”19 Finally, H.J. Cody, a colleague and friend, called him a “true preacher of the Everlasting Gospel,” a “kindly loving pastor,” and a devoted Canadian. Hague always had challenged, cheered, and “made central the person and work of our adorable Redeemer.”20 Never shy, Hague once admitted that friends accused him of having an “indulgence in adjectives.” His response was telling. “I thank God I do. I would fain rise in the company of St Paul and St Peter and St John to the heights of their enthusiasm, and as I think and speak of the Gospel use the terms glorious, fine, grand, splendid, noble, marvellous,” he vowed. “O brothers, pity, pity, the man who never feels the thrill of that joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” The gospel’s “marvellous” truth should not and could not be silenced. It needed to be proclaimed without reserve.21 Hague thus set high standards when it came to communicating the Christian faith. In The Evangelical Future, he spoke about the duties Anglicans had in an age of change and apparent decay. “We do not love controversy,” he declared. “But to shirk it when needed is the part of a coward. In these terminal and difficult days all true Evangelical Churchmen must fight the good fight of faith without [f]altering, and strive on to finish the work we are in ‘to bind up the wounds of the Church and the nation; with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.›22 Hague’s ardent piety and unabashed party loyalty shaped how he defined and defended the spiritual purpose and historic identity of the Church of England in Canada. He did so as a modern-minded evangelical and as an Anglican steeped in tradition. As a result, his piety contained distinctly modern and antimodern themes. In his scholarly and popular writing Hague insisted that Anglican liturgy, Reformation doctrine, experiential piety, and Biblical authority could not truly be separated. In this way his personal faith reflected its English heritage, particularly a late nineteenth-century Keswick-style piety. A typical evangelical modernizer in his eagerness to use the latest forms of popular culture, Hague often argued that Anglicanism needed to adapt in its outward forms to make the church more appealing to twentieth-century Canadians. Yet he was unwilling to change the essence of the evangelical gospel in any way. His duty was to protect and promote that gospel and keep it rooted in Anglican order and tradition. At the heart of Hague’s theology was his understanding of the character and basis of faith. He believed that “a vast deal does depend on creed.” But it was not enough “to say that a man is saved by

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his creed.” “A man,” he insisted, “is saved by Christ. That is the essence of salvation after all – union by faith with the living saviour.”23 Hague expanded on this theme in 1913, in a lecture at Wycliffe College, when he defended evangelical Anglicanism against liberal and anglo-catholic charges of narrow dogmatism. “Evangelical Churchmanship has stood for, and does stand for, a constructive, not a destructive Church movement; a positive, not a mere negative theology,” he protested. “It stands for certainties, principles, and its essence has ever been life! life! life! A dead Evangelical is an abnormality, for the man, the Church, that is dead has ceased to be Evangelical. It has ever stood for the displacement of formalism, indifferentism, and pseudo-churchism, by the recreating force of faith, and the breath of life-giving Spirit.”24 Creeds should not be statements of “an academic or traditional belief, but the honest profession, the deep conviction of [the] soul.” Believers must confess with joy, ‹I know Whom I have believed,’ ‘I am not ashamed.› Their religious and cultural identity was an inheritance to be cherished; nevertheless, Hague insisted that Anglicans embrace the gospel personally as well. Evangelical Anglican tradition had to be chosen freely but, once chosen, was binding.25 This view of faith and tradition shaped the way Hague taught his confirmation classes, where he displayed a tough-minded sensitivity towards his charges. In 1903, in a letter to H.J. Cody, he described his daughter May’s spiritual growth. “She is a dear good girl,” he wrote, “sensible & unselfish, but like all of her age a little nervous probably on the subject of religion. We both, her mother & I, feel that it is a very great crisis in her spiritual career, & we are praying that she may truly and really give her heart to Christ, & go forward in faith & love.” Hague described his methods with adolescents in his classes. In personal interviews he asked them if they had given their hearts to Christ. “My own feeling is always that the Confirmation time is the most definite-decision-point in the life of the Church boy or girl,” he explained. “The impulses & intentions are good; the one thing needed is to bring them to a definite personal heart decision for Christ.”26 In the same way, Hague stressed the need for close ties between experience and doctrine when he discussed the Prayer Book. His evangelical view of Anglican history was apparent in his low-church neglect of ritual in the Prayer Book and was part of a long tradition of protestant scholarship going back to the English Reformation.27 In 1898, in the Evangelical Churchman, Hague appealed to this age-old legacy: “With all these behind him – the Church’s teaching, the Church’s Prayer Book, the Church’s history, the voices of antiquity,

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the authority of the Scriptures, and beyond all this, the principles and practice of Christ and his twelve apostles – the Evangelical cannot but be strong. He is in a true position, not false.”28 Hague did not discount the medieval church completely, agreeing that many parts of the Prayer Book were rooted in that era. But he argued that the English reformation (as a second Pentecost) had restored the English church to its early purity.29 It is noteworthy that Hague did not highlight the Thirty-Nine Articles, the most Calvinist of the historic Anglican standards. He did not disregard the Articles, viewing them as a necessary doctrinal framework for the Prayer Book, but focussed on the evangelical character of the Prayer Book, as he saw it.30 The two pillars worked together in his experience. The articles provided doctrinal coherence and authority and the Prayer Book was the means through which Anglicans worshipped and encountered God. This harmony of order and personal spirituality gave Anglicanism its strength and stability (at least in its evangelical variant).31 The Book of Common Prayer thus embodied the heart of the evangelical experience of faith, according to Hague. It allowed revivalist spirituality and Anglican tradition to uplift each other. The Prayer Book was modern and evangelical because it used everyday language, was based on scripture, and emphasized congregation prayer. It was a bulwark against incipient ritualism and rationalism because it glorified God and stood against destructive modern trends that Hague thought glorified humanity. The Prayer Book rooted individual experience in the authority and guidance of the church, at once sweeping away formalism and promoting practical piety.32 For these reasons, it remained vital and relevant for modern Christians. In 1917 in a series called “Prayer Book Studies,” Hague summarised its appeal: “[Thus] in our Anglican service the consciousness of alienation, the craving for acceptance, the instinct of praise, the duty for confession, and the desire for prayer, one and all of these elemental and perennial necessities of the Christian’s life, are amply and simply met in successive sections of the service: Reconciliation; Jubilation; Instruction; Confession; Intercession.”33 Influence ran both ways. The doctrinal heritage and liturgy of the Church of England added texture to the unadorned gospel message and provided an orderly devotional framework that muted the individualistic piety typical of modern evangelicalism. But modern evangelical assumptions and practices shaped Hague’s interpretation of the liturgy and history of the Church of England.34 His eagerness to adapt Anglicanism to suit Canada and make the church more popular was characteristically evangelical and modern. Hague urged the

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Canadian church to adjust its customs (not core doctrines) to the cultural climate of Canada. If the name Church of England caused potential believers to stumble, it could be changed. Churches had a duty to tear down artificial barriers that inhibited the expansion of a popular and energetic Anglican Church.35 Hague considered evangelical Anglicanism to be a living heritage. It was a river, with banks to define its boundaries but whose water was always flowing. This emphasis on development and evolution was modern and evangelical in its optimistic desire for change and its anxious concern to control and define the limits of that change.36 For this reason, Hague advocated liturgical reform. During the decade after 1910, he championed adapting the Prayer Book to Canadian politics and culture. These efforts stemmed from his vision of a growing, vibrant nation and church. Along these lines he argued in 1913 that ritualism held little attraction for Canadians. “We have a new country, a new land, a new people,” he observed. And “if Canada is characterised by anything today, it is by national optimism and national originality.” Ritualism might have been accepted by people in the past, but evangelicalism was the future. Canada did not need a new modern gospel but a renewal of the old gospel in the lives of all believers, old and new.37 The revision of the Prayer Book in 1921 adapted it to dominion politics and changed the church calendar somewhat but included no ritualist or doctrinal innovations. Hague had worked on this revision from the start, and in his humble view, the result was a model of “conservative yet progressive adaption.”38 In keeping with this blend of old and new, Hague encouraged greater use of modern songs and hymns in worship. As a member of the committee that revised the Canadian Hymn Book between 1905 and 1908 he worked to include more contemporary music, declaring that plainsongs and Gregorian chants did not appeal to modern ears. To critics who opposed music with origins in the holiness movement or Moody-Sankey revivals, he responded in evangelical fashion: “After all, what is Church music for? It is to express feeling and emotion. And the choir is not there for its own edification or to elevate the standard of ecclesiastical music, much less for the purpose of educating musical faculties. It is there for the glory of God, and to help the people sing.”39 Despite their success in getting revivalist songs included in the new Hymn Book, some evangelicals remained unhappy. When lowchurch extremists such as Archdeacon William Armitage of St Paul’s Church in Halifax and S.H. Blake of Toronto tried prevent the Hymn Book from being approved by the General Synod, Hague marshalled the forces of moderation. In August 1908 he appealed to H.J. Cody to

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help undercut evangelical opposition to the Hymn Book. “I have been praying a great deal about this matter, and thinking about it,” Hague worried, “and I do not see how trouble can be averted if our friends, the Archdeacon and Mr. S.H.B. persist in their policy of extermination.” Never a uniform movement, militants among the evangelicals might attack even an occasional loose cannon like Hague for being too gentle in his opposition to ritualism.40 The overtly protestant interpretation of Anglicanism that Hague espoused shaped his opinions of other evangelicals and ecumenism. Because the faith of evangelical Anglicans was rooted in scripture and traditions going back to the apostolic church, he believed that they could participate in cooperative ventures with strength and assurance. The catholicity of Christianity and the need for unity were life-long themes in his ministry. Hague did not advocate organic church union but believed that where liberty and genuine fellowship existed, unity could be trusted to take care of itself.41 He also criticised Reformed Episcopalians, Plymouth Brethren, and ritualists as schismatic and parochial and as obsessed with trivial matters. In 1892 Hague described the risk-taking approach Anglicans should follow: “If the Church of England is going to be the unifier, it will only be because she as a Church is more ready than all others to make surrender of things dear to her for the sake of securing the blessing sought and is more filled with the Spirit of love, and peace.”42 It is reasonable to judge Hague’s denunciations of liberal doctrinal innovations and anglo-catholicism as a retreat from his own emphasis on unity, sacrifice, liberty, and charity. In the context of turnof-the-century North American protestantism, however, his seeming hypocrisy should not surprise. Liberal and high-church Anglicans, he insisted, threatened the evangelical consensus that had developed in English Canada. Moreover, unity not based on God’s truth was an empty shell. Hague’s defence of orthodoxy after World War I makes sense from this standpoint. He advocated a strict but charitable defence of the gospel because doctrinal innovations and sectarianism both militated against evangelical Anglican hopes of a revived church and nation. The relationship between catholicism and evangelicalism in the piety of conservative evangelicals like Hague was clear in their attitude towards the Prayer Book and ecumenism. When Hague claimed to be “catholic,” he meant something different than his high-church brothers and sisters did. For evangelicals, “catholic” did not mean ritualism, the Roman church, or Eastern Orthodoxy; it meant relations with other protestants. To be catholic was to be evangelical, to cooperate with like-minded protestants and build the

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kingdom of God. To do otherwise was schismatic. Predictably and paradoxically, this protestant ecumenism often worked against Anglican unity. Evangelical readings of Anglican history and theology contributed to the loose protestant cultural consensus in North America, but they threatened to undermine a unified Anglican identity during a time of unsettling change in society and culture.43 The point here is to avoid simple dichotomies between ecumenists and sectarians, tolerance and bigotry. What demands analysis is the particularity and potential sectarianism of all appeals to comprehensiveness, those of Anglicans included. The ambiguities of Hague’s religious identity – its modern and antimodern expressions, its pan-protestantism, its loyal Anglicanism – all reflect the tensions inherent in the experience of modernity. The strands of Hague’s identity overlapped and pulled at each other. Its core was evangelical Anglican, inseparably. But his pursuit of a comprehensive evangelical identity fit uneasily with other Anglican traditions, alienating Hague from anglo-catholics and liberals and threatening fragmentation. The same was true of his desire to adapt the faith to modern times and yet remain rooted in a long line of evangelical Anglican forebears. At what point did adaption lead to uprooting and disembedding? Anglo-catholics denounced people like Hague for abandoning Anglican tradition, liberals rejected them for not going far enough. Such concerns were not only theological but also practical matters of parish life. The evangelical Anglican message and its vision of a revived church and nation properly led to faith and action, in Hague’s view. He stressed the need for the renewing experience of the Holy Spirit, a personal relationship with God, and commitment to the work of the church and kingdom of God. For evangelicals in North America and Britain, as historians have shown, the late nineteenth century was an age dominated by an emphasis on the Holy Spirit. For example, the Holiness movement and Keswick meetings in Britain and North America emphasized that the Holy Spirit sanctified believers and empowered them to do the work of the church in missions and social reform. Keswick teaching in England inspired Anglican evangelicals especially. By contrast, in North America Keswick spirituality influenced a wider range of protestants through popular, ecumenical Victorious Life conferences.44 In this context, Hague promoted Keswick piety, stressing the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of believers and their activities in the Anglican Church and Canadian society. Faith was experiential and practical. The Romantic sensibility and activism of Hague’s Keswick piety was profoundly modern, of course, albeit

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critical of other aspects of modernity. Such ambivalence, embracing and anxious, typified opponents and advocates of modernity alike.45 In particular, the efficacy of prayer as a channel to God and a help in life’s troubles stood out in Hague’s spirituality. He urged his readers to pray for revival, the work of the church, the unity of Christians throughout the world, the health of the nation, and the welfare of the empire. Along these lines, during the First World War Hague implored Canadians to put their faith in God, not Victory Loans, weapons, or soldiers, saying, “No man can offer at this moment a higher contribution to the Empire than the humble, grateful, earnest contribution of the contrite heart and continuous prayer.”46 After the war he continued to call on Anglicans to lead Canada in prayer for revival and the work of the church in society.47 This activist spirituality also found expression in Hague’s practical efforts to advance the work of the gospel through voluntary organizations. In the 1890s he promoted the Evangelical Prayer Union, a world-wide circle of prayer. While people could pray at any time, Hague suggested that “for the sake of unity and power special prayer be made … each Saturday morning between the hours of seven and ten.”48 He also supported evangelistic organizations such as the Brotherhood of St Andrew, an Anglican group that evangelized unchurched men in North America.49 And he reminded church leaders not to neglect their duty. In 1923, in the Canadian Churchman, Hague told Anglican clergy and the women’s auxiliary that the work of the church must continue even through the heat of summer: “We must remember that the great operations of awakening, winning, saving, teaching, training, organizing, in the great missionary areas, must be continued with unabated zeal, month after month, or the work of the Kingdom will suffer terribly.” This pep-talk exemplified evangelical piety, linking the efforts of ordinary Christians to providence and the Kingdom of God.50 While he promoted typically modern voluntary organizations and evangelistic missions, Hague expressed little interest in politicaleconomic reform and criticised the social gospel. In 1899 he mocked “Sheldonism” and “Henry Georgism,” observing: “As we all know, this age is the paradise of faddists and theorisers. And one of the faddiest of fads is that the clergy of the Church of England should deal more with social problems, and take up such questions as capital and labour, and strikes, and co-operative enterprise.” Unlike most liberal, and a few evangelical, Anglicans, what interested Hague was the “old old story” of the gospel, not the “new” social gospel.51 Over the years, Hague’s views of social reform changed in tone and emphasis more than content. After World War I, he aimed broadsides

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at modern “false gospels” like Marxism and grew increasingly critical of social Christianity that did not give priority to saving souls. His indifferent, sometimes hostile, opinion of social reform perhaps stemmed from his middle-class upbringing, but it also reflected his abiding sense of the sinful hearts of all people.52 A generation behind the Methodists and Presbyterians, the social gospel had few supporters among Anglican evangelicals in Canada before 1900. Meaningful numbers of them did not show interest in social reform until the second decade of the twentieth century. In this regard they resembled their English siblings. William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury had been leading reformers during the early to mid–nineteenth century, but turn-of-the-century evangelical Anglicans had little interest in social and political reform.53 Despite his scorn for social Christianity, Hague was able to balance spirituality, moral obligation, and doctrinal orthodoxy. Unlike fundamentalists, throughout his career he took a mediating path.54 He grew more concerned to protect Biblical authority, doctrinal standards, and the practices of the Church of England during the last two decades of his life, but he never neglected the work of the Holy Spirit or the need for regeneration and revival. In a postwar pamphlet on the doctrine of justification – “the soul of the Reformation” – he noted that behind all the changes taking place in Canada there was still “the unchanging and unchangeable fact of man as he really is before God; just poor and needy, just guilty and condemned.”55 In all times, and especially in such confusing ones, the world needed to hear the gospel of love and salvation by faith. Such assertions of familiar piety appealed to respectable middle-class Anglican evangelicals like Hague, who valued the order of the Prayer Book and their interpretation of tradition. The world around Hague persuaded him to modify his gospel message in tone and emphasis during the 1920s and 1930s. In the process he revised his sense of where he was and what was wrong; however, he did not change who he was or alter his remedy for the dilemmas of modernity. Hague was an evangelical Anglican who preached the gospel of Christ. All societies that have confronted modernity – whether Western, non-Western, or colonial – have faced these questions: How to adapt? What to maintain? What to leave behind? To welcome modernity was to reject things associated with “dark ages” and embrace what seemed “progressive.” In all cases some sense of the past was inherent, whether to escape or maintain traditions. In this regard Hague looked at the past equally in terms of continuity and of change. Like many other modern people he stressed the need to throw off medieval superstition (i.e., anglo-catholicism) and adapt to contemporary

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culture. Relative to liberal Anglicans he insisted on the continuity of evangelical Anglican piety and doctrine. In his pantheon of evangelical Anglican heroes of generations past he found the positive core of his identity, the “conservative yet progressive adaption” of a living tradition to modern life. And in the liberal and anglo-catholic parties he located his negative “others” – foolhardy modern blasphemers and hide-bound traditionalists. Hague spent the last two decades of his life contending against the dangerous cultural-intellectual currents of modernity and responding to subtle changes in the church. In the evangelical party itself he found cause for concern. During a trip to the Maritimes on behalf of Wycliffe College in 1934, he encountered evangelical clergymen – graduates – practising ritualism. In a long letter to Robert McElheran, who had become principal after Thomas O’Meara’s death in 1930, Hague sadly described his response to a young alumnus who had succumbed to ritualist pressure: “Really I hardly knew what to do or say sometimes, but I did all I could in the way of advice and counsel, and hope my visit will strengthen our cause and give him a desire to come back to our ways and stand up for Wycliffe.”56 For both men, the evangelical Anglican heritage and the hope of the future were at stake. The ritualist threat was a question of principle, Hague argued, not just practice. He concluded firmly: “If we were just an Anglican College as King’s or Bishop’s or Trinity or even the Diocesan Montreal or if we were only turning out semi-Evangelicals, weak Protestants, indefinite Churchmen or men who want to be Evangelical but not too Evangelical, Low Church but not too Low Church, Protestant but not too Protestant, then to my mind it is questionable if Wycliffe is worth preserving.” Hague thus grew defensive and became more convinced than ever of the need for a rooted evangelical theology college in the Canadian church.57 He defended evangelical Anglicanism against what he saw as pernicious modern religious trends towards vague theology and thin spirituality, responding with the good news of the Son of God who became human and died on a bloody cross to save humankind. Despite ongoing concerns about ritualism, during the 1920s and 1930s Hague’s efforts centred primarily on protecting the Bible from the menace of biblical criticism and countering the seeds of doubt planted by so-called liberal compromisers. At heart his concern was to bolster the faith of believers against modern relativism. He defended scripture and evangelical theology not for their own sake but because he believed that people could receive religious assurance and

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spiritual renewal only through the Holy Spirit and with the solid foundation of God’s word. Consequently, in addition to defending orthodoxy, Hague encouraged personal piety and revival in the church and nation. In the essays he contributed to The Fundamentals (1910–15), Hague formally articulated his views of the authority of scripture and protestant doctrine. A twelve-volume series of topical essays by North American and British evangelicals, The Fundamentals was an irenic attempt to encourage faithful evangelicals and define the basics of orthodoxy. Hague’s essays dealt with the atonement, Genesis, and higher criticism.58 They drew on prevailing assumptions in AngloAmerican evangelicalism, notably common sense beliefs about scripture and knowledge as objective and factual.59 From this viewpoint Biblical authority and saving faith demanded literal readings of Genesis. Giving up the creation story was a step towards the slippery slope of modern relativism. “The Bible as a whole is like a chain hanging upon two staples,” Hague explained. “The Book of Genesis is one staple; the Book of Revelation is the other. Take away either staple, the chain falls in confusion.”60 “The History of Higher Criticism” also aimed to protect the Bible’s authority from the subjectivity of modern scholarship. Hague expressed grudging respect for “honest” German historical critics but condemned Anglo-Americans who tried to retain an empty shell of divine inspiration. The Bible “is not the Word in the old sense of the term. It is not the word of God in the sense that all of it is given by the inspiration of God,” he protested. “It simply contains the word of God. In many parts it is just as uncertain as any other human book.”61 As this complaint suggests, Hague believed that reason and empirical scholarship could verify the truth of the scriptures. Yet he also displayed an awareness of the effect of sin on the human intellect. The most important “qualification for the perception of Biblical truth,” he always maintained, “is neither philosophic nor philological knowledge, but spiritual insight.”62 True, “saving” Biblical knowledge required heartfelt piety and the influence of the Holy Spirit. In “At-One-Ment by Propitiation” Hague discussed the atonement and again illustrated the overlap of evangelical spirituality, common sense categories, and historic identities. In the essay, Hague traced the doctrine’s history through the ages and identified himself with a long line of protestant piety, asserting that the Christian faith was uniquely concerned with redemption. Christ’s death, he said, was “substitutionary, sacrificial, atoning, reconciling, and redeeming.” Hague confidently cited the essential unity of the leading protestant

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churches on the atonement and lamented the confusing reinterpretations demanded by modernists.63 He also stressed the atonement’s practical power, pointing out that it was more than a moral system or a historical doctrine. In essence the atonement was a “life principle,” one that generated love for God, a horror of sin, an incentive for selfsacrifice, and a “powerful dynamic for the life of righteousness.”64 His pietistic devotion to the doctrine of the atonement tied Hague to Reformational-Anglican trinitarianism and revealed the influence of Romantic spirituality and the Keswick movement on his evangelicalism. His language was emotive: “To the soul that beholds the Land of God, and finds peace through the blood of the cross, there comes a sense of joyous relief, a consciousness of deep satisfaction, that is newness of life.”65 Despite the moderating influence of experiential piety on Hague’s theology, some evangelicals protested that people like him failed to distinguish between the method and spirit of Bible study. According to John de Soyres, Hague and his conservative colleagues did not realize that if they “would work towards encouraging the devotional spirit (which they are able to do) the method will take care of itself.” Unlike moderate and liberal evangelicals, such as de Soyres and H.J. Cody, conservatives like Hague insisted that piety and strict literal views of scripture could not be separated.66 The necessary connection that Hague insisted on between piety and orthodoxy also marked his understanding of the ties between faith and scholarship. In The Evangelical and Scholarship, he rejected the assumptions of modern historical critics, mocking their “extraordinary bias toward any new fangled interpretations of the [Biblical] text” and debunking notions that their work was free of presuppositions. Rather than read scripture objectively – by examining the internal evidence and letting the Bible interpret itself – modern critics produced theories and hypotheses about such things as the relationship of the Old Testament books to Babylonian myths. “These men have become slaves of authority,” he complained bitterly. “Unprovable assumptions, excogitated and woven in the workshop of a German hypothesis-weaver, are sometimes accepted even by British and American scholars as if they were planted on the everlasting rock foundation of a final scientific knowledge.”67 Though he valued objectivity, Hague’s deepest concern remained the tendency for modernist intellectuals to trade the disciplined scholarship of the believer for the unwarranted theorizing of a freethinker.68 Modern scholars thus deserved their title in the technical sense only, Hague claimed. Most of them were reckless and prejudiced, clever sophists who caricatured religious traditions rather than

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appreciate and understand them.69 They cynically destroyed the very ties to the past that nurtured a person’s faith and hope. In contrast, Hague expressed a deep reverence for tradition, a “spirituality of history.” He argued that good scholarship depended on intellectual humility and proper piety (what one historian has called “reverent reason”).70 Like many Canadian educators and clergy he assumed that knowledge and education should be used responsibly, to edify people spiritually and encourage order in society and the nation. Teachers thus should avoid undisciplined speculation. Hague also claimed that modern scholarship harked back to the rationalist scholasticism of earlier ages. It was a danger to the church, particularly to young students, preachers, and teachers, and left no room for compromise. True learning did not sow doubt; it uplifted the soul, respected God’s authority, and affirmed faith. In concert with the Holy Spirit, education linked believers in the present to the faithful of the past.71 Hague would not have dismissed modern notions of academic freedom out of hand, but he would have insisted that they be balanced with the responsibilities that students and teachers had to God, church, and nation, and to traditions such as evangelical Anglicanism. Ultimately, truth and faith in Christ could be found only through the power of the Holy Spirit, Hague asserted. Good books and rational argument helped, but prayer and sympathy in faith led a person to Christ.72 God was the “Great Hypostasis,” Hague said, the foundation of faith, not a mere “hypothesis” to be proved.73 Along these lines, in The Wonder of the Book (1912), a study of the mystery of scripture, he described the relationship between truth, faith, and reason: “As Pascal has finely said, ‘There are truths that are felt and there are truths which are proved. Primary truths are not demonstratable. Principles are felt; propositions are proved. The heart has reason, which the reason does not know.› While critics came to “unsettle and destroy,” the spirit of Christ validated a divine certainty “incommunicable by mere reason” and impervious to the “assaults of doubt.”74 Though Hague described inspiration in mechanical terms and used the rationalist language of common sense philosophy, he avoided an obsession with scriptural authority. His awareness that scripture found its unity in Christ and its power in the Holy Spirit mediated his reverence for the Bible and his sense of the mystery of its origins.75 “To me,” he wrote in 1933, “the Bible is a unified, vital organism, a vine planted in Genesis, consummated in the Living Christ, a body vitalized and vivified throughout by one Spirit.”76 In the end, evangelical orthodoxy depended less on the defence of scripture than on the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers and in the church.

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Like other conservative evangelical Anglicans in Canada and England, Hague spent more and more time defending orthodoxy and the Bible during the 1920s and 1930s. But this defence of the faith always went hand in hand with calls for the spiritual renewal of his church and the nation. Hague never failed to emphasize that true faith and a right reading of scripture came only with the direction of the Holy Spirit and through the order of the Prayer Book. His apologetics thus carried on a long tradition of evangelical Anglican scholarship.77 Ironically, like the anglo-catholics that he despised, Hague had a profound reverence for the past. It was holy ground to be defended against modern critics. But the heritage he venerated was not easily compatible with high-church Anglican traditions. Hague’s revivalist instincts and “spirituality of history” also help to explain the moderate tones, relative to fundamentalism, that evangelical Anglicans continued to use after the war. Hague’s scholarship thus reveals the same modern tensions discussed throughout this chapter. His evangelical piety was modern in its Romantic tendency to put feeling above doctrine, but it was antimodern in its insistence on a direct connection between feeling, doctrine, and tradition. If it was a truism for Hague that liturgical conventions were dead without a personal, heartfelt connection to God, it also was true that spirituality required roots in and reverence for the abiding traditions of Christianity – a balance he thought best found in evangelical Anglicanism. Modern intellectual developments threatened this balance on two fronts: anglo-catholic ritualism and modernist rationalism, as Hague feared more and more in the 1920s and 1930s. The central dilemma that preoccupied Hague from the conclusion of World War I to his death in 1935 was growing uncertainty about basic Christian tenets. The declining confidence in religious leaders that affected some Canadian denominations during the interwar years lay behind his efforts. Perceptions of decay in the cultural authority of protestantism in English-speaking Canada have been analysed extensively by historians. In colleges and universities intellectual certainty had been partially eroded by relativism and in some cases abandoned. Biblical critics by this time wrote more for an international community of scholars than in the interests of preaching and conversion.78 The Great War had also worn away easy faith in progress and evangelical theology. And the revival that evangelicals expected to follow on its heels did not fulfil their expectations.79 Anglicans such as Hague felt that these developments threatened the evangelistic and social mission of the church, subverted the piety of ordinary believers, and discouraged the experience of the Holy Spirit.

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In this context Hague defended scripture not as a source of abstract truth, though it was also that for him, but as the means by which Christians learned piety, received faith, and found assurance in a modern, materialistic society. For the same reason, he criticised ritualist worship, saying that it prevented people from experiencing the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Ritualism gave the appearance of orthodoxy and tradition but, in Hague’s view, substituted aesthetic beauty for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It also neglected the theological content of faith. Ritualism remained a key concern for evangelicals like Hague, in part because it allowed many Anglicans to sit through worship services without realizing the poverty and hypocrisy of their piety. Ritualism was a way to slip rationalist theology into the church.80 As this fear suggests, rationalism remained Hague’s more immediate concern. For all these reasons, he vigorously defended the Bible and evangelical orthodoxy and promoted revival in the church, assuring Anglicans of God’s regenerating power. When liberal Anglicans and other protestants questioned the role and mission of Christianity in the modern world, Hague challenged them and offered a message of hope. One facet of Hague’s mission to combat doubt was to point out the impact of biblical criticism on piety. In 1929, in the Canadian Churchman, he attacked a Bible commentary written by Bishop Charles Gore of England, a liberal anglo-catholic. Hague conceded Gore’s godliness and piety but dismissed his book as “a one-sided brief for modern criticism.” Critical works could be used to explain scripture, Hague acknowledged, but most modern scholars had an obsessive fear of orthodoxy. “Far from helpful to the man who wants spiritual illumination and inspiration,” he claimed, Gore’s commentary left lay readers with little more than the empty rationalizations of a critic. “The great need,” Hague declared, was not “works familiarizing” people with views that may “destroy the authority and historical worth of the Bible, but commentaries that really explain and illustrate the depths of the Word of God without derogating from its Divine glory and supreme authority.”81 The crux of the issue regarding the Bible was whether people considered it the authoritative revelation of God or a mere record and product of religious evolution from paganism to monotheism. In 1933, in the Canadian Churchman, Hague compared the “puerile nonsense” of critics to “a teetotaller offering his guests ginger beer and assuring them that it is champagne.” He responded: “We cannot accept Christianity without believing the facts of Christian religion.”82 On another occasion, Hague sadly recalled hearing a sermon on a psalm by a young preacher whose chief concern seemed to be prov-

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ing who wrote it. “There were a thousand men or so, hungry, eager, asking bread,” Hague lamented, “and he was giving them a stone of doubtful criticism; asking for a fish, and he was giving them a serpent of dangerous suggestions; asking for an egg, and he was offering them a scorpion of torturing doubt.”83 Preachers and scholars needed to encourage the mysteries of faith, using history, scripture, and Anglican tradition to build up believers, not tear them down. Clergy and lay people alike, Hague insisted, should keep their eyes focussed on God – not on the human intellect or custom – because truth, experience, and knowledge came together in faith. Giving up one facet of the Christian life weakened the rest. In addition, church leaders had a special duty to avoid spreading uncertainty. Their primary concern should be piety, not novelty in scholarship. Building on this belief, in 1927 Hague charged Wycliffe College alumni to preach the gospel with assurance and authority and avoid spreading hesitation or doubt. “Never in any sermon or address suggest a doubt that would weaken faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible, the Gospel,” he admonished. “I would rather cut off my right hand than turn away any poor weak soul from the Gospel. Let us give them our beliefs; they have doubts enough of their own. In the newspapers and magazines and journals of today they get their doubts by the thousand. Let us give them a thousand certainties to overcome; for a man who believes one thing has more power than a man who derides or disbelieves ten thousand things.”84 In an age of anxiety, when believers in Christian truth seemed to be decreasing in number, “specialists” in Christ should hold firm and be aware of their potential to bring revival – or more doubt – to the church.85 By the late 1920s, Hague worried that many people would not agree with him on these or other issues. Even at Wycliffe, where postwar students respected his piety and preaching, he was one of the old guard.86 His old-fashioned orthodoxy contrasted with the liberal evangelicalism of younger faculty like C.V. Pilcher and B.W. Horan or peers such as H.J. Cody and Robert Renison. In spite of it all, Hague continued to exhort Anglicans not to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. The need for faith was great during their trying age. In 1933 he depicted his own earnest piety: “I stand with the Book in my hand in adoring reverence of heart, with my mind uplifted to the Infinite in its vast and unfathomable revelations, for never a book spake like this book, with its deep and inexhaustible riches of God.”87 During a period in history when Christianity seemed to be in decline, evangelical Anglicans needed to defend the truth, come what may, and work and hope for revival. Throughout the last years of his life, Hague thus called for renewal. In 1931, amid the Great Depression,

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he agreed that Anglicans should “fight all social evil,” but argued that the greatest need was to advance the gospel and awaken the church. “For today is a day of trouble and rebuke and provocation upon the earth, of distress of nations with perplexity,” he wrote. “God is calling our people and the nations by chastisement and discipline. The world has lost its way, and has strayed like a lost sheep. Nothing can bring the world back to normality but the power of God, and the power of God must be in and through the Church … by the force of its spiritual life.”88 Hague identified contemporary Anglicans with defenders of the church from the past. In these troubled times evangelicals should look to the example of nineteenth-century leaders, because “they knew in all their heart and in all their soul that however small a minority they were numerically they were the majority if the time and truth of the centuries was counted.”89 Appeals to the place of evangelicalism in the history of the church highlight Hague’s Anglican sensitivity to the continuity of Christian tradition. This practice of the “spirituality of history” was common among Canadian evangelicals. It imaginatively linked them to the apostolic church through the course of history – for example, through heroes like Whitefield and Wesley in the eighteenth century and the Reformers in the sixteenth. Living in an age of revival, nineteenthcentury evangelicals saw themselves as successors to this legacy. Their vision of history structured the way they saw their place within their churches, society, and redemptive history. In the twentieth century this vision seems to have blunted the cultural pessimism common to fundamentalism and to have limited the appeal of modernism.90 The spirituality of history was especially important for an Anglican like Hague. He combined the ecclesiastical assumptions of Anglicanism with the wider evangelical protestant worldview. His loyalty to tradition, apostolic succession, and the Anglican Church suggests that Canada’s protestant “consensus” did not negate denominational allegiances.91 It also distinguished him from fundamentalists and modernists, who rejected tradition, each in their own fashion. Fundamentalists considered the past and the present corrupt and hoped to return to the presumably uncorrupted faith of the apostolic church. Modernists defended evolution intellectually but tended to treat the past as something to be overcome and left behind in the name of progress. Both groups studied, used, and took history seriously but, with little irony, viewed themselves as set apart from it. In contrast, most Canadian evangelicals considered themselves to be part of a living stream that linked them to the past and the future.

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Cultural pessimism thus did not dominate Hague’s views of the past or contemporary cultural change. Unlike fundamentalists and many conservative evangelicals, including some Anglicans, Hague did not react to changes in protestantism in his day by invoking literalist or dispensational readings of prophecy. Instead, he interpreted the modern world in light of the long march of church history.92 Hague’s historical understanding of the development of the church explains his limited interest in dispensationalism (though he was a premillennialist). At the beginning of World War I, for example, he noted that in this dispensation – “the times of the Gentiles” – Christians could expect wars and rumours of wars. This doctrine should be a source of spiritual comfort not speculative predictions. To this end, Hague assured readers of the Canadian Churchman that “when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, see that ye be not troubled: when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads for your redemption draweth nigh.”93 Though not strictly dispensational, Hague’s beliefs about the “end times” were premillennial. Premillennialism influenced some Anglican evangelicals in Britain and Canada and reinforced literalist, “scientific” readings of the Bible.94 Hague regularly criticised the postmillennialism of the social gospel for neglecting the personal return of Christ. He also used dispensational language to show that the Bible is Christ-centred, focussing on the first Advent and Christ’s return (the second Advent). In 1916, in an article in the Canadian Churchman, he divided Biblical history into three segments – those of the Old and New Testaments and the current “interim” between Christ’s ascension and second coming. Nevertheless, his premillennialism was modest compared to the intricate schemes of strict dispensationalists.95 While Hague occasionally referred to the signs of the times in the 1920s and 1930s, they did not preoccupy him. He advocated a mild premillennialism, like many conservative evangelical Anglicans during his day, but did not get caught up in trying to match historical events with specific prophecies. Instead, his ideas typified the spirituality of history, the interweaving of tradition, prophecy, and history that embedded Christianity in particular cultures and linked the piety of Christians past and present.96 As such, Hague’s piety was evangelical, Anglican, and Canadian. Even the mild sense of crisis some Anglican evangelicals experienced during the 1920s and 1930s generally did not inspire Hague to predict an imminent second coming. From time to time he described the present as “these terminal days.” In so doing, he was referring to the end of one age of evangelical strength, not the end of history. For

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this reason, he focussed on day-to-day concerns, instructing Canadian Anglicans to preserve evangelical truth and prepare their church for revival.97 Hague was sensitive to “the signs of the times,” but he stressed responsibility and duty and did not try to chart Christ’s return. Along these lines, Hague used an evangelical reading of Anglican history to interpret modern religious developments. He described twentieth-century attacks on orthodoxy as little more than ancient heresies with alluring new names.98 “The more I read history, especially ecclesiastical history in the Church of England,” he wrote in 1935, “the more I am impressed with the fact that it is all repeated in our present-day life. The things, the men, the problems, the controversies, the aims, the parties, the complications, the dangers, the duties are in essence the same as in the days of Wycliffe.”99 In this way, Hague identified problems faced by evangelical Anglicans in the 1920s and 1930s with the long history of Christianity. The fundamentals of the faith, he concluded, “have been and ever will be challenged by the restless and antagonistic spirit of the ages.”100 In short, Hague viewed the problems faced by contemporary Anglican evangelicals as part of the rhythm of history and the development of the church. Revival and decline, awakening and lethargy, shaped the life of the church. In periods of decline, evangelicals should pray and wait for “the ebbing tide to flow back on the old and well worn beaches.”101 They should preserve evangelical truth and work for a new revival of the church and of the world, because they held the key to the future. Evangelicals had awakened the Church of England in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and would do so again. In 1927 he concluded hopefully: “The Evangelical of to-day is the legal heir of the Reformation principles and the logical holder of this great regenerative force. When men ask if Evangelicals have a future, and if Evangelical principles are worth preserving, our answer is that they are the only ones that have a future, and they are the only ones that are worth preserving.”102 Hague’s historical identity as an Anglican and an evangelical gave him confidence to face the future. The evangelical movement in the Church of England in Canada may have stagnated during the interwar years, but Hague did not abandon his conviction that if evangelicals preserved the truth, revival would again come to their church. His warnings against change and talk of decline were true jeremiads. He did not dwell on presentday decline so much as recite the triumphs of the past to inspire evangelicals to win the future.103 This organic spirituality of history and immersion in evangelical Anglican tradition ultimately outweighed the cultural pessimism common to fundamentalists. The faith of

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believers like Hague in the present linked them to the past (tradition and memory) and to the future (reformation and hope) in a powerful antimodern historical consciousness. This historical piety suggests that Hague was influenced by British more than American culture. In his comparative analysis of American fundamentalism and English evangelicalism, George Marsden argues that a lack of intuitive historical consciousness among American evangelicals spurred fundamentalism there. The American experience itself, in the Revolution, seemed to be a new historical dispensation. Meanwhile, American adherence to common sense epistemology reinforced fixed notions of knowledge and truth.104 Dispensationalism also encouraged static beliefs about history by classifying time into discontinuous eras. “These influences,” Marsden concluded, “combined to dispose many persons to declare every aspect of the new views to be anathema and to oppose them with various non-negotiable logical antitheses.”105 English evangelicals, in contrast, generally recognized the unity of history and the weight of tradition. Sensitivity to the past, Marsden explained, inclined English evangelicals towards a steady acceptance of new ideas concerning biological evolution and the historical development of the Bible. Though conservative evangelicals in England did oppose some new ideas, they usually avoided the controversial style of fundamentalism. Keswick piety and a deep-rooted historical consciousness militated against such Manichean divisiveness. For this reason, fundamentalism had only limited influence there. Similarly, though a British invention, dispensationalism became a force only in American culture.106 Hague’s thinking does not exactly fit Marsden’s distinction, but his views of history did separate him from American-style fundamentalists. He opposed modernist intellectual developments and held to a steady literal interpretation of the “facts” of scripture, but he did not become a fundamentalist, because of an awareness of the dialectic of revival and stagnation in church history. Hague saw in Christian history a rhythmic pattern of growth and decline.107 Like many Canadian evangelicals, he viewed contemporary dilemmas as part of the upward spiral of time in redemptive history. In addition, Anglican doctrine and Keswick piety continued to inform and moderate his piety. As an Anglican, Hague located himself in an ecclesiastical tradition of apostolic succession that linked the Church of England tangibly to the new testament church.108 In contrast, most fundamentalists came from dissenting traditions, particularly Baptist and Presbyterian churches. This movement, Nathan Hatch has argued, was a twentieth-century example of the recurring dynamic in American

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Christianity that made a virtue of sectarian dissent.109 In nineteenthcentury protestant Ontario the opposite was true. Revivalism merged with a culture of order and stability into a broad protestant consensus. As in Britain, the sectarian individualism associated with revivals was mediated by historical loyalties and older ecclesiastical traditions.110 This culture of order fit with Hague’s devotion to the Church of England and the Prayer Book. His Anglican heritage and Canadian evangelicalism constituted a historical identity and ecclesiastical loyalty that left little room for fundamentalist traits like separatism and cultural pessimism. Hague did not become obsessed with the spirit of his age, because he believed present-day dilemmas to be one battle in a war the church had fought in the past and would fight again in the future against the “restless and antagonistic spirit” of all ages. Hague’s spirituality of history thus gave him more reason for hope than despair.111 More than historical consciousness was at stake here. The central issue was not awareness of the past so much as how Hague identified himself in relation to it. If modernists identified with history negatively by tending to embrace modern changes as progressive, Hague stressed continuity and tradition. Modern problems were not entirely new; they were like threats against Christianity in the past, part of the “restless and antagonistic spirit” of all times. The solution was not entirely new either. Evangelical Anglicans, Hague said over and over, had to remain faithful, as had the heroes of the past, proclaiming the gospel and preparing for the time when God’s Spirit would bring renewal. Modern times required some modern changes, but abiding, reverent continuity with the past was essential. The future was at stake. Because it disembedded people and cultures to an unprecedented degree, the dilemma of modern identity was an acute one for Hague. What of the past to change? And what of the evangelical Anglican inheritance to protect? The dynamic in American fundamentalism and its source of militancy lies here. American evangelicals had often disembedded themselves and rejected the past, revelling in the democratic liberty of their new dispensation. Nonetheless, they wanted to protect an identity rooted in a particular time and place – in nineteenth-century America. Because they did not recognize the historical contingency of their own religious tradition, their piety hardened and ossified, turning into fundamentalism when the wider culture in the United States changed. Fundamentalism’s preoccupation with the written text of scripture is noteworthy here. Unlike oral cultures in premodern settings, which evolved but considered themselves changeless, fundamentalists identified with an unchanging, revealed text. Amidst the

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uncertainties of modern American life fundamentalists measured themselves against that text. Historical critics were attacking the sole foundation of fundamentalism when they treated the biblical text as historical and changing. Hague likewise was appalled by this threat and fought it; but he did so with a comparably fluid sense of the “ebb and tide” of history and an appreciation of change and continuity in his Anglican tradition. However evangelical he was, the Bible was not his sole standard of measure. The course of Hague’s thought during the 1920s and 1930s also suggests that he had experienced the multiplicity of modern cultural identities, especially the way they overlapped and competed. In the years after World War I he promoted revival in the church and nation. While he continued to do so in the 1930s, emphasizing that in the midst of the Depression hope could be found only in revival, his evangelical Anglican identity had became potentially sectarian. He spoke of the need for evangelicals to protect the truth, even if it was unpopular and even if it led to them becoming a small minority in the Anglican Church and Canadian nation. For Hague, religious and national identities continued to overlap. But he also recognized that they were competing. The culture was changing, and he wanted to prepare evangelicals and Anglicans in Canada to make the right choice, if necessary. This dilemma did not lead him to pessimism. To the end of his life Hague believed that God eventually would revive both the church and the nation. This hope, rooted in God’s activity throughout the ages and in the faithfulness of believers past and present, did not fade. During the last few months of his life Hague urged Anglicans to defend the truth of the gospel, the authority of scripture, and the evangelical character of the Church of England, even if their numbers fell in the process. They should work to awaken the church and bring spiritual renewal to the nation because God had used small groups in the past and might do so again. Only a new Pentecost and a revived church could shake a materialistic culture and return it to faith in God. Hague continued to articulate this theme during Lent in 1935, promoting a “Mission of Renewal.” He implored Anglicans to bring all of life “under the absolute rule of Jesus Christ as Lord, through repentance, regeneration, crucifixion, communion, consecration, resurrection.”112 Hague died a short time later, in May 1935.113 Measuring Hague’s importance during his lifetime and beyond is an admittedly speculative venture. What did he represent? Did he have an enduring impact on Wycliffe College during the years from 1910 to the 1930s? A clue to his influence could be found in June 1973,

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when Leslie Hunt, then principal of the college, recalled studying under Hague’s tutelage. Hunt remembered that Hague had been the first person to steer him towards Wycliffe. Hague had appealed to nineteenth-century evangelical Anglican luminaries during the 1920s and 1930s; in turn, Hunt invoked memories of Hague and challenged students and faculty in his day to maintain and promote the “truths of the Gospel” in a trying and confusing decade.114 Although he became worried about the immediate future during the late 1920s and the 1930s, the core of Hague’s message did not change significantly during his lifetime. At heart, at the time of his death he was preaching the same evangelical gospel he had learned at Wycliffe during the 1880s. He thus represents the continuity of nineteenth-century evangelical Anglicanism into the mid–twentieth century. The essential continuity of Hague’s piety did not mean that his thought remained static despite changing circumstances. A shift took place after World War I towards a greater emphasis on preserving the truth. But his instinctive sense of balance between doctrine, faith, experience, and history did not change. Hague’s understanding of the church’s needs evolved, but his message and his passionate presence remained surprisingly consistent over the years. This continuity reflected the greater influence of English, rather than American, evangelicals on Anglicans in Canada. Many conservative evangelicals moved towards fundamentalism in the United States during the interwar years. In Britain, especially in the Church of England, most remained willing to cooperate and have fellowship with their more liberal colleagues. Likewise in Canada, though some evangelicals hardened in their orthodoxy and grew restive in their churches, they did not become cultural or ecclesiastical separatists. They remained part of the broad protestant continuum and wasp establishment.115 Even Hague, who was willing to have evangelicals become a marginal wing in the Church of England, to defend truth, never considered leaving it. The moderation of conservative evangelical Anglicans like Hague stemmed from their spirituality of history, the reverence for the past at the core of their faith. It was an ambiguous, tense moderation. Hague was a party evangelical who believed he had been called to preach the gospel and defend Anglicanism against the perils of modernism and ritualism. His defence of tradition was singularly evangelical and separated him from anglo-catholic and liberal Anglicans. He stood fast against what he regarded as corrupt change – ritualism and rationalism – and represented the powerful forces of continuity that continued to shape evangelical Anglicanism in Canada throughout the modern era. Yet he was willing to promote division and fragmentation

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to defend the truth, albeit with an abiding hope that God would one day bring revival and renewed vitality to the Church of England and Canada. Hague’s life thus helps to explain the identity crisis in the acc during the second half of the twentieth century. As he predicted, though it took time, evangelicals declined to a small minority in the Canadian church. In the process, some became liberals, while others moved towards anglo-catholicism. During the 1960s and subsequent decades a growing number of Anglicans simply left. Ironically, the blurring of theological lines that Hague resisted and the preservation of the strict evangelical form of Anglicanism that he championed both contributed to the emergence of a church without a commonly held identity and mission. Yet Hague would have rejected late twentieth-century predictions of the acc’s demise as too pessimistic – and for failing to acknowledge the presence of God’s Spirit in the ebb and tide of history.

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4 North American Anglicanism at the Turn of the Century

At first glance, Anglicans in Canada and the United States seemed to be heading in opposite directions during the 1870s. In December 1873 Bishop George David Cummins of Kentucky led a small group of radical evangelicals out of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Frustrated by the apparent control of the pecusa by ritualists, Bishop Cummins and his supporters intended the incipient denomination to reinvigorate what they considered true Episcopalianism. Over the next decade or so, numerous evangelical Episcopalians joined the new Reformed Episcopal Church – as individuals, rump groups from divided pecusa parishes, and whole parishes. The rec never grew beyond ten thousand adherents, and it failed to attract evangelicals from other traditions, falling far short of the grandiose dreams of Cummins and his fellow seceders. But it did signal the end of the once powerful and potentially dominant evangelical party in the pecusa. Evangelicals did not disappear from the Episcopal Church after 1873, but their institutions and numbers declined, and fewer and fewer influential parishes and church leaders called themselves evangelical.1 By contrast, evangelical Anglicans in Canada did not begin to come into their own until the 1870s, when they founded several influential institutions in Toronto, notably the Evangelical Churchman and Wycliffe College (called the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School at the time). By 1910, with over one hundred students, Wycliffe had become the largest Anglican seminary in Canada, a much-lauded contributor to foreign and domestic missions and a reliable source of clergy and

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bishops. A short time later, members of the evangelical party purchased and began publishing the Canadian Churchman, the national Anglican periodical. The evangelical star was rising in the acc.2 From the standpoint of evangelical Anglicanism, then, by the 1870s the American and Canadian experiences seemed to be diverging. From a longer perspective and a wider Anglican point of view, these differences should not be exaggerated. The story of North American Anglicanism between 1870 and 1920 for all parties, all told, was one of growing diversity, competition, and sporadic conflict. For Anglicans and Christians from most other traditions, these decades witnessed the evolution of loosely organized coalitions of conservatives and liberals in response to startling intellectual trends and changes in society, culture, and politics. Despite this process, the “divided mind” of protestant America remained largely united in spirit.3 Until the turn of the century, the growing diversity among Anglicans and other Christians was held together more by feelings of common cause, pragmatic cooperation, and healthy competition than by bitter conflict.4 In Canada, particularly, a still-young Anglican Church was building the basic institutions necessary for a truly national denomination – seminaries, parishes, diocesan machinery, Sunday schools, and the like. Not until 1893 did Canadian Anglicans form a general synod; and after 1900 waves of English immigrants and rapid settlement of the Western provinces would require steady expansion.5 In this situation, diverse and even hostile Canadian Anglicans could compete for souls and build institutions without constantly stepping on each other’s toes. The American Episcopal Church, by contrast, was a far more mature organization in 1870. Long before, amidst the postRevolutionary crisis of the 1780s, it had organized a national synod. A century later, while still founding new parishes, particularly in the West, and while working to meet the unprecedented needs of urban parishes in cities such as New York, the pecusa was a truly national denomination. It had the dubious luxury of endemic party conflict among moderate high churchmen, “advanced” anglo-catholics, liberals, and evangelicals. Evidence of fragmentation – that is, the potential for crisis, not just diversity – became conspicuous during these decades. With broad brush strokes this chapter explores how Anglicans in North America generally perceived and tried to contain the growing diversity in their ranks. While all Christians faced an expanding theological and cultural divide between conservative and liberal factions, Anglicans also continued to deal with conflicts over ritual and tradition. These cross-cutting sources of diversity intensified the deterioration of a

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unified Anglican identity in distinct ways, especially in the United States. In response to the growing diversity that threatened to undo a common Anglican identity after 1870, modern notions of Anglicanism as a uniquely comprehensive Christian tradition and a source of historic ecumenical experience took shape. The mood of Anglicans from the 1870s to the decade after 1910, much like that of other North American Christians, was hopeful as well as anxious. The turn of the century was a heady time of momentous and perhaps unprecedented changes, full of apocalyptic potential, and the future of Christendom seemed to be at stake. Diversity and conflict had brought undeniable dangers, but opportunities for progress seemed equally apparent. The intellectual, cultural, social, political, and demographic forces reshaping North American Christianity between 1870 and 1920 were both internal and external to the faith.6 Classic models of secularization portray this period of “modernization” as a time of religious decline. Darwinism and historical scholarship assaulted the intellectual underpinnings of orthodoxy; liberal-democratic reform stripped churches of state support in most of the West; social-political “differentiation” relegated religion to the private sphere of life; industrialurban expansion made Christianity’s social function seem less and less relevant, especially to the working-class masses; and cultural competition from sources such as advertising, consumer goods, and popular entertainment made it more and more difficult to attract people to services of worship and church-run social programs. Contrary to such portraits, however, recent historical scholarship indicates that modernization did not leave Christianity quite so beleaguered.7 In North America Christian influence and institutions spread to an unprecedented degree during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Christians did not merely respond after the fact to so-called external forces; they often confidently led them. Many of the intellectual and cultural changes associated with modernity were “internal” developments within increasingly Christianized North American societies. For example, Laurence Moore contends in Selling God that American protestants helped pioneer and put to religious use the emerging leisure industry, consumer capitalism, and mass-market advertising. In The Soul of the American University George Marsden argues that liberal protestants secularized the leading research universities because they were confident that liberalprotestant values and beliefs pervaded their institutions and the larger culture. Other scholars claim that social gospellers did not compete with the emergent welfare state during the early twentieth century. Indeed, they led efforts to expand the power of government

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to create a more just, egalitarian society and so further the kingdom of God. From this scholarly perspective, the secularization model exaggerates religious decline (by mistaking change for decline) during the twentieth century and neglects the often eager participation of Christians in modern cultural and intellectual developments.8 The point here is not to dismiss the idea of secularization or to deny the erosion of religious institutions and Christian cultural hegemony during the twentieth century but to point out the inadequacy of the model as a general rubric. For Christians in North America, Anglican and otherwise, the turn of the century was a time of retreat and expansion, danger and opportunity, anxiety and hope. Moreover, the modern era was not unique in requiring Christians and their churches to reevaluate their place within the wider culture or participate in and respond to intellectual challenges.9 The fundamental point here is that change, even significant theological change, did not necessarily signal decline, as crude secularization models imply.10 Nevertheless, whether fearful or hopeful about the church’s place in North America (usually they combined a bit of both), most Christians at the time believed that they were living through an era of momentous, unparalleled change.11 For this reason, like other modern observers they were tuned with a heightened, even a greatly exaggerated, sensitivity to history and their place in it. History and historical consciousness have occupied a central place in the development of modern cultures. The key words and phrases associated with modernity – progress, evolution, growth, development, and the like – indicate this. Darwinism was about natural history; Marxism centred around the history of material life and political economy; positivism charted progressive human intellectual evolution from animism to polytheism, monotheism, and metaphysics, and (ultimately) to modern rationality; sociology classified social evolution from traditional organic communities (Gemeinschaft) to modern institutional societies (Gesellschaft); nationalism “imagined” and “invented” the histories of peoples and states; scholarly historians took their place as the professional keepers and analysts of the past; and biblical critics, theologians, and church historians dug into the history of Christianity and the Bible to discover the true roots of the faith.12 By any standard, these examples indicate, it was an age characterized by historical consciousness – a “new age” and a “new world order.” The growing rift between conservative and liberal Christians reflected, among other things, this typically modern concern about the past. Both sides looked to the past – as good moderns, debunking myth and citing evidence – to confirm their own viewpoints. This point is crucial. Conservatives and liberals alike worked within

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broadly modern canons of historicity, believing that truth was found in documentary evidence and could be judged by reasonable people. During an era of unsettling change, heightened senses, and anxiety and hope, each side of the religious divide looked to the past for certainty, in order to construct and maintain a stable basis of historical identity and thus be able to face the future with robust spiritual purpose.13 As many historians have recognized during the late twentieth century, this search for historical foundations failed, along with other modern efforts to achieve intellectual certitude. In the realm of the past, the American historian William McNeill once remarked, one person’s history is another’s myth. Similarly, according to Nietzsche, the recovery and use of history is always about both myth-making and debunking, creating and destroying, remembering and forgetting, building ideological monuments to the past and using historical criticism to tear them down.14 The dividing of the protestant mind into conservative and liberal camps between 1870 and 1920 was such a process. In their search for the “historical Jesus,” liberal theologians found an enlightened, moral figure who epitomized their progressive vision of the modern world. They rejected orthodox portraits of Christ as out-dated superstition and fashioned a modern-looking mirror of themselves, as Albert Schweitzer once observed. The historical scholarship of moderate conservatives, such as the evangelical Anglican bishop J.B. Lightfoot, used the same methods but found a supernatural Christ who met what they saw as the needs and ideals of modern people.15 They dismissed the “historical Jesus” of liberals as irresponsible, immoral speculation. The issue here is not who was correct or whether history is completely relative but that no reconstruction and use of the past is objective. Much like ancient religious texts, chronicles, and mythic stories, conservative and liberal portraits of the historical Jesus were, at root, a search for identity. Pushing this cultural analogy further, Darwinism and other contemporary theories of evolution were not only about science but also about human origins and creation myths. Christian and non-Christian responses to Darwin varied immensely, from outright rejection to uneasiness and approval. Most recent historical scholarship recognizes that the so-called war between religion and science is itself mythic. All responses to Darwin involved more than a dispassionate evaluation of scientific evidence and method. Darwin’s theories provided a new “creation story,” with the requisite debates over its political, cultural, and religious implications. As recent biographers of Darwin and T.H. Huxley have shown, scientists self-consciously wrote within a particular social and economic context. Natural selection cannot be reduced

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to politics, but it suited Western societies preoccupied with imperialism and rampant capitalism. Darwin’s theories explained how educated, bourgeois Westerners could be members of the same species as the celebrated “wild man” of Borneo.16 Evolutionary science thus was about cultural identities as well as biology and natural history. A preoccupation with history and identity was predictable in such a time of change, mobility, and social “disembedding.” When individuals in their various communities found themselves uprooted socially and geographically, they turned to the past to reestablish cultural roots and stability. Culture was mobile, and it allowed people to form “imagined” communities not limited by time and space. The dilemma of modern identity, one which the Anglicans studied here discovered, was that cultural-historical identities themselves were anything but stable and predictable. Interpreted in this light, the rift between conservative and liberal Christians (protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and the rest) was not a battle of optimistic modernists against fearful antimodernists but an increasingly antagonistic competition among diverse groups struggling to define modern identities. Liberals and conservatives alike attempted to make sense of mind-boggling economic expansion, technological advances, social upheaval, cultural fragmentation, and world war. They needed to discover who they were, decide what problems they faced, find possible remedies, and look to the future with resolute spiritual purpose. That it was much more difficult than they expected to find such purpose, let alone certainty, helps to explain the bitterness of Anglican party conflict. It also helps to explain the common experiences of liberal, evangelical, and anglo-catholic Anglicans, and the surprising convergences in their self-identities and piety. Whether at the level of individual piety or Anglican party politics, this is a complex set of stories. For North American Anglicans, modern conflicts along liberalconservative lines intersected with older disputes between traditional high churchmen, latitudinarians, evangelicals, and ritualists. The conventional sources of Anglican consensus had maintained a delicately balanced identity in the Church of England from the late seventeenth century onward – consensus rooted in agreements on Biblical authority, if not interpretation, and establishment status. This consensus began to break down after 1770 in North America.17 In the nineteenth century, conflicts over churchmanship and modernity combined and interacted with each other, thus increasing Anglican diversity and intensifying the likelihood of fragmentation. Some Anglican leaders responded by redefining the historic identity of their communion along ecumenical lines, as a uniquely comprehensive

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and diverse Christian tradition. This conviction allowed them to make sense of the contemporary world. In addition, they prayed and hoped, the ideology of comprehensiveness would help to contain party conflict, head off fragmentation, and promote a progressive Christian future. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the pecusa grew broader and higher, as ritualism and liberal theology expanded their influence. Higher criticism, Darwinism, and the social gospel established roots in much of the church, as did the high-church aestheticism of advanced ritualism that followed on the heels of tractarianism in the 1850s and 1860s. Few of these innovations had originated in the American church (it imported ritualism and new intellectual currents from England), but it took them up avidly. The pecusa was active in the growth of the social gospel, in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction, as well as in response to urban-industrial expansion and rising levels of immigration during the 1870s and after. Evangelicals and liberals had long participated in moral-reform movements. After 1860, high-church Episcopalians also became more socially and politically active, motivated by the crisis of the Civil War and by a new anglo-catholic commitment to purifying American society.18 Without question, however, broad-church liberals led social-gospel activism in the pecusa. Inspired by the Christian Socialist movement in England and by broad-church Anglican theologians such as F.D. Maurice, liberals stressed that the church must emphasize questions of social justice, not merely saving souls, to fulfil the gospel. Among the leaders in this turn-of-the-century movement was William S. Rainsford, a popular Anglican revivalist who had moved from England to Canada and later to the United States. Along the way his theology had grown more and more liberal, though he retained a fiery evangelical style of preaching and employed evangelical curates at St George’s parish, an “institutional church” in New York City that offered a wide range of programs for the urban poor.19 One of the most immediate results of these developments was the proliferation of party conflict in the church in the early 1870s. As noted above, a minor secession of radical evangelicals in 1873 led several thousand Episcopalians to leave the denomination for the Reformed Episcopal Church. While this secession did not seriously affect the over all size of the pecusa, it dramatically shifted relations between evangelicals, liberals, and anglo-catholics. Until the Civil War, evangelical Episcopalians held their own, and more. Despite the vigorous growth of the tractarian and ritualist movements, evangelical institutions and leaders remained vibrant

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and active. However, the war deeply divided the evangelical wing of the church, as many evangelicals came from the South. After the war, the evangelical party was weakened and soon became dominated by more militant Northern evangelicals. Their fears of ritualism were spurred by controversies over Episcopal participation in the Evangelical Alliance and other interdenominational protestant missions, reform societies, and worship services. This debate led to bitter conflict. Confrontations around the baptismal service and use of the term “regeneration” finally resulted in the rec secession of 1873.20 The Reformed Episcopal exodus fundamentally damaged the evangelical party. Already before the secession, in 1872, the radical anglo-catholic John Henry Hopkins Jr had rejoiced with glee that the evangelicals had failed to get permission from the Episcopal General Convention to omit the word regeneration from the baptismal service. “As a great party struggling hopefully for the mastery within the Church, the old Evangelical party is dead, dead, dead,” he exclaimed.21 This claim was an exaggeration, but not far off. The rec secession had removed many potentially dynamic evangelical leaders from the pecusa. The remaining evangelical leaders were moderate conservatives, but aging and near the end of their careers. They had been preoccupied by ritualism for so long that they were unable to deal creatively with the more recent demands of liberal protestantism. The younger generation of evangelicals that replaced them generally took the party in liberal-evangelical and broad-church directions.22 The subsequent decline of the evangelical impulse in the pecusa should neither be exaggerated nor underestimated. To assume that liberal change by definition meant decline suggests a static view of evangelicalism. Certainly, key institutions, such as the Virginia Seminary, continued to promote a broad-minded and moderate liberalevangelical faith (see more on this in chapter 8). Rather than “decline,” it is more accurate to say that these events and changes signalled the growing diversity of the pecusa and the beginnings of fragmentation – along liberal and ritualist lines. Not only did liberal, anglo-catholic, and evangelical Anglicans remain mutually antagonistic, each of the traditional parties grew increasingly diverse internally. The Charles Briggs case revealed the limits and the extent of Episcopal controversy at the turn of the century. In 1899 Bishop Henry Potter of New York started an Episcopalian debate when he ordained Briggs, a professor of biblical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Otherwise conservative, Briggs had left the Presbyterian Church after being charged with heresy for questioning

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the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament. The Briggs controversy and other minor heresy trials at roughly the same time signal the limits of liberal, or “modernist,” theology in the pecusa. A moderate liberal-protestant scholar like Briggs found a home in the Episcopal Church, but his arrival raised significant protest. At the time signs of strength and progress likely seemed much more obvious than theological divisions to most Episcopalians – for example, institutional expansion of the church through social gospel programs, home and foreign missions, and women’s auxiliaries. However, the rec secession and conflicts over liberal theology heralded trouble.23 As has been emphasized at numerous points in this and previous chapters, care must be taken to acknowledge sources of both anxiety and hope. If conflict between church parties was a cause for concern, the growing diversity of the pecusa (and the acc) also provided new opportunities for clergy and lay women and men. Take, for example, the expansion of liberal and anglo-catholic expressions of Episcopalian religiosity. Evangelical revivalism had long sanctioned a limited public role for women in churches and moral reform projects, albeit a controversial one at times. The revival of men’s and women’s orders in the Church of England and in North American Anglicanism did much the same for high-church women, giving them new kinds of opportunities for contemplative lives and social-service work. Liberal Episcopalianism, and the social gospel more widely in American protestantism, also expanded the opportunities for women to participate in social work, public controversies, and politics. The best Anglican example of these newly sanctioned public roles, perhaps, was the creation of the office of “deaconess” in the late nineteenth century.24 The expansion of so-called women’s work thus illustrates both the growth of pecusa institutions, locally and nationally, and the interaction of diverse forms of Episcopalian-Anglican societies with the needs of modern societies. In Canada, meanwhile, between 1870 and 1920, evangelicals grew from a controversial minor party in a few isolated regions to an increasingly powerful and grudgingly respected national movement. Compared to the American story, theirs suggests that, while the same diversity and similar conflicts had emerged in the Canadian Anglican Church by the turn of the century, conflict was generally contained and channelled into the rapid expansion of the Canadian church as an organization. Relative to the pecusa, room to grow in the acc meant that competition could take place in separate regions and dioceses, not just within parishes and over positions of leadership in established dioceses.

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During the 1860s evangelical Anglicans could be found in most parts of the dominion, but large numbers (of clergy especially) existed in only a few areas. In the dioceses of Montreal and Toronto, evangelicals had reached a large enough critical mass to effectively contest church party politics. In the Diocese of Huron, evangelicals had elected Benjamin Cronyn bishop during the 1850s and organized Huron College in London. And in the North-West and Arctic, English evangelicals with the Church Missionary Society ran many of the parishes and missions. These dioceses had several evangelical bishops, appointed from England by the cms. Despite such regional strength in various parts of Canada, the development of several new institutions during the 1870s made Toronto the institutional centre of evangelical Anglicanism in the young dominion.25 In 1876 Toronto evangelicals began to publish the Evangelical Churchman. A year later the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School opened its doors. Bishop A.N. Bethune tried to stamp out these institutions by refusing to ordain peds graduates. His death in 1879 removed this obstacle and paved the way for further evangelical party growth. After a good deal of factionalism at the diocesan convention, the diocese chose a moderate evangelical, William Sweatman, to succeed Bishop Bethune. In the process high-church leaders had won concessions from the evangelicals, such as shutting down their Church Association, but the peds (renamed Wycliffe College in the 1880s) and Evangelical Churchman continued to promote their cause. By the end of the century, the Toronto evangelicals and their institutions had created an effective national evangelical party. Evangelicals had established seminaries in several prairie dioceses and in British Columbia. Wycliffe was the largest Anglican seminary in Canada and several more evangelical bishops had been chosen in various parts of the dominion. Two examples illustrate these developments. In the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century, the Dominion Churchman, the high-church national Anglican periodical, shifted its tone toward evangelicals from one of patronizing dismissiveness to grudging respect. Indeed, at the turn of the century it merged with the Evangelical Churchman and became the new Canadian Churchman. A decade later, the Toronto evangelicals would purchase the new paper. Conflicts between high-church and evangelical Anglicans did not disappear, but they did become normalized and were perhaps even considered healthy when the two sides avoided extremes, if for no other reason than that their strength meant the evangelicals would not go away. The second example also illustrates the point. Wycliffe College and Trinity College faced off against each other across Hoskin Avenue at the University of Toronto. The high-church Trinity College made

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repeated offers after 1900 to unite with Wycliffe. It also tried to hire Rev. H.J. Cody, a prominent evangelical moderate, as its provost. Evangelicals suspected that these overtures stemmed from the relative decline of Trinity, compared to Wycliffe, and were designed to undercut evangelical influence. Wycliffe rejected such proposals on several occasions. Nonetheless, by the second decade of the twentieth century Wycliffe and Trinity were sharing faculty, on occasion, to deal with shortages and illnesses.26 This growing diversity did not lead to secession, as in the United States, largely because there was room in the Canadian church for all of the parties to grow, both in central Canada and in the West. Immigration of large numbers of English Anglicans at the turn of the century and rapid settlement of the West after 1890 meant that the acc had to scramble desperately to keep up. Evangelical and high-church leaders regularly appealed to the Church of England for clergy, seminary teachers, missionaries, and money. In terms of institutional growth the Canadian church was still in its adolescent stage, even at the turn of the century. This had two obvious consequences. Because much of its energy was spent building parishes, seminaries, and other church institutions and because mass immigration and urbanindustrial growth did not erupt in Canada until the late 1890s, the social gospel did not have a major impact on Anglicanism there until the turn of the century.27 For the same reasons, party conflict was channelled into institutional competition. As these examples suggest, between 1870 and 1920 the crucial point of comparison between the Canadian and American experiences was not theology or ritual. Similar divisions, movements, and conflicts vexed and inspired the two churches. They differed most obviously in institutional context. Conflicts in the more mature American church tended towards fragmentation and division, with the evangelical party, as a party, finding itself (especially conservatives) squeezed out by the Reformed Episcopal secession and the emergence of liberal evangelicalism. Meanwhile, healthy competition contained and even moderated conflict between the church parties in Canada. Yet the same dilemmas of identity preoccupied Anglicans in Canada and the United States. The historic Anglican cultural status as an established church continued to shape the Church of England, albeit in weakened form at the end of the century, given political reform in Great Britain. Without this “national” church status in their respective countries, the pecusa and the acc struggled to define a basis of common identity to unify the diverse anglo-catholic, evangelical, and liberal church parties. In the late nineteenth century, Anglicans began to do so with a new emphasis on the comprehensive character of Anglican tradition.

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Advocates of this new ecumenical Anglican identity began to insist that their church was not protestant or catholic but protestant and catholic and liberal. The Anglican myth of comprehensiveness was not invented ex nihilo in the 1880s.28 Its historical roots can be traced back to the Elizabethan settlement of the mid– to late sixteenth century, when the new queen avoided the protestant and catholic extremes of her predecessors and steered a moderate, consensus-building course. However, this sixteenth-century consensus was based more on establishment status and political necessity than on a self-conscious celebration of diversity. The ideology of Anglican diversity and comprehensiveness – that the Church of England contains the best of protestant and catholic traditions, and a tolerant liberal emphasis on reason – emerged fully only in the mid–nineteenth century. In 1843, in the Double Witness of the Church, William Kip claimed that the Episcopal Church had a unique mission to both protestantism and catholicism. The tract was an Episcopal best-seller, running through twenty-four editions by 1898, and Kip was appointed the missionary bishop of California in 1853.29 The mature myth of Anglican comprehensiveness received official sanction at the Lambeth Conference of 1888. In response to an overture proposed by the Provincial Synod of the Canadian church in 1867, the bishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, had summoned Anglican bishops from around the world to the first of the Lambeth Conferences. The bishops were to deal with conflicts between the bishop of Natal, John Colenso, and the archbishop of Capetown, Robert Gray, over the interpretation of Genesis. At that first conference the participants (76 of the 144 invited bishops) recognized the value of such meetings. They met every decade thereafter, except during World War I. At the conference of 1888, the bishops initiated the first of the great modern ecumenical appeals and issued the Lambeth Quadrilateral, as a basis for Christian unity. The Quadrilateral recognized the value of Christian diversity but called for a new era of cooperation and unity based on the holy scriptures, the Nicene Creed, the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, and the historic episcopate. The bishops based their statement on the Chicago Quadrilateral of William Reed Huntington, an Episcopalian who had proposed the formation of an American national church to reunite the Christian denominations. The Lambeth Quadrilateral espoused a generally orthodox – but liberal – protestant theology and a modern faith in the progress of the Christian churches towards unity and God’s kingdom. It also nicely disguised the growing dilemmas of Anglican identity and transformed

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them into an opportunity for ecumenical Christian brotherhood. The Lambeth Quadrilateral thus was rooted in both anxiety and hope. In this spirit of hope and in a self-conscious Anglican search for unity, in the 1880s the American Church Almanac began to promote the idea of a world-wide denomination. It published “Statistics on the Anglican Communion,” listing the more than twenty-eight thousand clergy, two hundred bishops, and millions of adherents in Britain, the Empire, and America.30 After World War I, at the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Anglican bishops issued a new ecumenical invitation, “An Appeal to All Christian People.” The appeal got to the ideological heart of the myth of comprehensiveness as a strategy to deal with diversity, saying, “It is through a rich diversity of life and devotion that the unity of the whole fellowship will be fulfilled.”31 Anglican unity – and ecumenical fellowship – would be found in diversity rather than single-minded consensus. The Lambeth Quadrilateral and subsequent expressions of the myth of comprehensiveness failed to transcend divergent party readings of Anglican history, however. While it did promote a unity of purpose, the myth itself was a particular interpretation of history. If evangelicals perceived Anglican tradition through protestant eyes, stressing scripture and conversion, and anglo-catholics focussed on ritual, apostolic succession, and the historic episcopate, the myth of comprehensiveness eminently suited the newest Anglican party, the liberal– broad-church wing. Over time, most Anglicans would at least pay lip service to the myth. But the myth itself did not necessarily promote a common identity, mediate Anglican conflicts, or foster Christian unity. Anglo-catholics could use “comprehensiveness” to justify reunion with the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy and thus condemn evangelical sectarianism. Evangelicals could exploit comprehensiveness to promote protestant unity and damn anglo-catholics and Roman Catholics for causing Christian divisions. For their part, liberals could employ it to rebuke all other groups for not respecting Anglican traditions of diversity, tolerance, and comprehensiveness. This is not to overlook the potential for the ideology of comprehensiveness to create a basis for Episcopal and Anglican unity. It is to recognize that “comprehensiveness” itself was an essentially contested concept (in much the same way that “catholic” meant something different to liberal, evangelical, and high-church Anglicans). Comparing party diversity in the Anglican communion to immigrant-ethnic diversity in Canada and the United States is helpful on several levels. North American Anglicans themselves were immigrants to the New World. While they transplanted many of their Old World traditions, they could not do so entirely, notably in the

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loss of establishment status. Furthermore, New World immigrant societies like the United States and Canada were remarkably pluralistic in racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, and political terms. As a result, they experienced a constant tug of war between the need to consolidate national identities and accommodate the reality of diverse subcommunities. Anglicans in North America thus were confronted by identity choices unfamiliar to their siblings in England. In addition, by the turn of the century they faced tensions between internally diverse liberal, evangelical, and anglo-catholic subcommunities and a “comprehensive” Anglican identity. In this fashion, the Anglican experience was similar to that of immigrant societies. As a reality and an ideology, pluralism has been an archetypal modern dilemma. As an ideology, liberal-democratic pluralism at once means to foster unity and celebrate diversity, much like the Anglican myth of comprehensiveness. Such dilemmas cannot be resolved with any finality. Pluralist ideologies and the myth of comprehensiveness do not merely provide a procedural basis for a federated union: they make moral claims and are themselves cultural traditions. They compete with other particular traditions rather than transcend them.32 This competition between myths of comprehensiveness and various subcommunity identities was especially crucial for Anglicans. Each Anglican party – anglo-catholic, evangelical, and broad-church–liberal – held to its own traditions. Unlike liberals in other denominations, those in the acc and the pecusa did not downplay their tradition in favour of a generic ecumenical identity. To the contrary, they claimed that ecumenism was a uniquely Anglican tradition, one they called their own – Anglican “comprehensiveness.” In so doing, they hoped to transform a particular tradition into a universal identity for Anglicans and, ultimately, to reunite Christendom. Such was their mythhistory and potentially global purpose. This goal was characteristically “modern” in its grand scope and its struggle to reconcile a particular and a universal identity. But, it was antimodern in its desire to embed itself in a distinctly Anglican tradition.33 The relationship between the myth of comprehensiveness, the growing diversity of Anglican identities, and the ecumenical movement is also instructive. A few successful church unions did take place during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (notably the series of denominational unions that culminated in the United Church of Canada in 1925). However, the ecumenical movement’s accomplishments generally came in the form of church federations, socialservice agencies, and political lobbying. By emphasizing the most basic levels of doctrinal-spiritual unity, national and international

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federations allowed the participating Christian denominations to deal jointly with practical problems, such as responding to wars, and to promote collective projects in missions, charity, and “peace and justice” issues. But federations did not lead to organic reunion. This was the fundamental dilemma. The Anglican communion, including its branches in Canada and the United States, aspired to remain a church and to be more than a federation – its celebrations of diversity notwithstanding. For the ideology of comprehensiveness to function as more than pragmatic cooperation, the myth had to wed the antagonistic church parties to a common reading of Anglican tradition and thus create the basis for a unified sense of spiritual purpose.34 As the next two chapters indicate, it became increasingly difficult to so. Conflicts over rationalism (liberal-modernist theology) and ritualism divided Anglicans and often led them to view Christians from other traditions in mutually exclusive ways. For W.H. Griffith Thomas, a conservative evangelical and a leader in the early fundamentalist movement, the crisis in orthodoxy, piety, and morality that he perceived during the early twentieth century led him to find common cause and Christian unity with sectarian evangelicals. The same sense of crisis led William Manning, a high churchman inspired by evangelical piety, to abandon his ecumenical efforts in favour of an increasingly rigid definition of Anglican catholicity during the 1920s and 1930s. In the process, and in the long run, such trends not only prevented evangelicals and anglo-catholics from finding common ground, they also promoted new divisions between liberals and conservatives within the historic Anglican church parties. These patterns of fragmentation should not be overstated. Even in the pecusa, where they were more apparent in the 1920s and 1930s, serious institutional decline did not transpire.35 Conflicts over identity – in theological debates and by leaders at the diocesan and synodical level – did not necessarily damage Episcopal parishes. A more difficult challenge, perhaps, was the increasing competition for people’s time in the form of advertising, consumer products, leisure and entertainment industries, and spectator sports. Nevertheless, the potential fragmentation of religious identity in the Episcopal Church was significant in an American culture that offered people a growing number of new identity choices. Faced with a myriad of social and cultural competitors, what would happen to a denomination that failed to agree on its identity? What would set it apart and make it special? What were its traditions and history? What was its spiritual purpose? Episcopalians were finding it increasingly difficult to address these questions with harmonious voices, let alone unanimity.

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5 W.H. Griffith Thomas: Anglicanism, Fundamentalism, and Modernity Christianity is Christ, and civilization is not necessarily Christianity. Christianity means the Gospel, and the Gospel means redemption from sin; and it behoves those at home and those abroad to seek to proclaim by lip and life the message of that Gospel as “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” W.H. Griffith Thomas, Modernism in China (1920)1

In 1910 W.H. Griffith Thomas sailed from England, leaving behind a successful career as an Anglican minister, Keswick speaker, and college principal, to go to Canada to teach at Wycliffe College in Toronto. He did so with regrets but was “mindful of the larger sphere to be found in connection with a reputedly Evangelical stronghold in the young and growing Dominion.”2 In Toronto, Thomas taught at Wycliffe, edited the Canadian Churchman, and helped put the stamp of a growing evangelical party on the Canadian church. Equally important, his position at the college afforded him numerous opportunities to work with evangelicals outside Anglican circles in Canada and the United States, at Bible conferences and the Toronto Bible College, in the Victorious Life movement, and as a writer. Less than a decade later, in 1919, Thomas resigned his post at Wycliffe and moved on to Philadelphia. He had never been completely happy at Wycliffe, feeling constrained and betrayed. But he also left for positive reasons, once again following a broader calling, a “continent-wide ministry,” as he put it.3 In Philadelphia he moved to the centre of the newly formed fundamentalist movement, as a speaker, polemicist, and organizer. He attended early meetings of the World Christian Fundamentals Association (wcfa) and stirred up conflict among missionaries on a lengthy trip to China. After 1920, however, Thomas pulled back from the wcfa and the extremes of fundamentalism. Instead, with Lewis Sperry Chafer, he helped found the Evangelical Theological College in Dallas as an alternative to both mainline seminaries and fundamentalist Bible

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colleges. Thomas never officially left the Anglican communion, but interdenominational commitments dominated the last five years of his life. After his death in 1924 fundamentalists, evangelicals, and Anglicans in North America and England remembered him fondly.4 The paths Thomas chose make him a compelling person to study. He was respectable, a conservative evangelical scholar, thoroughly Victorian in manner and comportment, English, Oxford educated, and an influential minister in the Anglican church. Yet he gravitated towards nondenominational, fundamentalist circles from the time he moved to North America. He did so not as an impetuous young man or an embittered aging evangelical but during his most productive years. Personal experiences shaped his decisions, but there was a spiritual and intellectual integrity, a logic, to his life. He thus offers the historian an opportunity to explore the relationship between Anglicanism, fundamentalism, and modernity. His migration from evangelical Anglicanism to American fundamentalism illuminates the divisive, enigmatic energy of modern spirituality, as boundaries, relationships, and contexts shifted under his feet and redefined his churchmanship. Despite having a stable core of personal piety in the experience and message of the Keswick movement, Thomas was uneasy in both fundamentalism and the Anglican communion at the end of his life. He was typically modern in this restlessness. His personal faith was stable, but his broader sense of religious identity was remarkably fluid, leaving him hard-pressed to find a community in which he fit comfortably. A number of distinct themes of modernity can thus be observed in Thomas’s story: the disembedding and displacement of Thomas’s piety from its English Anglican roots; the competition of Anglo-American, Anglican, evangelical, and fundamentalist identities; a tension between the modern experience of ambivalence and a modern desire for certainty; and the impact of Romantic sentiment and Enlightenment rationalism on expressions of evangelical piety. This does not mean that Thomas was by himself representative of the modern-evangelical experience. Nevertheless, his experience of modernity and various responses to it were characteristically modern. William Henry Griffith Thomas was born in 1861 at Oswestry, in Shropshire, England, to Annie Nightingale Griffith, a widow from before his birth. As with many prominent evangelicals, his early life reads like a Horatio Alger story – humble origins, youthful perseverance, professional success, self-assured piety. Thomas spent his childhood with his mother at the home of Dr William Griffith, his grandfather. After Griffith’s death in 1869 and following litigation

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over the estate, they moved to a small home in the Shropshire countryside. Financial straits forced Thomas to leave school at fourteen, a setback that caused him embarrassment and made him feel “handicapped from the start.”5 Thomas was “born again” in his mid-teens. He had been asked to teach Sunday school and had done his best, but gradually he had become aware that he had not yet experienced conversion himself. Fellow members of the Young Men’s Society in his Oswestry church helped lead him to a new-found faith in March 1878. They prayed with him, and “light and joy” came into his soul. The next day, Thomas remembered years later, “[My] soul was simply overflowing with joy, and since then I have never doubted that it was on that Saturday night I was born again, converted to God.”6 Thomas “devoured” religious literature and was active in his parish but remained conscious of “a good deal of wandering from God.” He did not “fall into open sin,” but was nevertheless not satisfied with himself and felt that he had failed. About eighteen months after his conversion, prayer and Bible study led him to a sanctifying experience of rest and comfort in God. “I thought that was the next thing I had to do,” he told a Victorious Life audience in the United States in 1917. The words “yield” and “abide” were “blessed of God to my soul, and I entered into a new experience, and realized as I never had before realized, what Christ is in the believer’s life.” A short time later, through a magazine, The Life of Faith, Thomas discovered that Keswick teaching explained his experiences. The Keswick – Victorious Life movement emphasized the renewing and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of indifferent believers who had undergone a conversion in the past and re-energized them to live holy lives. His experiences, Thomas explained in 1917, had inspired a lifelong participation in Victorious Life conferences in Britain and North America, the common thread running throughout the distinct phases of his career.7 When he was eighteen, Thomas moved to London to work as a clerk for his uncle, William Charles. The days were long, but he endured them and studied Greek late into the night. His chance for a ministry came when Rev. B. Oswald Sharp, the vicar of his parish, offered him a position as lay curate. Thomas spent his mornings studying and attending lectures at King’s College and afternoons and evenings in parish work. By 1885 he had earned an associateship with distinction from King’s College, achieved a first in the Cambridge Prelims, and been ordained a deacon.8 Thomas served Sharp as a curate for several years, then moved on to St Aldate’s, Oxford, to work with Canon A.M.W. Christopher. While there, he began studies that

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won him academic prizes and culminated in an earned dd. In 1896, he accepted a call to Portman Square, a London proprietary chapel that was converted into an ordinary parish, St Paul’s, in 1900. During these years, Thomas married Alice Monk (1898) and became a father (to Winifred, in 1902).9 By all accounts, Thomas’s career as a pastor was successful and typically evangelical in its mix of orthodox doctrine and modern methods. Thomas quickly gained a reputation as a powerful preacher, and his use of revival hymns was popular. St Paul’s modern “parochial machinery” included prayer meetings, men’s and women’s groups, day schools, a cycling club, a prayer union, working-class parties, temperance groups, a circulating library, a teacher’s preparation class, and a weekly Bible class. Thomas’s Bible-class notes later formed the basis for several published commentaries. His success also initiated a lifelong concern for religious education that led in the decade from 1910 and in the 1920s to a lengthy association with the Sunday School Times, an American protofundamentalist magazine. Beyond Portman Square, he conducted regular missions in London’s slums, addressed the Northfield Conference in Massachusetts in 1903, took parishioners on a trip to Palestine, and began to publish a steady stream of pamphlets, books, and articles in the religious press.10 “A Sacrament of Our Redemption” (1903?), Thomas’s first book, was a revision of his Oxford doctoral thesis. Thorough, if not imaginative or innovative, it traced the history and theology of Holy Communion and argued in irenic fashion for the evangelical point of view. The battle, Thomas wrote, “is for the simplicity, the purity, and the integrity of the Gospel of the Grace of God.”11 His popular textbook, The Catholic Faith (1904), was based on material from his confirmation classes and lectures to his parish. In it, similarly, Thomas presented a balanced summary of Anglican teaching and practices from a candid evangelical point of view, though with little controversy. He welcomed the variety of “loyal” parties in the Anglican Church but pointedly criticized extreme tractarians for their sacramentalism and for moving in “Romish” directions.12 Themes common in Thomas’s later writing can be found here in embryo. The Catholic Faith stressed the “present, continuous, and perpetual work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts” of God’s people. The Holy Spirit’s indispensable role meant that rational accounts of faith followed spiritual experience rather than preceded it. Keswick piety also found an implicit place. “Holiness is not an achievement to be accomplished,” Thomas declared, “but a gift to be accepted, and in the acceptance, appropriation, enjoyment, and use of the gift will be found our growing Sanctification.” Finally, while the book read with

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a schoolmaster’s tone, it closed with a burst of evangelical enthusiasm. Thomas proclaimed that despite obvious differences between Anglicans, they had in common a duty to evangelize the world, using the power and hope provided by God in the Holy Spirit. The “one expectation of the Church is the Coming of the Lord,” he claimed. “While we strain every nerve to evangelize the world in this generation, our hope must ever be fixed on ‘that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.’ With all these glorious certainties awaiting us in the future we must continue in prayer, in effort, in earnestness and holiness of life, ‘looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.›13 Expectant, heartening language like this marked Thomas’s popular writing throughout his career. In 1905 Thomas left Portman Square to become principal of Wycliffe Hall, the evangelical college at Oxford, the first of several times he sought a broader ministry.14 In a farewell letter to his parishioners, Thomas described his years of “happy ministry” there, expressed keen regret at leaving, but stated with conviction that he had “taken the right step in so doing.”15 His ministry grew as he had hoped it would. He taught Christian doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, and his weekly Greek New Testament reading at Oxford was popular with students, including a young T.E. Lawrence (later Lawrence of Arabia). Thomas also became a popular public speaker. He spoke for the first time at Keswick in 1906, returning often in the years that followed. He also taught at Bible conferences, was invited in 1908 by Prince Bernadotte of Sweden to address a conference there, and spoke at the Pan-Anglican Congress that same year.16 Because he was released from the day-to-day duties of parish life, Thomas had significant opportunity for interdenominational cooperation and influence while at Wycliffe Hall. His published work during this period indicates that he used this freedom to speak and write for evangelicals from various backgrounds. Yet his ministry remained rooted in evangelical Anglicanism. In England the Keswick movement attracted more Anglicans than evangelicals from other churches.17 Through Keswick, Thomas became acquainted with evangelical Anglican leaders such as Prebendary H.W. Webb-Peploe and Bishop Moule. By contrast, in North America Presbyterians, Baptists, and sectarian evangelicals dominated the Keswick–Victorious Life movement. Thomas’s Keswick experience and Anglican identity did not pull him in opposing directions in England, as they would in North America. Indeed, his position at Wycliffe Hall, training evangelical Anglican leaders and participating in the Keswick movement,

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kept him securely in the Church of England fold, while giving him opportunity to expand his influence inside and outside it.18 The varied directions in which Keswick–Victorious Life piety pulled Thomas help to explain the relationship between his personal faith and Anglican identity. In particular, his individualism and voluntarism were quintessentially modern and evangelical, as he willingly left communities behind to pursue his personal definition of faith and calling. Compared to a Dyson Hague, Thomas’s identity was more individualistic and less bound by tradition. Thomas’s decision in 1910 to accept an invitation from leading Anglican evangelicals in Toronto to teach at Wycliffe College was motivated by a similar sense of opportunity. He had gone to Canada early in 1910 on a nation-wide speaking tour and greatly impressed Wycliffe’s faculty. Other evangelical leaders in Toronto – notably S.H. Blake, a wealthy lawyer on Wycliffe’s board and an influential member of St Paul’s Church on Bloor Street – also wanted Thomas to come to Wycliffe.19 By this time the college was well established and earning the respect of Anglicans across Canada. It had trained and supplied clergy to parishes across the dominion for two generations, especially in the missionary dioceses of Canada’s West. Evangelical Anglicans in England also had become familiar with Wycliffe and its work. English periodicals, such as the militantly evangelical Record, reported on Wycliffe and the progress of missions in Canada. Wycliffe faculty, such as Principal Thomas O’Meara, often travelled to England to secure support from wealthy evangelicals there for the work of the church and college in Canada. English evangelicals also supported the acc through men and money from the Church Missionary Society.20 Principal O’Meara and the president of Wycliffe’s council, N.W. Hoyles, offered Thomas a teaching post during his visit to Canada. He turned them down. Not losing hope, Wycliffe and S.H. Blake stayed the course and courted Thomas after he returned to England. They promised a professorship in systematic theology and apologetics, opportunity for cooperation with evangelicals from other denominations, and the prospect of editing the Canadian Churchman, the national weekly of the Canadian church. Blake and O’Meara were sensitive to Thomas’s concerns about income. They acknowledged that he did not have independent means and was worried about his family’s financial well-being. They promised him that his Wycliffe salary and money from writing would cover what he was earning in England. Thomas remained reluctant,21 but after much thought and prayer, the advice of friends and colleagues, and the promise of financial security, he accepted what he felt was God’s call to go to Canada.22

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Strangely, Thomas encountered difficulties at Wycliffe from the time he arrived in Toronto later in 1910. Sometime after he accepted the college’s offer, but before he got to Toronto, Wycliffe chose to have the Canadian H.J. Cody continue to teach apologetics and systematic theology. It assigned Thomas the less prestigious position (in his view) of professor of Old Testament literature and exegesis. The evidence surrounding the incident is sketchy. Thomas clearly was unhappy but accepted what he viewed as a demotion and became a popular teacher. His daughter Winifred later remembered that academic jealousy of her father’s stature – Oxford-educated and English-born – inspired the change and other affronts that her father felt while at Wycliffe.23 If Winifred Thomas’s memories were accurate, these slights may have been an unfortunate side-effect of clumsy efforts to Canadianize the Anglican Church. Although Anglicans in the young dominion relied heavily on English resources, a movement began in the second decade of the twentieth century to make the acc more independent and indigenous. Evangelicals like Dyson Hague hoped this would help to win the unchurched of Canada to Anglicanism.24 Circumstantial evidence that this was the case relates to Thomas’s work as the editor of the Canadian Churchman (1914–16). Thomas had reported regularly on the English church. In 1916 he was replaced as editor with a Canadian who, presumably, would promote greater domestic content. These events suggest an ambivalent relationship between English and Canadian evangelicals and indicate that the acc was going through a time of transition. In any event, the incident was handled badly and, understandably, Thomas felt slighted.25 During his decade at Wycliffe, Thomas did his share of teaching but greatly expanded his labours outside the Anglican Church. In 1913 Princeton Theological Seminary asked him to give the Stone Lectures, a prestigious annual series. Thomas published the lectures as The Holy Spirit of God, his most important work of theology. He also spoke widely to popular audiences at Bible conferences across North America, nurtured the emerging Victorious Life movement in North America, and continued to speak at Keswick in England. His literary output, similarly, remained prodigious. Besides numerous pamphlets and books, Thomas wrote for the Sunday School Times and Bibliotheca Sacra, widely read conservative evangelical – later fundamentalist – periodicals. He also taught at the Toronto Bible College, an interdenominational school founded during the early twentieth century with an irenic, but generally conservative evangelical, character.26 Thomas’s experiences in Toronto thus were mixed. Although Wycliffe had brought him to Canada, he never felt comfortable there. He found

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interdenominational connections in the United States and Canada more fulfilling. Predictably, he came to value them highly, while his Anglican ties became a burden. Tensions in his overlapping and competing identities made him increasingly ambivalent – uncertain about how to define himself and with whom to associate. Before World War I Thomas’s fluid mix of modern, Anglican, evangelical, and Keswick–Victorious Life identities remained compatible. But late in the decade his identity became ambivalent and fragmented, and he felt threatened. In response he began a search for clarity and certainty.27 Even so, as long as his Anglican and interdenominational commitments did not clash directly, Wycliffe remained an effective base for his ministry. This conclusion highlights a facet of modernity explored in this study. Thomas’s move to Toronto “disembedded” him culturally and religiously. The core of his personal piety remained constant, but his social context changed dramatically. In England the Keswick movement had embedded Thomas in an evangelical Anglican community and afforded him some opportunities to cooperate with evangelicals from dissenting churches. His religious and cultural identities had not pulled in opposing, fragmenting directions. In North America, however, his sectarian interdenominational connections eventually conflicted with his Anglican obligations. This left Thomas to reflect – often painfully – on where he belonged and who he was.28 Most of Thomas’s writing during his tenure at Wycliffe began as addresses at Bible conferences, Victorious Life meetings, and Bible colleges. His Stone Lectures stand out as an “academic” exception. He first thought of them as possible Bampton Lectures at Oxford but gave them at Princeton when Benjamin Warfield invited him to speak there.29 The lectures covered the biblical basis of Christian thought on the Holy Spirit, the historical development of theology related to the Holy Spirit, and practical applications of this theology to modern issues. While The Holy Spirit of God was based on academic lectures, it overlapped significantly with Thomas’s popular work, expanding on views that he frequently articulated on scriptural authority, the dilemmas of modern religion, and the growth of holiness in believers’ lives. Crucially, although Thomas spent much time and energy defending the Bible, his life, work, and thought make most sense if he is viewed as an evangelist of the Holy Spirit.30 Before World War I, Thomas’s theology was moderate and irenic. This should be expected. Historians have argued recently that the turn of the century was an “age of the Holy Spirit,” a time free of militant conflict when liberals and conservatives alike stressed the Holy Spirit’s work in the experiences and lives of believers. Thomas

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unquestionably fits this picture.31 His volume in a series of Anglican textbooks, Christianity is Christ (1909), dealt with the relationship of the Christ of faith to the Jesus of history. He acknowledged in the book that the gospels contain “inaccuracies, inconsistencies, later additions, and interpolations,” but insisted that the inspired witness of the Bible and early church – and Christ himself – was trustworthy and credible.32 Like Dyson Hague, Thomas believed that Christianity stood or fell with the facts of the four gospels, even if faith itself ultimately hinged on a personal relationship with Christ. “The Christ of faith,” he stated plainly, “cannot be separated from the Jesus of history without losing both.”33 Already at this time, then, Thomas’s accommodation had limits. The higher critical search for the historical Jesus failed, he argued, when it neglected the supernatural in Christianity and reconstructed “the life of Jesus on a purely natural, historic, and non-mysterious” basis. “Those who attempt to do so,” Thomas stated, “have confessedly no new historical facts to deal with, no new contemporary documents to put against our Gospels. The supernatural element in Christ and Christianity remains, and demands attention.” He concluded without any doubt that “Christ is not fully set before us when he is regarded simply as an external Object to imitate, and when His ideas and ideals are to be produced in us by imitation. The true life is that which comes as the result of the Holy Spirit glorifying Christ in the heart and working in us that life and those ideas.”34 Thomas’s moderate defence of the New Testament witness of Christ grew more conservative during his time in North America, especially after World War I began. He never stopped emphasizing that at root faith depended on the power of the Holy Spirit, but his apologetics became more militant and less accommodating. Why this was so can only be answered tentatively, though environment seems crucial. In England, according to David Bebbington, Keswick teaching encouraged adherents to move towards accommodating, irenic forms of evangelicalism. There, establishment-minded Anglicans rather than sectarians dominated the Keswick movement.35 In North America, however, Keswick teaching spread primarily among conservatives. Although Anglican evangelicals and other mainline protestants took part in the Victorious Life movement, it attracted many more sectarian evangelicals, especially dispensational premillennialists. The North American Victorious Life conferences drew a more popular and less learned class of people than the Keswick movement in England.36 It may be difficult to establish causality, but Thomas’s expanding role in the Victorious Life circles during the decade after 1910 and in the early 1920s at least parallelled his ever stricter defence

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of the Bible. Thomas’s English Keswick roots led him into Victorious Life circles in the United States, where he was soon reshaped by the company he kept. Personal and individual as it was at its core, Thomas’s identity was transformed and renewed as he ended and began relationships. Keswick had embedded him in a double sense, tying him to the Anglican establishment culturally and to the middleupper class socially. The Victorious Life movement uprooted and transplanted him doubly in the comparably sectarian and lowermiddle-class movement. Other reasons for Thomas’s growing defensiveness, beyond the influence of friends in the Victorious Life movement, included the onset of World War I and problems at Wycliffe College. The war set off fears of a crisis in Western civilization in Thomas. As George Marsden has shown, many evangelicals connected liberal theology and declining piety to the war and changes in Western culture and social mores in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. Thomas’s hostile wartime essays about Germany fit with this pattern.37 To the same end, in 1917 and 1918 his personal problems at Wycliffe exaggerated his defensive theology and interest in premillennialism. They made him less willing to compromise and more apt to interpret disputes in apocalyptic terms. In short, as his personal and social circumstances became increasingly unstable, his theology turned static, unambiguous, and fundamentalist. Related to these changes, the impact of popular audiences on Thomas’s writing also seems evident during this period. Late in the second decade of the twentieth century, for example, Thomas contributed to the Sunday School Times and promoted a conservative defence and interpretation of the Bible. Similarly, the books and tracts he published on the authority and reliability of scripture were collected from public lectures at Bible conferences. In the Stronghold of Truth, a lecture series given at the Montrose Bible Conference in 1915, Thomas used a standard conservative defence of scripture. He confidently attacked the claims of higher critics, pointing to historical and literary evidence in the Bible itself, appealing to archeology, invoking the witness of Christ and his disciples, and stressing the growth of the historic church (i.e., the “results” of God’s revelation). Thomas also defended the “verbal inspiration” of scripture.38 While inspiration was not mere mechanical dictation, it did extend “to the form as well as to the substance,” to the “words as well as to the thoughts.” How “are we to know God’s thoughts, if we do not know his words?” Thomas asked. Finally, while he agreed that there are difficulties in the Bible (after all, it is “drawing back the veil”), he insisted that it deserved people’s trust and contained no demonstrable errors.

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When proof and argumentation were said and done, however, Thomas always returned to spiritual experience, basing the Bible’s authority on the testimony of the Holy Spirit in people’s hearts. He used a stock image: “If you want to appreciate the pictures on stained-glass windows, you must go inside the church; and if you want to know the Bible you must go inside, and not judge from the outside. Nor with reason only, but with conscience, and heart, and soul, and will; and when the whole nature responds to the highest criticism, rationalising critical theories can go on until doomsday without doing any harm.”39 This image fit his argument in The Holy Spirit of God, where he wrote, “There is only one way of demonstrating Christianity as a supernatural religion, and that is by a constant insistence on the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.” The true safety of the church and scripture ultimately depended on promoting piety and the work of the Holy Spirit, not reasoned apologetics.40 Thomas believed that the greatest peril of his day was the separation of the Spirit from the “word.” “The reason why there is so much darkness and dullness, and the need of Christian experience and insight,” he judged, “is that we take the Book and we forget the Author of it, the Spirit of God who gave it.”41 True Christian piety was necessary because of the impact of sin on reason. Like the other human faculties, he said, “reason has been affected by sin, has become biased, darkened, and distorted, so that it cannot be regarded as reliable as the seat of authority in religion.” It needed “to be purified and developed before it [could] give a proper answer to and verification of religion.” The solution for “the problem of arrested progress” will be found not “in the priest, or in the scholar, or in the philanthropist,” he concluded in 1913. “The supreme need to-day is that of the evangelist and the prophet.”42 The general problem Thomas wrestled with here can be interpreted as the relationship between reason and experience. The two could not be separated, he insisted, without being degraded. Doctrinal certainty and true spirituality fortified each other, and one could not be trusted without the other. This dynamic was a religious example of a fundamental modern dilemma. Modern experience has been profoundly ambivalent and fragmented, while the modern ideal is intellectual certainty. The dilemma of the one has driven the desire for the other. Thomas’s experience of fragmentation and ambivalence amidst world war, at Wycliffe College, in Victorious Life sectarianism, and in response to modern theology and biblical criticism helps to explain his growing militance. His social, cultural, and intellectual foundations were being upset. To protect the experience of saving Christian faith he began to search for certainty and denounce ambivalence.43

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Because he believed that the great danger of the age was neglect of “Christian experience,” Thomas’s passion in the decade following 1910 was Keswick-style holiness, a revival crusade that focussed on “surrender” to God as the way to faithful living and spiritual fulfilment. In North America, the Victorious Life movement promoted Keswick teaching. A frequent speaker at English Keswick conferences, Thomas soon became a regular participant in North America. He played a central role in the institutional growth of the Victorious Life movement – lecturing at summer conferences across the United States, attending annual meetings at Princeton (1913–18), helping to establish permanent conference grounds at Keswick, New Jersey. In turn, the movement had a formative influence on him. Victorious Life gatherings connected Thomas to an extensive institutional network of conservative evangelicals (many of whom later became fundamentalists). The Sunday School Times in Philadelphia promoted the Victorious Life, as did Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute and other schools. Victorious Life adherents had a passion for overseas missions. Examples include Charles Trumball, Robert McQuilkin (both wrote extensively for the Sunday School Times), and Henry Frost (North American director of the China Inland Mission). In addition, Victorious Life teaching often overlapped with dispensational premillennialism, especially at the Moody Bible Institute, the Sunday School Times, Columbia Bible College (founded by Trumball in 1923), and the Evangelical Theological College in Dallas. Uprooted from the evangelical Anglican community of Keswick in England, Thomas’s spirituality and the Victorious Life movement pulled him in conservative and sectarian directions in North America. Despite these differences, there were several continuities between the two movements. As in England, the Victorious Life crusade was an orderly middle-class offspring of the revival tradition. It appealed primarily to “saints,” not “sinners,” attracting troubled, lacklustre, and backsliding believers whose faith needed bolstering.44 “The Victorious Life Conference,” Thomas explained in 1917, “is intended to show that just as we bring the Gospel to bear upon the sinner, and make it as simple as we can, so this Gospel for the saint is intended to be equally simple, and they are both by faith. It is not justification by faith and sanctification by fighting … it is justification and sanctification by faith in the same Lord Jesus Christ.” Besides the experience of faith and sanctification, Keswick–Victorious Life speakers like Thomas stressed sound habits – daily prayer, Bible reading, and meditation. As a result of this respectability, the Victorious Life movement was not emotionalistic. When believers surrendered to Christ and

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accepted the gift of sanctification, they did so by “a continuous act of faith.” This gift, Thomas said, “is not feeling or emotion, or imagination, but fact made real by faith.”45 After surrendering in faith to Christ and receiving sanctifying power from the Holy Spirit, believers were expected to practise holy living and piety. The Victorious Life movement thus promoted a moderate Calvinism, stressing that once regenerated, the believer could choose sin or obedience.46 The experiential aspects of the Victorious Life should not be overlooked, however. Drawing on parallels to the Lord’s Supper, Thomas promised, “Surely we may believe that as [the disciples] took the bread on that night, they also took the Holy Ghost. They took, and if you and I are willing to take him this morning, as we are, and as definitely as we take the bread into our hands, that is the ‘taking’ of faith, and the Holy Ghost comes into our lives, and fills us with wisdom, power, blessing, joy, faith, courage, and everything for life, character and service.”47 He answered critics in the same way, arguing that the Victorious Life “expresses a spiritual experience and not merely a theological theory.”48 Restrained compared to Holiness revivals or Pentecostal glossolalia, the Victorious Life offered orderly assurance to middle-class evangelicals seeking refined forms of experiential Christianity. Such piety was “calculated to fill the soul with inspiration, joy, hope, and courage, and to enable it to go forward with confidence and expectation, with ‘a heart at leisure from itself,’ until the day comes when, either at death or at the Lord’s Coming, there will be absolute deliverance from the very presence of sin.”49 The role of personal religious experience and the Holy Spirit in Thomas’s revival work, as well as spirituality and religious identity, stand out in comparison to the convictions of another leading conservative evangelical, Benjamin Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary. The comparison is an apt one. Like Thomas, Warfield died (in 1921) before the fundamentalist-modernist conflict reached its zenith. Also like Thomas, Warfield was a respected conservative scholar who valued theological education and deplored the occasional heterodox excesses of popular evangelicalism. Their differences also stand out clearly, however, as they disagreed strongly about Victorious Life teachings. Unlike Thomas, who spoke comfortably to popular audiences, Warfield defended the faith primarily in an academic environment.50 Also unlike Thomas, who emphasized the priority and absolute necessity of personal spiritual experience for true faith, Warfield contended that faith, properly, began with reason.51 The debate between Thomas and Warfield, in the pages of the Princeton Theological Review and Bibliotheca Sacra in 1918 and 1919,

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was an intramural “modern” debate. As Charles Taylor has argued, modern notions of the individual self can be defined in Enlightenment and Romantic terms.52 The “Enlightened” individual emphasizes reason and intellect as defining human nature. The “Romantic” individual stresses feeling and emotional experience. In common, these modern cultural sensibilities prize individual conscience and evidence. The two are not incompatible; indeed, evangelicalism has been defined by its experience of faith and its rational common sense apologetics. However, the relationship between Enlightened and Romantic individuality – the balance – has often been strained. Like most evangelicals Thomas wanted to integrate reason and feeling but found this ideal threatened on two sides. Some evangelicals took religious experience too far, to irrational and heterodox extremes. Furthermore, liberal and modernist protestants also emphasized religious experience but explained it using an intellectual framework Thomas considered a danger to faith and doctrine. The Thomas-Warfield debate thus pitted against each other two protofundamentalist allies who judged the dangers of modern reason and experience differently. Warfield’s strength was apologetics. Indeed, he was the chief architect and greatest champion of Princeton Theology, a rigorous protestant apology for the inerrant authority of the Bible.53 He valued a sane, serene defence of the faith based on scriptural evidence and reason and felt that “perhaps no branch of scientific theology has been more fruitful during the past two centuries” than apologetics. Consequently, Warfield felt that apologetics had to play the leading role in Christianizing the entire world. “It is the distinction of Christianity,” he said, “that it has come into the world clothed with the mission to reason its way to its dominion.”54 His insistence on the primacy of reason led him to view faith in rigorously rational terms. He was unable to conceive of faith not first grounded in evidence.55 For Warfield Thomas’s belief that saving faith underlay certainty of truth reversed the natural order. Unlike Thomas, he de-emphasized the effects of sin on human reason and underscored the common intellectual ground occupied by sinners and saints. Although he acknowledged that sin had corrupted humanity, Warfield believed that it had not destroyed or altered any human faculty in its essence.56 Warfield’s understanding of the relationship between the work of the Holy Spirit and the role of human reason led him to an unusual distinction between types of faith. He argued: “The truth therefore is that rational argumentation does, entirely apart from the specific operation of the Holy Ghost which produces saving faith, ground a genuine exercise of faith. This operation of the Spirit is not necessary then

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to produce faith, but only to give a faith which naturally grows out of the proper grounds of faith, that peculiar quality which makes it saving faith.”57 Despite this odd distinction, Warfield did not neglect piety and experience. In fact, he insisted on the value of prayer and the need of the Holy Spirit. In the balance between reason and experience, however, he stressed the side of reason. “Only the Spirit of Life,” he confessed, “can communicate life to a dead soul, or can convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement. But we are arguing that faith is, in all its exercises alike, a form of conviction, and is therefore, necessarily grounded in evidence.”58 Warfield’s criticism of the Victorious Life stemmed from a strict devotion to rational faith. He castigated the movement’s obsession (in his view) with religious experience and its heterodox tendencies. Indeed, he considered its “mystical” teachings a relativist, modern threat to orthodoxy as dangerous as liberal-modernism itself.59 In a long article in the Princeton Theological Review of July 1918, he raised scriptural, doctrinal, and logical objections to the Victorious Life.60 Tellingly, his most damning criticism focussed on how the Victorious Life portrayed the Holy Spirit’s work of grace in believers. Warfield cited contradictions in Victorious Life teachings on sanctification. When believers surrendered and received God’s gift of sanctification, Christ totally overwhelmed their hearts, “counteracting” inclinations towards sin. Yet according the movement’s teaching, people stayed in perpetual danger of reverting to a sinful life. He protested: “How, in the name of all that is rational, can I retain a power to resist Him when I retain no body or mind or soul or spirit of my own; when I no longer exist as a distinguishable entity, but Christ has become me as literally as the tree which furnishes the wood of which a desk has been made has become that desk? Where is the seat of this power to resist Him?”61 On the one hand, the Victorious Life tended towards quietism; believers surrendered to an overwhelming God. On the other, it affirmed Pelagian heresy; believers had to actively decide to surrender and even then could backslide.62 Thomas’s response in Bibliotheca Sacra in July and October 1919 was respectful but firm. Point by point he countered the biblical and doctrinal criticisms made by Warfield and defended the orthodoxy of Victorious Life teachings.63 And yet, crucially, the evangelistic intent of these teachings was the rock on which his defence rested. He protested that Warfield’s theology provided no “real Gospel for the saint.” The “supreme lack” in Warfield’s teaching, he complained, “is the absence of any recognition of the fact that the Movement he criticizes and condemns expresses a spiritual experience and not merely a theological theory.” Like cause and effect, the two could

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not be separated, Thomas agreed. But it seemed imperative to him that “this experience should be considered and the fact and meaning of it explained.” “No experience which carries moral and ethical value can be without a basis of some truth,” he explained. “As the matter now stands,” he continued firmly, “Dr. Warfield’s criticisms are concerned with theological theory, without any attempt, so far as I can judge, to perceive and appreciate the undoubted spiritual experience underlying the Movement.”64 He crowned his argument with testimony about his own experience of the Victorious Life. Thomas’s debate with Warfield was suggestive, because it led him to articulate a subjective view of religious experience at a time when he was moving towards fundamentalism.65 Some historians have claimed that fundamentalism marked a retreat from immanence in Christian piety, from theology focussed on Christ’s humanity and the inner working of the Holy Spirit.66 This generalization only loosely fits Thomas and his Victorious Life colleagues. They did downplay the humanity of Jesus but also continued to promote the Holy Spirit’s renewing power. His career thus raises questions about fundamentalism. How did various fundamentalists view the relationship between reason and spiritual experience? What difference did this make for their attitudes towards North American society and other Christians? Has the significance of common sense ideology for fundamentalism been overstated? People like Thomas certainly valued facts and evidence but they denied the optimistic psychology and anthropology of common sense thought. Rather than abstract theology, or even the Bible itself, fundamentalists like Thomas were concerned primarily with the spiritual divide that separated believers and the unconverted.67 These issues shed light on the character of the emerging fundamentalist movement. George Marsden’s description of it as a “patchwork coalition” is fair. Internal fundamentalist conflicts were as significant as their infamous battles with modernists in the long run.68 The fundamentalist movement of the interwar years was unstable and internally divided from the start. Modern spiritual divides thus cannot be drawn in one-dimensional terms. Thomas’s identity was fluid and fragmented, and its various facets overlapped and competed, as the turning points in his trans-Atlantic career indicate. With whom did he identify? When and why? Whom did he exclude? What boundaries separated fundamentalists from conservative evangelicals? In short, could Thomas identify with any of his colleagues without reserve? Thomas’s debate with Warfield and his growing militancy coincided with renewed personal disaffection in Canada. In 1917 and 1918 his

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relationship with Wycliffe College soured again. Whether or not it was an excuse belying other motives, Thomas was criticised for spending too much time with interdenominational activities, to the detriment of his duties at Wycliffe and in the Anglican Church. By this time, he was a close associate of conservative American evangelicals such as Charles Trumball, Louis Sperry Chafer, R.A. Torrey, and others. In turn, Thomas grumbled that his teaching load and other obligations at the college were too heavy (he had taken over systematic theology). He also was not happy with the houses that the college had rented for him over the years, forcing his family to move several times. Worse, his salary at Wycliffe had not grown as he had expected, and he could not earn enough money writing because of duties at the college. Finally, he hinted that the college, unbeknownst to supporters, was becoming liberal. He did not trust some aspects of Wycliffe’s curriculum and threatened that he could cause trouble among the alumni.69 Several times in 1917 and 1918 Thomas offered to leave to allow Wycliffe to meet its budget more easily. With a vastly reduced student enrolment during the war, the college no longer needed or wanted him, he felt. By May 1919 Thomas and Wycliffe had grown tired of each other. After several emergency executive-committee meetings, he left for Philadelphia. The college kept his departure quiet, but rumours of mutual animosity spread among the alumni. Some college supporters even threatened to withhold money if it did not offer an acceptable explanation for the incident.70 Ultimately, Thomas left for various personal, financial, and theological reasons. As with his move to Canada, in Philadelphia he hoped to find a wider ministry, independence from institutional restraints, and the freedom to write and speak at conferences more extensively.71 In Philadelphia he also would play a central role in the early development of fundamentalism. Thomas was individualistic, entrepreneurial, and modern in following his personal principles and his voluntaristic denial of the bonds of community. The move continued the “disembedding” of Thomas from his English and Anglican roots. It is no accident that the experience of personal ambivalence and fragmentation had led him in fundamentalist directions. Ironically, Thomas may have been looking for theological stability and intellectual certainty to replace the bonds of community that he had cut over the years. In some ways his experience was that of an immigrant, uprooted and transplanted in strange soil. And yet, continuities need to be acknowledged as well. The Victorious Life movement continued to provide him with colleagues and communities, albeit in an increasingly loose, competing, and pluralistic coalition of conservative evangelicals.72

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Thomas’s growing militancy on Biblical and doctrinal issues was evident in his reaction to World War I. Historians have depicted the war’s impact on the evolution of fundamentalism in different ways. While it delayed the fundamentalist-modernist crisis, according to F.M. Szasz, George Marsden maintained that it was a catalyst for fundamentalism. World War I raised the stakes of theological conflict by encouraging extremist language and arousing fears of a crisis in Western civilization.73 In part, then, both historians are correct. The war crystallized lines of conflict previously forming but delayed organized denominational conflicts, as church leaders focussed on supporting the Allied cause and avoiding wartime unrest. Participating in this process in 1915 in Bibliotheca Sacra, Thomas described the connections he saw between the war and the “view of the Bible which has prevailed in Germany for many years past.” He asked why German churches had been unable to stem the tide of militarism and cited their lack of cohesion. Thomas then claimed that “religion has not been allowed to enter into German politics” and declared “that Christ as expressing God has been woefully ignored and neglected in Germany.” He asked, “Is it any matter of surprise that, having denied the Divine claims of Christ, the German leaders should come to emphasize power and force” more than “righteousness and love?” Germany had denied the “new birth” and had “done more than all other so-called Christian nations” to destroy faith in the supernatural. “And it is a matter of profound regret,” Thomas worried even more, “that so much British and American [biblical] scholarship has sat at the feet of Germany for the past generation.”74 North American and British Christians showed no more charity than their German counterparts, but this is not at issue here. Neither is Thomas’s own one-sided attack on German Christianity. The point is his fear that declining piety and liberal theology had caused the war.75 Worse yet, according to Thomas, what had happened in Germany was likely to occur next in America and Britain. Perceived connections between theological innovation and cultural crisis also stood out in Thomas’s changing views of evolution. In 1915 he attacked the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, who for him symbolized the war: Nietzsche “carried the doctrine of Darwinian evolution into ethics, and declared that the goal of the human race was the emergence of a higher type of humanity, so high that it would transcend morality itself,” Thomas said. Nietzsche had contempt for mediocrity, virtue, and the rule of law, dismissed passion and love as “the virtues of slaves,” and considered religion a decadent institution. He especially hated Christianity and its ideals, viewing it as “a religion for the

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‘herd.›76 In Thomas’s eyes, the cultural consequences of Darwin’s evolutionary thought led straight to the Nietzschean eclipse of morality. The contrast with Thomas’s earlier, more accommodating, views is striking. At Oxford he had accepted evolutionary interpretations of the biblical account of creation, including the physical evolution of humankind. He had disagreed only on the spiritual, moral, and personal quality of humanity, maintaining that God had breathed life and Adam had become “a living soul.”77 Late in the second decade of the twentieth century he had abandoned these nuanced views and condemned evolutionary philosophy and science outright. At heart, for Thomas the issue was not the science of human development but the symbolism of evolution as a theory of cultural development, particularly of morality and the Bible.78 For this reason, during World War I and after, Thomas attacked evolutionary science as an unproven hypothesis and railed against evolutionary accounts of religion and ethics.79 The war and its aftermath left Thomas uprooted, displaced, and homeless culturally. In the past his fluid personal identity had tied him to various overlapping groups of believers. During the years 1910–19 he began to experience this fluidity as fragmented and ambiguous. The threat of cultural chaos and what he saw as its origins in modernist theology and biblical scholarship led him to promote the certainties promised in fundamentalism. It is noteworthy that unlike Reformed Episcopalians, Thomas never seems to have felt formal secession from Anglicanism to be necessary. Perhaps he had judged that decision a failure. Perhaps secession was irrelevant for him. In North America he moved as an individual through the transdenominational networks of fundamentalism. The paradox is that these decisions only increased Thomas’s discomfort.80 After the war, Thomas’s fear of cultural crisis lingered. He expressed doubts about the League of Nations, saying that if sin was not taken into account, the peace conference would simply deal with the symptoms and not the cause of world catastrophe. The world would not be made safe so much by democracy, he said, as by the “autocracy” of Jesus Christ.81 This truth had not changed; but the war’s end did mark a change in the opportunities presented to protofundamentalist evangelicals. No longer concerned that church conflicts would hurt the war effort, they raised the banners of orthodoxy. For his part, Thomas helped organize early meetings of the wcfa with sectarian radicals such as William B. Riley, Frank Norris, and Reuben A. Torrey. He thus became part of the loose, erratic coalition of militants who quickly earned the name “fundamentalist.”82

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Thomas’s own fundamentalist leanings and activities came to light in his support of missions. In 1920, on behalf of the Sunday School Times, he and Charles Trumball visited several protestant missions in China. The controversies that resulted from their trip provide evidence of Thomas’s willingness to use fundamentalist tactics in the fight against modernism. In China he and Trumball found that modernism had infected much of the missionary enterprise. To their horror they encountered missionaries teaching the Chinese that salvation did not depend on Christ’s death and resurrection. In response, they helped to start a conservative countermovement that ultimately became the Bible Union of China, an organization dedicated to promoting orthodoxy and traditional soul-winning in the mission fields. Opponents of conservative evangelicalism criticized Thomas for spreading mischief and division in China.83 His rebuttal, in October 1921 in the Princeton Theological Review, turned the tables on them, blaming liberal intolerance of orthodoxy for his actions. “So long as conservatives are silent there is ‘union,’ and meanwhile the other side propagate their views,” Thomas observed. “But when conservatives speak out they are ‘divisive.› He also claimed that his speeches and organizing efforts had merely exposed divisions and galvanized feelings that had predated their arrival. Conservatives in China had formalized these divisions by organizing the Bible Union after Thomas and Trumball had left.84 The real issue in the mission fields, Thomas said, was not who started the mischief but the fact of opposing views of the Bible’s authority. Conservatives needed to become informed about goingson in China. They needed to influence mission boards and equip missionaries with the “best books on the conservative side.” Thomas expressed hope that such action would bear fruit. The Chinese, he noted sadly, took the Bible far more seriously than their liberal missionaries. Despite these dangers, he trusted that the conservative side would produce spiritual results that critical teaching and liberal theology could never match. Thomas thus found hope in the Bible Union of China. He concluded his account with stirring words that expressed hope, intractability, and disaffection with modernity. “Christianity is Christ, and civilization is not necessarily Christianity,” he observed. “Christianity means the Gospel, and the Gospel means redemption from sin; and it behoves those at home and those abroad to seek to proclaim by lip and life the message of that Gospel as ‘the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.› Battles over missions became a common arena of conflict between modernists and fundamentalists in the 1920s and 1930s. The vibrancy of evangelical missions and the decline of

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mainline efforts suggest that while fundamentalists may have lost the battle at home, they gained the upper hand overseas.85 The battle over missions, waged by Thomas in China and in the pages of the Prince Theological Review, highlights his view of modernity. “Christianity is Christ, and civilization is not necessarily Christianity.” Thomas was profoundly antimodern in his ideological rejection of contemporary civilization. But he remained remarkably modern in other ways. He continued to promote a Romantic individual religious experience, a spirituality that was felt. And he was acting more and more individually in the loose coalitions of evangelicalism and fundamentalism in North America. The Victorious Life movement embodied this combination of antimodern ideology and modern culture and organization. The contrast with Dyson Hague is significant. Unlike Hague, whose spirituality continued to express deep reverence for past generations of the faithful, Thomas’s neglect of Christian tradition was modernist (and his antimodernism was not traditionalist).86 His piety thus revealed an ambivalence typical of the relationship between fundamentalism and modernity – a hypermodernity in form and an antimodern ideology. In the United States, this fundamentalist-modernity ambivalence was directed towards “American” culture.87 The fundamentalists Thomas associated with viewed the situation in North America in essentially paradoxical ways. On the one hand, as hyperpatriots they defended “traditional” American values. On the other hand, their typically dispensational premillennial eschatology led them to express a radical, pessimistic rejection of much of what they saw in modern American society. They felt alienated, like strangers in their own land.88 Many of Thomas’s close colleagues in the Victorious Life movement came from nondenominational groups and institutions. And those from mainline churches often had stronger allegiances to their transdenominational allies. They stood in a long line of sectarian Christians in the United States who were willing to cut their losses to maintain autonomy and purity. These fundamentalists championed modern ecclesiastical practices and cultural outlooks that encouraged militancy and suspicion.89 From this perspective, the fundamentalist-modernist crisis was not at root a battle over theology, ideology, or the Bible. First and foremost, fundamentalism’s fear of ambiguity and desire for certainty was a form of spiritual warfare. Ironically, the militant anarchism that fundamentalism encouraged in people like William Bell Riley and Reuben Torrey alienated Thomas. In the three years before his death in 1924 he pulled back from fundamentalist radicalism and returned to a more irenic, sober, intellectual, and respectable form of conservative evangelicalism.90 His sense of the problem and the remedy – his identity – shifted again. He had always tried to carry himself with

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Victorian dignity. Twentieth-century cultural change had threatened him and inspired feelings of crisis, but the vulgar and sometimes bizarre extremes of fundamentalism had alienated him as well. A subtle theological distinction between Thomas and his militant colleagues was his view of the return of Christ. As with Dyson Hague, Thomas’s eschatology was premillennial and more practical than dispensational or speculative. In this spirit he insisted that the Second Coming (“that Blessed Hope”) be treated as “practical and vital for daily living.” Believers should try to avoid unnecessary detail and concentrate their attention on the main elements of premillennial teaching.91 Those who lived in the hope of Christ’s return and avoided speculation would find inspiration for service, holiness, and courage. “[In] occupation with Christ as a present Saviour and Lord and in constant expectation of him as our coming Master and King,” Thomas promised, “we shall realize everything that God intends for us in connection with the teaching of the coming. ‘Christ in you the hope of glory.›92 Reflecting this pragmatic, hopeful attitude, Thomas’s views of the millennium did not have the drastic cultural pessimism and conspiratorial instinct so common to dispensationalism. In 1923 he explained his position: “The Premillennialist is often charged with pessimism, but in reality he is the only true optimist. This does not mean the cheap and easy optimism of ignoring facts, but that spirit of courage which comes from looking even the most dark problems in the face, and then rejoicing to know that ‘the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.›93 Thomas had never identified his faith with nationality and had gone where he believed God had called him, from England, to Canada, and to the United States. For these reasons, perhaps, his experience of a crisis of civilization in the West was not as enduring as that which troubled many American fundamentalists throughout the interwar years. Indeed, in North America Thomas had found a welcoming, comfortable environment. He had disentangled himself from his English and Anglican roots and had left behind fixed, embedded identities. This process had been liberating, giving Thomas a wider ministry and (he hoped) financial security, but it also made him anxious and encouraged a fundamentalist desire for theological-ideological certainty.94 Thomas’s discomfort with extreme, sectarian fundamentalism can also be explained by the character of his conservatism in the years 1910–19. He had directed his defence of scripture to audiences of faithful men and women who believed but needed their faith shored up with clear statements of the credibility of scripture. The danger that moderately liberal evangelicals posed (more than modernists

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from Thomas’s point of view) was not a lack of faith but the way they undermined trust and certainty in the “facts” of the faith. Liberal evangelicals and modernists raised questions about the Bible that confused believers and damaged the church’s evangelistic mission.95 With such practical spiritual ends in mind he tried to answer the difficult questions that modern criticism posed for ordinary believers. For this reason Thomas found people who defended the Bible but accepted some conclusions of modern criticism especially frustrating. Faithful or apostate, the effect of their work was the same, he worried. In his review of On What Authority? by E.A. Knox, the bishop of Manchester, he praised Knox’s defence of scriptural authority, but questioned Knox’s refusal to call the Bible infallible. “[This] is decidedly puzzling,” he wrote with frustration, “because, obviously, people will ask how we are to distinguish between truth and error, because if where we can verify the Bible, it is proved to be incorrect, how can we trust it when it speaks of the things which are revealed and which are beyond our verification?”96 Despite his own conviction that faith was ultimately rooted in spiritual experience, Thomas distrusted all forms of intellectual ambiguity, seeing such ambiguity as detrimental to the certain piety demanded by ordinary believers. In the same pragmatic fashion, Thomas did not question the faith and motives of militant fundamentalists but seems to have worried that their radicalism was leading in undignified, anti-intellectual, and dangerous directions. In contrast, he advocated an intelligent, temperate conservatism. And so, in response to extreme fundamentalism he joined Louis Sperry Chafer and A.B. Winchester in organizing the Evangelical Theological College in Dallas. Their dream was a school that would encourage deep spirituality (which the mainline seminaries had failed to do), teach sound theological knowledge, and promote learning (which Bible institutes too often failed to do). The new school was to put a premium on “a constructive testimony,” explicating the Bible, and preaching a gospel that could win converts. In this way it distanced itself from Riley, the wcfa, hateful polemics, and frenzied appeals for money.97 Conservatives like Thomas found fundamentalist extremism, much like modernist theology, to be a threat to the faith. Its unsavoury, disreputable excesses put evangelicalism in a negative light that might turn potential believers away from the gospel. Perhaps Thomas remained more English, Anglican, and Victorian than he realized, especially when pressed by fundamentalist extremism. Even if it should not be overemphasized, this retreat from fundamentalism between 1921 and 1924 marked a return to Thomas’s earlier, less militant, views. He never wholly dissociated himself from fundamentalism and continued to speak at Victorious Life conferences, to

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write for the Sunday School Times, and to promote the Evangelical Theological College in Dallas. But he rejected the sectarian excesses of the wcfa and encouraged a more genteel, less marginal defence of evangelical orthodoxy. The continuities and discontinuities in his life, work, thought, and identity come together in these small differences. The mission that continued to direct Thomas’s life and changing views was Keswick–Victorious Life piety – its promise of the free gift of sanctification, its practical demands of holy living, and its promotion of personal piety through the power of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers whose faith had stagnated. The key to the twists and turns of Thomas’s career, this analysis reveals, is the context in which he worked. In Britain the Anglicandominated Keswick movement had tied him to the established Church of England. In North America, especially the United States, the Victorious Life movement and a desire to be free of institutional barriers led in sectarian, fundamentalist directions. But when fundamentalism threatened to marginalise the evangelical gospel, he backed away. In short, Thomas’s loyalty to institutions and communities evolved significantly in response to circumstances, but his essential convictions and basic spiritual purpose stayed the same. As has been emphasized in this and previous chapters, this story is a decidedly modern one. It offers an opportunity to reflect on modernity and self-identity. Postmodern scholars often depict the individual as a social construction. In some ways Thomas is a case study. Social-cultural context clearly defined Thomas’s self-identity as he moved from English Anglicanism and Keswick circles to North America’s Victorious Life movement and sectarian fundamentalism. The competing identities that pulled and pushed at Thomas – evangelical, Anglican, English, fundamentalist, and more – “constructed” him. And yet, amidst the distinct phases of Thomas’s career there was a logic, an integrity, revealed in an individual actively searching for his identity. Thomas was acted on, “constructed” socially and culturally, but he was also an actor. However fragmented an individual, however anxious his experience of modernity, he also found the fluidity of modern North American culture, exemplified in American evangelicalism, to be liberating. This is not the place to resolve scholarly disputes over the modern, “essentialist” rational-choice-making individual of liberal political-economic theory and the “socially constructed,” fragmented personae of postmodern thought. Indeed, it blurs the lines in these disputes.98 If Thomas did not live up to the modern ideal of the individual, neither does he fit the opposite, postmodern, extreme.

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In the end, then, who was Thomas? During the last years of his life Thomas spent more time outside Anglican circles than inside them. He had written widely on the Church of England early in his career; however, by late in the second decade of the twentieth century he was interested primarily in broader evangelical concerns. It is too much to say that the Church of England became a mere convenience for him, but he was an evangelical first and an Anglican second. And yet, at the end of his life Thomas continued to work on a detailed study of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Church of England’s chief doctrinal statement, a project he had begun earlier, in the years 1910–19.99 A clue about Thomas’s attitudes towards Anglicanism can be found in The Holy Spirit of God, his Stone Lectures of 1913. In a chapter on the Holy Spirit’s role in doctrinal development, he reflected on the relationship between the Bible and the church: “This question of the relation of Holy Scripture to the Church and of the Church to Scripture is of supreme importance. We fully believe that it is impossible to ignore Christian history and to start our consideration of doctrine de novo. But we also believe in the essential identity between the product of to-day and the germ of the first days, our criterion of this being the litera scripta of the New Testament.”100 Thomas was too much an Anglican, too steeped in history, to ignore tradition. But he also felt the primitivist pull of evangelicalism, the yearning to restore Christianity to the supposed lost purity of the early church.101 This tension illuminates his ambivalence towards both Anglicanism and fundamentalism. On the one hand, during the second decade of the century, as feelings of crisis grew, he focussed more and more on defending the Bible and promoting Victorious Life spirituality. Anglicanism thus lost its primary importance for him. Indeed, at Wycliffe College it became a troublesome burden. On the other hand, the ahistorical excesses and dogmatism of fundamentalism alienated him, perhaps pushing him back towards tradition. In the end he could not shake his Anglican heritage. As a modern movement evangelical protestantism could lead a person away from particular denominational identities into transdenominational organizations and movements. Unlike Dyson Hague, in his response to modernity Thomas did not root himself in an Anglican subidentity, in one fragment. Instead, the breakup of the protestant consensus left Thomas uprooted and in search of communities.102 He did not like to be tied down by his Anglican heritage, but those ties continued to define him. Thomas’s decisions at the end of his life also reinforce the point that fundamentalism never had a clear identity. From the start it was a fragmented coalition with deep internal divisions. People such as

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James Gray, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Trumball, and Thomas himself did become more militant in the second and third decades of the century. More important, they had worked independently of the mainline Protestant denominations for years. In the 1920s they unabashedly warned of the danger of modernism (and sometimes of extreme fundamentalism) but also continued to do evangelistic work (in foreign and domestic missions, the Victorious Life, and Bible colleges) as they had for years. In the denominational conflicts – Presbyterian and Baptist, especially – that militancy and those divisions threatened to obscure the gospel. Extremism also flourished on the eccentric far right of fundamentalism, where charismatic leaders scorned even the nondenominational network of Thomas and his Victorious Life colleagues.103 This analysis also suggests that the American fundamentalist crisis of the 1920s has been emphasized out of proportion to its importance. The interwar years were crucial to the character of American evangelicalism in the twentieth century, but the growth of an independent premillennialist community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the formation of lasting rifts between conservatives and liberals in American Christianity likely were more important.104 The fundamentalist-modernist crisis was a series of local, denominational conflicts and did not produce a unified movement. It raised the consciousness of people like Thomas who were part of the premillennialist and Victorious Life movements, but it did not affect them to the same degree as it did those tied closely to denominations (T.T. Shields, Carl McIntyre, William B. Riley, J. Gresham Machen, and others). If historians have put too much weight on the conflicts of the 1920s, it may be that the sound and the fury of the decade has obscured the greater importance of the long-term cultural and institutional fracturing of protestantism. Thomas’s story suggests that some fundamentalists backed away from the babel of denominational conflict in the early 1920s and simply continued to build nondenominational institutions, as they had been doing for several decades.105 The ideology of the fundamentalist-modernist conflicts has also obscured the “modernity” of both movements. While fundamentalists rejected the theological movement known as “modernism,” as Thomas’s life and thought indicate, they were typically modern in their desire for certainty, ambivalent experiences, and disembedded sectarian identities. While it is necessary and fruitful to study selfconsciously “modern” and “antimodern” ideologies in religious and cultural movements, this should not overshadow the fact that

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both modernists and fundamentalists were wrestling with modernity and offering competing identities in a modern North American cultural marketplace. The relationship between Anglicanism and fundamentalism is also clarified by Thomas’s story. The impact of dispensational thought on Anglican evangelicals and their role in importing it to North America has been described by historians.106 Common theological ground and cooperation existed between Anglicans and fundamentalists. But Thomas’s prolonged journey from the Church of England to American fundamentalism points to the incongruities between establishment traditions and sectarian movements. Thomas rejected ecclesiastical restraints for vocational and personal reasons. In the years 1910–19 his sectarian instincts had grown in inverse proportion to his Anglican loyalties. And unlike such Canadian colleagues as Dyson Hague, whose conservative faith was intellectually similar, Thomas moved towards fundamentalism. He later stepped back from fundamentalist extremes, in the end feeling that he could best promote evangelical spirituality in the loosely organised Victorious Life movement, not the Anglican communion or fundamentalism. What does this analysis mean for the peculiarly Anglican dilemmas of identity in North America during the early twentieth century? Do Thomas’s experiences and loyalties represent anything more than one person’s quest for a spiritual home? Certainly his interest in interdenominational evangelicalism, especially the Victorious life movement, parallelled the decision of Reformed Episcopalians who left the pecusa when it, in their view, was lost to anglo-catholicism and no longer contributed to the role they hoped to have in American protestantism. However, as Allen Guelzo has noted, the rec secession had a negligible impact on American evangelicalism. It became one more sectarian group in a fractured American religious mosaic. Thomas did not need them, did not need to formally leave Anglicanism, to be part of either the Victorious Life or fundamentalism – although he did cut ties with specific Anglican organisations, such as Wycliffe College, when they hindered his freedom.107 Thomas’s life and journey is best seen as a trajectory taken by a minority of Anglican evangelicals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As evangelical and Anglican identities pulled against each other, or “evangelical” identities began to outweigh “Anglican” tradition in importance, some Anglicans lost interest in their church and began to focus their time, energy, and identity on pan-evangelical movements and institutions. The revivalist piety of the Victorious Life, other transdenominational movements, and the fundamentalist

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defence of the faith reshaped their identities. For these people such a move was a break, but it also represented continuity with pan-protestant identities and movements that had shaped evangelical Anglicanism throughout the nineteenth century. Thomas thus represents people for whom evangelical came first, Anglican second. The next chapter, on Bishop William Manning, shows how the dilemmas of Anglican identity could also lead in the opposite direction. The threat of modernity inspired Manning to define with increasing rigidity what it meant to be Anglican – in the form of a high-church “fundamentalism.” However, even as his definition of Anglicanism narrowed, Manning insisted that he was defending not just his own communion but also the larger hope of a reunited, reawakened Christendom. His crusade also took Anglicanism in sectarian directions and did little to reconfigure and renew a sense of historic identity and common purpose that could unite American Episcopalians. If Thomas chose to disembed himself, to divest himself of English and Anglican traditions, Manning chose the opposite. His response to modernity was to try to embed the Episcopal Church in an increasingly rigid form of tradition.

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6 William T. Manning: Apostolic Order and Evangelical Truth The Episcopal Church stands in a relation of warm and living touch and of fellowship at many points with Protestantism. But her own faith and order as judged by the standards of the undivided Church are fundamentally and definitely Catholic. Her distinctive beliefs are those which have been held and taught by the Catholic Church throughout the world since the Apostles’ days. She has inherited these through nineteen centuries of history. William T. Manning, The Protestant Episcopal Church and Christian Unity (1915)1

Despite a distinct evangelical impulse in his faith, William Manning’s religious identity was profoundly high church. The paradox runs deep. Manning was a lifelong advocate of personal conversion; he was the man Billy Sunday said he most admired in the Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, to protect the integrity of the episcopacy and ensure the historical continuity of apostolic succession, Manning worked in the 1930s and 1940s to derail negotiations for organic union between the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches.2 This high-church identity and strict rejection of essential protestant dogma was also evident in Manning’s view of the Bible. He repudiated the Reformation ideal of “scripture alone,” pointing out that “the Bible comes to us from the Church.” After all, the Bible “did not produce the Church, the Church produced the Bible.” More significantly, Manning judged, “the modern Protestant principle of the Bible and the Bible only, with every man his own interpreter of the Bible, has resulted in the present tragic division and disunion among Christians.”3 To interpret scripture faithfully, believers required the guidance of both the Holy Spirit and the church. The laudable protestant emphasis on freedom and personal faith thus needed to be balanced – more than balanced – with the authority and order of catholicism. Individual relationships with Jesus, Manning believed, could be maintained only through communion with the saints in the divinely appointed body of Christ. Contrary to protestantism, he insisted as an Episcopalian that piety could not long be

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separated from the God-given institutional framework of Christian life (i.e., the church, its bishops, and its sacraments) without dying. By emphasizing both evangelical faith and apostolic order, Anglican tradition bridged protestantism and catholicism, Manning believed. In a modern world full of great potential and deep peril for the faith, the unique Episcopal/Anglican mission and purpose was to promote Christian reunion. Consequently, he opposed organic union with the Presbyterian Church. Unilateral reunion with a protestant denomination would prevent the pecusa from serving as a bridge to the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. It would also be apostasy, a betrayal of the Episcopal Church’s Anglican and catholic heritage.4 Manning’s convictions and career raise a number of interesting questions. How was high-church Episcopalianism influenced by the evangelical protestant culture of nineteenth century America? Why did Manning insist with growing vehemence after 1930 that church authority depended on the unbroken historical line of apostolic episcopal succession? Was his understanding of Anglican tradition comprehensive or sectarian? In general, how did the dilemma of being “in but not of” modern American Christianity – culturally a part of it, yet transcending it – shape the historical identity and spiritual purpose of Episcopalians like Manning? These issues also point to the dilemmas of modernity and identity. In response to the “disembedding” and relativizing processes in modern culture and society, Manning defended his Episcopalian tradition with increasing militancy. His insistence that individual faith would die unless rooted in Anglican tradition and apostolic episcopal succession was profoundly antimodern. William Thomas Manning was born on 12 May 1866 in Northampton, England, the second child of John and Matilda Manning. Little is known about his childhood, other than that he did well in school in England. In 1882, when he was sixteen, Manning and his family migrated to America, to the frontier in Nebraska. In 1886 a hailstorm destroyed the family’s farm and crop, and the Mannings picked up and moved to San Diego. In California, John Manning continued to farm but also practised law. The family found its footing there, and John and William became active in St Paul’s Church, as a Sunday school superintendent and an assistant.5 Young William Manning’s Sunday school career suggests that early on he was inclined towards personal piety and religious vocation, perhaps encouraged by his father. There is no evidence that he attended revivals in England or America or had a singular conversion experi-

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ence. The crucial event in his spiritual evolution seems to have been his decision in 1888 to study theology at the University of the South, in Tennessee. While there, Manning was influenced by William Porcher DuBose, the school’s Episcopalian chaplain and a professor in the theology department. DuBose has been described as a philosopher and mystic theologian. Not well known in his own time, some scholars have recently viewed him as the most imaginative and insightful theologian the pecusa has ever produced. DuBose and Manning became master and apprentice and, over time, close friends and colleagues.6 DuBose was born on a South Carolina plantation in 1836. Both sides of his family came from old Huguenot stock, but the DuBoses had been in America for six generations by the time of his birth. His grandfather had been an adjutant on General Francis Marion’s staff during the Revolution, and William followed this military tradition, graduating from The Citadel, South Carolina’s military college, in 1855. From there he went to the University of Virginia (ma, 1859) and to the seminary at the University of South Carolina. In 1861 DuBose became a Confederate chaplain. After the war he was ordained a priest and posted to churches in South Carolina. In 1871 he was elected chaplain and professor of ethics and apologetics at the University of the South. He was chosen dean of the theological department in 1894, where he had since become professor of New Testament. He stayed until his death in 1918.7 DuBose’s convictions evolved from a youthful evangelical faith, when first ordained, to more liberal and catholic views. Idealism, evolutionary thought, and incarnational theology shaped his piety, transforming it into a mystical catholic understanding of Christ and the church. For example, while Christ was God’s unique incarnation, DuBose believed that all people were created in God’s image and thus shared a generic incarnation. In the same vein, he stressed God’s immanence and Christ’s humanity, that in Christ God became human with all the troubles, weaknesses, and pains of mortality, except sin. DuBose also insisted, however, that Christ was the divine logos, the eternal Word and Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary. Nothing in modern scholarship shook his liberal-minded orthodoxy; indeed, it strengthened his faith and enriched his theology.8 The most significant impact that DuBose had on Manning was to help his student to assimilate the best aspects of anglo-catholic and evangelical spirituality. As a young man, Manning seems to have had a strong pietist impulse. DuBose likely helped him to explore this faith in evangelical terms, as a personal relationship with Jesus. However, since DuBose himself had found evangelical theology to be unsatisfying, intellectually and aesthetically, he also taught the young

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Manning to appreciate high-church doctrines of the church. In a sense, Manning’s early evolution towards a mixture of catholic and evangelical piety mirrored DuBose’s own journey. Manning also learned about the “comprehensiveness” of Episcopal tradition and Christianity from DuBose. His teacher’s emphasis on “one faith, one blood, and one hope” characterised Manning’s own preaching, as did DuBose’s experiential, sacramental, incarnational theology. In 1936, while reviewing a biography of DuBose, Manning commented on the spiritual integrity of his teacher. “Many today seem to take it for granted that honest and fearless thinking must necessarily lead away from full belief in Christ,” he observed. “It was not so with this honest and fearless thinker. No man could be more loyal to truth than he was.” DuBose had tested orthodoxy with the best of modern science, Manning contended, but had never rejected anything essential to the Christian faith.9 For both men, things “Christian” and “modern” did not conflict or compete but, properly, reinforced each other. Manning thus learned to nurture and define his faith and tradition broadly. His piety was personal and experiential, and in that sense evangelical. Nevertheless, in form Manning structured his piety along high-church lines. From DuBose he also acquired the moderate liberal conviction that orthodox doctrine and a high view of the church were consistent with the best of modern science and historical scholarship. As DuBose often said and Manning affirmed, the ecumenical creeds and the gospel “are not true because the Church says so, but … the Church says so because they are true.”10 After ordination as a deacon in 1889, Manning became a curate at Calvary Church in Memphis, continued his studies with DuBose, and briefly attended the General Theological Seminary in New York. The Bishop of Los Angeles ordained Manning a priest in 1891, and he became the rector of Trinity Church in Redlands, California. Manning taught at the University of the South in the early 1890s and in 1894 took over the Trinity Mission in Cincinnati. In 1895 he married Florence van Antwerp of Avondale, Ohio. They had two daughters, Frances and Elizabeth Alice. After Cincinnati, Manning was briefly the rector of the Church of St John the Evangelist in Landsdowne, Pennsylvania (1896–98). Then he moved on to Christ Church in Nashville, where he stayed until 1903.11 Manning displayed evangelical inclinations early in his career. In 1900 he invited Rev. William Rainsford of New York (originally from England, by way of Canada) to lead a week-long mission in Nashville. An evangelical liberal with modernist leanings, Rainsford preached several times, to draw in nonchurchgoers and to reinvigorate the

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parish.12 The event brought criticism of Manning – that Rainsford was too liberal and his preaching style too undignified and unruly. A former fellow student, Silas McBee, told Manning how dismayed he had become on hearing that Manning had invited Rainsford to lead a mission. He reminded Manning of the days that they had spent in Professor DuBose’s study and explained why he thought Rainsford dangerous.13 Despite such opposition, Manning considered the mission a success. At least one parishioner, Elizabeth Page, confirmed this view soon afterwards. She congratulated Manning for the event and its salutary effect on his own preaching. Rainsford had freed Manning to preach as he had always wanted to, she observed, though she was glad he remained more restrained in his presentation than Rainsford.14 Manning’s early work showcased his strengths. Several times he reunited divided congregations and encouraged them to get involved in missions and charitable work outside their parishes. In 1901 the pecusa recognized these abilities and his growing prominence when his diocese elected him to go to the General Convention of the pecusa in San Francisco. In 1903 Rev. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Parish at Broadway and Wall Street in New York, invited Manning to become vicar of St Agnes’ Chapel, one of the parish’s smaller congregations. Manning accepted eagerly. In New York, Manning came into his own. He soon established himself at Trinity, a parish known for its strong anglo-catholic, tractarian atmosphere and its wealth. Manning became close to Dix, and in 1904 the parish vestry made him assistant rector. When Dix died in 1908, it asked Manning to become rector.15 He accepted and soon was embroiled in controversies over tenements owned by Trinity. The press and Episcopalians from other parishes attacked the parish for its “ungodly” wealth and for exploiting the poor. In response Manning asked the New York Charity Organizations Society to investigate the worst charges against the parish. The society cleared Trinity, and Manning then instituted significant reforms. He had the tenements repaired and sought alternative sources of financial support for the parish. He cancelled many outstanding mortgages held by Trinity against the debts of other parishes. And though he closed St John’s Chapel, he opened another, the Chapel of the Intercession. In progressive-era fashion, Manning also revived parish life generally, beginning street preaching and evangelistic services and promoting social reform.16 In 1909 Manning’s annual address on parish policies summarised his vision of his ministry with two watchwords, faith and service: “First, faith in God and in His Truth, divinely and once for all revealed; and then, founded on this and inspired by it, the enlarging life, the growing vision, the increasing service which shall

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make this venerable Mother Parish of the Diocese, with each year that passes, more and more a blessing and power for God in the Church and in the City.”17 Manning’s activism and his prominence in the public eye grew during World War I. A lifelong Anglophile, he never felt the need to abandon his English roots to become a good American, and he promoted American support of the Allies from the start, calling “preparedness” a sacred Christian duty. According to Manning, “Jesus Christ does not stand for peace at any price. He stands for righteousness at any cost. And He proved this by going to His death on the Cross.”18 In a sermon at Trinity Church in 1917, just after America entered the war, Manning expressed his enthusiasm: “The soul of America never uttered itself more nobly and truly than as she rises to take this action.”19 The Allies were fighting not only to preserve democracy and Christianity in their own nations, he argued in the same sermon, but also to save Germany from the “malignant power of militarism.” Manning did not lose himself in war fever. Unlike many North American clergy, he defended aliens in the United States and distinguished the “evil” that had corrupted Germany from the “true spirit” of its people.20 Throughout the war Manning also stressed the church’s role. His Annual Statement of 1914 as rector of Trinity Parish stated that the war offered the church a new missionary opportunity. The horror of war had inspired people to ask, “To whom shall we go?” Like many clergy he hoped it would lead people to the feet of Jesus by shaking them out of their complacency. Manning clearly intended his preaching to shake the pecusa in the same way. He concluded his address with an evangelistic call for repentance. “These few months of the war have brought us back to reality. They have shown us once more the truth about human nature,” he declared. “Some men had begun to talk as though there were no such thing as sin; as though salvation were mere superstition, and judgement an old wives’ fable. Even in the pulpits of the Church there had been too little said about the Cross and its meaning. There had been a tendency to dwell on the Gospel as only God’s revelation to us, and not as God’s redemption of us.” This self-satisfaction could not continue, Manning stated. The church needed to wake up to the power of the gospel and the need for unity. More than ever it was the “manifest duty” of the church to seek reunion.21 This activism was controversial at times, but it only increased Manning’s prominence within and outside the Episcopal Church, in the United States and England. The same was true of his early support for Christian reunion.

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In the years 1910–19, Manning earned a reputation for advocating Christian unity. At the General Convention in 1910 he proposed a Faith and Order conference, and in 1912 he went to Great Britain to promote the movement. Manning’s support of ecumenism was carefully defined, however. He opposed pecusa participation at the 1915 Panama Conference on missions because it was to be an exclusively protestant event. Manning went so far as to resign from the Episcopal Board of Missions, a strongly evangelical organization that he had supported with enthusiasm in the past. Throughout his career, he opposed Christian unity schemes that did not include the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.22 Despite this proviso, on occasion Manning was surprisingly supportive of protestant ecumenical ventures. At the 1921 Episcopal General Convention in Detroit, he stunned fellow high churchmen by backing a concordat with the Congregational Church that would allow its ministers to receive Episcopal ordination without giving up their Congregational ministry. Manning’s usual allies criticised him, but low-church evangelicals praised him in the Southern Churchman, finding his support an unexpected source of encouragement.23 During the second decade of the twentieth century, Manning promoted Christian unity in print and in numerous addresses and sermons. In The Protestant Episcopal Church and Christian Unity (1915) and The Call to Unity (1920), for example, he articulated his early views of Christian unity. As these pamphlets suggest, Manning believed that ecumenism had to be based on both true faith and authentic order.24 “The Episcopal Church stands in a relation of warm and living touch and of fellowship at many points with Protestantism,” he noted in 1915. “But her own faith and order as judged by the standards of the undivided Church are fundamentally and definitely Catholic. Her distinctive beliefs are those which have been held and taught by the Catholic Church throughout the world since the Apostles’ days. She has inherited these through nineteen centuries of history.”25 There could be no true unity among the denominations until, without violation of their principles, Christians could come together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Union had to be inward, through common faith, and outward, through acceptance of the church’s episcopally ordained authority, before it was complete. Manning criticised people who disparaged “righteous convictions” as mere prejudice and chided those who advocated ecumenism primarily for its practical effects or who wanted to rush into “reunion schemes.” Despite such reservations, Manning was passionate about the practical, spiritual necessity of Christian unity and optimistic about achieving it in the near future. In The Call to Unity, a series of lectures

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that he gave in 1919, Manning pointed out the practical need for reunion. The church faced trying times in the new century, he observed, pointing to secularization, materialism, and “modern paganism.” If divided, it could not fulfil its Christ-ordained mission. Sectarian conflict and competition in religion had been a disaster for the cause of Christ.26 United Christianity stood, and divided it fell, Manning judged. Nonetheless, however important practical reasons were, spiritual imperatives were of greater significance. Disunity was a sin shared by all Christians. “Each Christian Communion is called upon to acknowledge its share in the sin of making schism, or of helping to perpetuate it,” he admonished. “There is no Church on earth, Catholic or Protestant, which is not a sharer in this sin.”27 The discord within Christendom was a sin because the church was not a human creation. Christians had to remember that the church was not merely a collection of individuals with a common purpose – not a modern voluntary society. It was the Spirit-filled body of the living Christ. There could no more be two churches than two Christs. “Christians may fail to recognise, or may deny, their fellowship in Christ, but it still exists, and in this lies the deep wrong of division,” Manning explained. “The Gospel means not only that which took place at Bethlehem, and that which was done on Calvary, it means the embodiment and manifestation of the risen and ascended Christ in the visible fellowship of His followers, in whom, by the power of the Holy Spirit, He continues His life and work in this world.” Christians thus should take risks for the sake of unity. Manning challenged the Anglican communion to lead this movement because it “is the one Communion in the world in which those who represent the Catholic position, and those who represent the Protestant position, now live and work together, in fellowship and unity. It is this which gives her the special mission to which she is called.”28 Manning thus asked church leaders in the English-speaking world to lead by example, based on their common bonds of language and history. “If Anglican, Eastern and Protestant Christianity, or a large part of it, could be brought together on a basis of true Christian liberty,” he said, “with loyalty to essential Catholic principle, this should in no way hinder reunion with the Roman Church, but on the contrary should greatly increase its likelihood.”29 Starting small, a reunion movement might catch on like wildfire. Anglicanism’s unique comprehensiveness and its historic position in the Anglo-American world made it a natural leader of ecumenical projects.30 The vision of faith and service that Manning promoted at Trinity Parish in New York in the years 1910–19 was thus distinctly “modern” in several ways. It was Progressive in its social gospel and

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reform programs. Manning respected the separation of church and state, institutionally, but promoted ideological and cultural links between Christian religion, morality, and the destiny of the American nation-state, notably during World War I. And he supported the reunion movements and the ecumenical spirit of the age. In subtle ways, however, ways that would become overt and aggressive in the 1920s, Manning was antimodern. The reunion movement he envisioned was rooted in Anglican comprehensiveness, not a generic liberal Christianity that had shed the particulars of tradition. The reunification of Christendom could come only through a renewal of catholic tradition, as exemplified in the Anglican communion. If Roman Catholicism perhaps needed some of the leavening of protestant reform, the protestant denominations unequivocally needed to re-embed themselves in historic catholic traditions that they had abandoned during the Reformation. This comprehensive vision would shape Manning’s identity and policies in paradoxical ways during his three decades as bishop of New York. Anglican traditions were diverse enough to allow him to claim to be protestant, catholic – and modern. This meant that the Anglican Communion was well placed to reunite Christendom, but it also demanded that Episcopalians distinguish themselves from protestant churches if they were to have any hope of reunion with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Internally, Anglican diversity led to conflicts within the pecusa, especially when modernist threats to orthodox belief destabilised it. Social and cultural changes during the second and third decades of the century also profoundly disturbed Manning. In response, in the 1920s his vision of Anglicanism’s historic comprehensiveness and ecumenical purpose – his identity – would turn defensive and sectarian. In 1917 the Diocese of Western New York elected Manning as its bishop. He rejected this call, however, reasoning that he had greater freedom to serve the pecusa as rector of Trinity Parish in New York City than he would have as a bishop in upstate New York. On the other hand, in 1921 Manning accepted the call to become bishop of the Diocese of New York (the city, not the state). The choice of Manning caused some controversy. In the Evening Journal, a William Hearst tabloid, editors protested the election of a foreigner to such a powerful position. Could no American bishop be found? Would Americans bow to an “English” bishop? “This election,” it concluded, “will tell us whether there is an American Protestant Episcopal Church, or whether it really is only a branch of the ‘Church of England,’ an institution of pro-British propaganda.”31 The

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New York Tribune responded by praising Manning’s preaching, strength of character, and “Americanism.” “There will be especial rejoicing that the staunch Americanism and active patriotism of Dr Manning have been thus recognized,” it asserted. “His voice was a powerful one for right during the war. The enemies he then made are greatly to his credit. He will take office with the unhyphenated population of the city.”32 Most of the New York newspapers agreed with the Tribune. The Episcopal Church press also generally praised Manning’s election. Supporters cited his leadership in reunion movements in the church and even the evangelical Southern Churchman agreed that Manning was a good choice. Only radical low-church evangelical opponents – as staunchly anticatholic as always – dissented by sourly pointing out that Manning would oppose pan-protestant efforts and be an authoritarian leader. Low-church radicals doubtless were doubly suspicious because Roman Catholic newspapers were so delighted by Manning’s election.33 In his consecration address, Manning expressed eagerness to lead the diocese and inspire the pecusa with an expansive new vision. He emphasized the opportunity that the church had to spread the gospel. “In spite of things on the surface which might seem to contradict this,” he said, “there is today a wonderful awakening to faith in God and to the need of religion.” To make the most of this opportunity the church needed to get its house in order. “If we are to draw men and women to Christ,” he argued, “we must first draw near to Him and to each other. If we are to lead the way toward unity, we must have a truer unity of spirit among ourselves. We must stand more fully for that comprehensiveness, that general inclusiveness, based on the rock of full clear faith in Christ as God, which is the distinctive note of our Communion.” A healthy church would allow prudent liberty of individual and corporate expression but would be united in love, in “living faith,” and in the authority of the church. In saying this, Manning acknowledged and accepted some party differences. A healthy church also would confront injustice and address social and political questions. The church did not have “special wisdom” in these matters, Manning admitted. But it was the church’s task to help people to “think of these questions with the mind of Christ.”34 And it was the task of Episcopal clergy and people to respect church authority. Manning thus set large goals for himself as bishop. To help meet them, the Diocese of New York City granted him two suffragan bishops to share his work.35 For the next three decades, he spent a good deal of time raising money and building the Cathedral of St John the Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Manning also reorganised the diocese, replacing its many archdeacons with an executive council.

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Evangelicals such as Rev. Alexander Griswold Cummins, rector of Christ Church in Poughkeepsie and editor of the low-church Chronicle, found these changes infuriating. He preferred the freer reign of Manning’s predecessor, Bishop Burch, and found Manning domineering. Over time, Manning’s principled insistence on the authority of the bishop only grew. According to opponents, such principles merely sanctified an overbearing, self-centred personality.36 Personality and church politics aside, passionate preaching marked Manning’s tenure as bishop of New York. He challenged Episcopalians – clergy and laity alike – to seek conversion and develop personal relationships with Christ. Manning was not an evangelical in self-identity or church politics, but his sermons reveal the impact of nineteenth-century evangelicalism on high-church piety. Calls for awakening and renewal had always been part of his preaching. But a changing political, cultural, and social climate and intellectual threats to Christian orthodoxy during the 1920s and 1930s made Manning realize with new urgency the need for spiritual renewal for the American nation and the pecusa. He had voiced these concerns as early as 1909 at Trinity: “We need a great revival of true religion … among our people, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, for it can be produced by no other power, a renewal of definite and deep religious faith and conviction.” No nation could endure after losing its religious faith.37 As with fundamentalists, his worries deepened during the 1920s. Unlike them, Manning did not lose his theological balance. For example, he continued to stress both God’s transcendence and His immanence.38 Yet his response to modernism – an ever more rigid insistence on a high-church doctrine of apostolic succession as essential to the church’s authority and identity – led him in sectarian directions to a form of “high-church fundamentalism.” Comparisons to W.H. Griffith Thomas are instructive here. Like Thomas, Manning responded to the social fragmentation and cultural ambivalence of modernity by seeking certainty. Unlike Thomas, who cut most of his ties to Anglicanism and tried to find certainty in the Victorious Live movement and the Bible’s authority, Manning clung to high-church Anglican tradition and episcopal authority. If Thomas’s fundamentalism was theological, Manning’s was ecclesiological. As a result, despite its numerous “modern” elements, Manning’s religious identity was much more thoroughly antimodern than Thomas’s. The modernity of Manning’s spirituality was evident in the impact of evangelicalism on his high-church Anglicanism. In “The Need of Conversion,” an address in 1931 to the Diocesan Convention, Manning effectively demonstrated the evangelical content of much of his

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preaching, which changed little over his time as bishop. He began by describing the moral and spiritual uncertainty of the day. He blamed a renewed “paganism,” alluding to the atheism of the Soviet Union, but also criticised the failures of Christianity. As Christians, he stated, “We have allowed our faith in Christ to grow dim. It is time for the whole Christian Church throughout the world to awake to new life. It is time for Christians in all Churches, and for all who believe in God and His law, to bear their witness.” Manning challenged Episcopalians particularly, calling for a full-orbed Christianity. “Our weakness as a Church is that so many of us fall short of full conversion to Christ,” he argued. “It is of little use to have dignity, order, beautiful forms of worship, noble architecture, if we lack the one thing that can give life and meaning to it all. Conversion does not conflict with the reality of the sacraments, conversion means awakening to, and using, the mighty blessings given to us in the sacraments.”39 In his preaching Manning often described what conversion meant for people and the church. “[It] means that Jesus on the Throne of God is real to us,” he declared. “It means that we shall know again the meaning of repentance. We shall be in no doubt about the reality of sin, and of our own sins. No man ever yet was converted and brought to Christ without realizing his own sinfulness and his need of God’s forgiveness.” Conversion would make hymns, prayers, the Bible, and creeds all the more real, he promised. The church thus needed preachers like John Wesley, John Henry Newman, Charles Spurgeon, Dwight Moody, and Phillips Brooks to promote strong personal faith in Christ. Little time remained for the Episcopal Church, Manning warned. “I ask you all, clergy and laity, men and women, young and old, to join with me and Bishop Lloyd and Bishop Gilbert and to carry this message, this call for the renewal and strengthening of our faith in Christ, into every parish, and every mission, and every community, and every home, throughout our diocese.” It was time to put aside “lesser matters” and focus on spiritual renewal, prayer, and strengthened faith.40 The urgency of Manning’s message was like that of Dyson Hague. Also like Hague, Manning cited the great leaders of the past, though he appealed to Roman Catholic as well as protestant exemplars. While Thomas seldom appealed to the past, Manning and Hague did so regularly – even if their reading of “true” Anglican tradition diverged sharply. It is also worth noting that all three emphasized the need for personal faith in Christ, with the qualification that this message was part of an overarching high-church piety in Manning’s case. In this vein, throughout his career as bishop of New York Manning argued that the gospel of Christ was the one power that could

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save the world. For example, in September 1934 he preached in Montreal at the General Synod of the acc. The evangelical editor of the Canadian Churchman welcomed him to the dominion with enthusiasm as a prominent advocate of closer relations among Englishspeaking peoples. In his sermon Manning stressed that salvation came only through “the grace of God, the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who came, and who still comes, to change the hearts and lives of men and women. It is this gospel that the world now needs in all its fullness and in all its Divine power.”41 The gospel, and the presence of the living God, answered the deep needs of human life. It was not enough that people knew Jesus as an example, Manning insisted. Unless “we know Him as a Person, unless our lives are surrendered to Him, and changed by Him, we cannot make Him known to the world. Our one great need in the Church to-day, all of us, Bishops, Priests and People, is real and full conversion to Christ,” he concluded in another sermon.42 These sermons offered comfort and encouraged people to spread the gospel and build the church. In 1945, shortly after the United States had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, Manning spoke about Christian hope: “Christmas tells us that God reigns, and that in spite of the world-wide anxiety and fear, and the mutual suspicion which we now see among the Nations; in spite of the new and dire threat of World-Destruction; in spite of the sin that is in the heart of man, Christ has power to make this a World of Brotherhood and Peace and Good Will.”43 The more evil and chaotic the world and the greater the challenge to the church, the more hopeful his preaching became. Evangelical themes extended even to Manning’s views of the sacraments.44 As a high churchman he believed that baptism and holy communion were the objective means of grace. But sacraments had power only when people also had personal faith in Christ. “We know that the water and the bread and wine have no power in themselves,” Manning explained. “The power is in our Lord Jesus Christ. He has chosen to make these sacraments the means through which He helps and blesses us.” The sacraments could not substitute for personal religion. “Let me make this quite clear,” he said. “Our religion as Christians means personal, conscious relationship with Jesus Christ, faith in Christ, knowledge of Christ, fellowship with Christ, obedience to Christ. The thing that we need in our lives above all other things is the touch of Christ. The sacraments hold the central place that is given to them in the Christian religion and in our Prayer Book because in them we feel the touch of Christ Himself.”45 The sacraments thus were powerful, divinely appointed means of grace. Just as the incarnation made the Son of God a human being,

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the sacraments made the promises of God “a living reality” that people could taste, touch, see, and smell. In a series of talks to young people in 1926 Manning asked them, Is God an abstraction, “or do we believe in a God who draws near to us through simple and visible symbols which we can all understand and which bring Him into actual touch with our daily lives?”46 He appealed to the example of William Muhlenberg, a nineteenth-century Episcopalian priest from New York who had articulated a form of “evangelical catholicism” and argued that ritual was a powerful means of communicating the evangelical experience.47 The sacraments also were a sign that Christians should take God into “the midst of all … human interests and affairs.” Christians should not give up theatre, dance, or sport, but take them to God and make them agencies for “happiness and wholesome life.”48 This attitude towards amusements and culture perhaps reflected the cosmopolitan outlook of a leader in a middleto-upper-class church; it also stemmed from the way Manning understood the work of God in the world. Christ did not come just for sinners, he came to save and transform the world. Reflecting this conviction, Manning described the church’s mission as both evangelistic and social – that is, redeeming sinners and saving the world. “It is not the function of the Church to prescribe economic systems or forms of government,” he admitted, “but it is the function of the Church to bring in the reign of Christ in this world, and His reign is not reconcilable with war, or sweatshops, or economic injustice, or racial prejudice and persecution, or with a blind and selfish nationalism.”49 The duty and mission of the church was to embody and proclaim Christian truth in every area of life. Manning’s passion for evangelism and truth even cut through racial barriers. In 1932 he preached at All Soul’s Church in New York to support a rector who had refused to bar blacks from his parish. When black families had begun to dominate the neighbourhood around the parish and attend the church and its Sunday school, a few board members had complained. Manning criticised them strongly. In “times of World Crisis,” he argued, the Church had to stand for the “Divine vision” of the Catholic Church, the “visible Family of Christ,” where racial divisions had been dissolved.50 He stressed practical reasons for racial unity but concluded by citing evangelical principles and appealing to the “brotherhood” of Christ. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Manning spoke about the common bonds all people shared, in God’s image, and preached that all are one who are in Christ.51 Manning addressed numerous other social-political issues as bishop. The first to catch his eye was the rising divorce rate in the

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church and the nation, especially among clergy. In 1923 he claimed that stable marriages and families were the foundation of American society. He labelled divorce “selfish” and asked people merely to separate, to remain celibate and sacrifice personal desires for the nation’s good. He also urged the government and the church to do more, morally and legally, to support marriage. Ultimately, however, only a religious revival, about which he was optimistic, would solve the problem.52 Manning also attacked materialism and a larger pattern of problems, such as renewed “paganism” and attacks on the family. “The question today,” he said, “is whether the new world order is to be built on crass materialism and force, or on those spiritual foundations which alone give man his freedom of soul and human life its true meaning.”53 He also denounced New York’s City College when it hired Bertrand Russell to teach philosophy and ethics. The idea that the public should pay a self-styled atheist and libertarian to promote “immoral” ideas infuriated him. Manning believed that academic freedom needed to be balanced with community and moral responsibility. To the delight of some and the consternation of others, he helped to get Russell’s appointment revoked.54 Piety, reform, and politics were closely linked for Manning. Personal faith could save the world, he argued, because it led to personal holiness. Despite concerns about moral decline in the 1920s and despite strong moralism in his preaching, his attitude towards holiness was positive and affirming, as well as negative and critical. Holiness was not a duty or a burden so much as an expression of joy. In 1935 he described its character and meaning: “Holiness does not mean morbidness, nor unwholesome introspection, nor puritan narrowness, nor censoriousness. Holiness means likeness to Christ. It means fearlessness, and strength, and faith, and real joy in life, that very joy which is missing from the lives of so many today. And we all have it in us to respond to that call, if we will.”55 Manning wanted to sidestep the repressive connotations often associated with holiness, especially by “young people.” Instead he described it as living like Jesus. It required courage and strength and self-sacrifice and chivalry, and it was a sign of “vigorous young manhood.”56 This joyful holiness could be found only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. Again and again Manning returned to the need for spiritual renewal, for the good of the church, individuals, and the nation. In 1937, in a sermon at the cathedral, he called for renewed faith and civic pride: “I wish we might see all over our land a great revival of interest in true and vital religion. Religion is the only foundation on which Democracy can endure. We need a nation-wide revival of religion in the homes of America. We need a great awakening to the

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necessity of religion as the very basis of our life, individual and national.” He concluded by admonishing his listeners to pray for the end of dictatorship in Europe and for the return of liberty, justice, and brotherhood throughout the world.57 During World War II common evangelical themes also influenced Manning’s preaching. In a nation-wide radio broadcast on Good Friday in 1943 he declared, “In this great hour of world tragedy, may our eyes be opened afresh to the Wonder of the Cross and to the Glory and Triumph of Easter.” Good Friday and Easter were God’s promise that evil could not triumph, that right and truth not be destroyed, and God’s law not be overcome.58 In 1945, in a Thanksgiving message, Manning restated this promise as a challenge: “[If] war is to end, there must be a world-wide moral and spiritual awakening, an awakening which shall bring the nations to belief in God and acceptance of his universal Moral Law.” There could be no peace and brotherhood, no trust between nations, until people accepted the universal moral law of God. People had to put aside “that widely prevalent, self-sufficient, humanistic religion” that has no place for humility, repentance, or Christ. They had to stop the folly of putting humanity in the “place that belongs to God.”59 As noted earlier, in Manning’s sermons and speeches “modern” themes abound – individual faith, the social gospel, Progressive reform, nationalism. The distance that high-church Episcopalian piety had travelled – away from Bishop Hobart’s nineteenth-century program to distance the Episcopal Church from worldly matters and American protestantism – was profound. Manning had embraced much of modern life and religion. And yet, between the lines conflicting and competing sources of identity are evident. He attacked much of the modern world as evil – its wars, racial antagonism, materialism, glorification of humanity, religious indifference, and moral relativism. In response, the antimodern separatism that Hobart had once advocated to defend Episcopal tradition would became central to Manning’s own religiosity during the 1930s. The tension between traditional, modern, and antimodern impulses would give his churchmanship an increasingly rigid, defensive quality. When Manning was chosen bishop of New York he took John Henry Hobart’s maxim, “Evangelical Truth and Apostolic Order,” as his own, following in his predecessor’s footsteps (1816–30). However, the experiential language of Manning’s preaching suggests that “evangelical truth” meant something different for him than for Hobart. For high churchmen such as Hobart faith meant rational assent to theological principles, and apostolic order meant that the

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church stayed out of politics. In the maelstrom of democratic politics and revivalism in the United States during the early nineteenth century, Hobart viewed the Episcopal Church as a haven for order and tradition.60 Ironically, he believed that the pecusa could keep its Anglican and catholic identity only by separating itself from the mainstream of American culture, especially its evangelical protestantism. Unlike the still-established Church of England, Hobart and his generation of high-church American Episcopalians fled public entanglements. The evangelical impulse in Manning’s preaching thus points to a crucial evolution in piety that the pecusa underwent during the late nineteenth century. Like Hobart, Manning defended the fundamental necessity of episcopal church governance and apostolic succession. Unlike him, Manning’s faith was personal and experiential as well as intellectual. Also unlike Hobart, as bishop he directly addressed political issues, social problems, and cultural changes. High-church Episcopalians like Manning had absorbed numerous evangelical conceptions of faith – Romantic spirituality, more generally – and protestant understandings of the providential relationship between Christianity and society. Manning likely did not recognize the gulf between Hobart’s piety and his own. Nevertheless, the attempt by Hobart and other high-church leaders in the nineteenth century to make the Episcopal Church a refuge from the modern American evangelical empire had failed. High-church Episcopalians had been fundamentally, though subtly, transformed – that is, Americanized and modernized.61 The main similarity between Hobart and Manning – a staunch high-church interpretation of the historic episcopacy – remained decisive, however. Ironies abound here. Despite Hobart’s efforts, evangelicalism had transformed his church, both with the growth of an evangelical party and with Romantic pietist impulses.62 However, even if the pecusa had become part of the religious and cultural mainstream in the United States, it still stood somewhat apart from American protestantism, especially with the decline of the evangelical party in the late nineteenth century. Paradoxically, to protect the “catholic” nature of the Episcopal Church, Manning defined his high churchmanship in ever more sectarian fashion. His defence of catholic authority through episcopal authority and the apostolic succession led him to view the “true church” increasingly narrowly and to become suspicious of ecumenical ventures (even if he always supported the principle of reunion). The church politics and spirituality of William Manning thus were broader, more comprehensive, and more ecumenical than those of

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John Henry Hobart. Manning’s high-church vision was also shaped by the Romanticised high-church piety of the tractarian and ritualist movements. More importantly, his faith was subtly influenced by the evangelical culture of nineteenth-century America.63 Manning did not view these changes in negative terms. Indeed, he likely would have considered them the result of the natural evolution of a diverse Anglican heritage. Even so, despite the impact of evangelical piety on Manning and despite his emphasis on the comprehensiveness of Anglicanism, at its core his identity remained high-church and anglocatholic. This became clear during the 1920s and 1930s in his response to modernist theology and rapid social change. As noted earlier, these dangers gave Manning’s preaching a new urgency. More than that, they forced him to defend both his faith and the pecusa by assuming an increasingly defensive posture. During the 1920s Manning attacked theological modernism and defended orthodox doctrine. In the 1930s perceptions of crisis forced him into a high-church and oddly fundamentalist corner. Apostolic succession became his litmus test, and Anglican comprehensiveness a narrow sectarian path rather than a comprehensive bridge. His high-church identity grew increasingly brittle and antiprotestant after 1930. And in the name of “catholic” comprehensiveness he promoted a competing, divisive form of Anglicanism. The search for religious certainty in response to modern ambiguity produced disunity and conflict. The dilemmas of modern identity thus were woven through Manning’s life and thought during the interwar years. The dilemma was his, but it is also the scholar’s. How should his message be interpreted? In his personal piety and inclinations, Manning can be read as a moderate liberal protestant, a social gospeller, an evangelical, and an anglo-catholic – a model of comprehensiveness and spiritual integrity. As in the case of W.H. Griffith Thomas, however, changing cultural contexts turned his convictions divisive and narrow. Whatever his qualities as an individual, religious conflicts revealed how competing cultural, national, and religious identities socially “constructed” him. Manning’s insistence that only the uninterrupted succession of bishops from the twelve apostles truly guaranteed the truth of the gospel message, the authority of the Episcopal Church, and the validity of ordination was a “search for order.”64 During the 1920s social and cultural change battered and further crumbled the remaining influence of Victorian morals and values.65 At the same time, the modernist-fundamentalist crisis divided American protestantism. Soon after, the Great Depression of the 1930s made American society economically unstable and further eroded the relevance

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of Victorian values. Fascism in Europe, World War II, atomic weapons, and concentration camp horrors would confirm for Manning that the United States and the Western world had reached an alarming crisis. Growing militant and defensive, as in his response to materialism and divorce, Manning met these events head on. He continued to hold out the promises of the gospel as a comfort for a world overwhelmed by instability and catastrophe. At the same time, he tried to shore up the authority and strength of the church. In the early 1920s, only a few years into his term as bishop, Manning and the Episcopal Church confronted theological modernism. In November 1923, shortly after a special meeting in Dallas, the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter to all Episcopalian parishes and clergy. Manning had played an important role in calling the special meeting and writing the letter to deal with disturbances over recent “utterances” by a few “irresponsible” clergy.66 The bishops called for clergy to show loyalty to their ordination vows, which required them to assent to the Apostles Creed, Prayer Book, and scriptures.67 “It is irreconcilable with the vows voluntarily made at ordination for a minister of this Church to deny, or to suggest doubt as to the facts and truths in the Apostles’ Creed,” they stated. The bishops also demanded honest use of language. Clergy should not trifle with words in their sermons, giving unorthodox meanings to the truths of the creeds and the Bible (e.g., the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection). They should preach “the fact that the Jesus of history is none other than God and Saviour, on Whom and on faith in Whom depends the whole world’s hope of redemption and salvation.” Clergy who could not sincerely assent to the creeds should be honest enough to resign from the office of ministry. The creeds were not meant to be “fetters of thought,” the bishops said, but rather “points of departure for free thought and speculation.” They did not want to restrain the intellect, but clergy were duty-bound to respect their church’s historic traditions and protect the boundaries of orthodox dogma.68 The bishop’s argument, that words should not be uprooted from their traditional meaning, echoed the sentiments of Dyson Hague. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican communion were not mere conveniences as organizations and communities. Membership and participation implied obligations that transcended any one individual – accepting the ties that bound Anglicans together and set them apart as Anglicans. For Hague, Manning, and the bishops, Anglicans and Episcopalians were embedded in a tradition. While they valued individual experience and insight – in good modern fashion – they insisted that individual faith be defined by the community and

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tradition. The bishops’ letter thus was profoundly antimodern in the structure, in the grammar, of its argument, not just in the specific traditions, words, and doctrines that it defended. The same was true of Manning’s personal campaign to defend orthodoxy. In hard-hitting sermons in 1923 and 1924, Manning continued to rebuke unorthodox aspects of liberal-modernist theology. In Neither Fundamentalism nor Modernism, which he preached at the consecration of Bishop James Freeman in Washington, dc, in 1923, Manning addressed the crisis faced by many denominations in the United States. Against fundamentalism, he argued that Anglicans had never held to a “verbal inspiration” theory of the Bible. Furthermore, he viewed fundamentalism as the sectarian logic of protestantism. Against modernism, he argued that when it meant “only the desire to be wholly loyal to truth, to use our minds honestly and freely, to recognize and rejoice in the fruits of modern knowledge and the results of scientific research,” the church had nothing against it. But when modernism meant “the denial, or in veiled terms the undermining, of belief in our Lord Jesus Christ as God,” it had no rightful place in the Episcopal Church, which lived to propagate these beliefs and whose life and worship depended on them.69 In short, modern individualism needed boundaries. Manning continued with forceful pleas for revitalised piety. Christian faith is neither an abstract doctrine nor a barrier to the intellect, he argued. It is belief in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. “The Gospel we preach is Jesus Christ Himself, who, because He is God, is able to bless us, to hear our prayer, to lift us into fellowship with the Father,” he said. A church with a weakened gospel could not meet the world’s needs. “We stand in a world stricken, shaken, and bewildered, brought face to face with its need of God,” he asserted. “What we need now is a new preaching of the Gospel in all its Divine truth and power. Men are looking for strength and help from above.”70 The world needed the gospel, preaching with Christ at its centre, not esoteric, academic, and philosophical rationalizations that denatured, reduced, and denuded the Christian faith. Amidst all the ambivalence and confusion of modern life, people needed a message and a God in whom they could find certainty and confidence. In the end, then, Neither Fundamentalism nor Modernism was a call for renewed faith, orthodoxy, and preaching in the Episcopal Church. Clergy needed to recommit themselves to the “Gospel of the Apostles, of the New Testament, and of the Church from its beginning.” They needed to tell people about “the simple Gospel of the Eternal Son of God, coming ‘from the Father’s throne across the gulf that separates Creator from creation, across the gulf that separates

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holiness from sin,’ bringing God Himself into the very midst of our human life.” This message alone could “deal with human agony and suffering,” overcome “the sin of the world,” and fulfil humanity’s “visions of justice and brotherhood and peace.”71 Similar themes dominated Manning’s charge to the clergy of his diocese in 1924. He appealed to the needs of the world and to the traditions of the Episcopal Church and scripture but also demanded that clergy be honest and loyal to their ordination vows. “The issue,” he said simply, “is whether those of us who, of our own free choice, have accepted office as ministers of this Church, are under obligation to teach the faith which this Church holds.”72 Manning appealed to the work of Bishop Gore of England and his mentor, William DuBose, to argue that modern science and biblical criticism did not truly threaten Christian faith. In this way he could accept and celebrate the comprehensiveness of the Anglican tradition, even the modern contributions of broad-church liberals, without giving diocesan clergy a license to “interpret plain and clear affirmations to mean their exact opposites.”73 This defence of orthodoxy, especially the bishops’ pastoral letter, brought criticism and praise of Manning. The reactions raise the question of how liberal-modernist the Episcopal Church was by the 1920s. The celebrated case of Rev. Charles Briggs in the late 1890s (the Presbyterian professor at Union Theological Seminary who was charged with heresy and left Presbyterianism for the Episcopal Church) suggests that liberal theology had become acceptable in the Episcopal Church sooner than elsewhere. By the 1920s, however, Northern Baptists and Presbyterians seem to have caught up, at least at the modernist extreme. Little more than impressionistic judgments can be made about the majority of clergy and parishes in the pecusa and other denominations, but Manning’s long tenure as bishop of New York makes it likely that his diocese remained generally orthodox.74 Because Manning’s defence of orthodoxy had been balanced in the second and third decades of the century – strong, clearly stated, but moderate in tone – his ever more anxious insistence on apostolic succession as fundamental to church life and legitimate ordination might be unexpected. The perceived crisis in American civilization that drove fundamentalists to their extremes also influenced Manning, not through creedal issues, but through an ever more rigid understanding of church authority. Instead of biblical inerrancy, he held his ground to defend a rigid high-church position on the episcopacy during the 1930s. He believed that the historic church defined and protected the gospel. In short, his defence of the creeds could afford to be irenic, because his insistence on episcopal authority was anything but that.

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The connections between church authority, tradition, orthodox belief, and healthy personal piety were obvious to Manning. Without church order evangelical faith would suffer. “The creed, the sacraments, the priesthood, the Church itself, are not ends in themselves, they are only means to an end,” he admitted in 1934. “Their one purpose is to bring us to Christ. But they are the instruments of God for this great purpose and may not be lightly regarded, they are divinely given means to this great end and without them faith in Christ Himself tends to grow vague and weak, and even to disappear.”75 In its basic principles this message remained constant throughout Manning’s career. Even when defending high-church ecclesiology, he always remembered to give the evangelical call. However, as his changing attitudes towards ecumenical ventures and his increasingly violent and anxious language indicate, his temperament changed substantially after 1930. His high-church convictions grew suspicious and pessimistic, no longer charitable and quietly confident, as they had been earlier in his career. To put it glibly but accurately, Manning realized that without the essential church medium there could be no evangelical message. Disconnected from tradition and church authority, the modern evangelical emphasis on personal experience led to confusion and division. Manning’s piety thus was modern in its evangelical impulse but antimodern in its insistence on traditional and authoritative boundaries and its opposition to unrestrained individualism. Sermons preached in 1933–34 highlight the changing character of Manning’s views of the relationship between the gospel and the church. At centennial celebrations of the Oxford Movement in 1933 in Chicago, he reminded his audience of the comprehensive nature of Anglican tradition. He noted the great achievements of evangelicals and liberals in the pecusa and rejected the mistaken notion that the name “catholic” belongs to one party.76 “The Anglican Church itself,” he stated, “holds and teaches the Catholic religion, and every man who accepts the teaching of the Prayer Book as to the faith, the apostolic ministry, and the sacraments, is a Catholic Churchman, though he is also a Protestant in the original sense of that word as protesting against departures from the Catholic Faith as held and taught in the early days by the whole undivided Church throughout the world.”77 But as this statement suggests, Manning’s praise of diverse Anglican traditions hid a subtle assimilationist reading of history and a primary catholic identity. In grammatical terms, “catholic” was the noun and “protestant” merely a corrective adjective. The Oxford Movement thus was the common heritage of all Anglicans. Its anglo-catholic message did not belong to any one church group but, rather, called all true Episcopalians to personal knowledge of Christ, holiness, and activism.

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In the 1930s, a time of “spiritual crisis” worse than when John Keble preached his celebrated sermon of 1833, “National Apostasy,” the Episcopal Church had a duty to call America to a renewal of faith and morality.78 True renewal could come only by recognizing that God had appointed the church as the divine means by which people came to him. Apostasy thus could be traced directly to weak views of church authority. “Nothing is more certain, nothing is more surely proved by experience, or more evident at this time,” Manning stated in 1934, “than that the loss of faith in the divinely founded Church, and in the divinely appointed ministry and sacraments, tends towards loss of faith in Christ and in His Gospel as a divine Revelation.”79 However much it respected protestants and rejoiced in “brotherly” relations with them, the Episcopal Church had to remain distinctly and definitively catholic, Manning insisted. Unlike protestants, who in his view regarded churches as voluntary associations, catholics believed that the church as an institution was the divinely founded body of Christ. The episcopate, which was connected through history to the apostles chosen by Jesus, was essential and indispensable.80 Protestants thus became an “other,” a threat, for Manning after 1930. They were faithful as individuals, perhaps, but not true catholics, and so they were incomplete as Christians.81 The consequences of Manning’s emerging fundamentalist views of the church as the divinely appointed means of spreading the faith are most obvious in his responses to ecumenical projects. Before he became bishop of New York in 1921, he had supported a concordat with the Congregationalists that would allow their clergy to be episcopally ordained without giving up their prior vows. Manning had also spoken of the need to take risks and had even promoted the reunion of the English-speaking churches, because the rewards of unity were potentially great.82 As late as 1927, in York Minster, England, Manning had reaffirmed this point. His “Message to Old York from New York” called Anglicans to complete their communion’s “divine mission” by leading the reunion of Christianity.83 In 1929, although Manning allowed that Anglicans had often pushed “uniformity in worship too far,” he argued that for the pecusa to join a pan-protestant union would be a grievous step backward. It was the unique Anglican mission, one appointed by God, to unify catholicism and protestantism. If the pecusa grew too close to protestantism, it would lose any influence on the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches that it yet had. It was not a time to take risks.84 As this suggests, Manning had become so obsessed with protecting the episcopacy and apostolic succession that he began to oppose to any form of

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unilateral organic union with protestant denominations. The only acceptable scheme would have unified every church at once, Roman Catholics included. Though he continued to promote protestant and catholic reunion, his ecumenism had become desperate and unfeasible. The ecumenical question came to a head for Manning and the Episcopal Church during the 1930s and the 1940s when the Episcopal Church began to negotiate terms for organic union with the Presbyterian Church. In 1937 the Episcopal General Convention unanimously voted to pursue union. The ordination issue bedevilled hardliners on both sides. Was an episcopal blessing and consecration necessary for ordination to be valid? Would Presbyterian clergy need to be reordained? Could presbyters and bishops jointly consecrate clergy in the future? Strict high-church Episcopalians, such as those in the American Church Union, considered episcopal blessing a nonnegotiable necessity. For militant Presbyterians this was an insult; the notion of episcopacy itself smacked of medievalism. They were defending the modernity, the progressivism, of their denomination but also their own traditions of church governance and doctrine. For unionists on both sides, such as the Episcopal Evangelical Fellowship, the hope was an honourable, principled compromise.85 From 1937 until 1946, when the issue was decided, Manning fired regular broadsides against the proposals for union. In part, his concerns were practical. If the two churches achieved union, many Episcopalians would leave for the Roman Catholic Church, he feared. Union would sow dissension and confusion in both churches and thus should not be achieved by compromise at any cost.86 In addition, while union with the Presbyterians might encourage pan-protestant unity, it surely would alienate the Roman Catholic Church. Manning’s opposition was also principled. Ecumenism had to be led by God. No one who confessed loyalty to the “Faith and Order of the Church” and to the Prayer Book could accept this scheme to unite with the Presbyterian Church. That was unprincipled foolishness.87 Critics of Manning’s position, such as Bishop Edward Parsons of California, chairman of the commission on union, compared his attack on the proposals to a blitzkrieg: “The bombs drop. The issue is settled.” Parsons protested the accuracy of Manning’s criticisms and wondered why he wanted the proposal withdrawn even before it was discussed at the Anglican Communion’s Lambeth Conference. Did he think that the conference would support union? Parsons also cited Manning’s support of the Congregational Concordat in 1921. “Why should we not … like Christian gentlemen try to discuss these things without all this hysteria?” he asked.88

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The issue only became more heated over the next seven years. In 1946 Manning again took out his big guns. He rehearsed the particular problems with the Proposed Basis of Union and stated that union would cause secessions from the Episcopal Church. Then he struck directly: “If the General Convention were to ask the Church to take this Proposal into serious consideration it would be an act of plain apostasy and would plunge the Church into such controversy, distress, and dismay, and such shaking of the faith of our people, as this Church has never yet known.” The pecusa, in effect, would abandon the Anglican Communion and lose its historic status as a bridge between catholics and protestants. In the name of comprehensiveness and catholicity, a retreat from ecumenism was necessary. “Those who believe in the principles of the Church as given to us in the Scriptures and in the Prayer Book can give no countenance to this ‘Proposed Basis of Union,› he concluded.89 It was apostasy. This statement was a long way from Manning’s belief in the years 1910–19 that divisions in Christendom were a sin shared by all denominations. In this case, a sectarian impulse was honourable and virtuous. These arguments point to an underlying tension in Manning’s churchmanship. He singled out the particulars of the Proposed Basis but really had become opposed to any form of union with protestants. His was a sectarian defence of Anglican-catholic comprehensiveness. The only reunion scheme acceptable to him would have encompassed all Christians. And only God could bring that about, Manning admitted. He continued to state his support of Christian reunion, in principle, but he defined it in such strict terms as to make it all but impossible to achieve. Certainly the Proposed Basis died a quiet death. After failing to reach an agreement in 1946, both denominations turned to internal matters that had become more immediately important.90 It is not difficult to understand Manning’s mood during the 1930s and 1940s. The social and cultural changes of the 1920s (rising divorce rates, the fundamentalist-modernist crisis, and so forth) had disturbed him greatly. Economic upheaval and political unrest escalated with the Great Depression and World War II, and he began to perceive a crisis in the American nation and Western culture. Consequently, he grew brittle, intractable, and anxious towards ecumenism and the historic Anglican episcopacy. Though he remained somewhat irenic on creedal issues, Manning became a resolutely high-church fundamentalist. Rather than biblical authority, the nature and authority of the church became his final test of orthodoxy and order.91 For all the distance his spirituality had moved from that of his predecessor Bishop Hobart and for all the modernity of his

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“faith-and-service” programs as a priest and bishop, Manning could not escape the pluralism of a modern American culture. Like Hobart he retreated from the relativism implied in the competing identity choices that Episcopalians and other North Americans encountered on a daily basis. While his appeals to EpiscopalianAnglican comprehensiveness were genuine and in spite of the influence of evangelical and liberal Christianity on his piety, Manning insisted in the 1930s and 1940s that the only true and legitimate choice was his high-church, “catholic” identity. Manning retired as bishop of New York in 1947, suffering from cancer. He continued to be active, however, preaching and writing. Rumours circulated that he was “going over,” converting and “submitting” to the Roman Catholic Church. Manning denied these rumours and worked hard to promote spiritual renewal in his diocese.92 To the end of his life, he preached the evangelical gospel but identified himself as a convinced high churchman. In his last public message he said, fittingly, “We must preach the Christ of the Annunciation, the Christ of Bethlehem, the Christ of Calvary and the Resurrection and the Ascension into Heaven, the Christ who with the Holy Ghost still ministers in His Church on earth and in His holy Sacraments still blesses us with His living touch.”93 The gospel and the church remained indivisible. Manning died on 18 November 1949. He was enshrined in a tomb in the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City. The Cathedral was a fitting legacy, an exquisite, immense monument to his life and work. It was also ironic. People would remember Manning more for the magnificent cathedral he built than for the power of his gospel message and his high-church fundamentalism. Manning’s contradictory ecumenism and his vision of the pecusa’s role in the search for Christian unity stemmed from his devotion to the Anglican myth of comprehensiveness and his reactions in the 1920s to perceptions of a modern crisis in church authority and in faith. His need for religious certainty and authority led him to narrow his diverse piety into a strict high churchmanship. As the transformation of Manning’s Anglicanism revealed, the myth of comprehensiveness, which shaped his reading of Anglican history and defined his identity, contained sectarian paradoxes. The myth purported that Anglicanism has uniquely embodied and mediated the best aspects of catholic, protestant, and modern Christianity, harmoniously incorporating diversity and unity. It thus has been a unique “bridge” church in the difficult quest for the reunion of

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Christendom. In order to defend that bridge status, Manning vociferously opposed Episcopal negotiations for reunion with the Presbyterian Church in the 1930s. Though his particular usage of the ideology of comprehensiveness was high-church, or anglo-catholic, the myth itself was diverse in its sectarian possibilities.94 In a recent study Allen Guelzo analysed the contradictory consequences of the myth for Episcopalian evangelicals. He argued that the Reformed Episcopalians seceded from the pecusa in 1873 to promote the union of protestantism. Ironically, they quickly became a classic example of American sectarianism. The Reformed Episcopal Church became a tiny denomination, swallowed up in the whirlwind of conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism at the turn of the century, significant only as an American type, exemplifying the tragedy and promise of American Christianity.95 Manning’s opposition to the Proposed Basis of Union with the Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church’s rejection of it in 1947 suggest that similar contradictions characterised the anglo-catholic wing of the pecusa. In effect, high-church claims that the AnglicanEpiscopal tradition was a bridge to catholic and protestant Christianity alienated their church from both camps. For example, Presbyterians rejected high-church claims about the need for and use of the episcopacy, and Roman Catholics dismissed Anglicanism as yet another prodigal that had left the one true church. Manning’s erratic ecumenism reflected this contradiction. Because the only acceptable form of ecumenism would unite Roman, Orthodox, and protestant churches at the same time, in practice his vision made reunion all but impossible. Only after World War II did Anglicans play a bridging role in the World Council of Churches, a church federation that did not seek organic reunion. In the wcc, Anglicans and Episcopalians represented merely one communion among many protestant denominations and the Orthodox churches. Reunion discussions with Rome have continued, but they have been tentative and informal. Besides explaining the pecusa’s diffuse and enigmatic place in twentieth-century ecumenical movements and organizations, the myth of comprehensiveness also illuminates the dilemmas of identity evident in Manning’s life and thought. His preaching and personal faith displayed a distinct evangelical impulse, and he regarded the impact of protestantism in the sixteenth century on Anglican tradition as a necessary corrective. On occasion he even praised prominent evangelical revivalists like John Wesley and Dwight Moody. Manning also insisted that modern intellectual movements – the ones that could be trusted – reinforced orthodox Christianity. In that sense he was a moderate liberal. However, in the end Manning identified himself in high-church

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and anglo-catholic terms. The gospel could never truly be separated from the divinely instituted church, and its episcopal authority descended directly from Jesus’ apostles. In Manning’s reading of history, Anglicanism had broken away from Roman rule but not from historic catholic and apostolic Christianity. Anglican tradition had maintained true catholicism and encompassed and assimilated protestant reform. The implications of Manning’s anglo-catholicism revealed themselves most clearly in his rejection of organic union with the Presbyterian Church. Such a decision – in effect, recognition of the essential equality of the protestant churches – would have been apostasy, he believed. Manning thus scorned the identity of conservative evangelical Anglicans such as Dyson Hague and W.H. Griffith Thomas. For them, Anglican and “catholic” identities pointed towards ecumenical ties with like-minded protestants and inspired suspicion of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Carl Grammar also rejected Manning’s anglo-catholic reading of Anglican history and identity, viewing it in liberal-protestant terms as a reactionary, hide-bound tradition. In the end, Manning was unable to reconcile the dilemmas of modernity and identity that had defined him. The very modernity of his diverse individual interests and impulses – evangelical, liberal, Progressive, social gospel, and anglo-catholic – made him a compelling leader as the bishop of New York City, a large and demanding diocese. But these competing identities and the relativity they implied disturbed him fundamentally, especially when he began to perceive a social and religious crisis in the United States and the pecusa during the 1920s and 1930s. Manning genuinely valued the comprehensive Anglican vision he espoused, and it truly characterised his own identity. But when confronted by the ambiguity of modern American culture Manning’s identity turned sectarian and narrow. In his search for certainty and stability, he clung to anglo-catholic traditions of episcopal authority, apostolic succession. He opposed the “disembedding” processes of modernity in North American Anglicanism by insisting that individual faith was certain and secure only when strictly embedded in church traditions dating back to the ancient church through North American and English history. At root, his identity remained profoundly antimodern.

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7 Anglicanism in North America, 1920–1950

In the conclusion of Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church (1946), E. Clowes Chorley argued that evangelicalism in the pecusa was “born again” during the 1920s and 1930s. Evangelicals had existed “in the shadows, divided and discredited” for sixty years, out of touch with “contemporary life and thought” and lacking “vigorous corporate expression.” But after having long been overshadowed by liberals and anglo-catholics, they were making themselves heard again.1 As a broad-church liberal, Chorley praised the revival of evangelical Anglicanism that he had observed over the past two decades in the pecusa.2 The resurgent evangelicals, Chorley explained, were not the lowchurch, conservative, and often crude militants of the mid– nineteenth century. Rather, like the contemporary Evangelical Group Movement in the Church of England and in Canada, they “stood for continuity with the old Evangelical school, but ‘sought to baptize new knowledge into the name of Christ, and to present the Christian Faith in forms suitable to the mind today.›3 In short, they had adopted much of the outlook of liberal Christianity. In addition, contemporary liberal evangelicals shared much with liberal catholics. Liberal catholicism had become the most dynamic movement in the Anglican communion by the turn of the century. Charles Gore, a liberal catholic bishop in the Church of England, was the most influential Anglican theologian from the 1880s to the 1920s. He had successfully reconciled modern thought with orthodoxy for many anglo-catholics and, as Chorley argued, for many evangelicals too. Both

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groups of liberals appreciated beauty in worship, valued ecumenism, and were willing to compromise on numerous issues that had divided conservative evangelicals and anglo-catholics in the past.4 The Anglican ideology of comprehensiveness pervades Chorley’s discussion. According to this tradition, the Anglican communion has uniquely, successfully, and with a minimum of controversy combined the best aspects of protestantism and catholicism and generally avoided their extremes. Indeed, the coming together of liberal catholics and evangelicals during the interwar years, which Chorley celebrated, could be regarded as a living example of liberal-minded Episcopalian comprehensiveness.5 This liberal movement and the myth itself would largely define the pecusa – and the acc, for that matter – after World War II, often to the chagrin of conservative evangelicals, anglo-catholics, and (after 1960) charismatic Episcopalians.6 What the myth does not do justice to and what Chorley ignored are the episodes of radicalism and controversy that characterised the Episcopal Church during the interwar years. Militant anglo-catholics continued to inspire liberal evangelicals to voice fears of “Romish” conspiracy and superstition, much as their conservative ancestors had done in the past. In particular, high-church opposition to protestant ecumenism, specifically to proposals for union with the Presbyterian Church in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s, inspired low-church bitterness. Furthermore, Chorely wrongly implied that the only evangelicals left were liberals. Liberal evangelicals predominated during the 1930s, but conservatives continued to have some influence.7 Men and Movements was the most significant historical study of the Episcopal Church to its time, and it remains the most complete study of pecusa church parties to 1945, but Chorley’s work plainly reflects the hopes of mediating liberals like himself between the world wars. Whatever the shortcomings of Chorley’s analysis, he correctly observed the convergence of liberal evangelicals and catholics on numerous Episcopal issues. This convergence took place for Anglicans throughout North America. For example, conservative faculty at Wycliffe College in Toronto lamented a growing tendency in the 1930s for graduates to accommodate ritual practices in their parishes. Principal Robert McElheran and an aging Dyson Hague believed that a reassertion of evangelical tradition was required to ensure that Wycliffe alumni remained solid on party issues. By contrast, other evangelicals had become convinced that moderate ritual was not a threat. Indeed, for many, ritual enriched evangelical worship and attitudes towards the church, which had been deficient in the past. In the 1940s Wycliffe would establish a committee to reevaluate its statement of

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principles and address these issues. Despite some controversy, by the 1950s the college’s new statement of principles remained evangelical in spirit and self-identity but became more flexible and open to liberal and ritualist innovations.8 The Wycliffe example suggests that Chorley’s narrative of a convergence of liberal catholics and evangelicals also might be told as the diversification of the traditional church parties. Liberal evangelicals and anglo-catholics moved closer to each other but grew distant from conservatives within their own parties. Modern liberal-conservative lines, in effect, cut across older Anglican divisions based on churchmanship. This was a form of comprehensiveness, perhaps, but one that led to competition and conflict as well as to consensus. The Canadian and American stories were not identical. Between 1920 and 1950 controversy characterised the pecusa to a greater degree than the acc, where there was a noticeable decline of party conflict. Much of this difference stemmed from particular American issues, notably the negotiations for union with the Presbyterian Church, which had no direct parallel in Canada. Nevertheless, the diversification, perhaps fragmentation, of Anglican identities was apparent in both churches, even if it was covered over with the ideology of comprehensiveness. This chapter situates these Anglican trends in the broader context of the deterioration of the protestant establishment in the United States and its evolution in Canada. Specifically, the chapter suggests that the Anglican communion became a pluralist coalition of diverse, shifting parties at a time when mainline protestantism in North America was being transformed by ecumenical impulses and an increasingly diverse society and culture. In this multicultural context, could North American Anglicans find a niche? They no longer had a unified, organic identity with which to compete in the diverse ecumenical religious markets of Canada and the United States. The acc and the pecusa offered diverse Anglican choices in a diverse religiouscultural marketplace and Anglican comprehensiveness amidst generic protestant ecumenism. Did ecumenism weaken Anglican boundaries from the outside, while diversifying church parties splintered them from within? Or did Anglican diversity and the myth of comprehensiveness represent successful adaption? Understood within a wider theoretical framework, these ambiguous trends typified the consolidating and fragmenting forces of modernity, which also were shaping the evolution of nation-states and societies such as Canada and the United States. It is difficult to draw neat causal linkages between social behaviour and cultural identities, but it is evident that both factors continued to shape the piety and activities of Anglicans in the pecusa and the acc.

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The place to begin is with the “travail” of mainline protestantism during the interwar years. It would be too strong to say that the informal protestant establishment in the United States collapsed in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the Great War and the Roaring Twenties did rupture the consciousness of American protestants, as they recognized how much their nation had changed over the past half-century. Since the 1870s that informal establishment had been dividing internally into conservative and liberal camps. At the same time, an inter- or transdenominational network of revivalist and premillennial associations had evolved outside the mainline protestant orbit, linking evangelicals from sectarian groups to those who were members of mainline denominations.9 Further afield, after the Civil War the influx of millions of immigrants – Asian, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish – had challenged Anglo-Saxon protestant hegemony. Before the turn of the century, the Roman Catholic Church would be the single largest religious denomination in the United States (although, all told, protestants remained in the majority). Asian religions and new religious movements, such as Christian Science and Spiritualism, also made the American religious scene more diverse.10 Finally, competition from movies, amusement parks, roller rinks, spectator sports, radio, conspicuous consumption among the middle classes and some industrial workers, secular social-welfare movements, and the state undercut Victorian morality and challenged the traditional leisure and social roles played by the churches.11 The response of American protestants in the 1920s was three-fold. First, the fundamentalist-modernist conflicts fractured several church traditions, notably the Presbyterians and Northern Baptists, leading to the formation of several new denominations and seminaries. For the fundamentalists these changes represented religious and moral decline, and they chose to separate from mainline denominations to preserve a faithful Christian and American remnant. Second, mainline protestants renewed efforts to band together and more effectively address changes in modern America. For example, World War I galvanized the National Council of Churches. It was rooted in older ecumenical ventures, such as missions and social service, as well as in hopes for organic church reunion. During the 1920s, through various international and national congresses and bilateral negotiations (e.g., between the pecusa and the Congregationalist churches around 1920) protestants continued to explore the theological and practical bases of ecumenical cooperation. Third, protestant extremists fought against “outsiders” through such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. It is important to note that many sectarian goals were similar to those

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of the respectable mainstream organizations. They all were dedicated in some fashion to excluding or Americanizing immigrants from outside anglo-protestant communities.12 The results of these trends and conflicts are difficult to judge. At the very least, protestant hegemony was challenged openly. The choice of a Roman Catholic, Al Smith, as the Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1928 signalled this transformation, as did the growing influence of the Roman Catholic Church in cultural debates (e.g., pushing for censorship of the movie industry, which was itself dominated by immigrants). Significantly, Al Smith lost the election, highlighting the limits of protestant decline.13 Nonetheless, Roman Catholic observers regularly and gleefully reported endemic protestant conflict over modernist theology and happily predicted that their day was dawning. If Roman Catholics remained faithful and determined, they might win the United States for their church.14 The Great Depression of the 1930s also damaged religious institutions, as money needed to pay clerical salaries, run social programs, fund missions, build churches, and maintain seminaries disappeared. Combined with World War I and the economic conservatism of the 1920s, the Great Depression undercut the promise of progress that had inspired missions and the social gospel before the war. And yet, protestant decline can be exaggerated. Not until after World War II did notions of America as a Judaeo-Christian nation become commonplace. In addition, the fury of the modernistfundamentalist conflicts has obscured the continuity of a large, moderate protestant majority. Finally, while the protestant churches and their ancillary institutions no longer were expanding at the startling pace of the mid–nineteenth century, when they exceeded population growth, neither did they decline precipitously during the interwar years. “Breakup” is too strong a word to describe what happened to American protestantism. “Decline” may be closer, but it also needs significant qualification. More accurate are uncertain, ambiguous terms such as “depression” and “stagnation.” In this vein, a recent study depicts the decades between 1900 and 1960 in terms of the “travail” of a protestant establishment “between the times.” Disturbing new dilemmas from within and outside the churches threatened and weakened protestant hegemony but did not yet undo it. And most protestants had not yet stopped thinking of themselves as America’s religious-cultural establishment.15 During the 1920s and 1930s “ecumenism” meant protestant unity and only rarely referred to panChristian unity. Only the upheavals of the 1960s would shatter protestant hegemony and make the very desire for establishment status and privilege seem illegitimate to many mainline protestants.

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Nonetheless, even limited recognition of religious-cultural diversity and tentative adoption of pluralist ideologies during the 1920s might have serious consequences for the pecusa. As this brief narrative suggests, it is easy to make the decades between the world wars seem like a time of decline – or, at least, a period of change that led to serious decline in the 1950s and 1960s. But the plot is not so simple. In terms of identity, Episcopalians during the 1920s and 1930s experienced conflicts within (and among) their own traditions and faced new sources of social, cultural, and ideological competition from the outside. The trauma and dislocation of two world wars and the Depression would have affected the pecusa under any circumstances. Migration in search of work alone meant that some parishes would close down or decline in numbers and that others would be created, especially in the West. Migration to the suburbs after World War II meant the same. These kinds of social forces affected Americans of diverse religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. The point is to avoid simplistic, linear readings of mainline protestant decline that occurred in the 1960s back into the 1920s and 1930s. The myth of comprehensiveness says too much, belying Episcopalian conflicts and internal competition between the church parties, notably over talks about union with the Presbyterian Church. But the pecusa did continue to adapt ideologically and institutionally to modern American culture during the interwar years. In particular, analysis of the Episcopal Church at the parish level indicates the significance of continuity as well as change, certainly not radical disruption. People in Episcopal Church pews did not experience fundamental changes in worship and theology during the interwar years or dramatic numerical decline, but they did see parish life modernized. The pecusa strengthened diocesan and national denominational bureaucracies and exercised greater control of local organizations. For example, in the past, women’s auxiliaries had raised money and spent it on their own. To facilitate greater efficiency and cooperation, competing church structures had to be rationalized and centralized, church officials believed. To take one diocese as an example, in 1928 in Chicago the women’s auxiliary was discontinued and subsumed under the work of the diocesan social service department. This kind of reorganization of church structures and missions might offer women voices in diocesan (and national) agencies, but it sacrificed their independence to male and professional policy makers. Such bureaucratic inclusion clearly did not mean equality, as women normally had only token representation and could not vote. These kinds of changes threatened to shift the balance of power in the Episcopal Church, both nationally

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and in parishes, and also had significant implications for women spiritually. Women whose piety was shaped by participation in local women’s auxiliaries lost much of the independence and freedom that once had defined their place and identity as Episcopal women. The Great Depression cut short some of this bureaucratic reorganization and demanded that local women’s groups subsidize severely diminished diocesan budgets. In urban and rural parishes women with roots deep in local communities organized teas, bazaars, fund-raising balls, and bake sales and travelled in cars and brought relief to people in need. Nevertheless, diocesan and national programs and agencies and settlement houses were run by men and professionals. In subsequent decades, beginning during the 1950s, the national women’s auxiliary would reevaluate its place in the pecusa. But not until the 1960s and 1970s would women serve on parish vestries and win the right to ordination.16 This story is profoundly ironic. Plans to make the denomination more efficient and progressive and to extend its mission undermined local and lay participation, especially in women’s auxiliaries. On the one hand, these trends highlight ways in which the pecusa continued to evolve, to modernize. On the other hand, they unsettled the piety of Episcopal women who had often had been the backbone of the parishes. In later years, in the 1970s and 1980s, similar stories might be told about women’s ordination and the women’s auxiliaries. Full participation by women in vestries, parishes, dioceses and their participation nationally as priests, deacons, and bishops weakened women’s parallel institutions. Were they redundant relics from times past when women had been denied full membership and participation in the life of the church? The social activities, fund-raising, missions, and social services that once gave meaning and a unique role to Episcopal women, as women, were not lost. They continued to be an independent, if diminished, potential source of power and participation in parishes. Nevertheless, progress had unintended and unexpected consequences.17 What this trend meant for Episcopal identities is not clear. It suggests that the evolution of pecusa identities – the denominational “travail” – was not simply a matter of theology and tradition or protestant decline and division. It was also a by-product of internal reorganization. In becoming modern – in this case bureaucratic, in the name of order, control, and efficiency – the pecusa undermined local ties that once bound Episcopal women and men to their parishes. The relationship of organizational change and the changing place of women in the pecusa to the myths and ideologies of comprehensiveness and to liberal, evangelical, and anglo-catholic identities is difficult to discern.

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But this much can be said. Competition over identity and tradition by church parties was accompanied by organizational upheaval during the Great Depression and more broadly by the evolution of the pecusa as a typically modern organization. In English-speaking Canada during the 1920s the creation of the United Church was a response to threats to protestant hegemony and unity, but it was also something of a triumph for the protestant establishment. This is not to say that ecumenism in the United States was merely a fearful, negative response to change. It also incorporated millennial and progressive hopes about the advance of God’s kingdom. Nonetheless, in Canada more than in the United States, ecumenism seemed to accomplish glorious things during the interwar years. It is thus more accurate to speak of the evolution of Canadian protestantism than of its decline or even its stagnation, deterioration, or “travail.” During the 1870s and 1880s various splinter groups from the Methodist-Wesleyan and Presbyterian traditions had united as national denominations. Church union at this level reflected the decline of older, intramural denominational conflicts, the evolution of a loose, broad-minded evangelical-protestant consensus, and a practical concern to strengthen and nationalise protestant institutions to better meet Canada’s needs, especially in newly settled regions.18 Between 1880 and 1910 the next stage of discussions about church union took place among the national denominations (Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and, on occasion, Anglican). Despite initiating interdenominational discussions in 1889, the acc had backed away from union talks by the turn of the century – because of enduring Anglican pretensions about national church status, as well as conflicts over the Nicene Creed and the necessity of the episcopacy (this was a sticking point even for many evangelical Anglicans).19 During the first and second decades of the twentieth century the other three groups committed themselves to church union. World War I delayed the process but also made its necessity seem more apparent to unionists. A large minority of traditionalist Presbyterians emerged in the 1920s to oppose church union. Not necessarily fundamentalist, they wanted to keep alive the Presbyterian tradition and denominational name, and they did so, despite legal efforts into the 1930s by the United Church of Canada (ucc) to prevent its use.20 This opposition, which was rooted in religious and ethnic Scottish identities, can be seen as an antimodern attempt to maintain a distinct heritage. Meanwhile, the ucc opened its doors in 1925 and continued to

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promote the social-gospel mission and moderate evangelical piety that had characterised Canadian protestantism at the turn of the century. The new denomination was the largest in English-speaking Canada and worked to evangelize the nation and address its social and political needs. Together with the other protestant denominations, in organizations such as the Social Service Council of Canada the ucc helped lobby the federal government to begin to create a welfare state during the late 1930s. Indeed, the 1920s and 1930s can be viewed as the high point of protestant influence in Canada.21 Links between protestantism and nationalism, between private and public religiosity, remained dynamic in English-speaking Canada, in contrast to the “travail” of the protestant establishment in the United States. Paradoxically, a few significant cracks appeared in the Canadian protestant establishment during the same decades that it was achieving some long-held goals (i.e., church union, social reform, and the early origins of a welfare state). The fundamentalist-modernist conflicts did not plague the protestant churches in Canada on the same scale as in the United States, but liberal-conservative divisions widened. In addition to Presbyterian dissension, manifested in the group that had rejected church union, Baptist conferences suffered fundamentalist splits, notably those led by the obstinate T.T. Shields of Toronto.22 Furthermore, immigration during the 1920s greatly increased the Roman Catholic and (to a lesser extent) Jewish populations in Canada, adding to the large prewar immigrant communities.23 These immigrant groups, combined with native-born French-speaking Roman Catholics, render the very notion of protestant hegemony in Canada as a whole somewhat problematic. Furthermore, even if protestant churches did contribute to the very early evolution of the welfare state in Canada during the late 1930s and the 1940s, their growth stagnated as a result of the Great Depression. For example, the number of seminary students and postings for graduates in parishes and missions dropped significantly during the 1930s. There was little money to be had. Finally, albeit more slowly than in the United States, the world of leisure industries, mass entertainment, spectator sports, and consumerism expanded between the wars, creating new forms of competition for the churches and undermining Victorian standards of “proper” Christian morality.24 As in the United States, Christians in Canada often led in these changes – using advertisements and promoting church-sponsored dances, roller skating, and movies. Historians thus should not assume a linear secularization process. The interwar years were a time of great hope as well as growing anxiety for Canadian protestants.

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Amidst such changes it became increasingly difficult to remain complacent. If not a “between time,” or an era of “travail,” as for American protestants, the years between 1920 and 1950 were a time of transition in Canada. After World War II the protestant churches in Canada flourished for several heady but misleading years, as hundreds of new congregations were organized, churches built, and members added in the rapidly expanding suburbs populated by the parents and children of the baby boom. In the 1960s, to a greater degree than in the United States, notions of protestant consensus and hegemony in collapsed. Canadian Anglicans then would contend with a headlong decline in numbers and morale. From the 1920s to the 1950s, however, the religious landscape was shaped by ecumenical, moderate protestantism, diversity, church union, home missions, and social service.25 The cultural challenges that Anglicans faced were immigrant diversity, consumer culture, and the evolving welfare state.26 Understood in this light, secularization models seem inadequate to untangle what happened to the acc and the pecusa during the interwar years. “Secularization” generally signifies religious decline and the social “differentiation” of modern nation-states. Neither of these theoretical concerns describes what was distinct about the 1920s and 1930s. Pluralization and the conflict and competition of identities are more helpful rubrics. While these trends might be seen as part of a secularization process, they do not need to carry that ideological baggage. More importantly, the alternative paradigms frame religious patterns in a wider cultural context. Women, adolescents, and members of ethnic-religious communities found that they had more identities than ever available from which to chose, as institutional and communal restraints on individual behaviour continued to erode. These interwar centrifugal trends inspired countermovements by the state, churches, corporations, and social-service agencies to reorder society. The Ku Klux Klan was active in Canada, as in the United States. But despite such efforts the social context of identities became more diverse, and spirituality grew more individualized in Canada. In theoretical terms, the 1920s witnessed the increased “disembedding” of individuals and groups in North America. These trends had different consequences for Anglicans in the United States and Canada in the short run but were fundamentally similar in the long run. The complexity and illusiveness of these comparisons reflects the tensions that shaped the modern era generally, between centrifugal and centripetal forces. Even as Canadian society became more diverse and perhaps began to fragment, with the evolution of consumerism, urbanization, and industrialization, countervailing move-

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ments such as the formation of the United Church of Canada promoted consolidation. The same contrary forces can be seen in Anglo-Canadian nationalism. The interwar years witnessed the on-going evolution of AngloCanadians’ self-identities, as growing numbers began to see themselves as North American rather than British first and foremost – they were Europeans who had been redefined by the colonial experience, a harsh Northern environment, and the mixing of immigrant peoples.27 A mark of this newly emerging self-identity was friendlier perceptions of and relations with the United States. At the same time, Canadians agonized over the threat of continentalism and American domination, culturally, economically, and politically. Did American branch-plant industries, magazines, movies, and radio threaten Canada’s independence, British heritage, and unique North American experience? Anglo-Canadian leaders addressed this problem practically by founding cultural institutions, such as the cbc radio network, that could resist American influences and promote national unity. They confronted the dilemma ideologically by depicting Canada as a geographic and cultural hinge between Great Britain and the United States, a mediator between the two greatest influences on English-Canadian life, past and present. Whatever the pretensions and illusions of this self-perception, it neatly resolved the tensions in becoming “American” and remaining true to the British heritage.28 Moreover, this myth-ideology functioned in ways remarkably similar to Anglican notions of comprehensiveness, which also found in diversity and contradiction a basis for unity. Several points can be made here. First, compared to the United States, an evolutionary continuity in cultural ties between religion and nationalism in Canada helps to explain both the relative coherence of the mainline protestant establishment there and the waning of party conflict in the acc. As Anglicans and Anglo-Canadians, members of all parties in the Anglican Church sought ways to promote a meaningful, compelling common identity and did so for ideological and practical reasons. Second, these Canadian continuities did not reflect an essential difference between the American and Canadian Anglican experiences so much as contrasting historical circumstances during the interwar years. In the long run, as North Americans the pecusa and the acc faced fundamentally similar modern problems and challenges. Third, people’s multiple identities – as Americans and Canadians; Anglicans, catholics, and protestants; women and men; and more – overlapped and competed and conflicted. No theoretical calculus can easily untangle or predict all the interconnections between these identities. People’s identities and the

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relationships between them were in flux during the interwar years, cohering and fragmenting. This typically modern flux shaped the goals and dilemmas that preoccupied the five individuals depicted in this study, as anglo-catholics, liberals, and evangelicals struggling to define what it meant to be Anglican. While the following section focusses on the acc and the pecusa as denominations, these stories can also be read for what they tell us about particular individuals, church parties, and North American Anglicanism as a whole. As the career of Bishop William Manning reveals, the Episcopal Church in the United States suffered from conflicts among anglocatholics, evangelicals, and liberals over the negotiations for union with the Presbyterian Church. It also experienced limited, yet noteworthy, trouble over fundamentalism and modernism. His moderate theology and evangelical leanings notwithstanding, during the 1930s and 1940s Manning held to a strict high-church interpretation of the episcopacy and apostolic succession. He refused to compromise what he considered essential Anglican standards to achieve ecumenical goals for which he had worked so long and hard earlier in his career. In this case the much-lauded ideology of Anglican comprehensiveness not only failed to produce union with other denominations, it also displayed internal contradictions. Even as they often could not agree upon what Anglican or Episcopalian meant, church parties interpreted “comprehensiveness” in diverse, competing ways. For high churchmen like Manning it meant reunion with the historic catholic churches (defined by the episcopacy and apostolic succession) and the conformity of protestantism. For evangelicals and liberals it meant protestant ecumenism and, at times, anticatholicism. Though Anglicans in Canada did not face public controversy over ecumenical ventures or fundamentalist-modernist conflicts, as did the pecusa, similar tensions bubbled under the surface. Party conflict decreased steadily in the Canadian church, as a survey of the national Anglican newspaper the Canadian Churchman from 1900 to the 1920s indicates, but it did not disappear.29 As noted earlier in this chapter, leading conservative evangelicals such as Principal McElheran of Wycliffe College grew concerned during the 1930s that graduates had become soft on ritualism. As principal, McElheran’s goal was to combat the growing influence of ritualism and modern theology and so to stand fast against the forces that threatened the acc and Canadian society. Wycliffe’s trustees had chosen McElheran as the college’s new principal for his unshakable evangelical credentials and to provide stability in an era of cultural change and economic upheaval. The

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new principal did his best to lead Wycliffe on the path of evangelical orthodoxy during a time of profound social turmoil. “I try to remind myself constantly of the fact that, as Principal, I am not free,” he said in 1931. “It is not mine to do as I like. I have a heritage to guard and a great and wonderful institution to guide.” As McElheran’s statement suggests, his sense of mission was profoundly antimodern. He was not “free” and his duty was to protect and promote a particular heritage. For this reason his specific goals as principal were simple: protect the evangelical and protestant character of the college, train men for the ministry and missions, and ensure the loyalty of students to the Bible, Prayer Book, and church.30 It is thus telling that one of the first problems McElheran discovered after he became principal was the growth of ritualist practices among evangelical clergy. This development was only one of the ways in which the evangelical party was diversifying in the 1930s. In a report in 1932 to Wycliffe’s Council on his trip to the Maritimes to visit graduates, McElheran described the opposition and pressure that Wycliffe men faced in many dioceses. He praised those who held firm, declaring: “I cannot speak too highly of the devotion and loyalty of men who carry on their work with any degree of loyalty to their principles, in the face of such persistent opposition.” He feared for the evangelical party because some evangelicals had adopted ritualist practices, such as the eastward position in communion, a development that he considered “significant.” Principal McElheran responded to the renewed threat of ritualism by stressing that Wycliffe should support isolated evangelicals, for example those in the Maritimes. The college also needed to keep its own house in order. “I am more convinced than ever, after such an experience as this,” McElheran said, “that everything must be done in the College to train the men on sound lines.” His fear was simple: “If [graduates] leave Wycliffe with their ideas hazy and their principles not well grounded and well established, it is not to be supposed that they will go into dioceses where everything is against them and suddenly become convinced Evangelicals. We must see to it that when men leave here they know the principles of Wycliffe College with respect to the Church, the ministry and the sacraments.” Dyson Hague similarly argued that Wycliffe should stick to its principles, or it would not be worth preserving.31 McElheran’s response to the liberal theological climate of the day was as unequivocal as his attitude towards ritualism. But he was swimming against the theological tide. His predecessor, W.E. Taylor, the acting principal in 1930, had noticed growing “unsettlement” in the thinking of many Wycliffe students. He had encountered seminarians

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who did not simply accept the traditions being handed down to them; they wanted to think their way through modern intellectual problems on their own. Taylor attributed this tendency to the effect of university life and teaching. It is equally likely that many students came to the university with questions. Serious students usually got through their time of doubt stronger and better for it, Taylor believed, but these developments troubled him nonetheless.32 Student “unsettlement” reflected changes in the mood of the Anglican Church as a whole. In the minds of some moderate and most conservative evangelicals, rationalism, relativism, and biblical criticism had become more serious threats than in years past. In response, Wycliffe College added declarations about the historical truth and the doctrinal significance of the trinity, incarnation, atonement, resurrection and ascension, and person of the Holy Spirit to its statement of founding principles. The new statement also stressed that missions were an essential part of the church’s work, “implied in Christian discipleship, and involving world-wide witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”33 In the mid-1930s, Robert McElheran continued to promote the principles of the college, restating them at annual trustees meetings to remind Wycliffe supporters of their roots and duty. In a time of change and upheaval, he was hopeful that the college would be a rock of stability. He reflected on the school’s mission in his trustees report in 1937, concluding proudly: “[It] has been a year of great anxiety throughout the world. International unrest, national fears, social and industrial disturbances and great and grave personal problems. It is a happy thing … that, in the midst of all the changes and chances of this mortal life, the institution committed to our care is one that stands for those eternal principles and that unchanging truth, which is the only security.” Only the gospel of Christ, he insisted, could save an “erring world.”34 Despite the efforts of conservatives such as Robert McElheran to shore up orthodoxy, other evangelicals explored more liberal paths. In 1937 C.V. Pilcher, a former Wycliffe professor who had become coadjutor bishop of Sydney, Australia, wrote to H.J. Cody. Cody had been rector at St Paul’s Church in Toronto for three decades but had left a few years before to become president of the University of Toronto. Pilcher described the theological climate in his Australian diocese to Cody. He noted that anyone there who denied the extremely conservative doctrine of the verbal inspiration of scripture was dismissed as a modernist. As a result, liberal evangelicals often found themselves allied with liberal anglo-catholics against the conservatives. Pilcher also noted the poor education of many of the

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clergy in Sydney, though he admitted that they were “good fellows.” He concluded by warning Cody that this letter was “for the inner circle only.”35 Pilcher’s warning does not imply that a cabal of liberals lurked covertly in the Anglican communion. It simply indicates that some evangelicals, in Canada and elsewhere, had chosen to explore the liberal limits of their faith. At Wycliffe College, for example, Professor B.W. Horan taught an irenic, moderately liberal theology. Similarly, H.J. Cody joined the Liberal Evangelical Group Movement and encouraged the growth of local chapters in Canada and the United States. The Group Movement had begun in England and spread to the North American branches of Anglicanism. Also known as the Liberal Evangelicals, it embodied new links between the liberal party and moderate evangelicals.36 Cody’s successor at St Paul’s, the former Bishop of Athabasca Robert Renison, got into hot water with members of his parish over vague conclusions in a sermon on the Virgin Birth.37 Clergy such as Horan, Renison, and Cody had broken from the stricter orthodoxy promoted by Hague and McElheran. Their faith can best be described as “mediating” liberal evangelicalism.38 They likely did not reject the essentials of orthodoxy – defined in Wycliffe College’s statement of principles – but the group’s very existence is evidence of growing diversity within the acc’s evangelical party in the 1930s. By the end of the 1930s, then, the evangelical party in the Canadian Anglican Church had begun to come apart at the edges. Some clergy and lay people were exploring liberal theology and accepting ritualist practices, while others tried to hold the line against all forms of change. In general, Wycliffe College promoted a moderately conservative form of evangelicalism, but students and faculty no longer accepted the old verities without question. A long-term trend, which would accelerate after the Second World War, could also be seen developing.39 Older lines between high-church and low-church Anglicans, distinguished by adherence to, or rejection of, ritualist practice and sacramental theology, had begun to blur and become less important. Meanwhile, liberal-conservative divisions were becoming more apparent among evangelical Anglicans and anglo-catholics. Would these trends lead to the fragmentation of the evangelical and anglocatholic parties in the acc? Or would they lead to liberal convergence and consensus? And what do they suggest about the reconfiguration of the Anglican communion as a whole? Developments in the pecusa during the 1930s raise similar questions about its reconfiguration. E. Clowes Chorley asserted that during the 1930s and early 1940s a coalition of liberal evangelicals, liberal

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catholics, and broad churchmen formed. This diverse movement of progressive-minded Episcopalians wanted to harmonise Christianity with modern thought forms, valued beauty, dignity, and refinement in style of worship, and held a great deal of hope for ecumenism.40 A case can be made that Chorley overestimated the coherence of this liberal coalition. Compared to the ambivalence of liberal catholics towards union proposals, the militancy of low-church liberals like Carl E. Grammer regarding union with the Presbyterian Church in the United States stands out. More importantly, the bitterness inspired by strict high-church, anglo-catholic opposition to union with the Presbyterians could not have helped but isolate some evangelical and broad-church liberals from liberal catholics. Rather than as members of a coherent movement, liberal catholics, liberals, liberal evangelicals, and evangelicals should be seen as fellow travellers united on some matters of theological spirit and church politics but divided on others.41 And yet, as the next chapter indicates, even militant low-church liberals such as Carl Grammer believed that a new movement of liberal Episcopalians, broadly defined, was forming during the 1930s. Through the Church League (an anti-ritualist lobby organization), the Liberal Evangelicals, and the Evangelical Education Society, Grammer hoped to unite evangelicals and liberals against what he considered radical anglo-catholicism. Grammer’s evangelicals and liberals were partially successful. Militant anglo-catholicism did not disappear from the pecusa, but it become a minority movement in a predominantly liberal-modernist denomination after World War II.42 However, evangelicals themselves (liberal, moderate, or conservative) became marginalised after the war. Evangelicals who remained in the Episcopal Church went underground and did not reemerge until the 1960s, with the charismatic movement, and the 1980s, when a variety of other traditionalist and orthodox groups challenged the liberal-modernist attitudes that had dominated the pecusa for several decades.43 Developments in the American Episcopal Church during the 1930s and 1940s were thus messier and more antagonistic than in the Canadian church. Nevertheless, parallel trends of crucial importance can be discerned. As in the Canadian church, lines between high- and lowchurch Episcopalians blurred in the United States, despite the efforts of Carl Grammer and other liberals and evangelicals to redraw them more clearly. Ironically, Grammer’s campaigns closely parallelled those of conservative evangelicals such as Robert McElheran and Dyson Hague at Wycliffe College, people with whom he had little else in common. During the interwar years talks with the Presbyterians

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about union, which created bitterness between high- and low-church Episcopalians, did not have a parallel in Canada. Liberal-evangelical bitterness in the pecusa raised questions of self-identity. Should Episcopalians pursue relations with catholics or protestants? Many Episcopalians appealed to Anglicanism as a bridge between the two traditions, but strongly held views within various Episcopal camps meant that appeals to comprehensiveness accomplished little in practical terms. Finally, the balance between conservatives and liberals in the Episcopal Church had swung decidedly in favour of the liberals by the late 1940s. This did not happen in Canada, arguably, until the 1950s and 1960s.44 The following chapters on Carl Crammer and H.J. Cody explore the fate of liberal Episcopalianism in the United States and liberal evangelical Anglicanism in Canada during the interwar years. Grammer was remarkable for his combination of ecumenical urbanity and often furious anticatholicism. Cody was noteworthy as an irenic Anglican and for his place in the protestant establishment in Canada. The two men exemplify the dilemmas of modernity and Anglican identity in very different ways. Together they suggest how membership in the protestant establishment influenced North American Anglicanism. The dilemmas of modern Anglican identity were both modern and Anglican.

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8 Carl Eckhardt Grammer: Things That Remain in Liberal Anglicanism Each age must think in its own thought-forms. The law [was] expressed by St Paul when he wrote: “When I was a child, I [spoke] as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” Unless a child so thinks, under-stands, and speaks, he will never develop into manhood and put away childish things. “Evangelicalism – Its Past and Future” (1938)1

For Carl Eckhardt Grammer the past was a foreign country, one marked by differences from his own time. Of his evangelical Episcopalian upbringing – as a child and young man in parishes ministered to by his clergyman father during the 1860s and 1870s and as a student at the Virginia Theological Seminary during the 1880s – he had warm memories. But they were memories, reminiscences, marked by sentiment, nostalgia, and a patronising, progressive-minded sense of distance. The title of his major autobiographical and theological statement, Things That Remain, reflected this distance. The book did not lament the certainties of a by-gone time or dredge up the childhood faith of an aging liberal Episcopalian who had been chastened by cultural change and world war. Instead, it confidently proclaimed eternal theological verities and spiritual experiences in modern “thoughtforms.” For the adult Carl Grammer, evangelical Episcopalianism was from a time past, not a living tradition in which he found and practised his faith. And yet, during the late 1920s and 1930s Grammer reclaimed some aspects of his evangelical heritage. As a liberal Episcopalian with an eye to the progress of modern society and the church, he feared what he considered to be the stagnant, traditionalist threat of an anglo-catholic party rooted in the rituals and orthodoxies of the religious dark ages. As he saw it, the danger manifested itself in numerous ways: in a church party with a determined but regressive program; in the American Missal, an unauthorized “Romish” version of the mass intended for Episcopalians; and in high-church

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sabotage of pecusa-Presbyterian negotiations for church union. Grammer responded by beginning again to identify himself as an evangelical, in a dogged effort to unite liberals and evangelicals against the apparent anglo-catholic menace. Grammer’s historical identity thus was ambivalent. For most of his career it was shaped by his personal modernising effort to advance beyond evangelical tradition, that is, by discontinuity; late in life it was driven by a pragmatic but not unprincipled reclamation of some aspects of that evangelical heritage, by resurgent continuity. The other subjects in this study all identified some aspect of the past as “true” Anglicanism and devoted themselves to promoting that particular tradition, whether it was anglo-catholic or evangelical. By contrast, Grammer generally did not identify with the past. A liberal, modernminded, progressive person, he believed that “the cables of tradition” had to be loosened so that the eternal essence of the Christian faith would be free to advance in terms that made sense to the reasoning and experiences of the present modern age. In short, Grammer was typically modern, even arch-modern, in his “disembedded” identity and his desire to free himself of tradition.2 Despite this modernist temperament, Grammer did not uncritically accept all things modern as properly Episcopalian and true. Notably, he dismissed the materialistic and naturalistic assumptions of some scientists as repugnant and illogical. He judged the personal nature of God and miracles as necessary for Christian truth and piety. And at times his criticism of modernist philosophy and theology struck evangelical-sounding notes. Intellectually, Grammer was a liberal Episcopalian. But who was he at heart? His enigmatic liberal spiritual identity can best be distinguished and understood in his reactions to modernist thought, his own evangelical past, and the anglo-catholic “threat.” In turn, his career illuminates themes often neglected by Episcopalian historians who work within “consensus” interpretations of their church history. The eye-opening militancy of Grammer and some of his liberal colleagues on key issues and the fragmentation of coherent church-party lines during the 1930s belie the Anglican-Episcopal myth of comprehensiveness. Consequently, Grammer’s story can be told in both familiar and enigmatic ways. His journey of faith, from Calvinist orthodoxy as a youth to later liberal Episcopalianism, perhaps modernism, was one taken by numerous protestants at the turn of the century. But despite advocating tolerance and reason, his militancy on issues such as protestant ecumenism and anglo-catholicism resembled nothing so much as the fighting spirit of his aggressive, low-church evangelical forbears, people he often wrote off as crude and unsophisticated.

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Grammer and his liberal Episcopal colleagues were as noteworthy for their contradictions and combativeness as for their comprehensiveness and urbanity.3 They demonstrate the turbulence of identities, both confronting and embracing modernity, in the Episcopal Church during the early twentieth century. Carl Grammer was born to Elizabeth Anne Sparrow and Julius Eckhardt Grammer, dd, in Smyrna, Delaware, on 11 November 1858. Little is known of his childhood. In Things That Remain Grammer said that his father had encouraged in him a “sincere belief in Christianity, as taught by the Evangelical School in the Protestant Episcopal Church.” The vitality of evangelical belief was evident, Grammer recalled, in his father’s parishes and family life. But though it was “incredible” for the young Grammer that there might “not be a substantial basis for such a beneficent and fruitful faith,” it made demands that he was “not willing to obey.” Accordingly, his adolescent piety remained a “mere speculative assent” until he “took up the study of the Bible” for himself while preparing to become a lawyer.4 As a young man, Grammer went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, earning an ab in 1880. After graduating, he decided to study law. In conventional evangelical fashion a conversion experience changed the direction of his life. He later remembered that while reading the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans there came “a conviction that God’s spirit must be drawing me, and working in me these new and profound interests. My response was that if God wanted me, I certainly wanted God. I knelt down, and yielded myself to the Sovereign Will of the Universe.”5 In the following weeks Grammer found “new happiness and strength.” He was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. And after a summer of reflection he gave up legal studies and went to the Virginia Theological Seminary, a bastion of moderate evangelicalism. A few years later, in 1884, Grammer graduated from the seminary and became a deacon. In 1885 he was ordained a priest. His first parish was in Hancock, Maryland, where he stayed until 1887, when he moved on to the Church of the Epiphany in Cincinnati. That same year, the Virginia Theological Seminary where he stayed until 1898, appointed him professor of church history. Meanwhile, he married Mary W. Page in 1889, started a family, and eventually had three children. He also received an std from Trinity College in Connecticut (in 1885) and edited the Protestant Episcopal Review from 1890 to 1898. In 1898 he left the seminary to become rector of Christ Church in Norfolk, Virginia. And in 1905 he accepted a call to

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St Stephen’s Church in Philadelphia, a city that historically had supported a vibrant evangelical Episcopal community.6 Grammer spent the rest of his career in Philadelphia, retiring in 1936 at the age of seventy-eight, still a vigorous man. Several times while at St Stephen’s he attended the general convention of the pecusa. He was a contributing editor of the Chronicle, a low-church periodical published in Poughkeepsie, New York. He wrote numerous pamphlets on religious and humanitarian topics, presided for a time over the Inter-Church Federation of Philadelphia, and for several years was president of the Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Grammer was also on the board of Sweet Briar College in Virginia, and he was a Mason and a member of several fraternities. Intellectually, the high point of his career came in 1928, when he gave the Bohlen Lectures, an annual series founded by John Bohlen, a wealthy member of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia, one of Phillips Brooks’s early parishes. Grammer’s lectures, published as Things That Remain, testified to his spiritual evolution over the years, and they were a cogent theological and philosophical summary of his liberal rereading of the Christian faith.7 Like his model conversion experience in the 1880s, Grammer’s account of his subsequent spiritual evolution followed archetypal lines, from moderate Calvinist evangelicalism to liberal Episcopalianism. “The critical question soon rose,” he recalled in the late 1920s, likely referring to his seminary days, “whether this mystical experience [of evangelical conversion] should determine the ultimate form of my theology. Much of the strength and peace that religion had brought me, undoubtedly came from my acceptance of the Determinism of St Paul; believing that God had elected me to life and service, I felt that I could not fail of victory.” The fate of the wicked did not trouble Grammer, for he discovered that biblical support for the doctrine of eternal punishment was slight. Ultimately God must “prevail with the individual as well as with the universe,” for the heavenly father “could not be bereaved of a child.”8 Grammer later gave up this universalist Calvinism and “accepted the Freedom of the Will as essential” to moral accountability and personality. Nevertheless, he continued to believe in “Divine Will,” maintaining that God would prevail, not through irresistible decrees, “but by the power of one personality over another. He would draw men to him with the cords of a man, as the old divines used to put it, and not as the iron magnet attracts its filings.”9 These gradual transitions in theological beliefs appear to have been painless for Grammer – at least in his retrospective accounts. He always insisted that his youthful training and piety had permanently

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and positively shaped his piety later in life. “This early experience of the saving truths in Calvinism,” he later testified, “prevented me from sharing in the general aversion to Puritanism. I look on it as the rock whence I was hewn, and reverence its great affirmations of the sovereignty of God, the organic oneness of mankind, and its emphasis on God’s part in our salvation.” Such a claim perhaps was disingenuous, given that Grammer viewed Calvinism as a simple faith rooted in his childhood. Yet it was telling intellectually. If Calvinism did not appreciate human accountability, he explained, Arminianism did not sufficiently “exalt Divine Grace” or realize “the immanence of God.” Neither did Grammer consider these historic debates to be dead. Though out of date in theological terms, conflict continued between the “determinism” of materialistic science (e.g., in behaviouralist psychology) and the ethical necessity of free will.10 The lesson, Grammer said, was that “mystical experience did not authenticate the whole of the philosophy held at the time, and that a new philosophy did not prove that there were no elements of truth in the old philosophy, nor invalidate the mystical experience that the old philosophy had a share in creating.” The evangelical encounter with God continued to be valid, even if its account of that encounter had to be rejected. As in much of life, theology and theory came first in experiences. It is wise, Grammer thus concluded, to begin by accepting “the traditions and standards bequeathed to us by the past, as a provisional guide of life. The radical who proposes to begin his search for truth by denying everything until it has been proved is like the scholar who should require a demonstration of the beauty of literature before reading the poets.”11 Consequently, spiritual experience took temporal priority over reason and analysis. “The great trouble with professors,” Grammer commented, echoing the pragmatism of William James, “is that they so often endeavour to make the philosophy create the experience, instead of appreciating that the proper subject of philosophy is the experience itself.”12 In telling his story this way, Grammer implicitly identified himself with modernist thought. He valued personal religious experience, sought to distance his account of such experiences from particular historic traditions, and believed that at root human experience is universal (“eternal” in his terms). The 1880s and 1890s, which were Grammer’s formative intellectual years, seem to have left him with generally irenic, liberal religious convictions. This likely reflected the mediating evangelicalism of his childhood, youth, and early adulthood (i.e., his father’s evangelical faith and the Virginia Seminary’s moderate, accommodating theology). It also reflected the confident ease of liberal protestantism

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at the turn of the century. Two things are noteworthy here. First, Grammer’s story is not the whole story. Episcopalian evangelicals did not disappear immediately after the Reformed Episcopal separation of 1873. Although evangelicals in the pecusa declined in number (of lay people and leaders, with fewer bishops and key parishes) and although the content and character of the faith were changing, meaningful continuity with the past remained. Some evangelical parishes still flourished. And institutions such as the Virginia Theological Seminary continued to promote a mediating form of evangelicalism that could attract liberals and conservatives both. Second, Grammer’s brand of Episcopalianism was shaped by the spirit of his age and embodied the strong ties between liberals and moderateconservative evangelicals that remained unbroken in most American denominations.13 Those ties would not be severed until after 1900, especially after World War I. Grammer’s formative years thus were marked by peace more than by conflict.14 These early experiences of faith, as a youth and at law school, and the subsequent training that Grammer received at the Virginia Seminary, shaped the way he approached theology for the rest of his life. He began, he recalled, “with a firm belief in the essential truths of Christianity.” This belief awoke a “mystic response” and a “personal experience of power,” which he later “reduced” to a “form acceptable” to his reason. Finally, as a parish minister he added the “test” of reconstruction, “trying to awake a response” to his “message in the hearts and minds” of his listeners. As a preacher, Grammer tried to help people “solve the problems of their lives by bringing them into touch with God through eternal truths, and by illuminating for them the path of duty.” He concluded in 1928: “When the desired response was awakened, I need not say that my own faith was fortified. This is the road whereby I have reached the conclusions of these lectures.”15 The place to begin to try to understand the character of Grammer’s Episcopal identity and its relationship to modernity is with his party affiliation. In Things That Remain Grammer recalled that after his spiritual evolution from youthful Calvinism to a modern-minded adult faith he had no longer regarded himself as an evangelical Episcopalian. “While I retained my tenderness for the Evangelicals, and my unity of the spirit with them in their emphasis on personal religion,” he explained, “I became a Broad Churchman or Liberal, or a Modernist, as they put it in England, though I dislike the term because of its association with the Roman Catholic Modernists, whose rejection of the historical element in Christianity seems to me too radical and unbalanced.”16 These ambiguous terms meant diverse things in different places and denominations. A “modernist” as people in the

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Church of England used the term, Grammer was by American standards a liberal. His criticism of modernist attitudes and theology makes this clear. William Hutchison’s definition of protestant modernism helps to sort out these issues. In The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (1979) he showed that modernism promoted the adaption of theology and tradition to scientific thought. Modernists also stressed the immanence of God in human culture and were optimistic about the progress of society towards the kingdom of God.17 By these standards Grammer can be considered a modernist, but only with significant qualifications. He challenged the uncritical adaption of theology to modern science and often argued that science claimed far too much for itself, going beyond the limits of common sense, reason, and logic. He also chided theologians and philosophers who slighted the Almighty God’s transcendence, and insisted that immanence needed to be balanced with an emphasis on God’s sovereignty and uniqueness. Grammer most closely espoused religious modernism in his generally culture-affirming faith in the progress of society in the modern world.18 In this matter he identified with the modern world, believing that it was improving on a distant, often grim past. Yet he retained features of his evangelical heritage, suggesting ambiguities and tensions in his liberal faith. During the late nineteenth century, liberal evangelicals adapted the historic Christian faith to modern thought in order to strengthen and promote the essentials of orthodox belief. Scholars have defined protestant evangelicalism (itself a “modern” movement, with, as discussed in chapter 1, eighteenth century roots) as a form of Christianity that stresses the Bible’s unique authority, the centrality of the Cross in doctrine, the necessity of a personal conversion, and activism and missions.19 The lines of continuity between evangelicalism and liberal protestantism were a common emphasis on individual experience in religion, activism, and a suspicion of tradition. But liberals subtly adapted evangelical beliefs in crucial ways. They viewed the Bible as preeminent among the holy books of the world religions, rather than as uniquely inspired. They understood Jesus’s death on the cross not as a substitutionary atonement but as the perfect example of self-sacrifice. And, they rejected the idea of original sin, viewing personal conversion as a progressive, gradual experience rather than an immediate, uniquely life-changing event. Finally, they emphasized that social activism, at home and abroad, was at least as important as traditional soul-winning, if not more so.20 According to this definition Grammer clearly was a liberal Episcopalian, but with an important qualification. Context was the key to

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how he identified himself. During the decades when evangelicalism in the pecusa was in decline and went underground (1890s–1920s) he called himself a liberal. In the late 1920s and in the 1930s, with the emergence of the Evangelical Group Movement in England (the Liberal Evangelicals in the United States) and a renewed anglo-catholic threat, Grammer began to identify himself as both a liberal and an evangelical. E. Clowes Chorely has argued that during the interwar years liberals and evangelicals, along with liberal catholics on some occasions, came together in a loose, re-energised coalition.21 The crucial point here for Grammer’s self-identity and for the dilemmas of Anglican identity generally is the contradictions, continuities, and tensions that existed between modernist, liberal, evangelical, and catholic forms of Anglicanism.22 Circumstances forced these tensions into the open and sometimes led people like Grammer to change their identities. In this regard what stands out about Carl Grammar is the difficulty in applying the term “dilemma” to his story. Despite his criticisms of modernism, despite his changing attitudes towards the evangelical Anglican tradition, and despite his fears of a resurgent anglo-catholic movement in the 1930s, Grammer did not suffer from dilemmas of identity. He knew who he was and where he was and what he opposed. Unlike the other subjects in this study, he did not at all feel threatened by the modern world or modern ideas. In spite of his rejection of naturalistic science and philosophy, he did not seriously question the progress of modern life. In Grammer’s case, the dilemmas of identity and modernity were unconscious, rather than an existential trouble that he experienced. In short, contradictions and tensions can be observed in his modern, liberal-minded Episcopalian beliefs, but he was unaware of them. Grammer identified with the modern world, viewing it as fundamentally progressive and moving closer to God. Nevertheless, the character of his piety – its liberal and occasionally evangelical elements – came to light in his critique of American-style protestant modernism. The most telling objection he made was his insistence on the likelihood and importance of miracles. Grammer doubted that vital religion or sound morality could be based on a philosophy that ignored miracles. Specifically, he stressed the necessity of Jesus’s resurrection and subsequent appearances before his followers. “Only on the basis of such an appearance,” Grammer argued, “can I understand the change in the disciples, the conversion of St Paul, and the exaltation of Him who is described in the early part of Acts as Thy servant Jesus, to the position of the Son of God in an eminent sense.” Some miracles

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recorded in the Bible might have been exaggerated or misconstrued. But “it is incredible,” he insisted, “that the whole miraculous element is mythical and without historical foundation.”23 Modernists were wrong in this case. People who rejected miracles out of hand as impossible vexed Grammer to no end. He scoffed at scientists who refused even to consider them. “My chief reason for disregarding the opposition of science is the unwillingness of scientific people to consider the evidence,” he said. Convinced that the universe was both profoundly mysterious and reasonable, he was “shocked by the narrow dogmatism of the average scientist on the subject of the miraculous, or the psychic.” Like many conservative evangelicals, Grammer argued that any science that rested solely on naturalistic assumptions was not qualified to judge miracles, which by definition fell outside its purview. Unlike them, he was intrigued by spiritualism and the paranormal, contending that the time was past “when the phenomena of telepathy, phantasms and messages from the dead can be neglected.”24 Belief in miracles was not an isolated issue for Grammer. It was connected to his general critique of materialist thought, his views of the nature of reason, and theological questions about providence, the Incarnation, and God’s transcendence. However cautiously, Grammer also believed that miracles were as possible in the twentieth century as in the New Testament era. “This theory [of miracles] connects our life with vaster potencies,” he declared. “[It] recognizes that upon this bank and shoal of Time we are surrounded by an ocean of Infinity, out of which influences break upon our shores. It is not merely because we find miracle[s] imbedded in Christianity that we accept the historical evidence. We also find the possibility of miracle[s] a necessary implication of Christian Theism, and of a spiritual conception of man.“25 Reason itself demanded miracles. This emphasis on a spiritual conception of humanity pervaded Grammer’s thought. Unlike most evangelicals, his language and methods were philosophical rather than biblical and exegetical. He used the categories of pragmatic philosophy. However, like evangelicals Grammer stressed personal religious experience. His views reflect historical continuities between evangelicalism and liberal protestantism, but his was a liberal theology shorn of most specific, particular Christian references. Grammer rejected the language, categories, and traditions of evangelical Christianity as outmoded, but he believed that the eternal, universal religious experience it attempted to articulate remained valid. Individuals had not only a

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mind but also a will and feelings. Here, modernism and naturalism failed. Naturalistic science alone (that is, reason unaided by subjective personal experience) would impoverish an individual’s sense of personhood. Reason needed to be assisted by “common sense,” a term Grammer used frequently. For example, reason depended on people’s belief in and experience of the unique aspects of their personalities. “For what is the basis of science itself,” he observed, “but the instinctive and inevitable judgement of common sense that the external world is a reality and that the senses are to be trusted.” Even naturalistic scientific knowledge had to rest on “faith in certain basic and irresistible assumptions,” which people instinctively made and trusted.26 These notions of faith and trust were intrinsic to Grammer’s understanding of humanity and its relationship to God. “We have an instinctive sense of the value of our own personality,” he argued. “In fact, our whole relation to the world is a series of active efforts of adjustment, assimilation, and detachment.” As people instinctively balanced their bodies when walking, so they sought to conserve and develop personality and balance it with experience. Religion was the “supreme effort in this direction.” The proof of God’s existence did not lie in science, which could not address the question, but in human experience. Faith thus was an adventure rather than an intellectual problem. The proof is in human nature, Grammer concluded, as people’s full “realization of God” depended on the “richness, fullness and spirituality” of the individual. “The pure in heart see God, and the earthly and sensual find him nowhere.”27 The irony of the impoverished conception of human nature of modern science struck Grammer with particular force. It startled him to find that many modern thinkers had repudiated Calvinism, with its theories of the degradation of the will, but believed the mind was a product determined by evolution. For Grammer the arguments against Calvinist determinism also defeated modern forms of social, biological, and psychological determinism of the mind and will.28 In contrast to such materialist philosophies, which could only inspire pessimism, he said that the free will of humanity and God’s providence should be sources of comfort. God was so in control of the universe that nothing could thwart his Almighty will and providential purpose. “When the universe grinds a man to pieces, his sufferings must not be fruitless and purposeless,” Grammer declared. This claim might not satisfy dogmatic analytic philosophers, he admitted, but it was based on his personal experience and on “the inner meaning of Humanism and Pragmatism.” He was disgusted with the dogmatism

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of “narrow logic” and concluded with passion, “Flowers cannot be studied to advantage when dried and pressed, and life cannot be understood by drying up all its rich interests and vitalities.”29 This emotive language and Grammer’s emphasis on personal spiritual experience highlight the enduring impact of Romanticism and evangelicalism on his liberal piety. He did not identify himself as an evangelical, but he continued to be shaped along those lines. William Hutchison has argued that romantic piety was a crucial link between evangelical and liberal forms of protestantism at mid-century. For example, Horace Bushnell (1802–76), a prominent Congregationalist preacher from Hartford, stressed the indwelling of God in the world and emphasized that people had intuitive access to the divine. His sermons were well known both for the way they appealed to the emotions and for their nebulous doctrine. They protested against rationalism and the hardened piety of dogmatic orthodoxy.30 Bushnell’s more liberal successors, like Grammer, took this open-ended theology in directions that the Hartford preacher would have found alarming. Nonetheless, they followed an accommodating trail that he had set. In this way a Romantic cultural emphasis on religious feeling and experience linked evangelicals and liberals. On this pietistic and spiritual basis, Grammer also criticised modernist assumptions about God’s immanence in human culture. At the core of his argument was the human need to have a relationship with a personal God. “A God with personality and yet with other powers besides,” he explained, “is the kind of God which our nature demands, and which reason, in the large sense, as distinguished from logic or understanding, indicates. Such a God, a God having personality, I reckon among the things that remain.”31 This God had to be both immanent and transcendent to meet a modern humanity’s needs. According to Grammer, God had to be transcendent and sovereign – thus above the created world – to work miracles and change individual lives. A wholly immanent God would lead to a tepid pantheism that did not allow God a personality independent of the universe. Such a view of God was irrational and deficient, Grammer contended. “A God who reasons and loves and wills, but has not personality is as unthinkable as a shadow without the light that casts it,” he said. “It is thought without a thinker, love without a lover, and decision without a decider.” More importantly, “if personality is denied to God, then it is difficult to justify some of our deepest instincts such as prayer, and the testimony of religious experience is emptied of much of its meaning.”32 But the Almighty’s transcendence should not be overstated either, to the neglect of divine immanence. Grammer

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traced the idea of God’s immanence from mystical traditions in ageold Christianity through to modern revivals. “The Absolute is a Sun,” he claimed, “of which you need make no request, you simply walk out into its rays and it lightens you. Here is no personal relation. The God of religion is a Friend who desires to have us make our requests, even though He may be able to read our minds, and who wishes us to cultivate his society.” The key was balance. A transcendent God supported morality but was too distant to inspire piety. An immanent God gave rationality to mysticism and explained how God is “in” people. Nonetheless, unduly emphasized, a theology of immanence led to pantheism and destroyed morality.33 The way out of this dilemma, Grammer decided, was the doctrine of the Incarnation. For people to connect with God, Grammer believed, they needed a mediator, whom he found in Jesus.34 Although not uncritical of the ancient creeds, with their platonist categories, he found them useful. “It is the merit of the Church’s doctrine of the Divinity of Christ,” he noted, that it tries to “preserve the humanity of Jesus, and also meet our need of contact with God. Mankind will never be satisfied with a Demiurgos. The religion of Jesus must bring us into contact with the Father in Heaven, to whom He taught us to pray.” Grammer thus asserted that modernists who rejected Christ’s divinity had cut the heart out of Christianity. In their search for the historical Jesus, they had made the Saviour over in their own image and obscured the eternal truths that he embodied and taught. In their eagerness to stress the progressive nature of truth, liberals, among whom Grammer counted himself, sometimes had “overlooked the positive and permanent elements” in their faith. They did not need “a new gospel, but the old gospel essentials proclaimed with new conviction and power.” The truths Jesus taught were eternal, but they had to be brought down into time and space, in his incarnation and through his followers.35 As this discussion suggests, Grammer’s liberal critique of modernism was evangelical and orthodox in some crucial aspects. But this subtle continuity should not be exaggerated. Although Grammer stressed the eternal truths of Jesus’ person and teaching, believed in miracles, and questioned the relevance of science on some issues, he also relativized Christianity in conspicuously modernist ways.36 Modernist leanings were most obvious in Grammer’s views of scripture and other religions and in his general optimism about the progress of modern society. As with the church and tradition, he considered scripture a provisional authority and guide that had to give way to personal experience and reason. In a loose sense, this stance located him in both the liberal and the evangelical traditions, where

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individual judgment was valued above institutional consensus and personal experience could take unorthodox turns. In other ways it made him a modernist. The Bible was a special message inspired by God but not unique. “We have long outgrown the narrow dogmatism that pronounced such books as the Rig-Veda, the Zend Avesta, the Koran, blasphemous fables or lying impostures,” Grammer explained. “We believe that through them God spoke in times past in divers manners.”37 In addition, Grammer insisted that the Bible itself did not require people to accept the idea of “verbal inspiration.” Such a view of the Bible made little sense to him because the scriptures clearly contained a “mixture of the human and temporary with the Divine and Eternal.” They had the “same kind of inspiration in religion that the great masterpieces exhibit in literature, art, or science,” he said. Nevertheless, among religious texts the Bible was “preeminently” inspired, just as Christianity was preeminent among the great world religions. This view, Grammer believed, “loosens the cables that bind us to the Past, and enable[s] us to use the Bible as a book of inspiration and not as a book of rules and laws.”38 A more profoundly modern statement of religious identity is difficult to imagine. The past was a hindrance to modern people’s religiosity, and identity was to be individual and universal, not bound by particular traditions. Although he seldom made explicit reference to social progress or the kingdom of God, Grammer also seems to have been liberalmodernist in this regard, as with his views of scripture. Despite criticising scientists who made unwarranted claims about religion, he celebrated the progress of knowledge during the modern age.39 In much the same way, he paid almost no attention to eschatology, except in critical fashion. He dismissed the end-times message found in the New Testament and Jesus’ teachings as part of the ancient Jewish world and no longer applicable in modern America. It was an expression of the past. Premillennial fears of imminent ruin and sudden transformation also made little sense to him.40 Finally, Grammer could not fathom the neo-orthodox, or “crisis,” theology of Americans like Reinhold Niebuhr and Europeans such as Karl Barth. In 1931 Grammer dismissed Barth’s theology as a manifestation of distrust in reason and a return “to the letter” of the Bible.41 As might be expected, then, World War I and the Great Depression did not have much of an impact on Grammer’s central theological categories. In this sense, he followed large numbers of liberal protestants in the United States. They acknowledged the reality of sin and destruction, but these categories were not fundamental to their theology. Despite losing some of their optimism about progress dur-

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ing the 1930s, they never gave up such typically liberal truisms as God’s immanence in culture and progress.42 In similar fashion, the central theological convictions of Grammer’s liberal Episcopal piety seem not to have changed much after the 1890s. In this context it is worth noting that several members of the Evangelical Education Society criticised the theology of their liberal colleagues, stressing more literal views of the Bible and conservative forms of doctrine (original sin, substitutionary atonement, divine judgment).43 Along these lines, Rev. Charles W. Lowry, professor of Systematic Divinity at the Virginia Seminary, argued that “the real bent and tenor of modern Christianity has been to detach the Evangel from the Bible, to accept Christ but not Isaiah, to exalt the Gospels carefully edited but not the Law and the Prophets or Justification by Faith and Salvation by Grace alone.”44 Lowry’s statement suggests the tensions underlying the relationship between evangelical and liberal Episcopalians during the 1930s. Clearly, some members of the Education Society feared that liberals like Grammer had given up too much of orthodoxy. It is equally important, however, to note that liberal-evangelical disagreements did not prevent the society from presenting a united front on other issues. Common concerns about the menace of Romish ritualism stood out as much as liberal-evangelical differences. Grammer’s inability to understand Barth’s theology and seeming insensitivity to the possible implications of world war and the Great Depression for theology raise questions about where the centre of his theology lay. What was the gospel that he preached? Predictably, given his emphasis on “eternal verities” (that the truths of Christianity had not changed) the core of Grammer’s theology lay in problems he considered timeless – people’s relationship to God and the evolution of individual character. Little sense of history, other than that of a modern-minded person leaving behind an out-of-date past, shaped his theology. His concerns would be affected only in tangential ways by social change and war. The past was not a heritage where Grammer found roots and strength; it was history, done and gone. Episcopalians had to loosen the cables that bound them to the past. This attitude gave Grammer’s theology a timeless and abstract character. His response to changes in religion and culture during the 1920s highlights the tendency of his theological self-identity to float free of past and present context. Ironically, where Grammer most clearly was a modernist, in his rejection of the past, he echoed the attitudes of fundamentalists, who also rejected history and traditions as corrupt.45 Also ironically, given the reflexivity of modern culture (i.e., its emphasis on self-awareness and its

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often self-absorbed introspection), Grammer had little sense of how particularly and peculiarly “modern” his views were from the viewpoint of the “post-” modern late twentieth century. He valued what he considered “eternal” ideas and experiences and rejected the “cables” of the past, but his ideas were remarkably time-bound. Perhaps all cultures, in any time or place, consider their truths to be universal and timeless. Nevertheless, self-consciously “modern” thinkers especially prized freedom from superstition and universal knowledge based on reason and believed they were achieving these things. Again ironically, for a person so shaped by historical consciousness, so aware of change and distance from the past, Grammer had remarkably little sense of how modern-minded thinkers like himself constructed their own timebound traditions. While he was unaware of this dilemma of identity, unaware of the contradiction, it marked Grammer’s beliefs in profound ways, especially his views of evangelicals and anglo-catholics. One of the few events in American culture that Grammer did comment on during the 1920s was the fundamentalist-modernist conflict. He firmly rejected fundamentalism for some of the same reasons he questioned modernism. Many conservative evangelicals and secular radicals had argued that modern Christianity was empty of meaning and fated to pass away. Grammer responded that extremists had misread the situation. “What they take for processes of decay,” he observed, “I hold to be fermentation, the growth of new life upon the old.” He advocated a liberal middle course.46 This self-conscious moderation did not mean that Grammer saw himself as a compromiser. Indeed, he considered truth to be vitally important. Despite the comprehensiveness of the pecusa, truth claims came first, he insisted: “Experience has proven that in the interest of truth, and for the avoidance of sophistry it is expedient … to have the bounds of comprehension as wide as possible – with the proviso, that the fact that the Church is tolerant, should not put a damper upon zeal for the ascertainment and propagation of the Truth.”47 If fundamentalists were too caught up with the past, with historical thought-forms they identified as eternal truths, modernists sometimes too quickly dismissed essential, eternal truths as part of the past. Grammer failed, of course, to see the ways in which his own “thought-forms” were historical and parallelled fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. Nevertheless, he did acknowledge common ground with evangelicals. For Grammer, the need to protect truth was rooted in a desire to promote a spirituality that affected people in all facets of their lives – in mind, will, and feeling. In this sense, his theology was experiential and, in some limited ways, evangelical. His liberal reading of evangelical-

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ism makes this clear. “At its core,” Grammer stressed in 1933, evangelicalism “was mystical, and depended not upon learning or logic but upon the response of the heart to the teachings of Christianity. It placed little emphasis on modes of Church government, speculative theology, or forms of worship. Its seat of authority was in each man’s breast.”48 Grammer’s theology attempted to maintain and nurture this mystical essence within a modern intellectual framework. His description of the irenic heart of evangelicalism, though a little misleading, given his militancy on some church issues, did communicate the intent of his theology. Despite his sincere intentions, Grammer’s desire to follow modern thought-forms overwhelmed the remaining elements of evangelical theology in his piety. The abstract, liberal character of his theology can be seen clearly in comparison to liberal evangelicals, with whom he claimed common cause during the interwar years. Like Grammer, liberal evangelicals (and many liberal catholics, for that matter) typically sought a balance between what they considered stagnant orthodoxy and irresponsible modernism. A good example was the Evangelical Group Movement, which emerged in the Church of England during the 1920s. A circle of clergy and scholars, liberal evangelicals tried to harmonise modern scholarship with evangelical essentials. They were interested not so much in new ideas as in breathing new life into a stagnant evangelical community and positively engaging the modern world. Liberals and evangelicals in North America took up similar efforts in the Canadian and American wings of the Anglican Communion.49 Responding to this new movement in 1938 at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Evangelical Education Society, Grammer argued that liberals and evangelicals had much to learn from each other. Evangelicals could teach liberals – “perhaps I should say, some Liberals,” he amended – to develop a better ear for the gospel and its practice. Liberals could teach evangelicals to recast their faith into new thought-forms. The two groups needed to come together, to organize and spread their influence throughout the church, as the Evangelical Group Movement had done in England during the 1920s.50 For the bulk of his career Grammer had identified himself as a liberal, considering evangelicalism to be a fond memory, something he had left behind. During the 1920s, with the emergence of liberal evangelicalism in the Episcopal Church, he again began to identify himself as an evangelical, as well as a liberal. Drawing on his own experiences, Grammer advised other Episcopalians to do the same. “At last the American Liberals have come to the same conclusion,” he said in 1938. “Some of us belong to the Church League, and

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many of us to the Liberal Evangelicals, and some to both. We ought to get closer together, and draw in more members, and plan ahead.”51 The renewal of liberal evangelicalism in the Episcopal Church during the 1920s greatly pleased Grammer, because evangelicals (with few exceptions in his view) had been so hide-bound during the late nineteenth century. Obsessed with defending themselves against ritualism and modernism, evangelicals had embraced legalistic forms of orthodoxy that “knew nothing of its mystic experience.” In the 1920s Grammer discovered liberal evangelicals who were leaving legalistic obsessions behind and waking up to modern “thought-forms.” This gave him great hope, especially since a liberal-evangelical coalition would better oppose anglo-catholics in the pecusa. Paradoxically, and yet crucially, given his “affectionate” memories of his evangelical upbringing and his hope for liberal-evangelical renewal, Grammer’s reappraisal of the evangelical tradition retained its paternalistic, smug tone. “Each age must think in its own thought-forms,” he stated self-righteously in 1938, in a passage that is reproduced at the beginning of this chapter. “The law [was] expressed by St Paul when he wrote: ‘When I was a child, I [spoke] as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.’ Unless a child so thinks, understands, and speaks, he will never develop into manhood and put away childish things.” In spite of his changing attitude, then, Grammer continued to reject evangelical orthodoxy with a patronising sense of liberal-modernist certitude.52 He especially criticised the common evangelical doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross. Such a legalistic theory of “Jesus as a victim suffering in our stead and bearing the penalty of our guilt” could not be reconciled with either “the love or justice of God.” Christ’s death on the cross was an “enduring lesson of the love of God” and “the power of self-sacrifice for truth.”53 Rather than seeing it as a substitutionary atonement, which viewed Christ’s death as legally paying the debt of punishment sinners owed to God, Grammer believed that the example of Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross for the sake of truth drew people to him and to God. The atonement embodied divine character and personality. Put another way, Grammer was not interested in justification, in being made right with God, but in sanctification, in how Christ’s moral example and love could transform people in their being and character.54 His indifference also reflected his distance from liberal catholicism, which maintained that in the eucharist service Christians held up Christ’s sacrifice and claimed it as their own, as payment for sin and as an example to follow.55

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Grammer did not follow liberal catholics and evangelicals in their emphasis on sin, redemption, judgment, and eschatology.56 He viewed sin as weakness, blindness, and imperfection. Christ’s death and God’s grace did not redeem and transform sinners so much as give people aid in the evolution of their character and personality.57 On occasion, Grammer did speak of evil, the heinousness of sin, the need for forgiveness, and submission to God. Nonetheless, from his point of view sin was more a stain on a person’s life than a deep, thorough-going corruption of humanity and God’s good creation. Two further clues to Grammer’s thought come from his frequent references to “emergent evolution” and “personalism.”58 The theory of emergent evolution came from England, through the writings of C. Lloyd Morgan and C.E. Raven. In his Gifford Lectures, published as Emergent Evolution and Life, Mind and Spirit in 1922 and 1923, Morgan argued that God discloses himself everywhere and always, but to varying degrees of significance. In this process, as humanity and God grew closer, Jesus held a unique place. Crucially, creation and redemption were one and the same thing. Distinctions between the natural and the supernatural thus had no validity for Morgan. In this scheme, the death and resurrection of Jesus were the climax of a mystical process of living through dying. C.E. Raven developed the theological implications of these ideas more explicitly in his work, although he distinguished more strictly than Morgan between the natural and supernatural.59 From this perspective, in Grammer’s words, God’s grace served to “mold concrete lives and show itself in molding and guiding individuals.”60 The goal of this molding was for individuals to evolve, to become closer to God, develop as individuals, and grow in communion with their society. As the unique mediator between God and humanity and the “ambassador of God and interpreter of His mind and character” (something which all believers shared, Grammer noted), Jesus was an example and a mystical inspiration. Through the work of God’s Spirit, people experienced Jesus’ love and his model of selfsacrifice for truth.61 However important Jesus’ teachings – and they were “eternal verities” Grammer insisted – behind them lay Jesus’ personality. This personality embodied, ennobled, and inspired human development. He summarised Jesus’ work simply: “The verities Jesus taught are eternal, but they must be brought down into time and space in the lives of his followers, and most of all in the lives of the teachers of those verities.”62 As this statement indicates, “personalism,” an influential philosophical and theological movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, strongly shaped Grammer’s thought. The movement

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stressed that human persons and God’s personality were much more important than any system of thought or reality that attempted to subsume individuals to itself. An intellectualised form of mysticism, personalism was a reaction against a seemingly ever more bureaucratic and impersonal society, the inhumanity of World War I, and the deterministic world views that explained that war and society – whether Marxism, idealism, evolution, materialism, behaviouralism, scientism, or Darwinism.63 American personalists, such as A.C. Knudson, whose Philosophy of Personalism (1927) was published a year before Grammer’s Bohlen Lectures, based their argument on theism. Since God was a person, all moral and ethical truth came from the absolute value of the person. Human personality was based on God’s personality. To deny one was to deny the other.64 In this context Grammer’s emphasis on Jesus as the unique incarnation of God made a great deal of sense. The attraction of Jesus’ teaching and personality and the importance of his role as a mediator was that he brought people closer to God, fulfilling their instinctive, existential needs. “Conscious of weakness, [people] have asked for strength,” Grammer explained with feeling. “Conscious of blindness, they have asked for light. Conscious of sins, they have asked for cleansing. Conscious of imperfection, they have asked for holiness or completeness. Sinful as they are, they demand that the universe be moral. All our life is dominated by the demands of personality, and we cannot but believe that the universe will show itself reasonable by supplying these demands which otherwise would be mere impertinences.”65 Ultimately, people needed communion with the Almighty, not mere intellectual satisfaction. “The need that [mystical experience] supplies,” Grammer explained, “is not the desire for an explanation of the Kosmos, but the soul’s yearning to come into contact with God.” Human personality could not be separated from God’s personality, in which humanity found its origins. There is something deep in our nature, Grammer insisted, “that calls for personality in God, something deeper than mere logic, the desire of the dependent for a support, of the lonely for a companion, of the creature for the Creator, of the imperfect for the Perfect, of the servant of duty for the Lawgiver.”66 This emphasis on mystical experience did not negate the need for reason, Grammer cautioned. After all, the New Testament “commands us to love God with our mind, and with our strength or will, as well as with our heart, or emotional nature.” The key was balance. Ideally, reason and mystical experience should complement each other. Alone, the intellect would make God “unknowable.” Alone,

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the will would “treat Him either as a working theory” or as a “blind force.” And alone, the mystic would smother the individual and God in the pantheistic “All.” Together, the various human faculties would bring a person to theism, to “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The lesson is plain, Grammer concluded. “What God has joined together, let not men put asunder. We must face the totality of reality with the totality of our faculties.”67 The core of Grammer’s message – preached to his parishioners at St Stephen’s Church in Philadelphia and outlined systematically in Things that Remain, his Bohlen Lectures of 1928 – thus was a mystical, personalist theology designed to help modern people find communion with God and humanity and grow in character and being as persons. Combined with his critique of modernist thought, Grammer’s message was sophisticated and intellectually compelling. It retained evangelical elements, notably a Romantic emphasis on personal religious experience and growth, but Grammer had restated them in “new thought forms,” as a modern-minded liberal Episcopalian attempting to suit the contemporary world.68 In short, evangelical categories had given way to the language of personalism and emergent evolution. What is remarkable – given Grammer’s concern to address modern people in modern terms – is the way the most significant events of his time had little impact on his theology. The influence of personalism and emergent evolution on Grammer’s beliefs perhaps helps to explain his negative reaction to neo-orthodoxy and the limited impact of the First World War and the Great Depression on his thought. Personalism and emergent evolution were essentially culture-affirming religious movements. They understood creation and redemption as a single process of growth and development. In theological terms, Grammer believed that Jesus’ work on the cross did not redeem and fundamentally transform sinners; it made them more what they already were becoming. Religion did not remake or transform culture but completed it. The deeper criticism of culture found in neo-orthodoxy and the crisis theology of Reinhold Niebuhr thus clashed with Grammer’s thought on an intuitive level. For a liberal personalist such as Grammer, it was difficult to fundamentally criticise a modern culture that he believed was evolving towards a closer relationship with the Divine.69 The tensions within Grammer’s thought thus are obvious. He strongly identified with the modern world, particularly with notions of personal and cultural progress; yet he continued to believe in miracles and dismiss elements of modern philosophy and science. He rejected his evangelical heritage; yet its influence on his thought and piety was obvious. Furthermore, during the 1920s he began to

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reclaim some aspects of his evangelical lineage. Despite so doing, he continued to dismiss the theological basis of that heritage in smugly liberal terms. In self-identity, then, Grammer was a liberal, rather than a modernist or an evangelical (no matter how much he might sound evangelical or modernist in response to a particular issue). He also was thoroughly low-church. His renewed interest in evangelicalism in the 1920s and 1930s was not unprincipled; nevertheless, it reflected what he regarded as the strategic need to defend the Episcopal Church against traditionalist, anglo-catholic incursions. Common cause and action were crucial, since a common enemy of liberal and evangelical Episcopalians was threatening to take over the church. As this description and analysis of Grammer indicate, he was far more unambiguously modern – self-consciously disembedded, disconnected from the past – than the other people in this study. Unlike them, he did not identify with a particular Anglican tradition (and claim that it was “true” and “comprehensive” Anglicanism). Only when confronted by what he saw as resurgent anglo-catholic dogmatism in the 1920s and 1930s did Grammar reclaim elements of his older evangelical Anglican identity. He rightly viewed evangelicalism as more overtly modern than anglo-catholicism.70 In claiming an evangelical identity, to a very limited degree, Grammar was not so much identifying himself with a tradition rooted deep in the Anglican past as identifying himself against what he perceived as a greater traditionalist threat to modern Christianity. Thus, while he claimed an evangelical identity and while his piety revealed some evangelical elements, Grammar remained liberal and modern in his core self-identity. All the people examined in this study exhibited modern and antimodern elements in their piety and theology – an indelible and inescapable element of modern identities.71 But Grammer was the only one who did not in some fashion identify himself as antimodern in order to defend Anglican-Episcopalian tradition. This strong modernism in Grammer’s thought was best revealed in his attitudes toward anglo-catholicism. If Grammer’s views of modernism were somewhat sceptical and ambiguous, but nevertheless balanced, his response to anglo-catholicism was combative, one-sided, and unrelenting. In 1933 (the centenary of the beginning of the Oxford Movement) he wrote a caustic appraisal of anglo-catholicism for the Evangelical Education Society. Anglocatholics had called on the pecusa to observe the one-hundredth anniversary. Evangelicals and liberals, Grammer answered, held “that the most helpful observance is to point out the reactionary character of the Movement and its close relationship to Continental Ultramon-

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tanism. The sooner our Church understands this the better.”72 He described the Oxford Movement’s leaders as “dominated by fear of progress” and of “liberty of thought.” And while he grudgingly admired anglo-catholics who left the Anglican Communion for Roman Catholicism – because they were following the logic of their (outdated) principles – he accused those who stayed behind of being scoundrels intent on undoing “the work of the Reformation.”73 Grammer’s fundamental objection to anglo-catholicism was that it turned Christianity into “a body of doctrines and laws that have been once for all established for all time.” In this way anglo-catholics were like conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists who also inhibited the progressive future of their church.74 “I regard the progress of [the anglo-catholic school],” he warned, “as a serious drawback to the usefulness of our Church. It may split the Church, but I am persuaded that it can never build it up.” To combat what he saw as “fossilized Christianity,” Grammer urged liberal Episcopalians to “proclaim the gospel of the love of God” and its “glorious liberty.” The pecusa needed to proclaim the truth because “comprehensiveness” should not be an excuse to avoid exposing errors and sophistries. Nor should Episcopalians refrain from expressing convictions for fear of contradicting the opinions of others.75 Given the irenic tones Grammer generally used, even on “outdated” evangelicals, his harsh language perhaps is startling. What were the sources of his intense abhorrence of anglo-catholicism? Two points stand out. According to Grammer, radical anglo-catholicism was self-consciously traditionalist – tied to the past in spirit and in its Greek and medieval worldview. Given his whiggish commitment to the progressive nature of religious development, Grammer could not tolerate living in the past. In addition, anglo-catholic opposition prevented the Episcopal Church from cooperating with and uniting with other protestant denominations. Against short-sighted evangelicals and liberals who thought that the anglo-catholic menace had diminished, he replied: “In saying that the tide is running against us I know that I lay myself open to the charge of being too pessimistic: ‘The crisis has passed,’ it will be said, ‘the tide has turned.’ How often I have heard those fatuous remarks.”76 He knew better. Abhorrence for what he saw as anglo-catholicism’s outrageous traditionalism was clear in Grammer’s reaction to the American Missal, published by a militant group of anglo-catholics at the beginning of the 1930s. The missal, which he claimed used Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox liturgical forms to celebrate the eucharist, was promoted by an independent group and not approved by the Episcopal Church.77 It was, however, supported unofficially by the custodian of

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the Standard Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church, and thus took on an aura of official sanction. Grammer and the Evangelical Education Society quickly published a pamphlet to attack the missal and raised support to outlaw it at the next meeting of the General Convention. In the pamphlet, “In a spirit of brotherliness, as well as in zeal for the truth,” Grammer described his anglo-catholic rivals as “wellorganized and diligent ‘borers-within,› a fifth column of subversives trying to take over the pecusa and lead it to Rome. Because it was not sanctioned by the pecusa, the missal represented a renegade spirit of “lawlessness and extreme individualism” – ironically, by people who otherwise claimed to be exponents of church authority. On this matter, Grammer cited opposition to the missal by highchurch bishops, notably William Manning of New York, with whom evangelicals and liberals such as Grammer often clashed on other issues.78 The missal was dangerous because it promoted the “sacrifice of the Mass” rather than the “righteousness of the Gospel” and the “word of faith.” The missal was also an intolerable form of superstition, a manifestation of the distrust of reason common to fundamentalism, and a “reversion to the authority of the Church in the ages before the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the Reformation.”79 If the kind of superstition being promoted in the missal was becoming more popular in the Episcopal Church, Grammer warned, then liberals and evangelicals, who had “a more spiritual message,” were partly to blame. At least the anglo-catholics had a program, he conceded. He thus called on liberals and evangelicals to unite in “earnestly setting forth … the Gospel of our loving Heavenly Father, Who calls us to be His co-workers in building up a better order in this World.” “What we need,” he urged, “is more consecration to the Divine purpose, more reliance on Divine power, more faith in the loving Father revealed to us by the beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, more zeal for the Divine kingdom.” Reason had its place, but it could not take the place of faith and service. Ultimately, only prayer and self-devotion could build up the “walls of Zion.”80 The missal threatened to move the Episcopal Church in the wrong direction, Grammer argued, closer to Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox churches. It thus could not be accepted by any reasonable, modern-minded Christian. Episcopalians could not afford to alienate protestantism “out of deference to churches” that were “petrified by dogmatism and fear.” “Certainly the Protestant Churches that have been conferring with us at Lausanne will find this Missal a bitter pill,” he argued. Christians did not need the institutions and rituals of the dark ages. “Like the Evangelicals in our

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own Church,” protestants “are convinced that there is but one Mediator between God and man, the Divine Man, the God-man, Christ Jesus.”81 The missal also had to be rejected for its obscurantism and for the sake of protestant unity. By stating his case in this fashion, Grammer was identifying protestant Christianity with modernity and the Enlightenment. The danger of high-church (or anglo-catholic) Episcopalianism to protestant unity revealed itself during the negotiations for organic union with the Presbyterian Church in the United States.82 In 1937 the two denominations began efforts towards joint ordination that would permit clergy from each communion to serve in both Presbyterian and Episcopal congregations, where such cooperation was practical. During the early 1940s, after a proposed concordat of union had been written, the response of high-church, anglo-catholic opponents to sharing ordination and uniting with the Presbyterians grew shrill. By the mid-1940s, opponents of union were arguing that sharing ordination would cause a secession of anglo-catholics from the Episcopal Church to Rome and would damage any possibility of reunion with the Roman Catholic Church or Eastern Orthodoxy. The point of contention for high-church Episcopalians was whether Presbyterian clergy needed to be re-ordained by a bishop before their ordination was valid. On one side evangelicals and liberals favoured union, as did some liberal catholics, who admittedly were nervous about some of the details. On the other side more conservative high churchmen, such as Bishop William Manning and anglo-catholic radicals, opposed it.83 By this time strong opposition had also built up in the Presbyterian Church, likewise based on defending its traditional forms of church government and doctrines. In 1946 the General Convention officially rejected all union proposals with the Presbyterians. Even liberal leaders such as Bishop Edward Parsons of California recognised that the pecusa needed to resolve critical internal differences before it proceeded towards union with other denominations.84 In both churches the politics of tradition and particular identities had triumphed over modern ecumenism. This failure was deeply painful for evangelicals and liberals such as Grammer. They considered the rejection of union with another protestant communion to be yet another attack on their place in the Episcopal Church. The liberal reaction to this attack consistently employed the myth of comprehensiveness. The root of the conflict, the Evangelical Education Society explained, was that Anglican tradition, of which the Episcopal Church was merely a branch, had never insisted on any one teaching about the nature of Anglican church order. As in the New Testament scriptures, Anglicans had never

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decided whether apostolic succession and the episcopacy were part of the “being” (essence) or simply the “well-being” (practical order) of their Church.85 By rejecting union with the Presbyterians, militant anglo-catholics were trying to force one view on the entire Episcopal Church. The irony, evangelicals and liberals pointed out bitterly, was that union with the Presbyterian Church would not damage prospects of reunion with the Roman Catholic Church. Rome had “made it abundantly clear that in [its] eyes” Anglicans and Episcopalians were every bit as “schismatical and heretical as the Presbyterians.” Rome was interested only in “submission.” Tragically, by repudiating a sincere Presbyterian overture, the pecusa had severely damaged the cause of protestant ecumenism. A crucial opportunity for reunion and progress had been lost. According to liberals like Grammer, Episcopalians had to learn that protestants and catholics needed each other, to learn from the best that each had to offer. If union with the Presbyterians caused a crisis, then Episcopalians should have faith in God’s guidance. “[We] should realize,” one liberal evangelical concluded, “that real crises are always brought about by God and not by man, because in its deepest sense crisis means confrontation and judgement – confrontation with some God-given reality, by their response to which men are eternally judged.” Ecumenism had confronted Episcopalians with a choice between light and darkness. And liberals and evangelicals were certain they knew where the choice of light lay: in protestant ecumenism and anglo-catholic accommodation.86 Again, the ideology of comprehensiveness and a universal Anglican identity justified a particular identity, in this case a liberal protestant one, and excluded others. Ironically, for all of his self-conscious criticism of tradition, Grammer appealed to latitudinarian, evangelical, and liberal heritages as truly modern, Episcopalian, progressive, and comprehensive. He may not have recognized these “modern” traditions as such, but they served him in that way, by appealing to the past to define an identity and present-day mission. Modernity had its own ideological lineage – myths about the so-called “dark ages,” the Renaissance and the Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. To the degree that liberals and evangelicals shared in this modern lineage, they had common cause, as Grammer’s own career reveals (though it is likely that Grammer and other self-consciously liberal protestants appealed to this heritage with less ambiguity than evangelicals).87 Grammer interpreted contemporary events, such as negotiations for union with the Presbyterian Church, in this light. His militancy was understandable. A combative man when provoked by the right

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issue, he reacted instinctively against any opposition to protestant unity, which he identified with modern progress. Anglo-catholic– high-church attitudes towards Anglican tradition offended him on several levels. They were irrational and hidebound forms of tradition that inhibited the work of the modern church. Grammer summarised his attitudes toward high-church doctrines about the sacraments and ministry in 1939: “Those who realize that one of the greatest needs of the church is to simplify her creed, and cast aside the elements that were taken by our faith as it passed through civilizations filled with pagan and legal conceptions, appreciate that these vestiges of ancient superstitions and modes of thought need to be weeded out of the Prayer Book.”88 Grammer shared these doctrinal attitudes with many liberal and evangelical colleagues. His visceral hatred of anglo-catholicism suggests that his low-church attitudes were bred deep in the bone. They were a line of continuity with the evangelicalism that he had known when growing up in his parent’s homes and parishes. Indeed, for most liberals low-church animosity towards anglo-catholics may have been all that remained of their evangelical heritage, though other aspects of evangelical piety perhaps continued to influence Grammer’s theology. Certainly, his strong low-church militancy indicates, in its own particular fashion, that the Anglican ideology of comprehensiveness, as promoted by many Episcopal historians, was a mythic, ideological use of history. Indeed, it is astonishing that such a bitter battle, one that revealed the continuing militancy of liberals and evangelicals in the Episcopal Church during the mid–twentieth century, has received so little scholarly attention from Episcopalian historians. Grammer’s low-church zealotry also reveals the complex character of his identity as an Anglican. While he considered himself a liberal Episcopalian for most of his career, conflicts with anglocatholics during the 1930s incited him to vigorously readopt the least tolerant, most militant aspects of his evangelical heritage. However far he had departed from his past, some things remained. Grammer’s militant opposition to anglo-catholicism and his strategic, selective reclamation of an evangelical as well as a liberal identity clearly revealed his use of the past. Unlike Dyson Hague, he not only rejected the particular traditions and versions of the past embraced by anglo-catholics, he also rejected their very “pastness.” Like anglocatholics and other high-church Anglicans, evangelicals embraced a theology or spirituality of history. They viewed themselves as part of a living heritage, one that connected them through history to the Reformation and early church. By contrast, Grammer self-consciously treated the past as mere history, as something to learn from and then

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transcend. As a modern Christian he believed that Episcopalians had to express eternal truths in the thought-forms of their own day and reject those of days gone by. In terms of his self-identity, Grammer’s theology connected him to Christians in the past in timeless, abstract fashion rather than through a particular historical tradition. For him the very notion of progress meant that historical ties were cables to be cut rather than lifelines and anchors on which to hold. The irony, of course, is that his very “modern” identity itself was a tradition. Liberal Episcopalians like Grammer thus used history in their own ideological-mythic ways to construct an identity and a contemporary sense of purpose and mission. Grammer’s efforts to unite liberal and evangelical Episcopalians in the 1920s and 1930s are a good example. Yet his use of the past, in his ecumenism and comprehensiveness, was based less on identifying with and embracing particular aspects of a tradition than in stating unambiguously what he rejected of the traditions of others. Grammer died on 17 May 1944 in Summit, New Jersey, where he lived after retiring in 1937. It is impossible to know but interesting to speculate whether the Second World War shook his optimistic, culture-affirming liberal faith in humanity and the progress of modern people towards closer relationships with God and each other. The many tensions in his life and thought make any supposition suspect. The most obvious tensions in Grammer’s thought thus stemmed from his attitudes towards his evangelical heritage. For most of his life, evangelicalism was an antique, a part of Anglican tradition whose time had properly passed away. Turning from the past, as a modern thinker, Grammer identified himself as a liberal Episcopalian. Unlike Anglican evangelicals such as Dyson Hague, who emphasized their continuity with the living presence of the past, Grammer usually was nostalgic and patronising towards his evangelical upbringing. Only an experiential-mystical “essence” from evangelical spirituality remained relevant to self-identified liberals like him. The past, in this case evangelical “thought-forms,” was disconnected from the present for him. However, in the late 1920s and the 1930s Grammer’s views changed for strategic reasons. In part, this was a response to the liberal Evangelical Group Movement in the Church of England. More immediately, Grammer began to identify himself as a liberal and evangelical to find allies against militant anglo-catholics in the pecusa. Yet, for all his liberality, Grammer was aggressively low-church and anticatholic. Though removed from the evangelical faith of his ancestors, he could not entirely transcend their influence. He identified with little of the past,

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but he could not transcend his militant low-church heritage. Nor could he avoid constructing his own modern lineage. A more subtle tension in Grammer’s thought stemmed from his attitude towards modernism. In irenic fashion, he sometimes criticised science, especially when it overstepped its bounds by denying the possibility of miracles. He also defended God’s transcendence and warned about the pantheistic implications of modern immanent views of God. Yet Grammer essentially affirmed the modern culture around him with his unshaken belief that individuals and society were progressing towards deeper communion with God and each other. In H. Richard Niebuhr’s terms, his Jesus was a “Christ of culture” who affirmed and completed the world rather than judged and saved it.89 For this reason, Grammer did not understand the cultural pessimism of neo-orthodoxy. He identified with modernity, even if not uncritically, and rejected tradition, what he dismissed as the “cables” of the past that tied people down. Despite this stance, his identity revealed a mythic-ideological use of the past. In that sense, like the other subjects in this book, Grammer’s spirituality embraced and rejected elements of both modernity and the past. Unlike them, he did not self-consciously identify with a tradition but was against the very notion of tradition. Even his campaign to unite liberals and evangelicals in the 1930s, to better oppose anglo-catholics, was a largely strategic reclamation of an evangelical identity. Religious and cultural identities address basic questions.90 Who am I? Where am I? Who are they? What is wrong? And what is the remedy? For Grammer, being modern was fundamental to his identity. Unlike the other subjects in this study, modernity was not a part of “what is wrong.” For Grammer, what was wrong was the dead hand of the past, in the form of an anglo-catholic revival that threatened to bring back the dark ages. The remedy was modern enlightenment, though Grammer was not uncritical of modern science and philosophies. All the people analysed in this book were modern in crucial ways. But Grammer was the only one to self-consciously embrace modernity and not see it as a danger to Christian faith and the Episcopal-Anglican tradition. The irony is that, for all his criticism of traditions, Grammer did not recognize his own construction of a “modern” tradition.91 Besides the tensions in his own identity, Grammer’s career also reveals something about the Episcopal Church in the mid–twentieth century – the endurance of low-church–high-church divisions and bitter party acrimony. It thus belies the myth of comprehensiveness, which has often led Episcopalian historians to underplay such conflicts. The alignment Grammer sought between evangelicals and

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liberals and against anglo-catholics also indicates how conflicts cut across lines of identity in the Anglican-Episcopal tradition, in response to modernist theology and philosophy and in terms of churchmanship. With whom should liberal catholics identify? With conservative anglo-catholics? Or militant low-church liberals like Grammer? Finally, given Grammer’s patronising views of evangelical doctrine, how much could he share with conservative evangelicals, whatever fears they both might have about “Romish” superstition? Controversies over negotiations for church union in the 1930s and 1940s also help to explain why the pecusa was more fractured than the Anglican Church in Canada during the interwar years. As H.J. Cody’s career indicates and developments at Wycliffe College confirm, older conflicts between evangelicals and anglo-catholics over ritual were waning in Canada during the 1930s and 1940s. This did not mean that Canadian Anglicans had a more coherent and unified identity. For practical reasons at that time, they had fewer immediate sources of conflict, such as the negotiations for organic church union with the Presbyterians that had divided American Episcopalians. As H.J. Cody’s story reveals, however, lack of conflict over theology and mediating styles of churchmanship could also lead to dilemmas of identity.

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9 Henry John Cody: Modernity and Mediating Anglicanism If we are to be a living Church let us remember [that] we live in the twentieth century; our life must be continuously, instantaneously, exquisitely adjusted to environment. We reverence the past, but must not let it put a cramping clutch of a dead hand upon us. “The Uncompleted Task,” St Paul’s Church (1913)1

In his preaching Henry John Cody addressed the needs of modern people with compelling spiritual sensitivity, encouraging men and women who had grown weary with the day-to-day burdens of modern life. “In Christ is something that exactly meets the needs of the burdened, the broken and bankrupt,” he declared. “The test of any religion that claims to be universal is … how it meets the world’s needs. That is, what message have they for the weary. A message addressed to the weary is a message addressed to everyone.” Insight into the anomie of modern life marked his best sermons.2 Cody was a liberal evangelical Anglican – accommodating and modern but generally orthodox – who exemplified much of his generation of protestants in Canada. Nevertheless, the breadth of his activities inside and outside the Anglican Church set him apart, as did his wide-ranging abilities and personal ambition. Sometimes he was a weary pilgrim, but he was also very much a man of the world. Cody was rector of the largest Anglican church in Canada, St Paul’s on Bloor Street, and he preached before the League of Nations and the English royal family and in Westminster Abbey. He was nominated, elected, or considered for numerous bishoprics in Canada, England, and Australia – all of which he turned down. He was the unofficial head of the Anglican evangelicals in Canada, the “high priest and apostle of evangelicalism,” as Archbishop S.P. Matheson of Rupert’s Land once described him. And whatever else, Cody was also part of the social and cultural establishment in Canada, a nation-builder like the business leaders and politicians

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of his day.3 He ardently supported the Conservative Party and was minister of education in Ontario from 1918 to 1919. This political influence helped get him appointed president of the University of Toronto in October 1931. In short, Cody was an “organic intellectual,” a member of the elite social-political network in Toronto, a cultural populariser, and a force in numerous public institutions. He might be described as one of God’s mandarins. Cody’s career is thus an opportunity to study the enduring tension between Christianity and culture.4 While his social and political ties rooted him in the consumer capitalist society emerging in Canada during the early twentieth century, his faith and intellect gave him a religious standpoint from which to evaluate that culture.5 Did Cody and church leaders like him remain “in but not of the world”? Or were they complicit in it, contributing in unintended ways to secularization?6 (Certainly Cody ran into problems during his term as president of the University of Toronto.) More particularly, what does Cody’s life and work suggest about the dilemmas of modern identity faced by moderate Anglicans? Likewise, how did the tradition of Anglican establishment continue to shape the identity and faith of a modern liberal evangelical like Cody? One of the basic theses of most sociological and historical writing on the modern era has been the segmentation and differentiation of economic, political, social, and cultural spheres – notably the separation of church and state. Cody’s life and career indicate how social networks and a cultural vision continued to link the supposedly secularized society of English Canada into the 1930s and 1940s. Nonetheless, Cody was a public figure during an era of change – for example, as the last clergyman president of the University of Toronto. Continuities in the modern social and cultural linkages between religion and public life and changes in the uneven modern processes of “secularization” shaped his identity. Henry John Cody was singled out for public life from his school days. He was born in Embro, southwest of Toronto, on 6 December 1868. His father, Elijah John Cody, was of English descent and his mother, Margaret Louisa Torrence, who died when he was fourteen, was of Irish background. From 1881 to 1885 he attended Galt Collegiate Institute. From there he moved on to the University of Toronto, where he earned high marks and won numerous scholarships. While a student in Toronto, Cody stayed with J.E. Bryant, his former principal from Galt, who had since become a publisher. Cody later edited the Evangelical Churchman, which Bryant published.7

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Early intellectual influences on Cody included George Paxton Young, professor of mental and moral philosophy at Toronto. Young, who had resigned from the Presbyterian Church as a minister because of spiritual uncertainty, contributed to the transition from common sense philosophy to neo-Hegelian idealism in Canadian universities. Cody later praised Young for his “power of inspiring thought and his great love of truth before all things.”8 F.D. Maurice (1805–72), founder of the broad-church movement in England, and Bishop Phillips Brooks (1835–93), a liberal evangelical from Boston, also inspired Cody with their Christian convictions and liberal, tolerant spirits. Cody said of Brooks, a man to whom he was later compared, “He seems a man in whom the generation of spiritual force is so strong and continuous that it overflows into the poorer and barren lives about him, kindling and enriching them.”9 Each of these thinkers had adapted Christianity to suit modern needs. Cody was theologically liberal and irenic, like them, but he also remained rooted in evangelical piety and culture and in the evangelical party. Cody’s experiences in Toronto marked him deeply. His record at the university “has probably never been excelled,” according to his first biographer, Bishop William White. Cody won scholarships and medals each year, swept the boards as a senior, and came out “without a peer.” Instead of taking a classics fellowship after graduating in 1889, he decided to teach at Ridley College in St Catharines, an evangelical school organized a short time before. He taught there for three years and at the same time qualified for his ma and did extramural work at Wycliffe College.10 His career choices reflected a huge appetite for work and an abiding sense of duty to the evangelical party and the Anglican Church. While a student at Wycliffe, Cody often preached at St Paul’s Church on Bloor Street, where the Reverend T.C. DesBarres, a wellknown evangelical, was rector. Once ordained a deacon in 1893, Cody continued there as an assistant. His student sermons were scholarly and literary, but in time they became more accessible and plain. Even so, in 1894 a parishioner advised Cody to use less metaphysical, highfalutin language and more mother English. “Perhaps if you will carefully examine the rear wall of the church,” he suggested, “you will find it bored and breached with shot that flew high and missed the living mark.”11 Cody seems to have followed this advice. A few years later, in 1897, another parishioner complimented his preaching, contrasting DesBarres’s abstract theological expositions with Cody’s practical spiritual exhortations, which dwelt on the love of Christ.12

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In addition to parish work, Cody taught Old Testament, Greek, and church history at Wycliffe College and served as registrar. He edited the Evangelical Churchman and attended the formation of the Anglican General Synod in Canada in 1893. At a young age, then, Cody had become prominent among Anglican evangelicals. At the same time, he had also earned a reputation as a moderate on church issues.13 In 1895 Frederick Steen, a friend who later taught at the Montreal Diocesan College, complained to him about the hard-line, low-church stance of the Evangelical Churchman. The paper ran roughshod over high-church Anglicans but self-righteously demanded fair play for evangelicals. To Cody he wrote carefully, “[It] seems that you too are bound down by your environment, and in taking up the paper have been obliged to take up its past spirit and traditions which certainly are not congenial to you.”14 Cody also took time, in 1894, to marry Florence Louisa Clarke, an organist at St Paul’s Church and the daughter of E.H. Clarke, a Toronto mpp. Cody’s career continued to advance as the new century began. He remained a curate at St Paul’s until April 1899, when DesBarres went into semiretirement and Cody became rector-in-charge. Soon after the promotion he stopped wearing the black gown in the pulpit (the common evangelical practice) and began using a surplice. Some parishioners criticized the change from evangelical simplicity, but any controversy died down quickly. In 1907 Bishop Arthur Sweatman appointed Cody rector, in title and function. During these years, parish facilities were expanded twice to accommodate the people whom Cody attracted. In 1903 St Paul’s enlarged the old structure, and in 1909 it adopted plans to erect a building of cathedral dignity, worthy of the site and parish. Completed in 1913, the new St Paul’s was the largest Anglican church in Canada.15 Honours and influence quickly came Cody’s way. In 1903 Bishop Sweatman designated Cody a canon at St Alban’s Cathedral in Toronto and in 1909 appointed him archdeacon of York. Cody received a dd from Queen’s University in 1903 and an lld from the University of Toronto in 1906, the first of many honorary degrees. At the same time, his work in the Canadian church expanded, particularly among evangelicals. Throughout his career, bishops and parishes looking for men to serve as missionaries, priests, and summer interns turned to Cody for advice about likely candidates. From the 1890s to the 1930s duties at Wycliffe, his supervision of students and curates at St Paul’s, and widespread personal connections made him an effective resource person. Cody also wielded influence on the Missionary Society of the Canadian Church. Missionaries in the far West could count on St Paul’s for such donations as cars and winter coats.16

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By the early 1900s, Cody’s reputation as a leader among the evangelicals in the Canadian church had been established. This was reflected in the description of him given by a former teacher and old friend. In 1902, J.E. Bryant recommended Cody to the vestry of a Philadelphia parish as “the most popular preacher in Toronto in his denomination, and one of the most popular in the whole city among all denominations.” Cody’s churchmanship was “of no narrow-gauge type,” Bryant noted. “I should describe him as broad, in the American sense of the word. I do not like to speak too positively in this matter as I am not so sure of my ground as in what I have said above; but I should say he is of the Phillips Brooks type of churchmanship. Of this, however, I am quite sure – he is not narrow or illiberal in any sense.”17 Cody stayed in Toronto, but Bryant’s report was accurate. Cody had great influence among evangelicals in the Anglican Church in Canada, and his broadminded attitudes had earned him the trust and respect of people from other parties. Cody’s unanimous election as bishop of Nova Scotia in 1904 highlighted his stature in the church and his key place among the Toronto evangelicals. He was the moderate candidate, acceptable to evangelicals and high-churchmen alike. The evangelicals in Nova Scotia begged him to come, as most of the clergy there were high-church, in spite of a significant percentage of evangelicals among the laity. As the bishop, a moderate like Cody could have shifted the balance of power in the diocese towards the evangelicals.18 Despite their pleas, Cody refused to accept the election. He believed, and friends and colleagues in Ontario agreed, that he was indispensable in Toronto – at Wycliffe, as the rector of what they regarded as the most important parish in the dominion and within the diocese. Toronto evangelicals like Cody saw their diocese and city as a gateway to the Northwest. They had to keep the evangelical fires burning in Toronto, at the centre, to promote missions in the West and win the national church for the evangelical party.19 It would be a fatal mistake, one Toronto evangelical claimed, to isolate Cody in Nova Scotia. Over the next three decades the same reasoning led Cody to reject inquiries and elections from the dioceses of Caledonia, Huron, Montreal, Rupert’s Land, Melbourne, and Manchester.20 The only episcopal see that Cody would have accepted was the Diocese of Toronto. But when he was nominated to replace Arthur Sweatman as bishop of Toronto in 1909, party politics prevented his election. The laity in the diocese favoured Cody, while most clergy voted for the high-church bishop of Algoma, George Thornloe. Cody was known as moderate in churchmanship and widely respected for his views and abilities, but the high-church party feared that if he

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became bishop, the Toronto evangelicals, among whom Cody was a leader, would dominate the diocese. The two sides eventually compromised and elected James Sweeney, a moderate high-churchman with evangelical leanings. The defeat discouraged Cody and the evangelicals because, while it suggested that party antagonism had declined, evangelicals still had not been accepted by the high-church elite.21 Despite the loss, Cody’s reputation grew during the years 1910–19. In 1921 Trinity College, a high-church bastion in Toronto, chose Cody as its new provost and vice-chancellor. He declined the offer and remained at St Paul’s, where he said that he had the most freedom to pursue his varied interests.22 A detailed sense of Cody’s churchmanship can be gleaned from his reaction to informal talks about reunion held by Anglicans and Roman Catholics at Malines, Belgium (1921–25). Cody preached a sermon in January 1924 that responded to the Malines conversations and the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1920, which had issued an ecumenical “Appeal to All Christian People.” Cody heartily praised the Anglican bishops at Lambeth for recognizing the nonepiscopal denominations as “real churches.” In the past, he had defended Anglican participation in interdenominational services, notably during the Kikuyu controversy of 1914.23 Cody’s sermon of 1924 also recognized the true faith of many individual Roman Catholics, even as it pointed out problems with Roman Catholic ecclesiology and doctrine. The sermon was designed to placate fearful evangelicals. In England prominent evangelicals such as the bishop of Manchester, E.A. Knox, had militantly criticized the talks at Malines, fearing a hidden connection between them and concurrent anglo-catholic efforts to introduce ritualist liturgy into the Book of Common Prayer, which the English church was revising in the 1920s.24 Cody warned evangelicals in Canada not to overreact, as the discussions with Roman Catholics were informal rather than officially sanctioned. It is interesting to note, nevertheless, that his key criticism of Roman Catholicism was a common one evangelicals often applied to anglocatholics. Roman Catholics were sectarian in the extreme, Cody stated, for insisting that their church alone possessed divinely sanctioned sacraments. Anglo-catholics similarly argued that only episcopal churches with lines of apostolic succession back to the New Testament era had authentic sacraments. From this viewpoint, protestants did not have true churches and could not enjoy God’s sanction, even though as individuals they might have true faith. In addition, Cody pointed out that the English people would never agree to actual reunion with Rome, because such a move would destroy any hope of Anglican union with other protestant churches. He

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concluded optimistically: “God will bring [reunion] to pass in His own time and way. We shall only reach the higher unity which transcends and yet unites clashing opposites by working out the truth we see. But through all, love may work. Love unites. Love reveals. Love abides. He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and with his brother.”25 Like most Anglican evangelicals, Cody advocated organic reunion with other denominations, if possible, but always stressed that spiritual unity was far more important. In so doing, Cody implicitly demonstrated a modern, liberal, and evangelical identity. He regarded ecumenism as a sign of religious progress. Liberal-minded protestants thus should put aside their minor differences, present a unified front to the world, and, as a result, more effectively Christianize it. Historic church conflicts remained relevant – especially protestant–Roman Catholic divisions – but the dead hand of past controversies should not inhibit the work of the church in the present. Cody thus remained rooted in the evangelical tradition, but relative to conservatives like Dyson Hague he was less concerned to defend it than to adapt it faithfully. In terms of his churchmanship, modernity, and identity, this placed him between Hague and Carl Grammer. Cody viewed himself as modern and progressive but was not sure if modernity would herald the triumph of God’s kingdom or another power-hungry human kingdom. To a greater degree than either liberals like Grammer or conservatives like Hague and Thomas, Cody’s was a fundamentally and selfconsciously ambiguous modern identity. A few weeks after Cody’s “Malines” sermon, Archbishop Matheson thanked him for it. Matheson described the sermon as comprehensive and excellent. “Your contribution to the discussion is valuable,” he concluded. “It clarifies the situation and is most helpful, and I am very grateful to you for making it public. If it challenges criticism, so much the better, but I do not see where the position you take is vulnerable.”26 In similar fashion, throughout his career Cody displayed moderation on party issues and theology and tried to steer evangelical Anglicans in Canada away from extremes. This life-long moderate stance should not be taken for granted. Cody put forth a steady, calm public image, but his private life and much of his preaching were marked by a deep experience of and concern about anxiety and dislocation. As in church matters, prudence usually characterized Cody’s statements about society and politics, but passions and tensions moved beneath the surface. Cody insisted that Christians should apply their religion to “all in life” and urged people to carry their faith into politics and business. “What is wanted is not to politicize the Church but

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to Christianize politics,” he explained. Predictably, Cody’s politics included a streak of moralism on issues like gambling and temperance, as was common among both progressive and conservative protestants. The crucial question is whether Cody judged modernity to be a danger or an opportunity for Christians. Did he identify with or against modern Canada and the world? In general, his social and political convictions epitomised the conservative progressivism of the wasp establishment.27 From this viewpoint, many modern social, economic, and political developments were necessary and good, notably material progress and individual freedom. But their social and moral consequences needed to be guided and overseen by responsible leaders. As his stance suggests, in practice Cody often did politicize the church and allow his Anglo-Canadian, British identity to compromise his faith.28 World War I was an obvious case where Cody’s liberal evangelical universalism and irenic restraint gave way to anglo-Canadian jingoism. Before the war he had defended interracial harmony, proclaiming that the unity of the human race and hope of abolishing national enmity lay in knowing the ultimate symbol of humanity, Jesus, “the Son of Man.”29 The war changed this dramatically. Cody’s recruitment of soldiers and his use of sermons to stir up patriotism epitomised the way most Canadian clergy lost themselves in nationalist excesses.30 Speeches and sermons by Cody during the war revealed his zealous Anglo-Canadian identity. In his eyes the genius of the British Empire, which was “freedom, justice, mercy, tolerance and humanity,” contrasted sharply with German barbarism. The war thus was necessary, righteous, and unavoidable. The allies could not compromise with Germany, because the war was a battle for principles, ideals, and civilization. Cody asserted that Germans considered the essence of the state to be power, while citizens of the Empire believed it to be justice.31 Although his wartime politics remained liberal internationalist in theory, with a distinct evangelical leaven, he regularly condemned Germany in blanket fashion, admitting the existence only of a small saving remnant of righteous people in Germany. The Allies thus had to reject all German offers of peace, he argued in 1917.32 Cody expressed hope in “the Lord of Hosts” and faith that despite darkness and confusion, God reigned. The Almighty’s mercy, truth, and righteousness would not be put to shame. Like most Anglicans, he was sure that God was on the side of the Empire.33 A more balanced, fair-minded appreciation of the relationship between nationalism and internationalism returned to Cody after the war. His political principles again assumed a liberal-progressive tele-

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ology. In an address in 1921 to New York businessmen, he depicted the “underlying consciousness of unity in Western civilization” as “a democratic impulse and the principle of nationality.” He urged people to avoid reactionary tribalism and insisted that genuine nationalism led to enlightened internationalism. Particularly in the “composite” nation-states of North America, people had to learn the lessons of tolerance.34 Cody went on to emphasize that “You must never condemn a whole people for what some of the people do.” Perhaps he was thinking about his own speeches during the war, which had come perilously close to such excesses. He also stressed the need for repentance. The secret of just and peaceful international relations lay beyond nationalism, in the divine realm. Liberal ideals had to be rooted in spiritual and moral principles to work, because humanity could find true unity only in the image of God.35 Like most Canadian protestants, Cody’s perceptions of foreign relations thus combined liberal internationalist and evangelical elements.36 He developed these ideas in detail in 1926 when he preached before League of Nations delegates in Geneva.37 The burden of his sermon was that humanitarianism and legal institutions could not ensure peace. “A genial humanitarianism will never carry us to victory in any critical struggle,” he argued. Progress in Canada, the Empire, and the world depended on Christian devotion. “As Christian citizens we must translate into reality the distinctive Christian ideals of brotherhood and love,” Cody pleaded, “and so make our contribution to the building of a city of God upon earth wherein all nations may in unity and freedom seek and attain ‘the good life.› Christian faith, hope, and morality alone could solve international conflict, he claimed. Only the Prince of Peace could ensure righteousness and thus free people “from the bondage of fear and despair.”38 During World War II, although he again considered the war a righteous conflict, Cody responded in a restrained, thoughtful manner. Like most protestant clergy he had rejected the hypernationalism of World War I. In the 1940s Cody’s patriotism was chastened, and his message tended to be contemplative and pastoral. The change likely reflected his age and a lifetime of experience. In an address to the Bible Society over the cbc in 1942, he pondered the meaning of the war: “The world is consciously or unconsciously crying out for Christ. If a Christian civilization or international decency is to be maintained and extended, there is need of the Book which nourishes freedom, puts meaning into life, inculcates noble living, and reveals the source of inner power by which we may live.”39 In 1942 Cody’s message focussed on Christ more than on the war, British democracy, or military victory.

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Cody also looked forward to postwar reconstruction. He stressed the need for “sane nationalism” and for internationalism, and he praised the Beveridge Report for proposing a progressive extension of social security. A just end to the war would include social and political change.40 In 1942 he summarized the ideals that should shape postwar policy in Canada: “We need a social ideal, under which the individual is not to be crushed in character, worthy ambition, or enterprise, and yet is a social being linked to his fellows in a society; and under which freedom and organic unity are both conserved.” Cody called this ideal “socialized individualism” and stressed a familiar theme, that democracies “based only on the rights of man will always be in peril.” The only democracies that could last, he warned, were those “based on religion, on belief in the absolute value of the individual soul in God’s sight.”41 Cody completed his argument by connecting the spiritual roots of the war to postwar reconstruction. “The evil tyranny which today we are combatting is not something merely military or economic or social or political,” he said, “it is the spiritual problem of false faith.” The belief that “the state is its own absolute and the state’s interest is its supreme law” could not be overcome by vague notions about the goodness of humanity. Only faith in God and belief in the absolutes of righteousness and God’s law were adequate. The modern world thus was an ideological and spiritual battleground. As with his sermon in Geneva in 1926, in 1942 Cody concluded that the world’s only sure hope was God, not human endeavours. “The only ultimate basis for asserting that all men are in any sense equal,” he wrote, “is that God is the Father of them all and that as His children they should be treated as free men.”42 The sharp contrast in Cody’s reactions to the two wars went much deeper than the chastening lessons of experience and age. Cody had treated World War I as a battle for civilization, a stance he later regretted as uncritically putting the church in the service of war and hatred. During World War II he focussed on the spiritual traumas of a great holocaust and on postwar social reconstruction. This response reflected a lifelong tension in Cody’s piety and public life. On the one hand, he preached salvation and rest in Christ to pilgrims weary with the modern world. On the other, he proclaimed a transforming vision of Canada and the world Christianized by knights of the cross. In social terms Cody was thoroughly wrapped up in the currents and institutions of modern life, as a member of the local elite in Toronto and as part of the international Anglo-American religious network. At the same time he often felt distanced, atomised, and disembedded. As this suggests, it is difficult to draw a line be-

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tween so-called antimodernists and modernists. Such distinctions are a matter of degree and often of movement within an individual’s lifetime. In archetypical theological terms, were Christian pilgrims temporary sojourners in a fallen world? Or were they crusading knights, transforming their home into the kingdom of God? Cody’s life suggests that the answer is both. This tension between a confident modern champion and a world-weary antimodern exile can be found in Cody’s sermons. As the work of a liberal evangelical his preaching seldom strayed far from the essentials of orthodox piety – the sufficiency of scripture, Christ’s atoning work on the cross, the necessity of conversion, and the call to evangelism and activism. But his sermons also reveal that he wrestled with modern ideas, remaining evangelical but avidly engaging modern scholarship. Though a capable intellectual, Cody was less an academic or systematic thinker than a popularizer who tried to bridge the growing gulf between university-trained scholars and lay people in church pews. His theological beliefs thus can be found in sermons, speeches, and occasional essays rather than textbooks or scholarly monographs. Cody seldom spoke directly about Anglican church history, but embedded in his message was a sense of purpose and historical identity, that of a liberal evangelical, rooted in Anglican tradition, dedicated to defending the faith, but also committed to adapting it for people troubled by the ordeals of modern life. In the end, then, did this dual focus on Anglican tradition and modern identity signify the coherence of Cody’s piety and worldview, or did it suggest deep-rooted contradictions? The intellectual integrity of Cody’s liberal evangelicalism can be seen in a sermon that he preached before the rural deanery of Toronto in 1897. The sermon addressed scriptural and historical accounts of Christ’s resurrection and analysed their necessity for Christian faith. Cody stated that without a physical resurrection Christianity made no sense. He specifically criticized theologians who claimed that Christians could have faith in the reality of a spiritual resurrection without a physical one. Against this standpoint, Cody insisted that Jesus’s bodily resurrection was the cornerstone of Christianity, where it stood or fell. He thus distinguished the three “essential” miracles – the incarnation, birth, and resurrection of Christ – from the “accidental” miracles that depended on the former. Indeed, the whole gospel depended on these three miracles.43 Like many evangelicals before him, Cody insisted that only the resurrection and its impact on Jesus’ apostles adequately explained Christian history. Science and morality demanded order, he said. The world would be plunged into moral chaos if Christianity was founded

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on a lie. And cause would have no relationship with effect, even in that highest of planes, the metaphysical.44 To overcome this dilemma, Cody argued that scientific evidence and the historical record did not prove or refute the claims of Christianity. Accordingly, he claimed that it was reasonable and even necessary to accept New Testament accounts of Jesus’ miracles on the basis of faith and the testimony of the ancient church and the holy scriptures. Only people with an a priori, unscientific prejudice against miracles would conclude otherwise. For Cody, the mystic and moral power of Christianity could not be severed from the historical reality of these miracles.45 Proof aside, the meaning of the resurrection and other facts about Christ’s life was far more important to Cody. Incarnation, resurrection, atonement, and ascension were not merely historical facts or theological dogmas requiring rational assent but profound spiritual realities. The spiritual and material aspects of Jesus’ work could not be separated and neither could the objective truth and subjective experience of living faith be disconnected. An individual’s assurance of Christ’s resurrection harmonized the objective and subjective elements of religion, Cody contended. The gospel rested “on a unique fact in the circle of human experience,” the resurrection. Personal appropriation of this fact offered “the widest scope for the energies of the spiritual life.” Here Cody explicitly rejected what he saw as the empty materialism of modern life. The gospel he preached offered people something more, something mystical. Faith stood between the material and the spiritual, between the seen and the unseen, and reconciled them.46 Cody’s treatment of miracles also indicated that he felt at home with biblical criticism. Like most Canadian evangelicals, he did not blindly accept modernist conclusions, but neither did he fear them, as conservatives often did. He welcomed explanations of miracles, arguing that science did not take away from the miraculous nature of an event but, rather, confirmed the experience of faith.47 Cody also dealt with evolutionary accounts of creation in this way. Genesis declared God’s loving majesty and depicted the beauty of creation, he said. It did not conflict or compete with science so much as reveal God as an artist who rejoiced in the goodness of creation. Cody thus quoted the astronomer Galileo with progressive, liberal-minded confidence: “The Bible was not given us to teach how the heavens go, but to teach us how to go to heaven.” In this way, Cody tried to tame modern biblical scholarship and theology and put them to evangelical, spiritual use.48 Cody also welcomed historical analysis of the church. That Christianity portrayed Christ differently in every age did not trouble him. Instead, it suggested that religious leaders in his own day

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needed to personify Christ in ways that appealed to modern people. Jesus “came to Paul as the righteousness he craved for,” Cody argued. “He came to Justin Martyr as the truth. He came to St Francis as the radiant comrade. He came to Spurgeon as rest and satisfaction.” Jesus was always the same, always “the Son of Man” and “Son of God,” yet diverse in form to different people, “and every form most exquisitely chosen.” Only a Jesus who was a living person, not an abstraction, could satisfy the minds and hearts of modern people, Cody asserted.49 In this light Christianity had to be adjusted to modern life. The past should not hold it back but must serve as a basis from which living traditions of Christian faith could evolve. As Cody’s argument here suggests, he understood a living Anglican tradition as evolving within clear boundaries, defined by the past and the modern present. His faith was conservative and progressive and thus self-consciously moderate. Furthermore, Cody acknowledged the dangers and dilemmas inherent in living between Anglican tradition and modernity. But they were present in every age. Indeed, being “in but not of the world” itself was a tradition in Christian history, one Cody recognized and identified as his own. Despite this awareness of the liminal cultural space between tradition and modernity and despite his care to balance conservative and progressive impulses, Cody could be stung. A careful use of modern scholarship to promote deep spiritual experience and modify Christianity to suit modern needs was evident in Cody’s treatment of immortality. Cody applied history, philosophy, and comparative religion to discuss life after death, beginning with the claim that the universal fact of death had encouraged nearly universal belief in immortality among people in diverse times and places.50 The question of immortality thus was an existential one, and it would not rest, because death itself would not leave people alone. “As long as death breaks into our family circles, the problem will recur,” he remarked. “Death came with his legions during the War and compelled a fresh answer to his challenge. No one who can think or feel is able to look unmoved on the face of death.” Life-experience forced people to ask if they would live again. Through the advance of knowledge and decline of superstition and despite the terrors soldiers faced during World War I, belief in immortality had survived. “The storms of war,” Cody observed, “revealed to men their intuitive knowledge of immortality in the form of a definite, deep, personal assurance.” If belief in life after death had survived that terrible war, it clearly was fit to live and be selected by the Creator to grow.51 As this argument suggests, Cody understood Christianity – indeed, all religions – in evolutionary terms. Its foundation did not change, but it

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did adapt to suit each age. Certainty of life after death could be found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ, who had overcome death, but that gospel had to be proclaimed in fresh ways to modern people. The flexible liberal-evangelical orthodoxy that undergirded Cody’s theology perhaps can best be seen in his insistence on the centrality of both the resurrection and incarnation to theology. Many evangelicals shied away from a strong emphasis on Jesus’ incarnation (God as immanent) because of its liberal taint, while liberals and modernists often disregarded the atonement and bodily resurrection, considering such dogmas barbaric and superstitious.52 For Cody, these doctrines could not be separated. Because Christ’s purpose was to reconcile God and humanity, Cody argued specifically against modernist claims that Jesus was merely a teacher. He admitted that the atonement was not a popular doctrine among some modern people but insisted that it was essential to Christianity. The hope and future of humanity lay not only in the incarnation but in the atonement and redemption won by Christ. By the grace of God, Jesus had tasted death for all people.53 In short, the incarnation brought God to humanity, and Jesus’s death and resurrection brought a redeemed humanity to God. If modernists were correct, Cody said, then it was strange that the apostles had so confused who Jesus was and that the gospels had put so great an emphasis on his death and resurrection. Much like the apostle Paul, Cody said of the resurrection that “everything depends on it. For us it is a fact, not for specul[ation] but for life.”54 Despite this rigorous defence, Cody’s orthodoxy was much more accommodating than that of conservative evangelicals. For example, he preached a form of “kenotic” theology, often speaking about Christ’s “self-humiliation.”55 During the nineteenth century, liberal theologians had struggled with the doctrine of Christ’s two natures. How could Jesus be fully human and thus finite and at the same time divine and infinite? Some had resolved the dilemma by pointing to the “self-emptying” of the Divine Son referred to in Philippians (2:7). Liberals took “self-emptying” to mean that when the Son of God became human, he retained his divinity but gave up his divine powers of omniscience and omnipotence. Jesus was divine in essence but also finite and mortal.56 Conservatives feared this theology because it made Christ’s divinity seem ambiguous. Fundamentalists responded by insisting on Christ’s divinity, to the neglect of his humanity, and thus inadvertently flirted with heresy to defend orthodoxy.57 In contrast to modernists and in implicit criticism of fundamentalists, Cody used the idea of “self-emptying” to adapt and defend orthodoxy and more effectively proclaim who Christ was.

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In a sermon on the incarnation, Cody described the spiritual value of the doctrine. “There is so close a kinship between God and man,” he explained, “that the Divine Word is able by a voluntary act of selfdetermining love ‘to enter the lower estate of human existence and humble Himself to the conditions of humanity without losing His personal identity.›58 Because Jesus was a human being in everything except sin – even temptation – he understood the weaknesses and burdens of humanity. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” Cody declared, “carrying the burdens of the flesh and using them in the education and growth of the soul, and the achievement of the infinite purposes of human redemption.”59 Cody’s theology thus put intellectual rigour to spiritual use. He confidently appropriated what he judged as the best of modern biblical and theological scholarship to more effectively present the gospel to modern people. The relationship between evangelicalism and liberal theology is usually told as a story of conflict, but these movements could also complement each other in obvious ways.60 The last time Cody preached in the old St Paul’s building, in 1913, he recognized this common ground. “Our own age presents a complex problem,” he asserted. It demanded that people move on. “The mental and spiritual atmosphere has changed – the attitude to organized Christianity has altered – many of the old motives no longer operate. If we are to be a living Church let us remember [that] we live in the twentieth century; our life must be continuously, instantaneously, exquisitely adjusted to environment. We reverence the past, but must not let it put a cramping clutch of a dead hand upon us.”61 This “exquisite” adjusting of the gospel to modern life was, however, easier in the abstract than in the hurly-burly of daily life, modern institutions, and Canadian politics. Contradictions in Cody’s piety become evident when the focus shifts from his intellectual use of evangelical theology and modern ideas to the psychological problems that his preaching addressed and to his public activities. The meeting of Christian faith and modernity in a person’s life could be exquisitely painful. Along with confidence in progress came anomie and fragmentation. In Cody’s own experience modernity and tradition both were dangerous. It was easy to find oneself lost. Although Cody taught systematic theology at Wycliffe College and although his sermons revealed a complex and accommodating, but orthodox, theology, the power of his sermons was their compelling pastoral content. People listened because Cody moved their hearts and addressed their existential needs. His preaching reached out to

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people alienated from the modern world, people who had lost their sense of direction and identity amidst the lonely crowd. “There is a certain underlying, depressed, hollow sense of the futility and meaninglessness of human existence,” he stated just after World War II. People were oppressed by fear of personal insignificance. They hungered for meaning but were frustrated and alienated by a depersonalized mass society; they craved stability but lived with the fears of the atomic age.62 These modern spiritual burdens could be satisfied only by faith in Jesus, Cody believed: “The Christian message is at its heart the cross of Christ, that is the doctrine of Divine Love made manifest and winning its victory through a horror of suffering and sin.” It had never been more necessary for preaching to centre on the cross and the resurrection.63 The promise of God’s love was not easy, for at its centre was a cross. Rather than easy answers for life’s dilemmas, Cody offered hope to people living without hope. In this regard Cody resisted the modern tendency towards an increasingly self-absorbed “therapeutic” religious culture. God’s grace indeed was a gift, a balm for modern anomie, and a place of rest, a home for restless modern people. But it was also a calling that demanded action and sacrifice on the part of followers of Jesus.64 The word Cody used to describe the futility and alienation so characteristic of modernity was homesickness or homelessness. One of his sermons depicted the human condition as exile. “Whether we are always conscious of it or not, we are all exiles,” he asserted. “But no matter where we find ourselves, the day comes when we hear the call of Home – of God, who is our Home; of Christ, who waits to welcome us. This is the deepest need of our nature – the homing instinct of the soul.”65 Another sermon developed a similar theme, humanity’s thirst for understanding, cleansing, love, and guidance. “The gnawing pain of our thirst is not a myth,” Cody contended. “It’s the secret of man’s restlessness. We are ever on the march, not only because change is the law of the world, nor only because effort and progress are the law for civilized men, but because like caravans in the desert we have to search for water. In Christ our thirst is slaked: all our needs are satisfied in Him.” The pastoral content of these sermons perhaps can be described as a form of evangelical Anglican mysticism. It was an experiential piety that revealed Cody’s intuitive recognition of people’s needs in a rapidly changing society after World War I.66 For Cody the only answer to the needs of the modern world was Christ. “The world is getting very weary of substitutes for Jesus in its hour of real stress and trial,” he observed. “The world is weary of all new tracts of thought that lead to naught; sick of quack remedies

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prescribed in vain for mental pain.”67 Restlessness and homelessness characterized the human condition in twentieth-century Canada. This was an opportunity for the Christian church. People did not find fast-paced consumer lifestyles satisfying; they found them wearying and burdensome. People were looking for rest and belonging. In response Cody preached the gospel of Christ, the alpha and the omega. He promised that above all the world’s false hopes “one figure stands, with outstretched hand, even the figure of Him who is the First and the Last – Jesus the Lord.”68 This gospel answered the cries of pain that the world directed at the church and God. In striking fashion Cody described what the Christian response to a sceptical, unbelieving world should be. If reason cried that no true God could look at people’s sin and misery and live, the church must point out that God’s heart had broken. If reason cried that people are born in sin and God is to blame, the church must point to the cross, on which the Son of God had accepted the blame and borne the punishment. Though a “stumbling block” and “foolishness” to reason, Cody offered the modern world a mystery, the God-man on a cross.69 And mystery was what the world needed, he believed, because modern people no longer had any “perspective of mystery,” having reduced existence “into a one-world dimension.”70 This lack of mystery not only afflicted the world, it had also corrupted many Christian traditions, Cody observed. Churches often were paralysed with institutional inflexibility or abstract dogma and were consequently unable to help people who longed “for a hand to grasp by faith,” a heart “on which to lay their heart.”71 Even the Bible was not a substitute for the experience of faith, Cody argued, perhaps criticizing those fundamentalists who made an idol of the Bible. Christianity, he said in 1934, “is not the religion of a dead book and rigid formula” but faith in a living and present person. “Him we seek to follow.”72 Mystery thus was at the heart of faith. God’s existence was not so much proved as experienced, so there was little to gain by advancing arid proofs about God. After all, people could enjoy sunshine without analyzing its rays. God was not an object, Cody stressed, and could not be found in theories, explanations, or institutions, only in the “presence of the living Lord.”73 Spiritual regeneration thus did not lie in codes of morality or in theology, it lay in “a true realization of God and a vision of the life of man in God.” “From the acceptance of these, with the mind and heart,” Cody argued, “springs a true ethic and a new joy in living.”74 Revivals of religion had always begun with an awakening of mysticism; and when not exaggerated or held in extremes, mysticism was a vital element of spiritual life. Cody’s point was to criticise

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modern theologians who distrusted mystery and preferred rationalist forms of religion.75 People did not need a rational God or an abstract first cause, Cody countered, but a suffering Saviour with whom they could identify and who could understand them. In this way, Cody put doctrine in the service of experience. For example, in his hands the incarnation was a message of divine sympathy. For those who believed in God’s goodness, suffering was a great perplexity. Cody turned this dilemma on its head, saying: “Man’s religion has much sorrow in it, no wonder he needs a suffering God.”76 He thus transformed the problem of doubt into an experience of God as the ultimate burden bearer: “In Jesus the veil of the Temple is rent in twain from top to bottom, and as we look, behold, there is sackcloth within, suffering, sacrifice, upon the very heart of God.”77 He also turned abstract questions about what it meant to be “catholic” into a message about the communion of the saints. No person should ever be alone, he claimed, for it is human nature to be in fellowship, in society and the church. Christian tradition was a deep well of experience on which to draw, connecting believers to “all the saints,” to their wisdom, endurance, love, hope, faith, joy, and to a “vision of eternal things unseen.” The community of the saints was larger than the experience and insight of any one Christian. It encompassed all people who aspired to “apprehend the love of Christ,” protestant and catholic alike.78 In the church people could find their true identity, a community of fellow believers stretching back through all times and places. The spirituality espoused in Cody’s sermons suggests that he grasped the ambiguous, dislocating, and often alienating character of life in modern Canada. Two world wars, technological change, consumerism, the Depression, urbanization, immigration, and more, kept shifting the ground under people’s feet. Their personal lives did so too. Cody’s own life was no exception. His son Maurice was killed in a boating accident in 1927, and his first wife died in 1932. In response, his preaching often took on the world-denying tone of a pilgrim wandering in a fallen creation, looking for certainty, direction, hope, and communion. How did this raw piety coexist with Cody’s confident liberal-evangelical synthesis of Christian tradition and modern thought? For Cody part of the solution to modern restlessness was a restless Christian faith determined to transform a world gone astray and to build God’s kingdom. It was a compelling, activist, modern vision and thus a tempting and dangerous one. Could a person such as Cody be in the world but not of it? The dilemma was evident in his evangelical call to the church. Cody described Christ’s death and resurrection as “the

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grandest of missionary motives.”79 Christians should be spiritually regenerated by faith in Christ; filled with passion, moral enthusiasm, and a new consciousness; ready to gather in the careless, indifferent, and sinful. Churches must proclaim forgiveness of sin through Christ, pierce people’s hearts, and prick their consciences until they ask, “What shall I do to be saved?” For Cody the message was that Christian conversion would give people a resting place for their heart and soul and thus make the world a home. The experience of faith, the comfort of the gospel, and lives of service were part of a unified whole for him, focussing on Jesus Christ. Yet questions remain. Could the Jesus of Cody’s sermons – the suffering servant on the cross – be reconciled with Cody the churchman and modern man of power? With whom did Cody most identify? If Christians were to have “characters like Jesus,” as he said they should, could they be modern mandarins, even if mandarins for God?80 Could Christ be reconciled with modern culture? The gospel ideal defined for Cody how Christians should relate to the world. Christians were called out of the world, out of sin and misery, and by God’s grace blessed with new life and new hope. As God’s redeemed community, faithful people were sent back into the world to spread the message of hope and practise Christ-like love. God called people to serve Him “in and through the business of this life, which is the field for the Christian warfare,” Cody declared. It was “not the occupation, but the entanglement with the affairs of this life” that was fatal. “We are to be in the world, but not of it,” Cody demanded. “We must emphasize the one great purpose of life, which is to please Him who hath called us. Such an aim makes it easy to give up whatever is displeasing to Him.”81 From Cody’s point of view, once they were saved, wandering pilgrims became knights, with a new purposeful restlessness and calling. The ideal – to be in the world, but not of it – was difficult to achieve, however. Cody recognized the paradox that meeting the needs of the world required churches to follow its agenda, at least to some degree. But Christians also had to challenge the world, he insisted. He thus warned that the “Church must not be too eager to make the Gospel acceptable, at the expense of any part of Christian truth.” It could never be fully assimilated to any culture without lowering its standards of morality, justice, mercy, and freedom.82 Like Cody, during the 1920s and 1930s some protestants began to argue that the Canadian churches had become complacent, uncritical, and accepting of Western culture. They began to view nationalism, racism, and totalitarian states as competitors with Christianity.83

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As a liberal evangelical, Cody urged Christians to demonstrate that the gospel was not the bulwark of an outmoded, privileged order. He identified Christianity with many of the modern world’s liberal- progressive movements. “It contains revolutionary, transforming, progressive principles,” he said, “which under the vitalizing power of the Holy Spirit, can raise mankind from any sort of conditions, to ever higher standards of life and service.” Evangelicals should promote the “status of women, the Red Cross and other philanthropic organizations, as well as democratic principles in government and human rights.” They should do so because the gospel “proclaims a new order infinitely higher than any of its rivals. It places the Kingdom of Heaven first, and other things follow.”84 Christians should not present society with a detailed political-economic program. Rather, they had to dedicate themselves to spreading the gospel. The gospel placed a far higher value on individuals and human dignity than on philosophy. The rest would follow naturally. This was the ideal. Cody acknowledged that Christians rarely, if ever, achieved the goal of being in but not of the world. Too often they willingly became entangled in worldly pursuits. For this reason he wondered if the modern expansion of Christianity was “merely the religious aspect of a world hegemony achieved by Western civilization in the 18th and 19th centuries?” Or did the modern age actually herald “a new and truly world-wide Christendom” which would reach “a new organic relation” with the civilization of the future?85 Cody left the question unanswered but claimed that the West had reached a turning point. Christianity had been the religion of the West for twelve centuries, shaping it and enjoying an organic relationship with its social-moral structures. Despite this history of Christian influence and power, “modern civilization [had] been progressively detached from its religious roots,” he observed. Triumph in one age clearly did not guarantee success in the future. Nevertheless, Cody believed that Christianity could achieve “organic union” with Canadian society.86 Promoting the Christian faith and principles in the twentieth century concerned Cody deeply, because the churches faced so much opposition, which took many forms – open hostility and persecution, “that friendship of the world, which is enmity with God,” flagrant social sins and “extravagant love of excitement,” and ignorance, indifference, and cowardice. Yet Cody regarded the chief obstacles to contemporary Christianity to be modern “man’s belief in his own self-sufficiency, his belief in economic salvation, and his concern with the immediate.” Historians and theologians thus needed to judge carefully the church’s place in modern civilization.87

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Ultimately, when Cody looked from the present into the future, he had an abiding faith in God’s sovereignty. He saw challenges, dangers, and opportunities but believed that God was providing for the church. “Throughout history the hand of God is seen opening doors,” he observed. “In a marvellous way events are found, most unexpectedly, to make openings for the advance of the cause of Christianity.” In modern times doors might be closing and the church might face a grim struggle for the survival of Christian civilization and the spiritual values of faith. Indeed, Cody was convinced that Christianity had entered a perilous age. Despite this concern, he retained a confident measure of hope and a sure sense of the church’s duty. Followers of Christ should spread the comforts of the gospel and promote Christian truth. He concluded, “Whether the doors are opening or closing, or the adversaries many or few, the true knight of Jesus Christ will follow as and where his Master leads; for God is working His purposes out.”88 In the end, God was in control. As with his spirituality, in the long run Cody’s views of the church and the world were deeply ambivalent. At times he seemed to view the world as a sinking ship and warned that Christians had best not be trapped below decks. At other times he expressed deep confidence in modern life in Canada, defending and praising that ship. This double-mindedness should not be unexpected. After all, Cody was part of the Toronto elite – an affluent, prominent clergyman, a successful politician, and, in 1932, president of the University of Toronto. The tensions in Cody’s identity thus can be seen most clearly in his public life. They suggest that he never effectively reconciled the relationship between the church and the world and hint at the ways in which the dilemmas of modern identity contributed to secularization and Anglican decline. Ideals of Christian service collided with modern reality for Cody during the Great Depression. His career in politics and education indicates that in public life he generally identified with the culture and institutions of modern Canada. In 1932 he resigned as rector of St Paul’s to become president of the University of Toronto. He had been an influential member of the board of governors for many years and to some seemed a natural choice. Consequently, few people were surprised in October 1931 when the board offered him the position, soon after he had refused to let his name stand for election as archbishop of Rupert’s Land. Cody accepted the board’s offer eagerly. His new job allowed him to stay in Toronto, as he had always wanted. After four decades at St Paul’s, it gave him new challenges; and near the end of his career it may have satisfied ambitions for

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wider prominence and public service. Finally, it fulfilled a prediction made by his classmates at the University of Toronto when they graduated in 1889 – that Cody eventually would become president of the university.89 Cody immediately faced criticism and encountered problems as the new president of the University of Toronto. It was a sign of what was to come. Critics considered his a partisan appointment and protested that he had been given the job as a favour from Tory cronies on the board of governors rather than for his academic accomplishments. As might be expected, W.E.N. Sinclair, leader of the Liberal opposition in Ontario, questioned Cody’s credentials. Furthermore, left-wing faculty such as Frank Underhill of the history Department disliked Cody and his Conservative supporters.90 For the new, untested president of the dominion’s largest university during a terrible economic depression, this did not bode well. Like his father and grandfather, Cody was a long-time member and active supporter of the Conservative Party in Ontario. In 1918 William Hearst, the Conservative premier of Ontario, had asked Cody to become minister of education. Cody accepted, obtained another assistant to help out at St Paul’s, and eagerly took to his new duties. The Conservatives found a seat for Cody (in North Toronto East, his home riding), and he easily won a by-election. Cody’s record suggests that he served effectively as minister of education and was considered something of a nonpartisan figure. When the Conservatives lost the provincial election in late 1919 to the United Farmers, he resigned his seat and his position as minister of education, despite some suggestions that he should continue. Over the next decade, however, Cody revealed his partisan stripes. During hard-fought election campaigns in 1926 and 1929 he supported the Conservatives publicly, earning the enmity of the other parties.91 Predictably, then, radicals at the university often clashed with Cody during the 1930s. As early as 1933 he began to keep an eye on Frank Underhill’s political activities. A principled iconoclast, the radical historian was associated with the newly formed Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Underhill bluntly criticized the Ontario government’s socio-economic policies and questioned Canada’s imperial connections with the British Empire. Cody also worried about the influence of the League for Social Reconstruction on the university campus. Somewhat hypocritically, as a long-time partisan Tory, he advised university faculty to avoid making public pronouncements on party politics.92 As these examples suggest, in practice Cody found it difficult to be “in but not of the world.” He was as blind as the next person to his own “worldly” commitments.

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Somewhat unexpectedly, given his long experience in the public eye, Cody also made trouble for himself with foolhardy political pronouncements in 1933 and 1934. After a trip to Italy during the summer of 1933, he publicly praised some aspects of contemporary social and political developments in fascist Italy. He stated his admiration of Benito Mussolini, whom he believed had cleaned up the slums, restored public order, and begun training the youth of Italy “along progressive lines.” Early in 1934, in a speech during Toronto’s Italian Week celebrations, Cody commended “the spirit of cooperation” for the “common good” that existed in Italy. He stressed that he was not advocating fascism, arguing that it was not at all suitable for North America, but he clearly admired the corporatist philosophy that intellectual expressions of fascism employed. Cody believed that Italy could teach Canada, with its extreme individualism and social chaos, something about concern for public order, national purpose, and economic restructuring.93 In retrospect, given his criticism of leftist activities at the university during the Depression and World War II and because of the horrific results of German fascism, Cody’s statements seem foolish. What explains the appeal of corporatist philosophies associated with fascism? Perhaps Cody’s politics reflected his own recent experiences of profound personal and cultural dislocation. He was searching for certainty and stability. Remember that Cody’s first wife, Florence Lousia Clark, had died in late 1932. His trip to Italy likely was an escape from loneliness, the unexpected pressures of the university, and the social, economic, and political chaos of the Great Depression in Canada. Under these circumstances, the spirit of public order and national purpose that he perceived in Italy could not help but impress him. Indeed, in a sermon in 1934 Cody said: “our age is in desperate need of stabilizing forces and these are best created and maintained by pure and undefiled religion. Our shaken structures need that spiritual underpinning which faith in God alone can provide.”94 During the 1930s Cody was not alone among North American intellectuals on the left and right in being impressed by corporatism. Moreover, his pronouncements on fascist Italy were similar in their naiveté to descriptions of the Soviet Union as a “worker’s paradise” given by socialist writers and journalists during the 1920s and 1930s.95 Cody’s problems continued during the late 1930s, once again with Frank Underhill. The history professor’s inflammatory speeches had outraged politicians, citizens, and the university’s board of governors. Early in 1935 Cody called Underhill into his office, upbraided him severely, and obtained a promise from him to avoid public speeches for a year. Though he stayed silent for a short

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while, Underhill continued to disparage Canadian economic and political policies throughout the 1930s, as did other university faculty, notably Eric Havelock. In 1939 the situation reached another crisis point. Politicians, the press, and the board of governors renewed calls for Underhill’s dismissal, claiming that he was a subversive threat to the nation and the Empire. Many faculty and students and some journalists in Toronto defended Underhill in the name of academic freedom. Ironically, though deeply annoyed, Cody had to defend Underhill and academic freedom against “tyranny and assault” because of faculty and student pressure. In so doing, Cody alienated his Conservative allies on the board of governors.96 Cody’s problems with activist faculty members stemmed from their leftist politics. But his belief that academics should limit public pronouncements to ethical issues and avoid partisan politics also reflected his vision for the university. His philosophy of education harked back to the nineteenth-century tradition of “a disciplined intelligence.” He believed that in addition to skills and knowledge, education should teach civic duty, morality, and piety. The secular values associated with research universities and modern notions of academic freedom struck him as shallow and individualistic.97 A summary of his attitudes towards university education can be found in a speech he gave in New York in 1932. As one of the few remaining presidents of a major university in North America who was a clergyman, Cody was asked to address the place of spiritual values in the university. When universities pursue “abstract truth to the very limit,” Cody said, “there is still something left undone.” Education needed to deal with the whole person. “I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that religion in some form or another is essential to every full, rounded education,” he declared. Social conditions, national life, and international conflicts, which came down to “problems of character,” only confirmed this. The increasingly common “attitude of aloofness from religion and contempt of religion” was not worthy of true scientists and educators, he said. Students would respond “to sincere and genuine religion which is a personal relation between [the] individual and God.” He concluded in evangelical fashion: “Let those who have faith be bold today and live it.”98 Implicitly in this speech, Cody was opposing the segmentation and differentiation of social, cultural, and intellectual spheres of life that has typified modern institutions and mind-sets. In particular, he rejected instrumental reason and intellectual speculation for its own sake. He believed that reason and research needed a clear purpose

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and direction – “horizons of significance” rooted in Christian faith.99 Ironically, in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, League for Social Reconstruction, and Fellowship of Reconciliation, Cody’s left-wing opponents at the University of Toronto carried on this tradition of linking culture, the intellect, politics, and the economy to moral and religious traditions.100 Despite their disagreement on the specific social values and political-economic policies needed to end the Great Depression, the progressive-conservative Cody shared with left-wing activists a principled moral-religious opposition to the disembedding results of liberal-capitalist modernization. In this regard, neither side identified with modernity so much as with older moral traditions. Cody’s policies at the University of Toronto suggest that his politics grew more conservative during the 1930s – in reaction to the Depression and as a result of close ties to the Conservative Party. During World War II, his views would change again. Cody would praise the British Beveridge Report (which advocated the creation of a welfare state) and promote such policies in Canada. How can this be explained? The Beveridge Report impressed him not so much because he favoured social democracy as because he advocated public order and “socialized individualism.”101 The individual and society should coexist in organic unity. A welfare state created in Canada after the war, if combined with a renewed sense of public duty in Canadian citizens, would have resembled the corporatist philosophy that Cody had admired in 1933 and 1934. His vision for the university similarly stressed that education must do more than teach knowledge and skills; it should also promote civic ethics, national pride, and piety. This program would encourage character and nurture a stable sense of public duty in students. Even if inconsistent in the day-to-day running of the university, and however curious his political views may appear in later times, Cody’s overall vision was compatible with his deeply ingrained sense of Christian responsibility in the world. And it was one he shared with left-wing Canadians influenced by the social gospel tradition.102 In 1945 Sidney Earle Smith replaced Cody as president of the University of Toronto. Originally a Maritimer, Smith had left his post as president of the University of Manitoba to become principal of University College in Toronto and Cody’s executive assistant and successor. Earlier than expected, the board of governors pushed Cody to resign the presidency and become chancellor. Two years later, even though his term as chancellor was to last until 1948, it replaced him with Vincent Massey. The controversy surrounding his retirement caused a minor scandal. Some evidence suggests that the board got

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rid of Cody because he had alienated it by defending the academic freedom of Frank Underhill during the 1930s and early 1940s. After retiring in 1947, in his seventies, Cody returned to working part-time at Wycliffe College and St Paul’s Church and to active participation on Wycliffe’s Board of Trustees.103 In the 1940s Wycliffe remained evangelical but had softened on party issues and become more accommodating in its theological stance.104 Similarly, Cody was a liberal evangelical, open to the truth wherever it led but confident of the essentials of orthodoxy. Reflecting this, he continued to preach the need for humanity to recognize its sinfulness and dependence on God for peace and rest. For example, in a speech in 1942 on the cbc, he described his Christ-centred faith: “[The Bible] is centered in Him as the one hope of the individual and the world. Herein are set plainly forth the way of salvation, of full spiritual and moral health; the awfulness of sin, the redemption of sinners through Christ, the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit, and the blessed hope of everlasting life.”105 Cody’s change of career in 1932, from parish priest to university president, thus was an extension of his liberal evangelical view of Christian duty and piety, and not a departure. Cody did distinguish between sacred and secular duties in practical terms – for example, stressing that Christians, as Christians, should promote ethical principles and not advocate particular political-economic programs. Yet he insisted that all Christians were called to service in God’s kingdom, in church and society. Consequently, it is fair to ask how the worlddenying mysticism of his preaching squared with his tough-minded establishment politics and confident philosophy of education. While his piety included heartfelt personal awareness of the tragic, alienating experiences of modern life, his emphasis on public duty and “disciplined intelligence” made him complicit in the power politics of worldly affairs. Cody never reconciled these contradictions, either intellectually or in his political, social, and religious commitments. His identities overlapped – as a liberal evangelical, an Anglican, a Canadian, a supporter of the Empire, a capitalist, and a Conservative politician. But they also conflicted with each other, as Cody’s search for a solution to the fragmentation of Canadian society during the Depression indicated. In effect, the capitalism and social-political policies that Cody supported as an active member of the Conservative Party created social conditions that his religious identity rejected. Put in more abstract fashion, the disembedding reality of modernity inspired a deeply felt need for the reintegration of identities. Cody went so far as to flirt with the corporatist ideologies of Mussolini’s Italy, even as Canadians on the left admired Stalin’s Soviet Union.

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Cody spent his last few years quietly. He occasionally attended university functions but remained somewhat bitter about his forced retirement. Perhaps feeling a little guilty, in May 1950 the Ontario government and the university invited Cody to rejoin the board of governors. He continued to preach from time to time, although rarely at St Paul’s, where (as the former rector) he felt somewhat uncomfortable. His health slowly declined in early 1951 and in April he died quietly at his home. He was buried with an inscription from 2 Timothy on his tombstone: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”106 Does understanding Cody explain or further obscure the processes and meaning of secularization in Canada? On one level, his popularity as a preacher suggests that liberal evangelicalism (mediating and accommodating but essentially orthodox) remained influential in the protestant churches in Canada well into the mid–twentieth century. He creatively and effectively addressed the existential and spiritual needs of modern people living in a constantly changing society. If Cody was representative of his generation of mainline protestants, his sermons suggest that evangelicals in Canada had the resources to tame the results of biblical criticism, comparative religion, and modern theology and put them to practical pastoral use.107 On another level, Cody’s experiences at the University of Toronto help to explain secularization in Canada. His poorly considered praise of Mussolini’s Italy and his hypocritical disapproval of socialist faculty suggest that theological acumen and spiritual wisdom did not guarantee political savvy or insight into the social problems of the 1930s. Despite Cody’s principled emphasis on the properly ambiguous place of Christian churches in worldly affairs, he did not recognize how his own career had tied him to the Toronto social elite and the Conservative Party. Again, if Cody was representative, then his career shows how thoroughly moderate evangelicals in the mainline protestant denominations were associated with the establishment in Canada (though not necessarily with the Conservative Party). In 1945 a symbolic but enduring change took place when the legal scholar Sidney Smith replaced the clergyman Cody as president of the University of Toronto. As mentioned, Cody had represented the nineteenth-century tradition of “a disciplined intelligence,” of organic ties between education, piety, morality, and public service. His retirement marked the passing of that vision and the advent of modern secular research universities, where knowledge and new ideas were unrestricted and, in a sense, were their own reward. This process had begun long before he retired. In 1905 and 1906 Cody had

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been a key member of the Flavell Commission, which did much to modernize the university and transform it into a research-oriented institution. The declining influence of mainline protestants in key public institutions, such as universities, happened gradually, much more so than in the United States. As Cody’s career indicates, despite the institutional separation (disembedding) of institutions in modern Canada, social networks and cultural values continued to link politics, religion, social life, and the economy in the 1930s and 1940s.108 Nonetheless, his generation of leaders presided over the denouement of this informal Anglo-protestant establishment. The increasingly formal and informal segmentation of social, cultural, religious, economic, and political spheres during the postwar decades (especially during the 1960s) would not inevitably lead to declining religious beliefs and practices at a popular level but clearly would weaken the cultural preeminence of evangelical protestantism.109 Were religious leaders like H.J. Cody bystanders, adversaries, or agents in the process of secularization? Cody’s preaching strongly and perhaps effectively resisted the decline of religion popularly. As an administrator at the University of Toronto – in the Flavell Commission in 1905–6, on the board of governors, and in the offices of president and chancellor in the 1930s and 1940s – he helped to turn the university into a modern, secular research institution.110 In this case, wittingly or unwittingly, he was an agent of secularization. As a public figure for most of his life, he was rarely a bystander. Cody’s career also says much about the dilemmas of identity faced by Anglicans in modern North America. They extended from the past (historical identity) into the present and future. Of all the people explored in this study, Cody was the most truly mediating. His church career can be portrayed as a model of comprehensiveness. Although he remained loyal to the evangelical party, he earned the trust of liberal and high-church Anglicans by promoting irenic forms of liberal evangelicalism. Yet his personal piety and public career indicate that he struggled to find a place in modern Canada. Cody’s most compelling sermons recognized the homeless, alienating impact of modern cultural-social changes during the early twentieth century. He responded with a mystical message about a suffering, incarnate God who promised relief from life’s burdens, compassion, and salvation. At the same time, Cody insisted that Christians be knights of the cross and transform their fragmented society with the ethical principles of Christian faith. He was wise enough to wonder whether the modern expansion of Christendom was merely part of Western hegemony. Much more than Carl Grammer, his theology led him to be suspicious of modern progress. But he was blind to his own identification of

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Christian ideals with the anglo-Canadian establishment, Toronto elite, and Conservative Party. The “clamping clutch” of the past in Cody’s life was not the liturgy or doctrines of Anglicanism but its traditional social and political identity as the church of the establishment. Like those Anglicans who identified a particular aspect of their history – whether evangelical, liberal, or high-church – with true Anglicanism and true Christianity, Cody’s career highlighted the entanglement of Christianity with society and politics. The dilemmas of modern identity for Anglicans thus came from two interrelated but distinct directions. First, what it meant to be an Anglican became increasingly diverse during the modern era, as various Anglican church parties read their common history in competing ways. Second, like other Christians, Anglicans could not easily disentangle themselves from modern institutions, cultural values, and politics. Anglicans thus wrestled with questions of identity in terms of what it meant to be Anglican and what it meant to be citizens in a modern society such as twentieth-century Canada.

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10 Conclusion: The Modern Project, Fragmentation, and Anglican Identity History, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power. While so subordinated it will and ought never … become a pure science … But the question to what degree life requires the service of history at all is one of the highest questions and concerns affecting the health of a man, a people, a culture. For with a certain excess of history, life crumbles and degenerates, and finally, because of this degeneration, history itself degenerates as well. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life1

“Common sense” wisdom has much to say about the past. George Orwell’s famous line – “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” – asserts that history is a product of power. George Santayana also proclaimed the necessity and utility of the past, saying: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This book suggests something different. In confronting the modern dilemmas of identity, North American Anglicans appealed to the past, specifically to comprehensive, anglo-catholic, evangelical, and liberal traditions, but they could not control historical accounts of the Church of England. Comprehensiveness ideology, in particular, was difficult to tame. A liminal myth-history rooted in liberal Anglican conceptions of the past, discourse about “comprehensiveness” was used to contradictory ends by competing church parties. Ecumenical appeals to comprehensiveness, in the name of protestant or catholic unity, often led to internal conflicts in the acc and the pecusa. Intended as a source of unity, the myth also inspired competition and fragmentation. In short, while liberal Anglicans first articulated comprehensiveness as an ideal, the notion itself was fluid enough to be used in diverse, unintended ways. The very richness of Anglican history perhaps was a source of fragmentation, suggesting that Nietzsche was correct when he said that “with a certain excess of history, life crumbles.” The past has a disorderly power and weight of its own, defying modern efforts to exercise mythic or academic control over it.

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One promise of modern life was the capacity to progress beyond the dilemmas of the past and so leave history behind. In this fashion the Great Seal of the United States declared, “Novus ordo seclorum” – a new cycle of the ages. But did modernity herald an end to history, a radical disjuncture, not merely a new historical era in human evolution? William Faulkner often said that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”2 This observation was profoundly true for modern Anglicans, who found that they could not escape the past. The people analysed in this study appealed to the past to define themselves and meet present-day needs. Neither their modernism nor their antimodernism was absolute, as each one exhibited an unresolvable tension between the needs of the present and the ties of history. This included liberals such as H.J. Cody and Carl Grammer. Each person was avowedly modern in some respects but rejected other things modern, in effect identifying with modern life and also against it. This pattern is a useful reminder that avowedly antimodern movements – religious or otherwise – were modern in some crucial aspects of intent, expression, and proclamation. Inescapably, their time defined them, as did the past. Even a liberal-modernist such as Carl Grammer could not elude his evangelical forebears and their low-church battles. They continued to define him, and he needed them. In terms of memory, culture, and religion, modern societies rarely broke as sharply from the past as people imagined or hoped.3 What do these observations mean for modernity and dilemmas of identity experienced by Anglicans in North American between 1880 and 1950? Consider the themes discussed in various chapters of this book: competition of identities, fragmentation, cultural disembedding, antimodernism, modernity as progressive opportunity, and modernity as irreligious menace. In trying to define themselves and their spiritual purpose, Anglicans in North America appealed to the past and sometimes against it. They did so to defend one strand of Anglican tradition as true and sometimes to find common ground. The results were enigmatic. No one church party gained control, in either the acc or the pecusa, between 1880 and 1950 (even if the ground shifted dramatically at some points, as in the rec secession of 1873). Neither did the past submit quietly to myth-making about comprehensiveness. There was too much history to control, too many strands of the past to weave together. This is not to claim that an objective past refused to be manipulated by later religious ideologues. More to the point, Anglican claims to comprehensiveness themselves were liminal and occupied fluid positions on and across churchparty lines. The ideology of comprehensiveness was meant to include, but it also excluded. (Compare the use of the rhetoric of

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comprehensiveness by William Manning and Carl Grammer.) Furthermore, amidst the liberal-democratic regimes and consumer economies of North America, religion and culture were in flux. For H.J. Cody the very success of Canadian Anglicans as a mainline protestant church made it difficult to critically discern his place as a citizen and a Christian in modern Canada. In other cases, the need to define a distinctively Anglican identity in a highly competitive cultural and religious marketplace fostered competition and fragmentation. Such a story lends itself to a secularization meta-narrative. What was remarkable, however, was the vitality and success of the acc and the pecusa. The problems of morale and membership that the pecusa and the acc experienced after 1960, along with the other mainline protestant churches in North America, need not be read backwards into the first half of the century. Instead, the story can be told more subtly as one of irony, adaption, paradox, and ambiguity – in short, a typically modern story. At the heart the “modern project” was a desire to promote universal identities and institutional centralization. An obvious example was the drive to create nation-states – to centralize power in national institutions and to homogenize regional, ethnic, religious, political, sexual, and class identities in imagined national communities. At the same time, the modern era was marked by profound forces of diversity, competition, and fragmentation (capitalist markets, international and domestic labour migration, industrialization, urbanization, competing political ideologies and cultural values, ethnic strife in emergent nation-states, revolutions, and the like).4 This dynamic was typical of the modernizing experience – the stresses of centrifugal and centripetal forces. From the eighteenth century to the mid–twentieth, forceful centripetal political and cultural movements characterised modernity. Recent decades have seen the deterioration of such efforts and ideals and have inspired a reassessment of their plausibility and justice. Today universal cultural identities and centralizing institutions often seem imperialistic and dangerous to people on both the left and the right. This shift – called post-, mature, or late modern by some – is a sign of the weakening, if not the end, of the modern project. (The tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces was present from the start, but the balance has shifted towards the latter in recent decades.)5 However the postmodern turn is signified and whatever its exact timing, this fundamental modern tension was evident from the start in religious communities, movements, institutions, and conflicts. A prime example is secularization. On the one hand, efforts to limit the role of religion in public life were part of campaigns to universalize

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and centralize the nation-state by taking sources of diversity and social-cultural conflict out of politics. On the other hand, the ideology and policies of secularization contributed to the differentiation of various arenas of social, economic, cultural, and political life, leading to the fragmentation of public life and various forms of community. Instead of integrated identities and communities, modern life more and more became marked by disembedded individuals who chose to be members of diverse, often disconnected voluntary associations and communities. As a result, identities and communities increasingly became voluntary, consumable choices rather than heritages into which a person was born (archetypally, this was a shift from Gemeinshaft to Gesellschaft).6 This tension between universalism and fragmentation shaped the evolution of North American Anglicanism profoundly. For example, take the mythology of comprehensiveness. Like ecumenism and national church-union movements, the myth can be read as a modernizing project, an attempt to manage Anglican diversity ideologically and address endemic church conflicts among anglo-catholics, liberals, and evangelicals. The parochial and contradictory use of comprehensiveness discourse by Anglicans from conflicting church parties epitomizes the centrifugal impact of modern life on identities and communities. In terms of the people examined in this book, the evolution of internally diverse high-church, liberal, and evangelical Anglican identities highlights typically modern patterns of fragmentation. Conversely, H.J. Cody’s public service and mediating Anglicanism exemplifies modernizing campaigns to integrate nation-states. The story of the modern dilemma of Anglican identity in North America is thus part of a larger modern story, which is also marked by contradictory trends towards homogenization and fragmentation. Another example reinforces the point. The Anglican myth of comprehensiveness is comparable to multicultural ideologies in immigrant societies such as Canada and the United States – as an effort to deal with diversity and conflict. Like multiculturalism, the Anglican myth of comprehensiveness was rife with potential contradictions in its recognition of diversity within a broadly assimilationist framework.7 Given these wider cultural patterns and tensions, was the fragmentation of Anglicanism inevitable, ironically, as a part of a universal modern experience?8 Or was there something uniquely Anglican at work? And if fragmentation is somehow universal to modernity, what might it mean for religion generally? What is secularization? In the end, what can be learned from the history of North American Anglicanism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

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This discussion can easily be read negatively, as an implicit declension narrative. It need not be. Historians of the Episcopal-Anglican tradition in North America typically have told one of two stories: the paradox of Anglican identities or Anglican evolution away from nineteenth-century party conflict towards a twentieth-century consensus.9 Relative to the paradox and consensus interpretations, this book is weighted towards the paradoxes of Anglican identities in the modern era. However, whether the competition and conflict of Anglican identities, and even fragmentation, are negative is an open question. What impact did these have on the evolution of Anglican tradition, on the acc and the pecusa as institutions, and on the piety of individual church leaders and members between 1880 and 1950? Except for the secession of the Reformed Episcopalians in 1873, neither the pecusa nor the acc suffered a major haemorrhage of members, though conflict between church parties was common – as in most Christian traditions at the time. Given the intellectual, cultural, political, and social changes and challenges of the era, the absence of upheaval and conflict might well have been a sign of ill health. This is not to naively wash over the conflicts explored in this study, but it is to acknowledge equally the robust theological debate, institutional evolution and expansion, and the survival of the acc and the pecusa through an era of dramatic change. Consensus histories typically underplay conflict and competition, but interpretations that highlight paradox need not be read as judgment. Paradox was a sign of the modern times. Religious traditions that were engaged with modernity, usually with both hostility and affinity, could not help but experience the cultural and intellectual currents of those times. The paradoxes of the modern project thus lie at the root of Anglican dilemmas of identity in North America. From its early-modern origins in the 1530s, the English church was part of the consolidation and legitimation of the English nation-state by Henry III, parliament, and subsequent monarchs. Yet from the start the logic of modernizing universalism competed with fragmentation and the reality of religious diversity, as Anglicans leaders attempted to build a national church that could incorporate Christians ranging from radical Puritans to devout Roman Catholics. The seventeenth-century revolutions marked the extent and limits of the Church of England – various wings were competing within Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism was outlawed, Puritans were migrating to the colonies, protestant nonconformists were tolerated. These origins suggest that contemporary dilemmas in the acc and the pecusa run deeper than a cultural or ideological standoff

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between liberals and conservatives – a conflict that mainline denominations are facing generally.10 Anglicans in Canada and the United States also must deal with profound questions unique to their own heritage. At the centre of Anglican identity, historically, was its established status as the state Church of England. Its core identity was not theological (unlike the Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches, even where they have had official or semiofficial status). The English Church never had a stable, homogenous theological identity. Its historical roots lie in a political effort to compromise between protestantism and Roman Catholicism – ideally, combining catholic tradition with a reforming protestant spirit. At different times since then, Anglicans have leaned in protestant, catholic, and latitudinarian directions. In the nineteenth century, evangelical and diverse high-church Anglicans could legitimately claim to be the true heirs of Anglican tradition – as could the more loosely self-defined broad-church-liberal movement. In this sense, Anglicanism has always been essentially contested. The essentially contested character of Anglican identity became particularly troublesome for its Canadian and American branches during the nineteenth century, since neither could claim to be an official state church. Indeed, in the United States the American Revolution meant that the Episcopal Church had to overcome the un-American odour of its English and state-church legacy. Similarly, in mid–nineteenth century British North America it became impossible for the Church of England to consider itself established. The Canadian church also had to reinvent itself as one denomination among many. The long battle during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between various evangelical, high-church, and liberal groups to define and control the acc and the pecusa continued older English efforts to define Anglicanism. But for the New World churches this struggle meant something more. It was also an attempt to find an overarching identity and a new centre, something they no longer shared with the Church of England (except as a cultural memory), which remained an established state church. In this setting the Anglican myth of comprehensiveness (that the Anglican communion is a bridge between protestantism and catholicism) took on dual importance. The myth covered over contentious diversity within the acc and the pecusa.11 The nascent ecumenical movement also gave Anglicanism a new purpose, a unique role in reuniting catholicism and protestantism. During the twentieth century in North America, the myth was exposed as less a stable reality than a fluid and contested ideal. The hope of ecumenical reunion fizzled, except in loose national and international federations. Eventually, Anglicans began to turn inward, to focus on their own troubled

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identities.12 Despite a rich theological heritage and the liturgy of the Prayer Book, the acc and the pecusa have been disoriented without Anglicanism’s historic state-church identity. The case of William Manning, bishop of New York City during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s is instructive. His vision of a high-church Episcopalianism, which he believed combined the spirit of evangelical protestantism and the order of catholicism, in theory could have given a centre and sense of purpose to Anglicanism and united the various factions in the pecusa. This did not happen, in part, because Manning regularly alienated evangelicals, liberals, and even anglocatholics. More importantly, evangelical and high-church Episcopalians remained divided – bitterly so, at times – during the interwar years. Long-standing conflicts over ritual thus continued to divide conservatives and, perhaps, contributed to the liberal-modernist victory in the struggle for supremacy in the Episcopal Church after World War II. A brief survey of party conflict in the Anglican and Episcopal Churches in North America reinforces this point. During the early to mid–nineteenth century, evangelicals in the pecusa seemed destined to be a major influence in the church. From the mid–nineteenth century to the early twentieth, high-church movements came to the foreground. At the same time, a liberal movement quietly grew, gradually transforming many evangelicals and high-churchmen. In Canada, the high-church party dominated most of the nineteenth century. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries evangelicals grew in number rapidly, and they had hopes of prevailing in the Anglican Church. By the 1930s, in both the American and Canadian churches, factions of evangelicals, anglo-catholics, liberals, and traditional highchurchmen were competing for influence. In the 1960s it became clear that the liberal-modernists had won the battle in national denominational institutions and many dioceses, although the other groups continued to exist, even flourish, locally. At the same time, both denominations began a downward spiral of declining numbers and declining morale.13 The current disquiet in Anglicanism, the historical record suggests, not only reflects liberal-conservative conflicts that have divided many Christian churches since World War II, it also involves peculiarly Anglican dilemmas of identity.14 For a growing number of people in the acc and the pecusa (and for those who have left), it is no longer clear what it means to be Anglican. The nature of these dilemmas of identity and morale and their relationship to membership participation and institutional strength are complex, as previous chapters have stressed. Through the 1950s it is plausible to tell a story of successful, albeit difficult, adaption.

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Since 1960 such a consensus narrative is more difficult to sustain. It should be no surprise that clear evidence of decline in the acc and the pecusa came during the 1960s and 1970s. Take Episcopal and Anglican women, for example – the backbone of parish life and of much diocesan work historically. On the one hand, fuller participation in their churches became possible as women won the right to ordination. On the other hand, growing numbers of women went to work full- or part-time, by choice and opportunity or out of economic necessity. These changes upset their roles in church life in terms of their cultural identities and the time they had available for church work. In the same decades competition and conflict over identities in the cultural marketplaces of North America increased dramatically. Again, in the same decades multicultural challenges to liberal-protestant cultural hegemony often compelled liberal Christians to reject the very notion of a cultural-religious establishment. In short, the social, ideological, and institutional challenges to Anglican identities that had existed since at least the turn of the century went into overdrive – a shift from modernity to “hypermodernity,” as it were.15 In his study of the response to disestablishment by leaders in the colonial Church of England in Upper Canada, Curtis Fahey depicted a shift from an establishment mentality to denominational identity.16 This involved downplaying religious identity as legitimating a social-political establishment and stressing the competition for souls in a pluralist and voluntarist cultural marketplace. The evolution of the pecusa after the Revolution was part of the same uneven, incomplete process. Christianity, more specifically protestantism, continued to serve as an informal cultural establishment in the United States and English-speaking Canada well into the twentieth century (H.J. Cody’s career is a good example). Nonetheless, Anglicanism as a whole perhaps was ill-suited to a cultural-religious marketplace. It did not have a readily marketable denominational identity so much as competing subidentities and an unstable ecumenical appeal to comprehensiveness. The five Anglicans examined in this book thus illustrate how Anglicanism never fully recovered from its failure to become the religious and cultural establishment in colonial and Revolutionary America and in colonial British North America. From this perspective the individuals studied in this book and the trajectories their lives and careers took fall into place. Bishop William Manning is a compelling, paradoxical case study of the failure of North American Anglicans to find a theological centre during the early to mid–twentieth century. He exemplifies the peculiar sectarian logic of the Anglican myth of comprehensiveness. Because he hoped to

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promote ties with the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches, he helped to defeat union proposals with the Presbyterians. The muchtravelled W.H. Griffith Thomas is also a case study of the potential sectarian logic of Anglicanism, specifically the lure of interdenominational evangelicalism and fundamentalism for some evangelical Anglicans. Carl Grammer, whose progressive-minded liberalism was fused with an abiding and bitter anticatholic spirit illustrates the enduring impact of low-versus high-church conflicts on modern Anglicanism. Dyson Hague, who tried to vindicate an uncompromisingly conservativeprotestant reading of Anglican history in his books and pamphlets, is a typical Anglican example of selective memory. H.J. Cody is a bit harder to place. He represents the inability of liberal-evangelical Anglicans to respond creatively to changes in society and culture in twentieth-century North America. Despite the power of Cody’s sermons to address the spiritual and psychological needs of people in a bureaucratic and fragmented society and despite his influential position as president of the University of Toronto in the 1930s and 1940s, he epitomizes the failure of protestants to keep their position of cultural dominance in Canada. Cody also represents the dilemmas of the informal cultural establishment that protestantism represented in anglo-Canada and the United States. He could not quite manage these tensions, even though he recognized them. How these spiritual, theological, and historical tensions, in response to modernity between 1880 and 1950, relate to the malaise experienced in the acc and the pecusa after 1960 is much more difficult to state. Did the diversity of identities so evident during the interwar years herald the decline of the 1960s and 1970s? Is this a story of success until those decisive postwar decades? Or is it too simple to put such weight on the 1960s and 1970s? Finally, do claims that North American Anglicanism is or may be going through a time of fundamental decline say too much? Are the doomsayers such as Reginald Bibby (on the acc) wrong? Certainly, observers could be found in the pecusa and the acc in the 1990s who pointed to evidence of vitality (see chapter 1). Without getting into detailed and probably tortured comparisons, some historical perspective can be taken. If those who once heralded the death of fundamentalism were wrong, is it possible that those who herald the decline of Anglicanism and the other liberal-protestant traditions might also be surprised? Are doomsayers asking the wrong questions and looking in the wrong places? Put another way, what form might a renewal movement in North American Anglicanism take? Personal spirituality? In local communities? In national denominations? As an international, even a global communion? Here, further consideration of some recent scholarship on secularization is helpful.

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219 Fragmentation and Anglican Identity

This story of fragmentation and, in recent years, of lost morale and numerical decline could easily be fitted into a traditional model of secularization. Such an interpretation, while it might loosely fit the Anglican story, misses crucial issues and intriguing evidence of renewal and reconfiguration. The recent work of Danièle Hervieu-Léger on young charismatic Catholics in France offers some useful ways to move beyond secularization, or at least to rethink it. In recent years, Roman Catholic institutions in France and much of the rest of Western Europe have suffered steady decline. Yet Pope John Paul II has become a popular religious celebrity, as his visits to different parts of Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the United States indicate. He has drawn hundreds of thousands of young people who celebrate their spirituality at Roman Catholic events. Besides such media events Hervieu-Léger also notes a revival of interest in “spirituality,” especially in charismatic movements. This experiential religion usually is highly personal, therapeutic, antidoctrinal, and anti-institutional. The critical question is whether this religious renewal in France represents an end to secularization or an end to institutional and doctrinal religion (but not to spirituality). Hervieu-Léger leaves the question open. She implies that secularization is real and even pervasive but that it constitutes not so much an end to religiosity as its transformation. This may be an evolution away from elements of control in religion – whether creeds, doctrines, or institutions – and towards personalized, individualistic religious (in popular parlance, “spiritual”) movements.17 This analysis raises the question of how our time relates to modernity. As a modern movement, evangelicalism long promoted personal, experiential piety and defied traditional religious institutions and doctrinal standards. These patterns suggest that our time is “mature,” “hyper,” or “late” modern, but not yet truly “post” modern. The patterns certainly seem continuous with the modern era in some crucial aspects. How does Anglicanism fit into this context? Some contemporary renewal movements in North American Anglicanism are charismatic and transdenominational while others are not. Indeed, some mainline and evangelical protestants regard catholic Christianity (Anglican, Orthodox, Roman) as inviting precisely because its rituals, traditions, and structures have ancient roots. This attraction holds true for liberals and conservatives in theology, albeit in different ways.18 The point is not to find direct parallels to HervieuLéger’s work but to look at how processes that scholars call secularization have transformed but not destroyed religious movements. Consider this: Robert Wuthnow has argued that the day of the national denominations is past because they cannot contain conservative-liberal

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220 Conclusion

divisions and because the individualism of turn-of-the-millennium Western culture militates against creedal boundaries and denominational identities. Denominations were transitional modern institutions, he says, designed to recognize and contain Christian diversity within modern nation-states. In our late-modern times they no longer can contain religious diversity or effectively promote ecumenical unity. The religious and spiritual movements of the present may be evidence of decline and secularization from the viewpoint of denominational structures and confessional traditions.19 But from post- or transdenominational viewpoints these processes simply herald change and reconfiguration. The issue of modernity and the disembedding of traditions is a useful example here. Do the “spiritual” but antireligious cultural currents of turn-of-the-millennium culture reveal a hyper-disembedding, taking early twentieth-century centrifugal forces to a fragmented extreme? The answer seems to be yes in terms of specific denominational traditions and institutions, but local communities, small groups, and parishes are often flourishing. Are national institutions and modern confessional traditions (i.e., those that date from the Reformation) the proper standard of measure? Perhaps not. Certainly they are not the only or the necessary standard of measure. The dynamics of fragmentation and the possibilities of some sort of reconfiguration were evident in the Anglican Essentials conference held in Montreal in June 1994. The conference drew evangelicals, high-church traditionalists, and charismatics together to address a crisis of declining membership and morale in the acc. Sociologists such as Reginald Bibby have predicted that the acc could disappear within the next fifty years if changes are not made.20 The groups represented at the conference each had their own agenda, but they all agreed that to overcome current difficulties Anglicanism must renew its commitment to an orthodox understanding of the Christian gospel. To address this goal, in the Montreal Declaration delegates rearticulated what they considered the essential tenets of historical Christianity and addressed some major social issues confronting the acc in the 1990s.21 In the process, traditional antagonists became allies. At the Anglican Essentials conference Michael Green, a leading English evangelical who has taught at Vancouver’s Regent College, described an imminent confrontation between what he described as liberalism and orthodox Christianity. “There’s going to be a showdown between those who believe in revealed religion, and those who make it up as they go along,” he predicted. “For extreme forms of liberalism, which do have strong grounding in the Anglican Church in Canada, even

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221 Fragmentation and Anglican Identity

monotheism itself is not securely placed. We speak [of] a God who acts as God, who has revealed himself in history, who has become incarnate in Christ, a God who burdened himself with human [sinfulness] and has physically smashed the death barrier, but risen again. That’s the crunch between those two.” In the face of the renewed confrontation between liberal-modernism and orthodoxy, “essentials” Anglicans saw the old battles over ritual, the sacraments, and church government as trivial indeed.22 The 1995 General Synod of the Canadian Anglican Church dealt with such issues as the church’s stand on homosexuality and genderneutral language for God in the new hymn book. Michael Pountney, the principal of Wycliffe College, responded that “if, as may well be the case, the middle ground of centrist opinion is disappearing, then it is likely that the growing polarization of the church between a liberal majority and a conservative minority whose apparent function can only be reactive will continue to divide [Anglicans].”23 Much the same could be said for the pecusa, where high-church traditionalists, charismatics, evangelicals, and even some Reformed Episcopalians have come together to promote orthodox renewal. Yet most Anglicans and Episcopalians, like other Christians, seem unable to imagine an alternative to the current standoff between liberal and conservative factions. The key point is that evidence of both ferment and decline can be found. The question, the open question, is what it means. The challenges that Anglicans in Canada and the United States face thus transcend denominational boundaries. They divide Anglicans but also threaten the identity of Anglicanism itself by raising the question of whether it is more important to be orthodox or Anglican, since the two no longer seem to be identified. Rev. Harry Robinson described the present-day dilemma succinctly: “The gospel is at a crossroads,” he said. “Anglicanism is just part of it. Anglicanism has served a purpose in history and probably will continue to do so. But it’s the gospel in a post-Christian Canada that really is important.”24 If religious identities need not be contained in a traditional church or a modern-style denomination, then the question is not whether to be Anglican or orthodox. From this point of view, Anglican traditions should not be identified simplistically with Anglican institutions.25 The fragmentation of traditional party lines within Anglicanism and transdenominational, liberal-conservative lines that transcend the acc and the pecusa thus raises questions about the meaning of Anglicanism but does not necessarily herald that contested tradition’s demise. “Whither Anglicanism?” then. There has been a fragmentation of Anglican identity in the modern era and decline of numbers and morale in the acc and the pecusa.26 But predictions of the destruction

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222 Conclusion

of Anglicanism in the next half century are perhaps overstated. The decline of universalizing modern institutions is not the same as the decline of a tradition, though it clearly is a sign of transformation. Religious movements are becoming more experiential and personal and often antidoctrinal and anti-institutional (“spiritual” rather than “religious”). They demand theological and institutional adaption, in this case of Anglicanism. But such adaption is not new.27 This is perhaps the most significant flaw in unsophisticated secularization models – assuming that changes in supposedly unchanging religious traditions and institutions necessarily mean decline. The need for theological and institutional adaption by Anglicans and Christians from other traditions does not mean that such changes should not be questioned and even resisted. Spirituality without confessional and institutional boundaries and communal grounding often seems shallow and rootless. But to identify modern denominations with the integrity of religious traditions would be to create a potentially false dilemma. Indeed, a compelling new articulation of historical Anglican identities and a renewed contemporary sense of purpose doubtless would require the adaption of Anglicanism as a living tradition, not some last-ditch defence of the dead hand of the past.28 The central paradox of the modern project and modern identities (the tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces) suggests a similar point. The very effort to contain and control diversity within Anglicanism and elsewhere promoted fragmentation. Have denominations such as the acc and the pecusa, much like nation-states and other modern institutions, tried to achieve too much unity and uniformity? Is the solution to reject such attempts? In Christianity in the Twenty-First Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead (1993), Robert Wuthnow has noted that the breakdown of denominational traditions may contribute to the homogenization of religious identities and movements.29 Perhaps. But contemporary cultural trends towards globalization have gone hand in hand with the proliferation of local cultures, as numerous scholars have argued. It would be a mistake to identify religious diversity with national and international denominations as they existed in the modern era. The growing globalization of Roman Catholicism, notably, the centralization of power in the Vatican under John Paul II, has not prevented the evolution of diverse local, regional, and international movements within Catholicism.30 Anglicanism too, on a smaller scale, can be considered a global communion, with branches in North America, New Zealand, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia. Talk about the decline of Anglicanism often ignores its evolution in Africa and Asia. What do fragmentation and local diversity mean for Anglicanism as a global communion?

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223 Fragmentation and Anglican Identity

Might Anglicans in the Third World influence and bring renewal to those in England and North America? What will happen to the ideology of comprehensiveness?31 As was the case during the modern era, the challenge today continues to be balancing meaningful theological borders with the need for diversity and permeability. What has changed is the institutional-communal context that shapes such borders, the communities they define, and the people who move within and between them, Anglican or otherwise. Given the difficult questions of identity and spiritual purpose faced by North America Anglicans today – by people in late-modern cultures generally – an emphasis on paradox, ambiguity, and irony is a commonplace one.32 Both the subject and the writing of this book reflect the times. That the efforts of dedicated, capable leaders had unexpected results and in the long run could not prevent Anglican fragmentation did not reflect individual weaknesses or failures. To the contrary, these results stemmed from pervasive pressures and trends in modern cultures and a historic Anglican inability to agree on what it means to be Anglican. Whether efforts at the turn of the millenium by liberals, charismatics, high-church traditionalists, conservative evangelicals, and others to reinvigorate the acc and the pecusa will simply be reactive, looking back to Anglican fragments from the past, or will also look to the future to define a new Anglican identity and foster renewal in an uncertain North American communion remains to be seen. Whether their success or failure will be local, national, or transnational also remains to be seen. Will their “modern” dilemmas be transformed by global encounters with Anglicans from non-Western societies? Will renewal, if it occurs, take place within a modern-style denomination, a traditional church, a global communion, or some new postdenominational configuration? Questions like these would not have surprised H.J. Cody, who wondered at the beginning of the twentieth century whether the modern expansion of Christianity was “merely the religious aspect of a world hegemony achieved by Western civilization in the 18th and 19th centuries.”33 In another sermon Cody described the restlessness of the modern age as a spiritual thirst. “The gnawing pain of our thirst is not a myth,” he said. “It’s the secret of [humanity’s] restlessness. We are ever on the march, not only because change is the law of the world, nor only because effort and progress are the law for civilized [people], but because like caravans in the desert we have to search for water.” His mysticism was rooted in the evangelical Anglican tradition, but it was also a response to the

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224 Conclusion

dilemmas of modern identity. The question is whether Anglican spirituality, rooted in the past but attuned to the present, is suited to our hypermodern age, and perhaps the next.34 This remains the dilemma and promise of historical identities – that they define us in unpredictable ways but we cannot escape them in any case. The people examined in this study suggest that Anglicans have a rich heritage on which to draw but also deep contradictions to avoid. If it is true that people who fail to study history are doomed to repeat the past, it may equally be true that those who draw too deeply on history will not be able to escape the past.

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Appendix Church Membership

A sense of membership numbers over time is useful for understanding the development of the pecusa and the acc. Both churches define members in terms of baptism rather than confirmation, which limits the value of membership numbers as a measure of commitment or participation. Numbers vary significantly, depending on how members are counted. Comparison of census and membership data shows that more people made the cultural claim to being Anglican than were members. This was especially true in Canada as the twentieth century wore on. Active participation declined, but cultural claims to being Anglican often remained stable. Both measures show growth with the population through immigration booms and the baby boom of the 1950s. In the 1960s both began to decline relatively and in terms of real numbers. Numerically, the pecusa has been larger than the acc; proportionally the acc has been more important. See Bibby, Fragmented Gods, 13–15; Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 1982, 1992, 1998. Table 1 Membership in the acc and the pecusa, 1931–96 Year

acc

pecusa

1931

671,000

1,957,000

1941

717,000

2,162,000

1951

834,000

2,643,000

1961

1,037,000

3,520,000

1971

1,017,000

3,285,000 (1970)

1980

932,000

2,786,000

1990

848,000

2,446,000

1996

780,897 (1994)

2,536,550

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Notes

chapter one 1 See Bibby, Fragmented Gods and Unknown Gods; Hervieu-Léger, “PresentDay Emotional Renewals.” 2 On modernism and postmodernism, see Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Berman, All That Is Solid; Lyon, Postmodernity; and my own “Consumers and Citizens.” 3 Bibby, Anglitrends (commissioned by the Diocese of Toronto). 4 Hockin, “New Birth amidst New Realities,” Christian Week, 20 (September 1994), 11. 5 David Neff, “Anglicans Refocus on Essentials,” Christianity Today, September 1994, 49. 6 I am referring to the Anglican Essentials Conference held in Montreal in 1994. On it, see Egerton, Anglican Essentials. 7 Pountney, “Anglicans Attempt to Come to Grips with the Future,” Christian Week, 11 July 1995, 8. 8 Kew and White, New Millennium, New Church, 169–70. For Browning, see Prichard, History of the Episcopal Church, 291. 9 See Spong, Rescuing the Bible; Radner and Sumner, Reclaiming the Faith. 10 For memberships numbers, see the appendix. 11 “Anglicanism” is a modern term; despite the anachronism, I will use it to refer to the Church of England and its colonial branches from the 1500s onward. 12 For discussion of this classic story, see Lyon, The Steeple’s Shadow; Beckford, Religion and Advanced Industrial Society.

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228

Notes to pages 6–8

13 For a general discussion of modernity and identity and for more of the scholarly literature, see my “Consumers and Citizens.” 14 The term is Anthony Giddens’s; he defines disembedding as “the lifting out of social relationships from local contexts and their recombination across indefinite time/space distances.” See Modernity and Self-Identity, 242. 15 See Nugent, Crossings; Ramirez, On the Move. 16 See Anderson, Imagined Communities, on nationalism; religious denominations, especially international ones like the Anglican Communion, are imagined too. They are culture communities based on shared memory, language, and history that transcends face-to-face relationships in local parishes. This is crucial given the mobility of Anglican clergy and lay people between parishes in given regions, cities, nations, and continents. On “strangers,” see Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity; Bauman, Life in Fragments. On the commodification of culture and religion, see Berman, All That Is Solid, for a restatement of Marx. 17 See Martin’s essay in Lyon, Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity. “wasp” is, of course, the colloquial shorthand for white, Anglo-Saxon, and protestant. 18 Giddens defines the “reflexive project of the self” as “the process where self-identity is constituted” by the “ordering of self-narratives”; see Modernity and Self-Identity, 244. Giddens refers to individuals; modern communities and institutions do the same. See Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity, on consent and descent. 19 See Walls, Missionary Movements. For a classic statement, see Niebuhr, Christ and Culture; also note Van Die, An Evangelical Mind, the conclusion. 20 The modern world was not the culmination of history in some teleological sense, as some nineteenth-century thinkers believed. And secularization, whatever its extent, was not the universal, evolutionary decline of religion. It was one transition in an age-old tension between Christianity and culture. On this, see Guelzo, For the Union, 4–17 and the epilogue. On tradition in the modern era, see Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, and despite its dismissive tone, Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition. 21 On this theme, see Gough, Christ Church, Philadelphia, 5–9. The Church of England was only loosely established in the colonial era. After the Revolution, no church was established federally, though some states had established churches until the mid–nineteenth century. 22 See Fahey, In His Name; Mullin, Episcopal Vision/American Reality; Westfall, Two Worlds. 23 This portrait is one-sided. Both the acc and the pecusa, like other churches in North America, grew rapidly in the nineteenth century. The key is a contradictory sense of anxious optimism. For more balanced coverage, see chapters 2 and 4 below.

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229 Notes to pages 9–15 24 Recognizing that each party was diverse and that my usage at times is anachronistic, I will use the terms “liberal,” “anglo-catholic,” and “evangelical” heuristically. 25 Guelzo, For the Union. Some rec parishes seceded in Canada but remained isolated and dependent on American support. See Lewis, “Reformed Episcopal Church.” 26 See Rawlyk, Canadian Protestant Experience; Hutchison, Between the Times. 27 These problems of identity and mission were not uniquely North American. Indeed, close ties between church and state can lead to greater secularization, as David Martin has argued; see General Theory of Secularization. 28 The material in the next few paragraphs comes from several secondary sources. Moorman, History of the Church, is helpful. Also see Davies, Worship; Sheils and Gilley, Religion in Britain. 29 See Moorman, History of the Church; Davies, Worship, vol. 3. 30 See Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. On eucharistic theology, Cocksworth, Evangelical Eucharistic Thought, is useful. 31 O’Connell, The Oxford Conspirators. In general, see Davies, Worship, and Chadwick, The Victorian Church; they are also good on the broad-church movement. 32 Prichard, Nature of Salvation, makes the case for an Episcopalian consensus between 1800 and 1870. 33 Clergy offer the most readily available sources for study and the turn of the century was an era of transition for them. They became “professionalized,” much like medical doctors, lawyers, and engineers; but the cultural stock of clergy declined in the twentieth century. Their story is thus especially poignant. 34 “Organic intellectual” can be traced back to Antonio Gramsci; see Lears, “Cultural Hegemony.” The term refers to educated, culturally influential people who communicated ideas to broad audiences and shaped public opinion and “common sense.” 35 Eliot, Middlemarch, 896. Clergy typically are distinguished from “the ground up” views and feelings of people in the pews. This division likely is fair for academic theologians in the late twentieth century, but it should not be casually read back into the past. The clergy in this study blur the line between “elite” and “popular” history. Though their ideas did not, in an essential sense, determine what “the people” thought, they dedicated their lives to communicating with those people. 36 See Lum, “American Fundamentalism.” On fundamentalism and Anglicanism, note Marsden, Fundamentalism; Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals. 37 On Cody, see White, Canon Cody; Masters, Henry John Cody. Both are uncritical, but Masters is more thorough. Cody comes up in histories of the 1930s for dealings with leftist professors at the University of Toronto; see

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230

38

39 40

41

42 43 44 45

46

Notes to pages 15–20

McKillop, Matters of the Mind. To look at public religion, William Westfall is doing work on Cody’s St Paul’s church in Toronto. See “The Church of England.” Hague has received attention in studies of evangelicalism. See Marsden, Fundamentalism; Sawatsky, ‹Looking for That Blessed Hope›; Noll, Between Faith and Criticism; Allen, The Social Passion. Grammer has received no scholarly attention, except for a mention in Zabriskie, Anglican Evangelicalism. Manning is the subject of a biography and parish histories. See Hughes’s hagiographic, Prudently with Power; Bridgeman et al., Parish of Trinity Church. At several points later in the book I will address the social context of Anglican identities, notably issues relating to gender. My concern will remain theoretical or contextual rather than empirical. For these identity questions and some useful reflection, see Middleton and Walsh, Truth Is Stranger. See Gleason, Speaking of Diversity. See Anderson, Imagined Communities. Rather than cite extensive theoretical literature here, I will let this stand as a statement of my theoretical assumptions and methodology. I will address these issues again, in greater detail and with citations, in later chapters. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart, 154. I am not buying into every aspect of their analysis of individualism and commitment in American life, but I do find their take on language and community helpful. chapter two

1 This is a rough date. In 1749, two thousand British settlers arrived in Halifax; a year later, the British settled several thousand European protestants and provided them with missionaries from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Newfoundland began to change from a fishing station to a settler colony around 1750; a formal Anglican presence soon followed. See Murphy and Perin, Concise History of Christianity. 2 Ironically, as in Nova Scotia, one of the first things the new Protestant Episcopal Church did was to have three American bishops consecrated in Great Britain, in order to create an independent church that could survive in the young republic. They beat British North American leaders to the punch. After failing to convince English archbishops to do the job, Samuel Seabury of Connecticut was consecrated in 1784 by nonjuring Anglican bishops in Scotland. Two more bishops were consecrated in 1787 in England: William White of Philadelphia and Samuel Provoost of New York. Conflict over recognizing Seabury’s consecra-

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231 Notes to pages 21–7

3

4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12

13 14 15

16 17

tion created trouble in the American church for a time, but it was resolved. See Manross, American Episcopal Church. On this, see Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism; Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith; and Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven. For the sake of simplicity, I use two anachronisms – Anglicanism and Church of England – not the proper name, United Church of England and Ireland. Also, by the mid–eighteenth century, the Puritans more accurately should be called Congregationalists. Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 17. See Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre. Woolverton, Colonial Anglicanism, 33. In general, on this process of redefinition see Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind; Gough, Christ Church; and Mullin, Episcopal Vision. See Fingard, Anglican Design; essays in Ruggle, Some Men; Fahey, In His Name; Vernon, The Old Church; Westfall, Two Worlds. Simcoe, quoted in Ruggle, “The Anglican National Dream,” in Ruggle, Some Men, 131. On the Loyalists and the Americanisms they brought with them, see Errington, The Lion. On revivalism in British North America, see Rawlyk, Ravished by the Spirit and The Canada Fire. Fahey, In His Name, 297–8. This is not the place to get into a deep discussion of the nature of imperialism or how to measure the success of Anglican missions in Asia and Africa. But the origins of late twentieth century Anglicanism, with indigenized churches in former African and Asian colonies, do lie in this era, bringing uniquely African concerns to the Anglican Communion. For example, American bishops at the 1988 Lambeth Conference hoped to deal with issues relating to women’s ordination, but much of the conference was taken up with the issue of polygamy and African Christians. See Prelinger, introduction to Episcopal Women. On evangelical Anglicanism in the colonies, see Chorley, Men and Movements; Butler, Standing; Pritchard, A History; Guelzo, For the Union; Butler, Awash; and Stout, Divine Dramatist. See Rawlyk, The Canada Fire; Fahey, In His Name; Westfall, Two Worlds. See Richard Vaudry’s essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. On institutional growth in Ontario, see Grant, A Profusion. For more detail on evangelicals, see Vaudry’s essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. In general, consult Fahey, In His Name. For more details, see Murphy and Perin, A Concise History; Millman and Kelley, Atlantic Canada to 1900. This story is told in numerous general texts. For a brief account see Murphy and Perin, A Concise History. For more details see Fahey, In His Name; Moir, Church and State in Canada West; Rawlyk, The Protestant Experience.

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232

Notes to pages 27–32

18 For growing cultural and institutional ties between religion, politics, and reform, see the literature on the social gospel in Canada. See Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christiannity, and the material in my essay, “Protecting Christian Liberty.” For specific analysis of Anglican efforts to build an unofficial, or “shadow,” establishment, see Westfall, “The Church of England.” 19 On the state, see Greer and Radforth, Colonial Leviathan. On church and reform, see Noel, Canada Dry; Noll, A History; Murphy and Perin, A Concise History; and Grant, Profusion of Spires. On the twentieth century, see Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity. 20 As noted earlier, see studies by Westfall, Two Worlds, and Fahey, In His Name. 21 Chorley, Men and Movements, argues that Evangelicals were the key movement in the American Church until the beginning of renewed highchurchism under Bishop Hobart in the 1810s. 22 Quoted in Guelzo, “Ritual, Romanism, and Rebellion,” 551–2. 23 Chorley, Men and Movements, 31–58, 111–32; Butler, Standing; Mullin, Episcopal Vision; Prichard, A History. 24 Guelzo, “Ritual, Romanism, and Rebellion,” 551–3. 25 Newsome, The Parting of Friends; Butler, Standing. 26 On the evangelical reaction, see Butler, Standing; Fahey, In His Name. 27 See Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, on reflexivity. 28 A library could be cited. Key studies include Davies, Worship and Theology in England, vol. 4; Chorley, Men and Movements; Butler, Standing; Hutchison, Modernist Impulse; Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture; Moir, Biblical Studies in Canada; Murphy and Perin, A Concise History; Dolan, The American Catholic Experience. 29 See Noll, A History of Christianity; Westfall, Two Worlds; Handy, A Christian America; Grant, A Profusion of Spires; Butler, Awash; Marty, Righteous Empire. Sectarian, conservative evangelicals often promoted a more pessimistic, premillennial message and influenced members of mainline churches such as the acc and the pecusa. 30 In the United States, as immigration after the 1870s shifted more and more to southern and eastern Europe, the pecusa did not much benefit from it. 31 See Pritchard, The Nature of Salvation. The book makes a worthwhile point about the possibility of consensus, though one easily overstated. From the perspective of history and the search for identity, it also perhaps reflects an Episcopalian search for a consensus history; as such, it is part of a “consensus school” of history writing in the pecusa. On this, see Guelzo, Evangelical Christendom. 32 The literature on women, religion, and social reform in the nineteenth century is immense. As entry points, see essays in Prelinger, Episcopal Women, and Muir and Whiteley, Changing Roles of Women.

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233 Notes to pages 32–8 33 For example, see Putney, “Men and Religion.” 34 For an excellent survey of the pecusa story, see Gunderson, “Women and the Parallel Church,” in Prelinger, Episcopal Women. Women in the acc first organized a little later, in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, but were consolidating at the national level by the turn of the century, like their American counterparts. For some of this literature, see the bibliography in Muir and Whiteley, Changing Roles of Women. Much of this literature was published in the 1980s and 1990s in the Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society. 35 See Reed, “A Female Movement.” In general, on Episcopal women and theological identity, see essays by Irene Brown and Joanna Gillespie, in Prelinger, Episcopal Women. 36 What needs to be avoided is the essentialist assumption that women in general or lay people in general are not concerned or willing to discuss theology. For example, on twentieth-century evangelical women, see Griffith, God’s Daughters, and Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender. 37 Though not focussed on religious life, a useful study that examines the continuities and discontinuities of rural and small-town life in New England is Barron, Those Who Stayed Behind. On Episcopalians, see Gunderson, “The Local Parish.” 38 In chapters 4 and 6 I will explore some ways in which high-church Anglicans were deeply affected by protestant Christianity. 39 This is the answer of Hayden White and postmodern historians and philosophers. See White, Metahistory; Jenkins, The Postmodern History Reader. 40 Again, themes in the last few pages will be explored further in subsequent chapters. chapter three 1 adoa, St Paul’s Church, Brockville, Vestry Book, 26 April 1886, 43; I have corrected spelling and grammar. 2 “Archdeacon Armitage: An Appreciation,” Canadian Churchman (cc), 26 Sept. 1929, 632. William Armitage, of St Paul’s Church, Halifax, the oldest parish in Canada and an evangelical stronghold, worked with Hague on the Prayer Book revision; Armitage, Canadian Revision. 3 The Evangelical Future, 31. 4 “The Highest Synod Matters,” cc, 1 Oct. 1931, 638. 5 Noll, History of Christianity, 276. Others use the term “accommodating.” 6 See Sawatsky, ‹Blessed Hope›; Masters, “Anglican Evangelicals.” 7 St Paul’s, Brockville, 1885–90; St Paul’s, Halifax, 1890–97; Wycliffe College, professor of apologetics, liturgy, and pastoral theology, 1897–1901; churches in the Diocese of Huron, 1901–12; the Church of the Epiphany, Toronto, 1912–33. The Wycliffe dd was honorary.

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234

Notes to pages 38–43

8 See Armitage, Canadian Revision, 24, 57, 150–1, 180, 186, 240, 243. Hague worked to limit the changes to practical adaptions to Canadian circumstances. He wanted to avoid doctrinal and exegetical changes as well as ritualist innovations. 9 These details come primarily from Who’s Who in Canada, 1935, 400; as well, see The MacMillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 3d ed., 290; Toronto Synod Journal, 1935, 46–7. 10 See Masters, “Anglican Evangelicals,” 62. 11 Minute Book of the Advisory Committee and Executive Committee, 10 Dec. 1929 to 15 May 1936, Church of the Epiphany, Toronto, adta. See Sawatsky, ‹Blessed Hope›; Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance. 12 See Clark, William Henry Griffith Thomas, 21. 13 Evangelical Future, 4, 14. 14 See chapter 4 of my “Gospel and Party.” On evangelicals and the past, note Hatch, American Christianity; Hughes, American Quest. I will compare American, British, and Canadian evangelicals at several points in this chapter and the chapter on Thomas. 15 See Hague, Church of England. 16 Steen, Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, to Cody, 25 Nov. 1902, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. 17 John De Soyres, St John’s Church, St John, nb, to H.J. Cody, 20 Jan. 1904; Matheson to Cody, 2 Jan. 1918; Cody Papers, poa, mu 4953, 4956. 18 Owen to Cody, 21 Sept. 1903, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. 19 Hayes, “Depression,” in Edinborough, The Enduring Word, 50. Thomas Millman, who attended Wycliffe in the late 1920s and later taught there, related similar stories to me. 20 Cody, An Address Delivered by the Hon. and Rev. H.J. Cody, m.a., d.d., l.l.d., at the Funeral of the Rev. Dyson Hague. Note “In Memorial, Canon Dyson Hague,” cc, 9 May 1935, 298. 21 The Evangelical Future, 26–7. 22 Ibid., 34. Hague used the word “paltering”; I have changed it to the more familiar “faltering.” 23 “Is a Man Saved by His Creed?” cc, 21 Dec. 1911, 802. 24 “The Future of Evangelical Churchmanship in Canada,” cc, 13 Nov. 1913, 734. 25 “No Use for Creeds?” cc, 11 November 1920, 738. Hague’s view of identity as both a heritage and a personal choice is typically modern; see Sollers, Beyond Ethnicity, on modern identity, “descent,” and”consent.“ 26 Hague to Cody, 3 April 1903; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. 27 See Hague, Protestantism, a required text at Wycliffe into the 1930s. Note his series “Prayer Book Studies,” cc, 1916–18. 28 “The Evangelical as Churchman,” ec, 10 Nov. 1898, 725.

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235 Notes to pages 43–7 29 Hague, Protestantism; “Prayer Book Studies: The Catholicity of Its Contents,” cc, 28 Dec. 1916, 833–4. 30 See “The Evangelical as Churchman,” 725–8. 31 Ibid., 727. Note, as well, Hague’s forword to Thomas’s posthumously published Principles of Theology, xi. 32 Hague, Protestantism, 1–5, 17, 25–6, 29, 37, 56. 139. Note also Hague, Through the Prayer Book; “Prayer Book Studies, cc, 1 Nov. 1917, 700;”Prayer Book Studies: Tones,“cc, 4 Jan. 1917, 9, 10. 33 “Prayer Book Studies: A Panoramic,” cc, 11 Jan. 1917, 25. 34 Curtis Johnson has described three kinds of evangelicals: formalists, antiformalists, and ecstatic; see Redeeming America, 7–8. Hague clearly falls into the formalist category. 35 “The Canadian Church Prayer Book: A Plea for Adaption,” cc, 22 Sept. 1904, 565–6. 36 On the ambiguous relationship between antimodern and modern themes in virtually all forms of modern thought, see Berman, All That Is Solid. 37 “Future of Evangelical Churchmanship,” 734–5. In the 1920s Hague felt that anglo-catholicism and liberalism were hurting the church. Change thus became more urgent, but his proposals were not last-gasp efforts to prevent decline. 38 Armitage, Canadian Revision, 143, 150–1, 180, 186, 240, 243. Note Hague’s English Prayer Book, chaps. 24–5. He also criticised attempted innovations of the English Prayer Book; cf. The Evangelical Future, 32–4. 39 ‹I Object,› cc, 27 Feb. 1908, 148–9. Note also, “English Church Music,” cc, 25 Jan. 1906, 63. 40 Hague to Cody, 27 Aug. 1908; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4954. 41 See The Church of England and “The Question Drawer,” ec, 6 April 1899, 219. 42 The Church of England, 82. 43 For a sense of context see Wolffe, “Anti-Catholicism and Evangelical Identity,” in Noll, Bebbington, and Rawlyk, Evangelicalism. 44 See Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, chap. 5. For America, note Loucks, “Theological Foundations”; Marsden, Fundamentalism; Wacker, “The Holy Spirit.” The Victorious Life was rooted in Wesleyan perfectionism, Romanticism and moderate Calvinism. Advocates stressed holiness, intense piety, and millennial hope. Believers should turn from personal struggles and let the power of the Holy Spirit in them do its work. 45 On this theme, see Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence; note also Dumenil, The Modern Temper. 46 “The Church’s Opportunity,” cc, 23 May 1918, 334. See also 11 Nov. 1918, 714; 30 Dec. 1915, 842.

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236

Notes to pages 47–51

47 cc, 13 Feb. 1919, 100; 26 Feb. 1920, 132–3; 7 Nov. 1918, 716; 21 Nov. 1918, 749. 48 “Prayer Movements,” ec, 31 Mar. 1898, 199. Circles of prayer date back to the Great Awakening of the 1740s; see O’Brien, “A Transatlantic Community.” 49 Hague, St Andrew’s Work. The group originated in the pecusa. 50 “The w.a. and Summer: An Open Letter to the Clergy and w.a. Leaders,” cc, 24 May 1923, 331. On revival and reform, see Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform; for Canada, see Grant, A Profusion of Spires; Westfall, Two Worlds. 51 “The Question Drawer,” ec, 29 June 1899, 421. Liberal and evangelical Anglicans were both concerned with missions at this time. But evangelical activism generally remained confined to soul-saving. The “great Reversal” of the turn of the century, described by David Moberg, did not affect evangelical Anglicans in Canada. Caught up in party conflict with liberals and anglo-catholics in the 1870s and 1880s, their interest in social reform was always limited. In the early 1900s, liberal evangelicals like C.V. Pilcher, R.B. Horan, and H.J. Cody became more interested in politics and social reform. The American model of a radical split between liberals and conservatives does not fit Canada, though historians like Richard Allen and Ramsay Cook have used it. For a contrast, see Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity. 52 See, for example, “The Question Drawer,” ec, 29 June 1899, 421. 53 See Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England; and, Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 211–17. 54 Unlike Hague, some evangelicals lost their sense of balance. Diverse evangelical theology in the nineteenth century gave way to a more narrow defence of the faith. See Noll, “Common Sense Traditions,” 226–7; Marsden, Fundamentalism, 93–103; Wacker, “The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age,” 48–9; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 195–6. 55 Justification, 22. 56 Hague to McElheran, 29 June 1934, wca, in a box entitled Appendix to Minutes/Council & Trustees (1927–40). 57 Ibid. 58 Hague’s essays are “The Doctrinal Value of the First Chapters of Genesis”; “The History of Higher Criticism”; and “At-One-Ment by Propitiation.” 59 Marsden, Fundamentalism, 109–23; cf. 121, on Hague. 60 Hague, “Doctrinal Value,” 74–5. 61 Hague, “Higher Criticism,” 106. Noll (Between Faith and Criticism, 39–42) stresses Hague’s angry tone. 62 Hague, “Higher Criticism,” 90. 63 Hague, “At-One-Ment by Propitiation,” 27, 23, 31–9. 64 Ibid., 40–1.

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237 Notes to pages 51–4 65 Ibid., 41; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 181–4, 226–9; Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, chap. 2. 66 De Soyres to Cody, 29 Oct. 1904; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4953. 67 The Evangelical and Scholarship, 19, 8–9. 68 Hague, “Folklore and Myths,” cc, 24 Nov. 1932, 741–2. 69 The Evangelical and Scholarship, 8. 70 For “reverent reason,” see Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century, 38. Note also McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence. 71 The phrase “spirituality of history” is a play on Gauvreau’s “theology of history,” which intellectualises a mysticism of the past that Hague and, arguably, other evangelicals displayed; see Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century. Critical scholarship offended Hague in much same the way archaeologists rooting around in burial grounds often offend Native groups. Biblical critics, in Hague’s experience, were treading blithely on holy ground. I will comment further on this later in the chapter. 72 “The Question Drawer,” ec, 27 Jan. 1899, 55. 73 Justification, 7. 74 The Wonder of the Book, 29. 75 Ibid., 42. He described his view of inspiration as “divine in authorship; human in penmanship.” 76 See “About the Bible,” cc, 19 Jan. 1933, 39. 77 On this tradition, see Pointer, “J.B. Lightfoot.” Hague’s scholarship was less nuanced and more aggressive, reflecting his personality and the controversial times in which he lived. 78 See, Moir, History of Biblical Studies. 79 Decline is a matter of debate; perceptions of change, at least, worried evangelicals like Hague. For the debate, see Marshall, Secularizing the Faith, introduction; Crerar, Padres in No Man’s Land; and Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity, which argues that Canadian protestantism reached its height of influence in the 1920s and 1930s. 80 See Hague, Through the Prayer Book, 311–8, 394–5. This view of anglocatholic ritualism as a modernist appropriation of the aesthetics of religion and tradition to substitute for lost faith, has been explored by Lears in No Place of Grace. Also note the chapter on William Manning in this study. A high-churchman, he argued that ritual without conversion and real faith was an empty shell. See chap. 6. Ritualists ranged in theology from arch-conservative to modernist. Some liberals and modernists found a sense of continuity with the past in the aesthetics of ritual. 81 “Bishop Gore’s Commentary,” cc, 14 Mar. 1929, 168. Gore’s Liberal Catholic theology can best be seen as accommodating but essentially orthodox. Compared to the “cutting edge” of modernist Anglican theology during the interwar years, Gore was considered conservative. For more on him, see chap. 6.

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238 82 83 84 85 86

87 88

89 90 91

92

93 94

95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

Notes to pages 54–9

“About the Bible,” cc, 19 Jan. 1933, 39. The Evangelical Future, 20. Ibid., 19–20, 4. Ibid., 23–6. My sources for this comment are Thomas Millman’s memories of his seminary days (interview, 15 Mar. 1991). For faculty at Wycliffe, see essays in Edinborough, The Enduring Word. “The One Hundred and Ninth Psalm,” cc, 23 Nov. 1933, 712; “To the Graduates of Wycliffe College,” cc, 4 May 1933, 279. “The Highest Synod Matters,” cc, 1 Oct. 1931, 638. Hague called for a new Pentecost in this letter. Note also “The Mission of Renewal,” cc, 14 Mar. 1935, 166. The Evangelical Future, 4. Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century. I use the term consensus loosely. As Hague’s views suggest, this consensus was promoted alongside, and at times uncomfortably with, particular denominational traditions. On this, see Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism; Weber, Living in the Shadow. Also useful is Marsden, “Evangelicals, History and Modernity,” in Marsden, Evangelicalism and Modern America. “The Canadian Church and the War,” cc, 1 Oct. 1914, 634; “Why Christ is Coming,” cc, 30 Nov. 1916, 761. On Anglicans and dispensationalism, see Rennie, “Fundamentalism and the Varieties of North Atlantic Evangelicalism,” in Noll, Bebbington, and Rawlyk, Evangelicalism; Sawatsky, ‹Looking for That Blessed Hope›; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain; Marsden, Fundamentalism, 55–71. For predictions by an Anglican evangelical, see “Armageddon and Babylon,” cc, 15 Oct. 1916, 670. Dispensationalism can be seen as an intellectualist, even rationalist, “spirituality of history,” a theology, a science, more than a piety. For more on dispensationalism, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. “Advent! Advent!” cc, 21 Dec. 1922, 835. “Prayer Book Studies,” cc, 7 June 1917, 364. The Life and Work of John Wycliffe (1935 edition), xii. “Prayer Book Studies: The Athanasian Creed in the Canadian Prayer Book,” cc, 21 June 1917, 396. The Evangelical and Scholarship, 38. The Evangelical Future, 21. On “jeremiads” as a literary and religious genre, see Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad. Marsden, “Fundamentalism as an American Phenomenon.”

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239 Notes to pages 59–64 105 Ibid., 231; see also Ross, “Historical Consciousness.” 106 Marsden, “Fundamentalism,” 228, 216–21. 107 Canadian evangelicals responded to modernity in a manner similar to that of British evangelicals. Bebbington has shown how British evangelicals incorporated critical thought into their views of scripture. Hague was different but also similar. His sensitivity to history made him see the crisis of the 1920s and 1930s as one of many, as in the past and again in the future. Yet he had little use for criticism and none for modern views of the Bible as a historical text; see Evangelicalism and Modern Britain, 186–91. 108 On episcopal authority and apostolic succession, see Hague, “The Evangelical as Churchman,” ec, 10 Nov. 1898, 725–8; The Church of England, the Center of Unity, 3–5. 109 See Hatch’s essay in Marsden, Evangelicalism and Modern America, and his Democratization of American Christianity. 110 Rawlyk, The Canada Fire; Westfall, Two Worlds; McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence; Van Die, ‹The Double Vision› in Noll, Bebbington, and Rawlyk, Evangelicalism. Rawlyk stressed the decline of radical evangelicalism in the nineteenth century. Westfall contrasted Methodist revivalism, a culture of dissenting individualism, with Anglicanism, a culture of order. By the 1860s, these cultures had mediated each other and formed a broad protestant consensus. Unfortunately, Westfall neglected evangelical Anglicans and their contribution to the consensus. 111 “Prayer Book Studies: The Athanasian Creed in the Canadian Prayer Book,”396. 112 “The Mission of Renewal,” cc, 14 Mar. 1935, 166. 113 The Church of the Epiphany, 20 (adta). 114 “Principal’s Report to the Trustees, 12 June 1973,” wca, in “Appendix: Council and Trustee Minutes, May 1970–May 1975.” On the acc during the 1970s, see my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. 115 Bebbington argues this in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. chapter four 1 On the secession and the decline of the evangelical party, see Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind, and Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom. In their view, evangelicals vanished in the pecusa. I contend that evangelicals did not in fact disappear, although their party, as an effective entity, did. It reemerged, albeit transformed, during the 1960s and 1970s in the charismatic movement. Despite fears throughout the late nineteenth century that evangelicals would leave the acc, only a few isolated rec congregations were founded; see Lewis, “Reformed Episcopal Church.”

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Notes to pages 65–8

2 For more detail in narrative, analysis, and documentation see my phd dissertation, “Gospel and Party,” and my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. 3 See Szasz, Divided Mind; Wacker, “The Holy Spirit.” 4 Grant Wacker has argued that until 1900, even until World War I, a sense of common cause continued to tie liberals and conservatives together; see “The Holy Spirit.” 5 For immigration to Canada during this period, see Avery, Reluctant Hosts. For a sense of the acc on the north-western frontier in Canada, see Hill, “The Women Workers”; Coates, “Send Only Those Who Rise a Peg”; Rutherdale, “Revisiting Colonization.” This is not to say that no parallels existed on the frontier in the United States; see Alexander, “Women in South Dakota Missions.” 6 See Noll, A History of Christianity, for the general context. 7 The literature is voluminous. Good surveys of secularization theories are Lyon, The Steeple’s Shadow; Beckford, Religion and Advanced Industrial Society. The classic European study is Chadwick, Secularization. The best comparative work is Martin, A General Theory. An example of the “decline” model for Canada is Marshall, Secularizing the Faith. For recent critical views of simplistic secularization paradigms, see my essay “Consumers and Citizens” and the larger volume in which it was published, Lyon, Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity. 8 Useful studies along these lines include Turner, Without God; Moore, Selling God; Marsden, Soul of the American University; Lears, No Place of Grace; Westfall, Two Worlds; Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity; Marks, Revivals and Roller Rinks; Van Die, An Evangelical Mind. On Christianity’s expansion in the nineteenth century, see Grant, A Profusion of Spires; Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith. 9 On this theme see Walls, The Missionary Movement. 10 Marshall, Secularizing the Faith, is a good example. 11 The prominence of millennialism, in both its pre- and post-varieties, supports this contention. Even premillennial views of the future could be culture-affirming in some aspects, Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, especially chaps. 4, 15, 25. 12 A useful survey of Western religious thought during this era is Welch’s two-volume study, Protestant Thought. It emphasizes, among other things, the centrality of historical questions. 13 On liberal and conservative uses of modern canons of history and textual scholarship to analyse the Christian scriptures, see Noll, Between Faith and Criticism; Welch, Protestant Thought. 14 See McNeill, Mythhistory; Nietzsche, Advantage and Disadvantage of History; Iggers, Twentieth Century Historiography; Novick, That Noble Dream. On modernity and the desire to achieve certainty, see Toulmin, Cosmopolis.

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241 Notes to pages 68–74 15 On the search for the historical Jesus, see Welch, Protestant Thought; Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries. On Lightfoot, see Pointer, “J.B. Lightfoot.” 16 On Darwin, see Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies; Desmond and Moore, Darwin. On Huxley, see Desmond, Huxley. 17 For a useful summary of the myth of comprehensiveness, see Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom, 5–17. 18 For accounts of this era, see Chorley, Men and Movements; Manross, American Episcopal Church; Prichard, History of the Episcopal Church; Holmes, “The Anglican Tradition and the Episcopal Church,” in Lippy and Williams, The Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience. 19 See Rainsford’s autobiography, Varied Life. In social-gospel parlance, an “institutional church” was one with a wide range of social programs and community activities intended to attract and help immigrants, the respectable but poor working class, and the indigent. 20 High-church Anglicans generally argued that the sacrament of baptism itself imparted saving moral regeneration. Evangelicals insisted that individuals had to consciously have faith, had to be converted, to receive saving regeneration. Some evangelical clergy thus refused to use to term regeneration when performing baptisms, and efforts to achieve compromise failed. See Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom; Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind. 21 Hopkins, “Decline and Fall of the Low Church Party,” Church and the World, April-July, 1872; reprinted in full in Charles Sweet, A Champion of the Cross, Being the Life of John Henry Hopkins, s.t.d. (New York, 1894), 295–358. Quoted in Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind. 22 This is similar to Butler’s argument in Standing against the Whirlwind. Unlike Butler, I argue that the evolution in liberal directions was not necessarily decline, although it was change. 23 The Briggs case is used regularly by historians as an example of the growing, but still small, rift in America protestantism. For a brief account, see Holmes, “The Anglican Tradition.” 24 For the pecusa, see essays in Prelinger, Episcopal Women; Donovan, “Women as Foreign Missionaries”; Schnorrenberg, “Alabama Deaconesses”; Reed, ‹A Female Movement.› For the acc, see Hayes, By Grace Co-workers; Hooke, “Women’s Teaching and Service”; MacDonald, “Anglican Women Religious”; Andrews, “St Luke’s Home, Vancouver.” 25 For a more complete account, see Hague, “History of Wycliffe College,” The Jubilee Volume of Wycliffe College; Jocz, “Beginnings: The Principalship of James Paterson Sheraton, 1877–1906,” in Edinborough, The Enduring Word. 26 See my phd dissertation, “Gospel and Party,” and my article “Redefining Evangelicalism in the Canadian Anglican Church,” in Rawlyk, Aspects, for more details.

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Notes to pages 74–9

27 See Pulker, We Stand on Their Shoulders. Note also the essays in Hayes, By Grace Co-workers. 28 By “myth” I do not mean inaccurate, distorted versions of the past, as opposed to “true” or “scientific” history; I mean the mythic function of the ideology of comprehensiveness and accompanying readings of Anglican history. Part of my argument is the claim that all historical representations have a “mythic” function in creating cultural identities. See McNeill, Mythhistory. 29 See Prichard, A History, 155–7. 30 For the details in this and the preceding paragraphs, see Prichard, A History; Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom. For Canadian participation in 1867 and 1888, see Carrington, The Anglican Church in Canada. 31 See Manschreck, A History of Christianity, 2:485–6. 32 I have addressed theoretical issues relating to identity, liberal democracy, and pluralism in North America in “The Irony of Identity”; also see my essay, “Protecting Christian Liberty.” 33 This tension gets to the heart of the postmodern critique of modernity and its “totalising” ideologies. That is, postmodern critics damn universal claims (“metanarratives”) for masking their parochial origins in particular cultural-historical contexts and for their (hegemonic) desire to master other identities. On this issue, see Middleton and Walsh, Truth Is Stranger, chap. 4. 34 This statement assumes that organic unity is superior to various forms of institutional federation. As noted previously, it is an open question whether fragmentation necessarily was harmful or a sign of decline. I will address this issue in the concluding chapter. 35 Relative decline occurred, however. Measured against the national population, the pecusa fell behind in terms of the percentage that it once claimed. Much of this can be attributed to immigration by ethnic groups of Jewish and Roman Catholic background from Europe. To call this “decline” goes too far; at most it was numerical “stagnation,” which is not the only or necessarily the best measure of health and vitality. See Finke and Stark, The Churching of America, for a market-oriented point of view. They make the case for a relative numerical decline of the pecusa, which is their standard of success and failure. chapter five 1 Modernism in China, 48. 2 Clark, Thomas, 19. 3 Ibid., 23. On Thomas’s feelings, see Kilgore, “Thomas,” 54–8. From his notes it seems that letters to and from key evangelicals in Britain and North America to which Kilgore had access have been lost. He cites them

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243 Notes to pages 80–4

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16 17

18

19

20

as in the Dallas Theological Seminary archives, but no one there knows where they are. See memorials and remembrances in the Sunday School Times after Thomas’s death; cf. vol. 66, 1924, issues in late June and July. Clark, Thomas, 4. These experiences left Thomas sensitive to slights and a perceived loss of dignity. Thomas emphasized that they showed him that he did not need to feel but only know that he had been saved. Ibid., 4–5. Victorious Life Conference, The Victorious Life, 321. Clark, William Henry Griffith Thomas, 5–7. Ibid., 6–10. Ibid., 10–14. Thomas’s early career is discussed in Renalds, Canon Christopher. “A Sacrament of Our Redemption,” 116. Though a historian, like Dyson Hague, he had little intuitive historical consciousness. The Catholic Faith, v-vii, 370–3. After moving to Toronto, where party conflict was more pronounced, he wrote with more militancy; see The Conflict of Ideas in the English Church. The Catholic Faith, 51, 94, 353–4. Clark, Thomas, 12–14; Kilgore, “Thomas,” 30. His habitual restlessness may have reflected his self-made origins. Unlike people from financially secure families, his early life was shaped by downward mobility. He preferred to speak and write according to his own interests, rather than to fit into existing channels. He may also have been searching for prestige and financial security. Clark, Thomas, 14. For these details, see Kilgore, “Thomas,” 39–43. His literary work for this period included a column in The Record and editing The Churchman; his book Christianity Is Christ comprised part of a series he edited titled Anglican Church Handbooks. See Kilgore, “Thomas,” 43. Life Abiding and Abounding contained addresses from Keswick and Northfield. On Anglicans and Keswick, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 159–63; for North America, see Loucks, “Foundations of the Victorious Life.” Lum, “Thomas.” The best sources for this are letters between Thomas and Wycliffe people; Council Minutes, Nov. 1916–Sept. 1927, Box 3 (1-b), and May 1919. When the council dealt with his departure, it put the material from 1910 in the minutes of 1919. See Edinborough, The Enduring Word; Blake, Wycliffe College; The Jubilee Volume of Wycliffe College. For the relationship between Canada and England, see the correspondence of Principal O’Meara (Wycliffe Archives) and Cody (Cody Papers, poa). On the cms and the West, see Boon, The

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21 22

23

24

25

26

27

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Notes to pages 84–6

Anglican Church; Coates, “Send Only Those Who Rise a Peg.” Some English evangelicals were attracted by hopes of the exciting future of the evangelicals and missions; others worried about immigrants and ensuring that Canada remained Christian and British in culture. See letters from Thomas to O’Meara, 3 May 1910, and Blake to O’Meara, 14 May 1910; Council Minutes for May 1919, Box 3 (1-b). Sources for this are limited. My account of Thomas’s decision comes from Clark, Thomas; Kilgore, “Thomas,” 48–9. Note also “Dr Griffith Thomas: Appointed Professor of Apologetics, Wycliffe College, Toronto,” The Record, 20 May 1910, 485. The evidence is fragmentary. Kilgore (49–55) cites a lecture in 1971 by Winifred Gillespie at dts. Conversations with Richard Lum, Arthur Farstad, and John Witmer at dts also helped me. The Wycliffe records are not clear. The college was more careful in the future when it hired scholars from England, not wanting the problems it had with Thomas. From Wycliffe’s viewpoint, Thomas’s “Oxford” manner perhaps seemed pompous. See minutes for Trustees Annual Meeting, 26 May 1926; Council Minutes, Box 3 (1-b). See Hague, “The Future of Evangelical Churchmanship in Canada,” cc, 13 Nov. 1913, 734–5; “Canadian Church Hymnal,” ibid., 22 Feb. 1934, 117–8; Armitage, Canadian Revision of the Prayer Book, 143, 150–1, 180, 186, 240–3; Hague, English Prayer Book, chaps. 24–5. Rev. W.H. Vance, Vancouver, Principal of Latimer Hall, to H.J. Cody, Toronto, 10 May 1916, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4956. Vance said Thomas was touchy (he felt handicapped as an Englishman) but thought some blame rested on those who had him replaced with a Canadian. Thomas was an exceptionally confident person with easily wounded pride. Vance suggested that Thomas be made a contributing editor, but nothing seems to have come of this. For Bible conference material, see The Stronghold of Truth, lectures on the Bible given at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Note the comments in Loucks, “Theological Foundations,” on Thomas. Thomas wrote a few essays for Bibliotheca Sacra, did book reviews for it, and helped edit it. For the Sunday School Times he wrote articles and weekly Sunday school lessons. See Kilgore, “Thomas,” 56–66, on his activities. In this Thomas was typical of Anglo-American evangelicals, as Grant Wacker has shown in “The Holy Spirit.” Before World War I an emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s work united liberal and conservative evangelicals; controversies after the war fragmented this unity. On modernity, “disembedding,” and reflexivity, see Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. Also see chapter 1 in this study. Clark, Thomas, 24–5.

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245 Notes to pages 86–9 30 Most of Thomas’s writings and speeches during the second and third decades of the twentieth century were popular works. In England he had balanced popular and scholarly writing. This change may help explain why he became more militant in tone. The careful language of academic writing would not move a general audience as would flamboyant language. 31 Wacker, “The Holy Spirit”; Bebbington, Evangelicalism and Modern Britain, chap. 5. 32 Christianity is Christ, 52–67, 71. Thomas agreed with liberal theologians who emphasized Christ’s kenosis, his self-emptying, whereby Christ’s “knowledge was limited by the conditions and requirements of His earthly manifestations” (32). See Davies, Worship and Theology, 4:195–200. Thomas later rejected this theology; see “Of What Did Christ ‘Empty’ Himself?” Sunday School Times 65 (3 Mar. 1923), 138–9. His early moderation and later conservatism were evident in his views of evolution. See below. 33 Christianity is Christ, 115. Evangelicals often argued that Christ’s miracles – verified by witnesses – proved that he was who he claimed to be. Thomas felt differently: “the true line of thought is to argue from Christ to miracles rather than from miracles to Christ” (40). Miracles were signs, not proofs. 34 Ibid., 108, 116–17. 35 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, chap. 5; tellingly, conservative evangelical Anglicans like J.C. Ryle often championed traditional, doctrine-oriented Calvinism and rejected Keswick’s experiential teachings and practices. They viewed Keswick teachings as too liberal. 36 Loucks, “Theological Foundations,” chaps. 1–3. This will get more attention below. 37 Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture; Thomas, “German Moral Abnormality,” Bibliotheca Sacra 76 (Jan. 1919), 84–104; “Germany and the Bible,” Bibliotheca Sacra 72 (Jan. 1915), 49–66. 38 See also And God Spake These Words, published in the Friends’ Witness as “The Book of Books.” Note “Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity,” in The Fundamentals. This was more scholarly but still for a broad audience. Bibliographies suggest that Thomas kept up with English scholarship (and through it German). See also Noll, Between Faith and Criticism. 39 For the above quotes, see Stronghold of Truth, 43, 49, 52. 40 The Holy Spirit of God, 4, 5. 41 Stronghold of Truth, 53, 54. 42 The Holy Spirit of God, 245, 249, 270. 43 For this theme, see Bauman, Life in Fragments and Modernity and Ambivalence. The latter work interprets the Holocaust as an extreme example of a

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50 51

52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59

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Notes to pages 90–3

“modern” desire to root out the ambivalent place of Jews in Germany and create categorical social-cultural certainty about “German” identity. The Holocaust, in this view, was not antimodern but an archetypical modern event. See also Toulmin, Cosmopolis. For material in the above paragraphs, see Loucks, 28–45, chaps. 1–4. For collections of lectures, see The Victorious Life; The Victorious Christ. For the preceding quotes, see “The Gospel of Victory,” in The Victorious Life, 44, 74. Thomas, “The Victorious Life (I),” Bibliotheca Sacra 76 (1919), 279–81. “The Holy Spirit in Daily Life,” in The Victorious Life, 60. “The Victorious Life (II),” Bibliotheca Sacra 76 (1919), 465. Ibid., 464–5. The Victorious Life–Keswick movement may have been an evangelical response to nervous exhaustion, the late Victorian middleclass malaise. It perhaps was a therapeutic spiritual balm for Christians needing rejuvenation. Yet it did revitalize people for activism, particularly missions. On this, see Lears, No Place of Grace; Frank, Less than Conquerors. See the article on Warfield in The Dictionary of Christianity in America. It describes Warfield as an academic, a professor, not a pastor. Warfield and Thomas respected each other, as Warfield’s 1913 invitation to Thomas to speak at Princeton suggests. Differences stand out in their apologetics, their view of the relationship between scripture, epistemology, and religious experience. Taylor, Sources of the Self. See also Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. For more on Princeton theology, see Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism; Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. “Introduction to Francis R. Beattie’s Apologetics,” (1903) in Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, 2:93, 99. “A Review of De Zekerheid des Geloofs,” (1903), ibid., 112. Warfield followed Augustine and Calvin but did not have their emphasis on sin’s impact on the intellect; for example, see his “Introduction to Francis R. Beattie’s Apologetics”; on him, see Marsden, Fundamentalism, 114–18. “A Review of De Zekerheid des Geloofs,” 115. “Introduction to Francis R. Beattie’s Apologetics,” 99. Ibid., 93–7; “The Victorious Life,” Princeton Theological Review 16 (July 1918), 321–3. In general on criticism of the Victorious Life, see Loucks, “Theological Foundations,” pt. 3, chaps. 1, 2. Warfield criticized its Wesleyan, perfectionist roots and its Pelagian tendencies – that is, its teaching that God could not bestow grace until believers surrendered to him, as only then could the Holy Spirit enter the human heart. God was left at the disposal of man. He said: “God stands always helplessly by until man calls Him into action by opening a channel into which His energies may flow. It sounds dreadfully like turning on the steam or the electricity.” See “The Victorious Life,” 371–3.

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247 Notes to pages 93–5 61 Ibid., 362. 62 Note Warfield’s dismissal of Victorious Life “mysticism.” It can be seen as gnostic in that the act of grace blurred the line between the divine and human. Warfield also complained that God was left at the behest of the believer. The secretive knowledge of the Victorious Life typified gnosticism. 63 Thomas cited the orthodoxy of the Anglican leaders of Keswick in England but noted areas where he disagreed with Trumball and McQuilkin. Yet he defended the Victorious Life with few qualifications. See Loucks, “Theological Foundations,” pt. 1, chap. 3; pt. 3, chap. 3. 64 “The Victorious Life (II.),” 464, 465, 466. 65 See his “German Moral Abnormality.” He wrote a similar article in 1915. On objectivity and subjectivity, see The Holy Spirit of God: “[Our] ground of canonicity is apostolicity, but the ground of our conviction of canonicity is the witness of the Holy Ghost” (159). See also Shelley, “Sources of Pietistic Fundamentalism.” 66 Warfield, J. Greshem Machen, and William Riley showed this tendency. Hardening of theological attitudes and the logic of common sense thought are cited as the basis of this shift. See Noll, “Common Sense Traditions”; Wacker, “The Holy Spirit.” For Canada, see Parent, “The Christology of T.T. Shields.” 67 See May, Enlightenment in America; Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism; Marsden, Fundamentalism; Noll, “Common Sense Traditions.” Gauvreau has argued that American evangelicals adhered much more strongly to common sense ideas than Canadians. His argument may need tempering; see The Evangelical Century. The focus of common sense thought is, perhaps, too intellectualist and does not adequately deal with spirituality and experience. 68 Fundamentalism and American Culture, 4. Marsden suggests that it broke apart after the 1920s. My analysis indicates that it had already begun to fragment in the early 1920s. 69 See a letter from Thomas to N.W. Hoyles, 6 January 1919; it can be found with Council Minutes for May 1919; Box 3 (1-b). 70 Council Minutes for 1919 contain a report on the Thomas situation and letters between Thomas and T.R. O’Meara, the principal; N.W. Holyes, the council president; F.C. Jarvis, the treasurer; and, R.W. Leonard, a longtime financial supporter who noted unrest among the alumni and wanted an explanation. See Minutes for Trustee and Council meetings, May 1919; Box 3 (1-b). 71 Kilgore, 59–60. Thomas’s finances in Philadelphia are not clear. He earned money for the writing and editorial work he did for the Sunday School Times and Bibliotheca Sacra and received money for speaking at Victorious Life and prophecy conferences. He may also have received money from benefactors for helping to found the Evangelical Theological College in Dallas.

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Notes to pages 95–7

72 The immigrant metaphor is also useful for further elaborating this analysis. Like immigrants who followed patterns of chain migration from Old World villages to New World neighbourhoods, a Keswick–Victorious Life “chain” provided Thomas with continuity. However, the cultural-social context of Keswick was significantly transformed for him in North America. As with immigrants, in the process his identity was recast. For the immigrant metaphor, see Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. 73 Szasz, The Divided Mind, 81–3; Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 141–63. Szasz stressed the slow development of conservative and liberal camps; Marsden emphasized the unity of the evangelical protestant churches until the early twentieth century. Protofundamentalists and liberal-modernists, Marsden argued, accused each other of disloyalty. Modernists criticized premillennialists who advocated other-worldly pacifism. Protofundamentalists connected liberal-modernist theology and ethics with German barbarism. The war heated up rhetoric on both sides. 74 “Germany and the Bible,” 49, 57, 61–2. 75 Note also Thomas, “German Moral Abnormality.” Liberal Anglo-American churches were no more charitable towards Germany, but ties between a cultural crisis and theology were less clear for them; they linked militarism and conservative theology. 76 “Germany and the Bible,” 55–6. 77 Genesis, 1:37–8; this work was written between 1900 and 1910. 78 Thomas, Evolution and the Supernatural. More broadly, see Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies; Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders. Livingstone stresses the symbolic and ideological threat of evolution in the 1920s – that is, the fear that evolutionary views would lead to social and cultural chaos and violence, as they had earlier, during the Great War. 79 Thomas considered evolution an unproven possibility. Theistic evolution was also “conceivable” but improbable; it certainly led in atheistic directions (Evolution and the Supernatural). Thomas’s growing militancy reflected perceptions of a crisis in Western Christian civilization, conflicts at Wycliffe, and the influence of friends in the Victorious Life movement. 80 The point here, implicitly, is the relationship between the modern experience of ambivalence and the desire for certainty; see Bauman, Life in Fragments; Modernity and Ambivalence. 81 The comments are from a prophecy conference at Carnegie Hall in New York; “See Prophecy Fulfilled,” New York Times, 29 Nov. 1918, 12. Speakers included Thomas, Rueben Torrey, C.I. Scofield, Lewis Sperry Chafer, James M. Gray, John Wilbur Chapman, and A.C. Gabelein; see the New York Times, 23 Nov. 1918, 11. 82 See Szasz, 89–90, 160. For early meetings of the wcfa, see the pages of the Sunday School Times for articles and ads.

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249 Notes to pages 98–101 83 See Thomas, Modernism in China, a pamphlet reprint of the original Princeton Theological Review article. 84 Ibid., 38, 4–8, 42–4. 85 Ibid., 25, 47, 45–6, 48. Issues included how Christian missionaries should relate to non-Christian religions and the proper balance between traditional and social evangelism; cf. 31, 37. See also the essays by Patterson and Carpenter, in Carpenter and Shenk, Earthen Vessels. 86 I do not want to make more of it here than space allows, but this point is significant. “Antimodern” is not equivalent to “traditionalist.” 87 Marsden explains fundamentalism as an “American phenomenon,” stressing the movement’s profound ambivalence. See Fundamentalism and American Culture. I would frame his interpretation a little differently, viewing fundamentalist “America” as a leading example of “modernity.” 88 Marsden argued that this ambiguity was a result of wartime experiences; Fundamentalism and American Culture, 141–64. 89 See Hatch, Democratization; Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith; Sandeen, Roots of American Fundamentalism; Marsden, Evangelicalism and Modern America; Weber, Living in the Shadow. 90 After his trip to China in 1920, Thomas’s name did not again appear in the World Christian Fundamentals ads of Riley and Torrey. This is circumstantial evidence; see the Sunday School Times. It does not prove a change of views but suggests it. Combined with other evidence, Thomas’s distance from Riley et al. is significant. 91 “Our Lord’s Second Coming,” in The Victorious Life, 104, 108. 92 Ibid., 109, 110, 111. Thomas’s can be seen as “trinitarian premillennialism”; see Lum, “Thomas.” See also Thomas’s “Our Lord’s Second Coming,” in The Victorious Life. He divided God’s relations with the faithful into the Old Testament (the Father), the gospels (the Son), and the church (the Holy Spirit). 93 “Great Facts about Our Lord’s Coming,” Sunday School Times 65 (22 Dec. 1923), 793. 94 Zygmunt Bauman has explored the nature of modern identities, arguing that the modern project was fixed identities, especially in nationalism and citizenship. In postmodern identities people flee that which is fixed for that which is ephemeral and is found in consumer markets. I argue that the modern experience has been a tension between centrifugal and centripetal trends. Nation-states and religious denominations promoted fixed identities, but individual citizens and believers have often fled such cultural constraints. See Bauman, Life in Fragments, and my essay, “Consumers and Citizens.” 95 Thomas’s arguments were not made to convince the proverbial village atheist but to convince people who already believed and wanted more certainty. As in the Victorious Life his apologetics were directed at saints

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more than at sinners. See The Stronghold of Truth; his essay in The Fundamentals; And God Spake These Words; “Reasonable Biblical Criticism,” Bibliotheca Sacra 69 (1912), 409–20; and “The Unity of the Pentateuch,” Bibliotheca Sacra 75 (1918), 150–7. Bibliotheca Sacra 80 (1923), 298. See Renfer, “Dallas Theological Seminary,” 142, 113–42; Hannah, “Evangelical Theological College,” 152–3, 190–8. Riley had approached Thomas about starting a seminary, but as he, Chafer, and Winchester worked together, they dissociated themselves from Riley’s organization. The moderation of etc was, of course, a relative matter, liberal Protestants would say. For these debates, see my “Consumers and Citizens,” which cites some of the relevant literature. For a useful summary of modern-postmodern debates, see Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences. On a personal note, I am sympathetic with a good deal of “postmodern” scholarship, as well as scholarship on “postmodernity.” However, it seems more accurate to me, in the realm of culture, to talk about “hyper-modernity,” the increase of centrifugal, fragmenting forces in the late twentieth century, and the increasing failure of centripetal, unifying processes. He never finished it. Evangelicals at Wycliffe edited it and published it after his death, in his honour. Despite the unhappy way that Thomas left the college, he had retained some respect and the affection of key people there. Dyson Hague wrote the forword to the posthumously published book, The Principles of Theology. The Holy Spirit of God, 214. Hughes, The American Quest. For more on tensions between denominational and evangelical identity, see the chapter on T.R. O’Meara in my phd dissertation. See Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right; Russell, Voices of American Fundamentalism; Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture; Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy; Ellis, “Fundamentalist-Modernist Schisms.” These differences in identity began to work themselves out as the less sectarian and anti-world fundamentalists became the neo-evangelical movement led by Billy Graham and the Fuller Theological Seminary after World War II. See Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism. This follows Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism, and Szasz, The Divided Mind, not Marsden, Fundamentalism in American Culture. For the growth of the various fundamentalist groups after the 1920s, see Carpenter, Revive Us Again. See essays in parts 4 and 5 of Rawlyk, Aspects. See Rennie, “Fundamentalism and the Varieties of North Atlantic Evangelicalism,” in Noll, Bebbington, and Rawlyk, Evangelicalism. Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom.

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251 Notes to pages 107–12 chapter six 1 A copy of this pamphlet, published in New York, can be found in the Manning Papers, Box no. 9, Episcopal Diocese of New York (ednya). 2 Hughes, Prudently with Power, 14. Hughes was a colleague at the cathedral in New York; his book is helpful but hagiographic. 3 Manning, “The Bible – The Book of God,” Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York, 6 Dec. 1931, in Be Strong in the Lord, 86. 4 Orthodoxy refers to the Eastern Orthodox churches (Russian, Greek, and the like). 5 Hughes, Prudently with Power, 4; see also E.R. Hardy’s entry on Manning in the Dictionary of American Biography, supplement no. 4, 546–7. 6 See The Dictionary of Christianity in America, 366; Hardy’s article in the Dictionary of American Biography; and Hughes, Prudently with Power. Manning reviewed Theodore DuBose Bratton, An Apostle of Reality, The Life and Thought of William Porcher DuBose, in the Living Church, 24 Oct. 1936; a pamphlet reprint can be found in the Manning Papers, Box no. 9, ednya. 7 Further details of DuBose’s life and career can be found in the Dictionary of American Biography, 3:472–3. 8 His most important works were The Soteriology of the New Testament (1892), on incarnational theology, and Turning Points in My Life (1912), an autobiography Manning helped him publish. 9 Manning, reviewing the DuBose biography, 7. He called DuBose a model of intellectual honesty and resolute faith who accepted much of modern scholarship but did not give up orthodoxy. This portrait is fair, although universalist strains in DuBose perhaps were not orthodox and conflicted with Manning’s conversionism. 10 Ibid., 8. 11 See Hughes, Prudently with Power and the entry in the Dictionary of American Biography. 12 See letters in the Manning Papers at the General Theological Seminary in New York, Box no. 1, folder no. 21. On Rainsford, see his autobiography, The Story of a Varied Life. 13 Hughes, Prudently with Power, chap. 3; McBee to Manning, 8 Mar. 1900; the Manning Papers at the gts, Box no. 1, folder no. 21. 14 Page to Manning, 15 Mar. 1900, the Manning Papers, ibid. 15 Hughes, Prudently with Power, chaps. 3 and 4; note also the Hardy article in the Dictionary of American Biography, 546–7. 16 Hughes, Prudently with Power, deals extensively with the tenements issue in chapter 5. 17 Manning, The Policy of Trinity Parish. A sermon preached in Trinity Church, New York on Low Sunday, 18 April 1909, by William Thomas

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22 23 24

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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Manning, dd, Rector (New York, 1909), 25. See the Manning Papers at the Diocese of New York Archives, Box no. 9. Preparedness – Our Christian Duty. An address by Rev. William T. Manning, dd … delivered at Conference of Mayors on National Defense, St Louis, Missouri, 4 March 1916 … (New York, 1916), 2; gts Pamphlets Collection (208 t67) Box no. 438. Manning, The Easter Call to America, 3 Apr. 1917, 5. gts Pamphlets Collection (208 t67) Box no. 438. Manning, Our Present Duty as Americans and Christians, 4 Feb. 1917, 5; gts Pamphlets Collection (208 t67) Box no. 438. Manning, The Rector’s Annual Statement. Reprinted from the Year Book and Register of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York, ad 1914 (New York, 1914), 8–9, 7, 9. See Hughes, Prudently with Power, chap. 6. Ibid. The Concordat had little practical effect and was repealed in 1961. The Call to Unity is in the gts library. The pamphlet The Protestant Episcopal Church and Christian Unity (New York, 1915) is in the Manning Papers, Diocese of New York Archives, Box no. 9. Ibid., 7. Manning said this in 1929, but it fits his argument of 1919. See “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and Its Relation to the Movement for Christian Reunion,” in Marchant, Reunion of Christendom, 211. The Call to Unity, 25. Ibid., 19, 92. Ibid., 118. On the myth of comprehensiveness, see Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom, introduction and conclusion. A clipping in the Manning Papers, gts, Box no. 9, folder no. 1; Editorial, The Evening Journal (26 Jan. 1921). Clipping, Box no. 9, folder no. 2; “A Strong Bishop,” New York Tribune, 27 Jan. 1921. In general, on reactions to the election see Hughes, Prudently with Power, chap. 8. See also the Manning Papers, gts, New York, Box no. 9, for clippings from the press. For all quotes in this paragraph, see “Our Fellowship in the Church,” 11 May 1921, in Be Strong in the Lord, 2, 3, 3–4, 8, 9. Ibid., 11. For discussion of Manning’s style and methods as bishop, see Hughes, Prudently with Power. My portrait is based on Hughes’s description of Manning’s reorganization of the diocese and on my reading between the lines of Hughes’s hagiographic biography.

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253 Notes to pages 117–21 37 The New Heaven and the New Earth. Preached in Trinity Church, New York, by the Rector, William Thomas Manning, dd, on the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (26 Sept. 1909), 5. gts Pamphlet Collection (208 t67, Box no. 437). 38 See Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 153–64, 221–8. On the imbalanced, oddly unorthodox theology of some fundamentalists, who tended to stress only God’s supernatural transcendence, see Parent, “The Christology of T.T. Shields.” 39 “The Need of Conversion,” in Be Strong in the Lord, 77, 78. 40 Ibid., 78–9, 80. 41 The Call of This Present Time to the Anglican Communion throughout the World (Milwaukee, 1934), 6–7; Manning Papers, Box no. 9, ednya; Canadian Churchman (13 Sept. 1934), 522–3, 535. 42 The Apostolic Ministry (New York, 1930), 6; Box no. 9, Manning Papers, ednya. It was a consecration sermon for a new suffragan bishop, Charles Kendall Gilbert. 43 The Glory and Wonder of Christmas. A Sermon by the Right Reverend William T. Manning, Bishop of New York, at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, on Christmas Day, 1945 (New York, 1945), 6. Box no. 440 (208 t67), Manning Pamphlets, gts. 44 Manning’s theology might be described as “sacramental evangelicalism.” See Dolan, Catholic Revivalism, xvii. 45 “The Sacraments – What is Their Relation to Everyday Life?” in Be Strong in the Lord, 58. 46 Ibid., 54–8. 47 The Gospel of Christ and His Church. Baccalaureate sermon preached at the General Theological Seminary by William Thomas Manning … Monday, 20 May 1935 (New York, 1935), 5–6; Manning Papers, ednya, Box no. 9; Hardy, “Evangelical Catholicism.” 48 “The Sacraments,” 57. 49 “The Power of the Oxford Movement,” 1933, in Be Strong in the Lord, 100. 50 A Sermon. Preached by The Right Reverend William T. Manning, dd, Bishop of New York, at All Soul’s Church … New York. Sunday, 23 October 1932 (New York, 1932), 6. See Box no. 440 (208 t67), gts Pamphlet Collection. 51 The Call of This Present Time, 6–7; The Outbreak of War in Ethiopia. A sermon by William Thomas Manning, Bishop of New York, preached in the Cathedral of St John the Divine, Sunday, 6 October 1935 (New York, 1935). 52 Manning, “Marriage and Divorce,” Bulletin of the Sanctity of Marriage Association (May 1923), Manning Papers, ednya, Box no. 9; “Marriage and Divorce,” Address at the Cathedral, 16 March 1923, in Be Strong in the Lord; and The British Crisis and its Significance. Address by the Right Rev. William T. Manning, dd, Bishop of New York, in the Cathedral of St John

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the Divine, Sunday, 13 December 1936 (New York, 1936); this was a response to the abdication of the throne by Edward viii of England, who was to marry a divorced commoner. The Call of this Present Time, 8. Hughes, Prudently with Power, chap. 11. Manning’s papers at the General Theological Seminary have extensive correspondence and newspaper clippings both criticising and praising Manning. The Call to the Christian Church Today. A sermon preached in St Bartholomew’s Church in the City of New York … 13 January 1935, by the Right Reverend William T. Manning, dd, dcl, lld, Bishop of New York, 8; Manning Papers, ednya, Box no. 9. The Church and Her Young Men, Sermon by the Rev. W.T. Manning, dd, Rector of Trinity Church … (New York, 1914), 6. Box no. 437 (208 t67), gts Pamphlet Collection. A Call for the Next Step in Building the Cathedral and a Message for the New Year. Sermon by the Right Rev. William T. Manning, Bishop of New York, in the Cathedral of St John the Divine, Sunday, 3 January 1937 (New York, 1937), 5; Manning Papers, ednya, Box no. 9. “The Victory of the Cross,” in Be Strong in the Lord, 162–3. “Thanksgiving Day in This Atomic World,” in Be Strong in the Lord, 167, 168. See Mullin, Episcopal Vision. Mullin describes the transformation of Episcopalianism in the nineteenth century in Episcopal Vision. Evangelicals and anglo-catholics both brought romantic, experiential understandings of piety to the church. Historians have commented on intriguing connections between the two groups. See Voll, Catholic Evangelicalism; Newsome, The Parting of Friends. I mean that evangelical protestantism was at the religious-cultural centre; it was an unofficial establishment. In identity terms, this is crucial for how catholics and protestants influenced and defined themselves in relation to each other. On insider-outsider status in the United States, see Moore, Religious Outsiders. High-church Episcopalians migrated from self-identified outsider status to insider status. This is not surprising, given their English background and social status. The transformation can be seen in the enigmatic identity of someone like Manning. The phrase describes how the middle class responded to the socioeconomic and political upheavals in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era; see Wiebe, The Search for Order. Coben, “The Assault on Victorianism in the Twentieth Century.” See also Dumenil, The Modern Temper (though the book neglects the middle-class, protestant mainstream somewhat). Hughes, Prudently with Power, chap. 8. Note also Szasz, The Divided Mind, 103.

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255 Notes to pages 125–9 67 Pastoral Letter of the House of Bishops, 14 Nov. 1923, at a Special Meeting of the House at Dallas, Texas. A copy can be found in Box no. 11, Manning Papers, ednya. In general, see Manross, American Episcopal Church, 348–51. 68 Quotes are from points 5, 9, and 10 in the letter. I use the word “dogma” here specifically in its traditional meaning – that which people agree on – rather than with the contemporary pejorative connotations of rigid antiintellectualism. 69 Neither Fundamentalism nor Modernism but Belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. From the sermon preached by the Right Reverend William T. Manning … (New York, 1923), 5–6; Box no. 9, Manning Papers, ednya. 70 Ibid., 7, 8. 71 All quotations in this paragraph come from ibid., 8. 72 “The Obligations of the Clergy as Ministers of this Church,” in Be Strong in the Lord, 36. 73 Ibid., 44, 45–8. 74 On Briggs, see Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse; on the Protestant establishment, see Hutchison, Between the Times; on the extent to which theological moderation characterised the “silent majority” of American Protestants, see Noll, History of Christianity, 369–73, chap. 17. Note Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy. 75 “The Gift of the Episcopate to the Church in America.” Sermon at the General Convention in Atlantic City, commemorating Samuel Seabury, 21 Oct. 1934, in Be Strong in the Lord, 116. 76 “The Power of the Oxford Movement,” in Be Strong in the Lord. On highchurch views of the episcopacy and sacraments and the Oxford Movement, see Mullin, Episcopal Vision. For evangelicals, see Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind. On the turn of the century, note Chorley, Men and Movements. 77 “The Power of the Oxford Movement,” 94–5. 78 Ibid., 95–100, 101. 79 “The Gift of the Episcopate,” 114. 80 Manning’s argument was disingenuous here. Many protestants considered their churches to be divinely founded. However, they distinguished the “visible” (flawed, time-bound) and “invisible” (eternal) church. Highchurch Anglicans did not recognize this distinction; many low-church Anglicans (e.g., evangelicals) did. They saw the episcopacy as the most effective way to govern the church. It was part of the church’s “wellbeing” (“bene esse”) but not essential to its “being” (“esse”). 81 The contrast to Dyson Hague is noteworthy here. For him “catholic” meant spiritual unity to other Christians, especially protestants. For Manning and other anglo-catholics it meant a specific Christian tradition of church authority and ritual – i.e., Anglican, Roman, Eastern Orthodox.

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Notes to pages 129–36

82 See The Call to Unity, 90–3. 83 The Anglican Church and its Mission to the Whole Church of Christ (New York, 1927), 7. Manning Papers, Box no. 9, ednya. 84 “The Protestant Episcopal Church,” 222. 85 Albright, Protestant Episcopal Church, 354. 86 “An Open Letter to the Commission in Regard to the Proposed Concordat, A Plea for Peace and Unity in the Episcopal Church,” Sept. 1930. Manning Papers, gts, Box no. 31, folder no. 2. 87 This was misleading, as Manning’s critics complained. The Roman Catholic Church had shown no interest in reunion. Informal Anglican–Roman Catholic talks took place at Malines, Belgium, in the 1920s, but there were no official overtures. 88 Parsons, “An Open Letter to Bishop Manning; Bishop Parsons Replies to An Open Letter on the Proposed Concordat Issued by the Bishop of New York,” reprinted from The Churchman, 1 Nov. 1939, 1, 2. Manning Papers, gts, Box no. 32, folder no. 2. 89 The Issue Created by the ‘Proposed Basis of Union’ between the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches (New York, 1946), 6, 7; Manning Papers, ednya, Box no. 5. 90 See Albright, A History, 356. 91 Manning’s sense of the connections between declining piety, threats to the church, and a cultural crisis in the United States was similar to that of protestant fundamentalists. See Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. 92 Hughes, Prudently with Power, chap. 8. 93 “The Turning of the Tide,” Living Church (18 Sept. 1949), 29. 94 Note, for example, that some modernists who rejected most aspects of orthodoxy sometimes found anglo-catholicism appealing for its aesthetic ritualist traditions. They still rejected the authority of the episcopate and apostolic succession. See Lears, No Place of Grace. Their antimodernism was aesthetic, not intellectual-theological. 95 Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom; see his analysis of the myth of comprehensiveness and the irony of the Reformed Episcopalians. chapter seven 1 Chorley, Men and Movements, 435–6. 2 Note also Zabriskie, “The Rise and Main Characteristics of the Anglican Evangelical Movement in England and America,” in Zabriskie, Anglican Evangelicalism, 36–7. 3 Chorley, Men and Movements, 436. See, in general, 435–43. 4 On relations between liberal catholics and liberal evangelicals, see ibid., 426–35, 437–43.

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257 Notes to pages 136–42 5 On the myth and on historians like Chorley, see Guelzo, Union of Evangelical Christendom. 6 See Woolverton, “Episcopal Church History,” 493–7. Ironically, conservative renewal movements after 1945 sometimes used the ideology of comprehensiveness to justify their place in Anglicanism. This parallels conservative evangelical use of pluralist/postmodern ideologies to justify their place in politics and the academy; see Allen, “The Postmodern Mission.” 7 See the chapter in this study on Carl Grammer (chap. 8) for more. For an example of a moderate evangelical in the pecusa, see Sack, “Reaching the ‘Up-And-Outers.› 8 On this, see my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. 9 The chapter on Grammer (chap. 8) explores the liberal side of things; the chapter on Thomas (chap. 5) does the same for conservatives. Two crucial studies are Szasz, The Divided Mind; Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. 10 In general, see Moore, Religious Outsiders; Dolan, The American Catholic Experience; and Ahlstrom’s classic Religious History. 11 See Lears, No Place of Grace; Moore, Selling God; Leach, Land of Desire. Christians participated in these social-cultural changes, sometimes leading them, sometimes trying to contain them and put them to religious use. Unquestionably, however, churches faced growing competition for people’s time, money, energy, and loyalty. 12 On radical conservative protestants, see Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right. 13 Al Smith’s loss cannot be reduced to an anti–Roman Catholic vote. This was an era of Republican dominance in national politics. But religion and ethnicity were central to the political cleavages of the time. See essays in Noll, Religion and American Politics. 14 See Halsey, Survival of American Innocence. 15 See Hutchison, Between the Times; also note Handy, “American Religious Depression.” 16 This story is told in detail in Prelinger, Episcopal Women; the book cites much of the growing literature on Episcopal and Anglican women. 17 See essays by Donovan and Gillespie in Prelinger, Episcopal Women. 18 These stories are told in numerous sources; for a general survey see Noll, A History of Christianity. Sociologists have often argued that at the heart of the modernising impulse was a universalising desire to contain diversity (see Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence). One example is nationalism, in both ethnic and civic forms; another is church unions, labelling the conflicts and identities of the past as “sectarian” and outmoded. Also at the heart of modernity, however, were centrifugal forces. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, sectarian groups proliferated.

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Notes to pages 142–5

19 On church union and interpretations of it, see Clifford, Resistance to Church Union; “The Interpreters of the United Church.” On Anglicans and church union, see T.R. Millman, “The Conference on Christian Unity”; Grant, The Church. 20 See Clifford, Resistance to Church Union. 21 On the United Church and evangelism, see Plaxton’s essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. For an interpretation of the interwar years as the high point of protestant influence, see Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity. The book runs against the grain of most of the older literature but does reflect recent historiographical trends that strongly criticise and undercut the secularization model. On that literature, see Marshall, Secularizing the Faith, the introduction, and note Gauvreau, “Beyond the Half-Way House.” On the United Church and nationalism, see Vipond, “Canadian National Consciousness.” 22 On Shields, see Parent, “The Christology of T.T. Shields.” 23 On immigrants during the interwar period, see Avery, Reluctant Hosts. Few Asians lived in Canada between the wars and even fewer immigrated to Canada, because of harsh restrictions; some Asians were Christians, but most practised their traditional religions. See my “Protecting Protestant Liberty” for reactions of the mainline protestant denominations to immigration. 24 A recent study of religion, leisure, and popular culture in small-town English Canada explores some of these issues; see Marks, Revivals and Roller Rinks. For more studies of leisure, vacations, consumption, sexuality, and morality, see Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment; Walden, Becoming Modern. Marks concludes, among other things, that notions of a protestant consensus, hegemony, and establishment need to be stated with care and nuance. The terms can easily distort the reality of diversity, conflict, and a struggle for influence at the ground level. I use them with such qualifications in mind. Indeed, that is part of my point. The interwar years saw protestant influence in English Canada reach a high point at the same time that it was being challenged as never before. 25 On the postwar years see Grant, The Church in the Canadian Era; on Anglicans after World War II, especially evangelicals, see my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. 26 For the general theoretical and historical context, see my essay, “Consumers and Citizens.” 27 I have commented on this issue, indirectly, with regard to immigration and racial ideology; see my essay “Protecting Christian Liberty.” 28 On u.s.-Canadian relations, see Thompson and Randall, Canada and the United States. For a popular treatment of Anglo-Canadian identities, see

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259 Notes to pages 146–51

29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44

Francis, National Dreams. On religion, see Vipond, “Canadian National Consciousness.” Her phd dissertation covers Anglo-Canadian nationalism and the 1920s more generally. Also note Smith, Canada – An American Nation? For the background to national identities in Anglo-Canada, see Berger, The Sense of Power. As part of the research for my phd dissertation I scanned the Canadian Churchman between 1900 and 1950, reading articles on the evangelical party and interparty conflict. This survey is a little problematic, since the evangelicals purchased the paper during the years 1910–19 and ran it subsequently. But it is clear that party conflict declined and relations improved, despite the occasional conflict over a particular issue. “Principal’s Report to the Board of Trustees” (22 May 1931), Appendix to Minutes/Council & Trustees (1927–1940). “Principal’s Report on His Eastern Trip – 1932”; Appendix to Minutes/ Council & Trustees (1927–1940). See chapter 3 for more. “Acting Principal’s Report for 1929–30”; Appendix to Minutes, Council & Trustees (1927–1940). For more on student-faculty relations during the interwar years, see the chapter on T.R. O’Meara in my phd dissertation. See the calendar for 1927, 14; Wycliffe Calendars, Box no. 2. See Minutes for Trustees Annual Meeting, 28 May 1937; Box 5 (1-b). C. Venn Pilcher, Australia, to Cody, 29 January 1937; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4962. Elmore M[?], Buffalo, ny, to Cody, 29 December 1933; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4962. For two books of essays produced by leading liberal evangelical Anglicans in England, see The Inner Life and The Liberal Evangelicals. On the movement in North America, see Zabriskie, Anglican Evangelicalism. James Nicholson, esq., to Cody, 9 January 1933; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4962. Noll, A History of Christianity, 276. For a more complete account of postwar developments, note my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. Chorley, Men and Movements, chaps. 15, 16. Note the continuing influence of conservative evangelicals, people who defended Biblical literalism, in the Evangelical Education Society. Nevertheless, even these conservatives seem to have been irenic; after all, they did participate with liberals like Grammer in the society. See his “Evangelicalism – Its Past and Future,” in Abiding Values, 11. On such recent developments, see Kew and White, New Millennium. These impressionistic conclusions are an educated guess. The American histories of the pecusa that carry the story into the postwar era are not very clear on numbers or percentages of the various factions in the pecusa. Unfortunately, the Canadian histories are virtually nonexistent.

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Notes to pages 152–7

chapter eight 1 Grammer, “Evangelicalism – Its Past and Future,” in his Abiding Values, 6–7. 2 See Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. 3 The history of liberal and evangelical Episcopalianism from the 1890s to the 1940s has scarcely been written. My impressions are based on biographies and autobiographies. See Alexander Allen, Phillips Brooks; Rainsford, Varied Life. Note also, Chorely, Men and Movements. 4 Grammer, Things That Remain, 18. The book, based on the Bohlen lectures for 1928, contains a short spiritual-autobiographical sketch. It summarises his theology and was written while he was in his late sixties. 5 Ibid., 18. This experience, as he recalled it, is classic, right down to being inspired by the Epistle to the Romans. This suggests that over the years, Grammer’s memory may have compressed the experience to a single event. Nevertheless, some sort of life change, decision, or conversion is evident here. 6 For these details, see “Grammer, Carl Eckhardt,” Who Was Who in America, vol. 2, 1943–50, 217. 7 On the Bohlen Lectures, see Allen, Phillips Brooks, 1:627. 8 Things That Remain, 18, 19. 9 Ibid., 19. At the Virginia Seminary Grammer likely learned a moderate, accommodating evangelical faith. On the seminary, see Goodwin, Theological Seminary. 10 Things That Remain, 20–1. 11 Ibid., 21, 24, emphasis added. Interestingly, this was a common evangelical argument made by conservatives against higher critics of the Bible – that critics reject orthodoxy out of hand rather than test the merits of the Bible or tradition. It suggests continuity between evangelicals and a liberal like Grammer. 12 Ibid., 17. Note, for example, James’s, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). 13 On the 1870s and 1880s, see Wacker, “The Holy Spirit”; Szasz, The Divided Mind. 14 Note that though the Reformed Episcopal separation happened during Grammer’s lifetime, he was still an adolescent at the time. As will be argued later in the chapter, he did continue to be extremely militant on lowchurch–high-church issues. Nevertheless, in terms of liberal-conservative theological issues, his early experiences were moderate evangelicalism, not conflict. 15 Things That Remain, 23, 24. 16 Ibid., 23. Most protestant modernists in the United States and continental Europe largely rejected the historicity of Biblical accounts. In Canada and Britain, where more mediating attitudes prevailed over the extremes, many liberal-modernists did not.

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261 Notes to pages 158–61 17 The terms “modernist” and “modernism” mean very different things in different contexts. In aesthetic terms – in literature, art, and music – “modernists” were avant-garde critics of modernity, often promoting “irrational” motifs. In theological terms, “modernists” tended to embrace modernity, science, rationalism, and notions of progress. I use the terms in the theological sense. Common ground between the two types of modernists perhaps can be found in their rejection of tradition and their embrace of personal experience. 18 Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, 2. Hutchison stresses a liberal-modernist continuum. While other definitions could be used, his fits Grammer’s own concerns. 19 See Welch, Protestant Thought; Bebbington, Evangelicalism. For more on defining evangelicalism, see the introduction to my phd dissertation. 20 I have taken the definition, collectively, from Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse; Welch, Protestant Thought; Szasz, The Divided Mind; and Wacker, “The Holy Spirit.” By “liberal evangelical” I mean Anglicans who might identify with both evangelicals and liberals. As Grammer’s life suggests, the category “liberal evangelical” hides significant tensions. 21 See Chorley, Men and Movements, chap. 15. 22 I have noted the differences between evangelical and liberal protestantism. Their continuities, in short, are a common focus on liberty, ecumenism, and a generally low-church ecclesiology. 23 Things That Remain, 181, 182–3; note also 186. Like many liberal protestants, Grammer was more willing to question Old Testament miracles and historical accounts than miracles and stories associated with Jesus in the New Testament. Note the similarity of his argument to that of H.J. Cody’s sermon on the resurrection in 1897 (see chap. 9). 24 Ibid., 191, 192; see also 39–41. Here Grammer’s theology is perhaps strange by typical evangelical standards. Evangelicals typically criticised spiritualism or the paranormal. Grammer’s views may have been more common among liberal protestants because spiritualism promoted itself as a scientific religion. On liberal protestantism, modernism, and spiritualism, see Cook, The Regenerators; Moore, In Search of White Crows. 25 Things That Remain, 198. 26 Ibid., 46, 49. Grammer had a healthy epistemological scepticism of science. His argument that all reason is based on faith in something anticipated mid–twentieth century criticism of modernist epistemology; it also reflected the pragmatism of William James and others. See Diggins, Promise of Pragmatism. 27 Things That Remain, 60, 61, 62. On this basis, Grammer stressed that truth and God were knowable; the senses and religious experience were trust-

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28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36

37

38

39 40

41 42 43

44 45

Notes to pages 161–5

worthy (63–4). His views were influenced by the philosophical-theological movement known as personalism. I will discuss it later (see also Knudson, Philosophy of Personalism). Things That Remain, 52–3. Ibid., 63, 156. On Bushnell and Romanticism, see Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, chap. 2. Hutchison notes parallels between the transcendentalist thought of Emerson and Bushnell’s theology. And see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, who argues that the Enlightenment shaped evangelical theology and then Romanticism shaped evangelical piety. Things That Remain, 115. Ibid., 107, 104. On pantheism, see 179. Ibid., 123, 179, 180–4. For Grammer’s Christology, see Jesus as a Teacher, which was the annual message of the Evangelical Education Society of the pecusa in 1935. Things That Remain, 143. Also see Jesus as a Teacher, 10, 12. The lines between evangelical and liberal aspects of Grammer’s theology sometimes were sketchy, as were those between liberal and modernist Christianity. See Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, preface and introduction. Things That Remain, 35–7, 131. Grammer’s views were not traditionally evangelical; he took them much further than would evangelicals. But they had roots in evangelical tradition. Ibid., 132–3, 137. This was a central theme in liberal protestantism: conservatives paid so much attention to the letter of scripture that they neglected its spirit (see Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God, chap. 4). Again, note also the parallels to Pinnock et al., The Openness of God. Things That Remain, chaps. 1, 5; “Evangelicalism – Its Past and Future,” in Grammer, Abiding Values. Jesus as a Teacher, 3–4. Grammer called Albert Schweizter’s eschatological Jesus a distortion, saying that apocalypticism was not central to Jesus’s “eternal” message. See Grammer, American Missal, 7. Grammer understood neither Barth’s view of the Bible nor his sense of a cultural crisis in the West. See Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, chaps. 7, 9. See essays by Rev. Charles W. Lowry Jr and Rev. R.O. Kevin Jr in Grammar, Abiding Values. These evangelicals do seem to have been in the minority, however. Like Grammer, most of the Evangelical Education Society was liberal (or perhaps liberal evangelical). Lowry, “Evangelicalism and the Bible,” in Grammar, Abiding Values, 86. For more on this theme, the common rejection of history by both modernists and fundamentalists, see chapters 3 and 5, on Hague and Thomas.

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263 Notes to pages 166–9 46 Things That Remain, 13–4. Examples of this include J. Greshem Machen, the Princeton fundamentalist, and Walter Lippmann, the secular journalist; Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, chap. 8. 47 Grammer, forword, in Grammar, Abiding Values, vii. 48 “An Appraisal of the Oxford Movement of 1833,” in Grammer, Sykes, and Bezant, Oxford Movement, 29. 49 On this movement, see Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals, chap. 16. Key documents include The Inner Life and Liberal Evangelicalism. Note also, Bebbington, Evangelicalism, chap. 6. In Canada H.J. Cody was influenced by this movement; see below. 50 “Evangelicalism,” 7. In general, as noted above, see Chorley, Men and Movements; Zabriskie, “Anglican Evangelical Movement.” 51 Grammer, “Evangelicalism,” 7–9, 11. 52 Ibid., 6, 7. Note the criticism of Grammer’s liberal attitudes from some Evangelical Education Society participants, notably faculty from the Virginia Theological Seminary who emphasized a more conservative view of the Bible; see essays in Grammar, Abiding Values. Grammer’s argument that battles against anglo-catholics left the evangelicals illequipped to deal with modernity is similar to Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind. 53 “Evangelicalism,” 5, 7. 54 See Things That Remain, 173–8; “Jesus, as a Teacher of Eternal Verities.” 55 Among liberal catholics, note Charles Gore and William Temple, who dominated Anglican theology from the 1890s to the 1930s; see Ramsey, Anglican Theology, 51–2. 56 To compare liberal catholicism and evangelicalism, see Chorely, Men and Movements, chap. 15. For England, see Ramsey, Anglican Theology; HylsonSmith, Evangelicals, chap. 16. As with the evangelicals, liberal catholics should not be seen as a homogenous movement; some were more modernist than others. Among liberal catholics, note Gore and Temple. Among liberal evangelicals, note H.J. Cody, subject of the next chapter in this study. 57 See Things That Remain, 89–92, 104–5. 58 The theme of personality – of God and individuals – runs all through his work; see Things That Remain. Emergent evolution is less overt but still important; see Things That Remain, 190. 59 See Ramsey, Anglican Theology, 23–7. 60 Things That Remain, 165. 61 Jesus as a Teacher, 9. Grammer’s views of Jesus’ work on the cross were not simply a modernist departure from orthodoxy. They harked back to medieval theologians who stressed that the atonement was an example, not a payment, of sin. Also, evangelicals like Horace Bushnell had stressed a subjective theology of atonement much like Grammer’s view of the work and person of Christ.

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Notes to pages 169–73

62 Ibid., 12. 63 On the influence of personalism in the United States, see Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse, 126–30. For a negative assessment (as abstract and dull) and its impact on popular religion, see George, God’s Salesman. George describes personalism as “intellectual mysticism” (50). 64 For a detailed history and explanation of personalism, see Knudson, The Philosophy of Personalism. My summary is based partly on a reading of Grammer’s thought, partly on a reading of Knudson, and partly on the summaries of several dictionaries of religion (for example, Neely, “Personalism,” Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion, 3:2741–2). Although some personalists rejected any strict separation of the human and the divine, Knudson and Grammer adamantly stressed this distinction. 65 Things That Remain, 89–90. 66 Ibid., 108. 67 Ibid., 212, 219, 213–20. 68 Note the parallels to Sam Shoemaker’s evangelical Episcopalian personalism, expressed in more orthodox terms. See Sack, “Reaching the ‘UpAnd-Outers.› For my comments on this parallel, see chap. 7. 69 I am implicitly using Niebuhr’s scheme, found in Christ and Culture, chaps. 3, 4. Grammer’s views combined aspects of “Christ above culture” and “Christ of culture.” On the shallowness of liberal-Protestant cultural criticism, see Curtis, A Consuming Faith; Lears, No Place of Grace; and Moore, Selling God. 70 In its tractarian and ritualist forms, first articulated and promoted between 1830 and 1860, anglo-catholicism was a modern restatement rooted in high-church tradition that addressed modern problems and reflected modern cultural trends (e.g., Romantic sentiment and its self-conscious traditionalism). 71 See Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, for this theme. 72 See “Appraisal of the Oxford Movement,” 39–40. Note also AngloCatholicism: Its Partisan Nature and the Causes of Its Growth, With a Postscript Commended Especially to the Attention of the Bishops, annual message of the Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1933). 73 “Appraisal of the Oxford Movement,” 29, 30–1. Grammer’s expressed “admiration” of anglo-catholics who left for Rome because they were following their principles was a common attitude among conservative evangelicals such as Hague and Thomas. 74 Ibid., 34, 35–6. 75 Ibid., 39, 36, 39–40. 76 “Evangelicalism,” 12. 77 A missal is a book containing all that is said and sung at a mass. Use of the term “mass” was enough to infuriate Grammer.

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265 Notes to pages 174–7 78 See An Examination of the So-Called American Missal, 5, 59, 61. For quotations from various bishops, see 8–11, 14–15, 18–19, 21–3. The “lawlessness” of militant anglo-catholicism continually vexed liberals and evangelicals. They were typically the church parties written off as individualists who did not value the church because they stressed the individual’s relationship to God. In contrast, anglo-catholics said the institutional church held the keys to heaven by dispensing grace through the sacraments. 79 Ibid., 59–60. 80 Ibid., 61–2. 81 Ibid., 60, 61. 82 Histories of the Episcopal Church almost completely ignore this story. At the time, however, it was a major source of controversy. Of the general histories I have seen, Albright’s A History is the best; for background to the proposed merger, see 346–50. 83 See, for example, Rev. C.A. Simpson, A Liberal-Catholic’s Approach to the Proposed Concordat between the Protestant Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches, a paper read at a meeting of the Liberal Evangelicals in New York City on December 12th, 1939 (pamphlet, n.p., n.d.). The paper gives a careful outline of the issues; it can be found in the Library of the General Theological Seminary. 84 See Albright, A History, 355–6. Note that both denominations had participated in the Federal Council of Churches and other organizations that stressed institutional federation and fraternal unity rather than organic union. Note also that I have told a bit of the story from the high-church perspective in the chapter on Manning (chap. 6); so far as I can tell, this side of the story has also not been told by Episcopal historians. 85 See, for example, Shall the Ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church Remain Open to Evangelicals, or Are the Principles of the Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church Opposed to the Teaching of the Church?, annual Message of the Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1936). This pamphlet was inspired particularly by the extremely high-church bishop of Rhode Island, James De Wolf Perry, when he refused to ordain an evangelical candidate for the ministry. 86 See Howard Chandler Robbins, Approaches to Unity: The Present Status, a paper read at a meeting of the Liberal Evangelicals in New York City on 9 April 1940 (pamphlet, n.d., n.p.), 12. 87 On evangelicals and the Enlightenment, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism. Evangelical epistemology, for example, was rooted in the Scottish Enlightenment’s common sense philosophy; see May, The Enlightenment in America. 88 The Evangelical Attitude toward the Prayer Book, annual message of the Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church, showing

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Notes to pages 179–84

incidentally the error of Bishop Manning in regarding a protestant view of the ministry as disloyal to our church’s position (Philadelphia, 1939), 6–7. 89 See Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. 90 See Middleton and Walsh, Truth Is Stranger. 91 This is, implicitly, a “post-” or “late” modern argument – that modern identities and ideologies contain many of the same dilemmas as premodern ones. chapter nine 1 “The Uncompleted Task,” Seventy Sermons, no. 63; a collection of sermons edited after Cody’s death by Bishop William White. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001, Toronto. 2 Cody, “The Word in Season,” Seventy Sermons, no. 22. 3 Matheson to Cody, 1 March 1911, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4954. White, Canon Cody, is helpful but hagiographic. Bishop of Honan, China, White was a student and friend of Cody. Masters, Henry John Cody, is thorough but uncritical, paying little attention to the religious-cultural context. On nation-building in the social, moral, and cultural realms, see Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water. 4 See Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. “Mandarin” refers to elites in bureaucratic, cultural, and intellectual roles (see Granatstein, The Ottawa Men). “Organic intellectual” refers to cultural figures whose authority shaped the worldview and cultural hegemony of their society. 5 On these issues, see Lears, No Place of Grace; Westfall, Two Worlds; Frank, Less than Conquerors. 6 On secularization, see Martin, A General Theory and Tongues of Fire; Lyon, The Steeple’s Shadow; Finke and Stark, The Churching of America; Rawlyk, Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience. 7 See White, Canon Cody, 5–16, and Masters, Henry John Cody, 1–45. 8 Quoted in White, Canon Cody, 18. Cody proudly served in the honour guard around Young’s funeral bier in 1889. On Young, see McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence. 9 The paper was written in December 1892 (quoted in White, Canon Cody, 22). Cody may have named his son Maurice after F.D. Maurice. 10 Ibid., 16–17. 11 Alfred [?] to Cody, 16 April 1894, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. See also, White, Canon Cody, 27–9. 12 W. Gillespie to Cody, 10 March 1897, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. 13 Cody was a Canadian heir to the broad-minded evangelicalism of Bishop J.B. Lightfoot (1828–89) of Durham, England. Lightfoot’s scholarship brought together higher criticism, moderate defence of orthodoxy, and moderation on Anglican party issues. On him, see Pointer, “J.B. Lightfoot as a Christian Historian.”

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267 Notes to pages 184–8 14 Steen to Cody, 20 February 1895, Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. On Cody’s work at the Evangelical Churchman, see Masters, Henry John Cody, chaps. 5, 6. Masters inaccurately portrays Cody as a conservative evangelical (he offers no context or definitions). 15 White, Canon Cody, 40–1, 43, 52–3. 16 For examples, see correspondence, Cody Papers, mu 4952–7. 17 J.E. Bryant, Philadelphia, to Morris Llewellyn, Philadelphia, 16 June 1902 (copy). Cody Papers, pao, mu 4952. On relations between the u.s. and Canadian churches, see chap. 4 of my “Gospel and Party.” 18 Telegram from A.E. Jones, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, to S.H. Blake, 26 June 1904. Jones asked Blake to try to influence Cody. Blake subsequently influenced him against going. Cody Papers, pao, mu 4953. 19 See a series of telegrams from S.H. Blake, a prominent Toronto layman and member of Cody’s parish, to A.E. Jones, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, June 1904. Cody Papers, pao, mu 4953. 20 Telegram from Blake to Jones, 27 June 1904. 21 On the election, see Masters, Henry John Cody, chap. 10. Sweeney had been educated in Montreal, was not a “Wycliffe man,” and thus was more acceptable to high-churchmen in Toronto. 22 White, Canon Cody, 88–90. 23 Cody, Lambeth and Malines: A Sermon (Toronto, 1924), 3–4. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. See Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals, 237–42; Manwaring, From Controversy, 34–5. On the Kikuyu controversy, see White, Canon Cody, 63–4. The controversy began when the Anglican bishop of Uganda celebrated the eucharist with protestant leaders from Africa, thus dividing evangelical and high-church Anglicans. 24 Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals, 237–8. 25 Cody, Lambeth and Malines, 10, 3–10. 26 Matheson to Cody, 4 February 1924; “Prayer Book and Malines Confc” (envelope), Cody Papers, pao, mu 4998. 27 On conservative progressivism, see Berger, Sense of Power. 28 Cody, “The High Calling,” Seventy Sermons no. 56, 3. He took the abstinence pledge as a youth but drank wine in later years. See Why is it Wrong to Gamble? (Toronto, n.d.) and Nationalism, Internationalism and Supernationalism, an address … 8 December 1921, Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. His views of women are noteworthy. He recognized how they had suffered injustice in the past and praised their freedom in a “progressive” Christian Canada. Yet he assumed they would play a secondary role in Canadian society – deaconesses rather than priests. He saw their vote as a way of a moralizing politics, a common view of maternal feminists. Such views were liberal for their day but limited by later standards; see Cody, “The Ambitions of an Apostle,” The Young Women of Canada 11 (September 1911), 127–31; and Protestantism – Its History and Principles, an address

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268

Notes to pages 188–92

given at the first meeting of the Protestant Federation of Patriotic Women of Canada, 25 April 1922. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. 29 Cody, “The First and the Last,” 9 February 1913 (typescript). Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. 30 Bliss, “The Methodist Church and World War I”; see also Crerar, Padres in No Man’s Land. 31 The History and Significance of the National Anthem, an address before the Empire Club of Canada, 21 December 1916, 13. Note also, The War: A Survey of the Struggle and a Prophesy, an address by Venerable Archdeacon Cody before a gathering of Canada Life Men, Thursday, 11 January 1917; and Canada and the War, address by Venerable Archdeacon Cody before a gathering of Canada Life Men, Thursday 10 January 1918. For all three, see Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. In general on this subject, see Berger, The Sense of Power; Wright, A World Mission. 32 Cody, Pan Germanic Propaganda and Perils of a Premature Peace, address given … before the members of the Montreal Rotary Club, 22 January 1918, 13–15. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. 33 Cody, The War: A Survey, 15. 34 Cody, Nationalism, Internationalism , 2, 3, 6–7, 11–13. 35 Nationalism, Internationalism and Supernationalism, 15, 18. 36 Wright, A World Mission. In Wright’s view the two conflict; I see them as reinforcing each other. For English comparisons, see Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals, chaps. 17–19; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 211–7. 37 Cody, “The Unfailing Christ,” a sermon preached at Geneva, in the Cathedral of St Peter, in connection with the seventh Assembly of the League of Nations, 26 September 1926 (typescript). Cody Papers, Series d-3: Sermons (Subject), pao, mu 7001. This sermon was published in a pamphlet version (mu 7018) and in the Canadian Churchman. 38 Ibid. (typescript version), 7–8, 13, 29. 39 Cody, The Bible in War and Peace, The British and Foreign Bible Society in Canada and Newfoundland … delivered December, 1942, 6. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. This address was broadcast by the cbc. 40 Cody, “Recapitulation and the Ideals of Reconstruction,” in Reconstruction (n.d., n.p.), 132, 139–41. This document, which seems to be an offprint (handwritten notes date it to 15 December 1942), is, as indicated, part of a larger document entitled, Reconstruction. In it Cody summarized the results of a conference. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7018. 41 Ibid., 140, 144; Cody advocated the social-safety net of a welfare-state but distrusted government intervention in the economy. 42. Ibid., 144. 43 “The Resurrection,” read at the Rural Deanery of Toronto, 5 April 1897, 3–4, 5. Cody Papers, pao, mu 4998. 44 Ibid., 18.

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269 Notes to pages 192–4 45 Ibid., 29–30. Cody rejected Friedrich Schleiermachers’ “mystic contention that the Christian-consciousness is wholly independent of the Resurrection.” His argument placed him in a long line of moderate evangelicals. It was also similar to arguments by Thomas, Hague, and Carl Grammer. This suggests a line of continuity from conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists to liberals. 46 Ibid., 34. Cody’s epistemology, as with many evangelicals, did not strictly conform to Baconian common sense views, which stressed that faith was based on evidence. For Cody faith determined what was worthwhile evidence. Perhaps the neo-Hegelian idealism George Paxton Young taught (effectively criticizing the older common sense views) was not as damaging to evangelical faith as historians like McKillop have suggested. See A Disciplined Intelligence. 47 For example, Cody explained apostolic use of foreign tongues at pentecost by suggesting that the Holy Spirit could induce a mind to retrieve and use foreign words it did not consciously remember. Cody, WhitSunday Sermon, June 1906, May 1925, St Paul’s, Toronto; Cody Papers, pao, mu 4997, envelope entitled, “Holy Spirit.” See Moir, A History of Biblical Studies; Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century. 48 “God in Creation,” Seventy Sermons, no. 1. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. On evangelicalism and biblical criticism, see Noll, Between Faith and Criticism; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. 49 Sermon on Mark 16:12, April 1917, April 1926, April 1932, St Paul’s, Toronto, envelope entitled “Resurrection Sermons,” Cody Papers, pao, mu 4998; and “The Face of Jesus,” Seventy Sermons, no. 48. 50 This approach suggests that Michael Gauvreau may have been wrong. He argued in The Evangelical Century that biblical criticism did not cause the decline of evangelicalism. The historical relativism of comparative religion, the social sciences, and modern historical analysis eventually did so. Yet Cody was able to tame the results of comparative religion in much same way as he did for biblical criticism. 51 “Immortality” (typescript), Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. The sermon is included in Seventy Sermons. It was written early in the 1920s and seems to have been published in 1922 in a series called The Layman’s Library. See church correspondence in the Cody Papers, pao, mu 4958, folder 11, May 1922. 52 On liberals and modernists, see the previous two chapters. 53 “Cross and Crown,” Seventy Sermons, no. 61. 54 For the quoted phrase, see notes for a sermon on Acts 1:3, preached in April of 1926, 1929, and 1932, pao, mu 4998, envelope entitled “Resurrection Sermons.” See also Cody Papers, pao, mu 4997, envelope entitled, “Sermons on Crucifixion & Atonement – II,” and mu 4998, envelope entitled, “Resurrection Sermons.”

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270

Notes to pages 194–6

55 “His Unspeakable Gift,” Seventy Sermons, no. 49. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. “Kenosis” is a Greek word which means “self-emptying.” 56 For a description of the history and development of this theology, see Davies, Worship and Theology in England, 4:195–99; note also, Ramsey, An Era in Anglican Theology, chap. 3. 57 See Parent, “The Christology of T.T. Shields”; note also Elliot, “Canadian Evangelicalism, 1870–1970.” Recent historians of fundamentalism have neglected this theme; controversialists such as Bishop John Spong and James Barr point it out. See Barr, Fundamentalism; Spong, Rescuing the Bible; and the chapter on Thomas (chap. 5). 58 “His Unspeakable Gift,” Seventy Sermons, no. 49. 59 “The Burden-Bearer,” Seventy Sermons, no. 13. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. There is a Keswick character to Cody’s theology. Because Christ was a human being, he understood human weaknesses. Because he was God and defeated death, he could overcome human weaknesses and bear human burdens. For more on the North American and British wings of the movement, see the chapter on Thomas (chap. 5). 60 Butler has argued this point about Episcopalians in the United States. See Standing against the Whirlwind. Cody suggests that liberalism could harmonize in compelling, orthodox ways with evangelicalism. Some evangelicals who were influenced by liberalism became modernists; others did not. Liberal theology thus did not inevitably lead to evangelical decline. 61 “The Uncompleted Task,” Seventy Sermons, no. 63. 62 Cody’s sermons addressed issues that shaped popular sociological scholarship in the mid–twentieth century. In his generation people often experienced a sense of weightlessness – disconnection from “real” experience – and a relentless, vague weariness called “neurasthenia.” In the 1940s and 1950s sociologists talked about “the lonely crowd” (David Riesman) and “organization man” (William Whyte). See Lears, No Place of Grace. 63 “The Everlasting Gospel,” Seventy Sermons, no. 69. The pilgrim, alienated and wandering, is an archetypal figure in modern thought. See Bauman, Life in Fragments and Modernity and Ambivalence. 64 On therapeutic religion and the culture of consumption, see Lears, No Place of Grace. See also Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, and Reiff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, both of which are cited and discussed by Lears. 65 “Homesickness,” Seventy Sermons, no. 4. Note also, “Mother-Comfort,” Seventy Sermons, no. 25. 66 “Life’s Oases,” Seventy Sermons, no. 20. See also no. 27. On the disorienting impact of modernity, see Bauman, Life in Fragments (for a general view), and Dumenil, The Modern Temper (for an American view). There is no single Canadian study in the vein of Dumenil’s work on the United

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271 Notes to pages 197–201

67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88

States, but similar themes can be found in the social and cultural history of Canada between 1900 and 1930. “The First and the Last,” 9 February 1913 (typescript), 8. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. Ibid., 8. On the impact of consumer culture, see Lears, No Place of Grace; Leach, Land of Desire; and on evangelicalism, Frank, Less than Conquerors. “Christ Crucified,” Seventy Sermons, no. 43. Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. The text was I Corinthians (1:23): “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (King James Version). The key here was that Cody was addressing scepticism rooted in pain, not abstract, rationalist questions. “The Hand of God,” Seventy Sermons, no. 18. “Whom Jesus Loved,” ibib., no. 40. “Fishers of Men,” ibid., no. 27. “Whom Jesus Loved,” ibid., no. 40. “The Hand of God,” ibid., no. 18. “Whom Jesus Loved,” 2. Note the difference between Cody and Carl Grammer. Cody’s theology was thoroughly mystical; Grammer stressed the need for a balance between mysticism and rationality. Cody’s theology, in the end, was more evangelical than liberal; Grammer’s was liberal, but more modernist than evangelical. “Fellow-Suffering,” Seventy Sermons, no. 24. “The Hidden Strength,” ibid., no. 8; see also “The Burden-Bearer,” ibid., no. 13. “All the Saints,” ibid., no. 52. See Cody, “Enthusiasm” and “A Young Man,” ibid., no. 30, 31. “Commissioned,” ibid., no. 38. “A Good Soldier,” ibid., no. 60. “The Eternal Gospel,” ibid., no. 64. Katerberg, “Protecting Christian Liberty.” Meyer’s classic u.s. study fills out the theological context; see The Protestant Search. For Canada see Horn, The League for Social Reconstruction; Scott and Vlastos, Towards the Christian Revolution. On Anglicans, see Pulker, We Stand on Their Shoulders; Hayes, By Grace Co-Workers. Cody’s critique of Canadian society was haphazard, not consistently laid out; and it was broadly corporatist, leaning to the right as much as to the left. “The Eternal Gospel.” “The Open Door,” Seventy Sermons, no. 47. Ibid., 2–3. Ibid. Ibid. He likely was referring to the rise of the Soviet Union and the threat of communism in North America and Europe during the 1930s. Like

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272

89

90 91

92

93

94

95

96 97 98 99

Notes to pages 202–5

many evangelicals who supported missions in Asia, he was probably also concerned about the threat of Chinese communism. See White, Canon Cody, 146–50. Note McKillop, Matters of the Mind, 387–8. On predictions that Cody would eventually become president of the university, see the graduation song for Cody’s class (White, Canon Cody,149). Masters, Henry John Cody, chap. 19; White, Canon Cody, 148–51. Masters, Henry John Cody, chaps. 13, 16. That Cody and his forbears supported the Conservative Party reflected Cody’s Irish-protestant and evangelical-Anglican lineage. On this for the nineteenth century, see Richard Vaudry’s essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. See McKillop, Matters of the Mind, 387–90. Masters puts a much more positive light on Cody and his tenure at the University of Toronto than McKillop does; see Masters, Henry John Cody. See McKillop, Matters of the Mind, 391–3. McKillop portrays Cody as a naive dupe. He argues that Cody’s “position at the pinnacle of academic life in Canada” was not secured by any academic or clerical achievement, only by his alliance with Conservative politicians. On this score McKillop is wrong. Cody was not a professional academic, but his undergraduate career and teaching record at Wycliffe suggest that he was a capable intellectual. Furthermore, his clerical record was outstanding, as efforts in Canada, Australia, and England to make him a bishop indicate. McKillop simply seems to dislike Cody. Masters, on the other hand, glosses over the incident. See Henry John Cody, 201, 209, 231. For the background to and context of Cody’s political views, see Berger’s discussion of conservative progressivism in The Sense of Power, especially chaps. 4, 7–9. “Lengthen Thy Cords and Strengthen Thy Stakes,” Watchnight Service in Toronto, 6 March 1934 (pamphlet, n.p., n.d.), 4. See Cody Papers, pao, mu 7001. Note that Cody remarried in December 1933, to Barbara Blackstock, a long-time friend of the Cody family. From the United States, see Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism. Note also that conservative interest in fascist Italy was more than matched by the support of the left for the ussr. See Penner, Canadian Left; Diggins, American Left. McKillop, Matters of the Mind, 393–9; Masters, Henry John Cody, chaps. 21–3; Berger, The Writing of Canadian History. On nineteenth-century attitudes, see McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence; and Matters of the Mind, chap. 4. See comments by Cody in a book of essays, Obligation of the Universities, 411–14. On this, see my discussion in the introduction; see also Giddens, Consequences of Modernity. On instrumental reason and horizons of significance, see Taylor, Malaise of Modernity. See also McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence.

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273 Notes to pages 205–12 100 On these groups, see Horn, The League for Social Reconstruction; also note the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order and its statement of 1936 by R.B.Y. Scott and Gregory Vlastos, Towards a Christian Revolution. 101 “Recapitulation and the Ideals of Reconstruction,” 139–40. 102 Masters argues that Cody viewed the two parts of his career as different aspects of the same Christian duty; see Henry John Cody. On the left and social Christianity, see Rawlyk, “Politics, Religion, and the Canadian Experience: A Preliminary Probe,” in Noll, Religion and American Politics. 103 For this story, see Masters, Henry John Cody, chaps. 26, 27. See also McKillop, Matters of the Mind. 104 See council and trustee minutes from Wycliffe College in the 1940s and 1950s. Note also my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. 105 Cody, The Bible in War and Peace, 6. 106 See Masters, Henry John Cody, 316. 107 A few historians have begun to argue this recently; see essays in Rawlyk, Aspects. My argument extends what Gauvreau says in “The Taming of History.” 108 On this theme, see Westfall, “The Church of England.” Westfall looks at the informal Anglican participation in an Anglo-Canadian establishment, commenting specifically on Cody’s parish, St Paul’s on Bloor Street in Toronto. 109 See McKillop, Matters of the Mind. 110 On this process in Canada, see McKillop, Matters of the Mind. For a more nuanced study of the United States, especially for the liberal protestant role, see Marsden, The Soul of the American University. chapter ten 1 Nietzsche, History for Life, 14. 2 A character in Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, act 1, scene 3. 3 This point, the ambiguity of modernism and antimodernism, echoes that of Marshall Berman in All That Is Solid. His point is to emphasize common ground between modern and postmodern experience, while mine deals more with modernity and antimodern ideologies and movements. The central point is the same. The boundaries of modernity are liminal and easily and regularly transgressed. 4 See Anderson, Imagined Communities. Industrialization and capitalist markets can also be viewed in terms of consolidation, with the emergence of transnational corporations that often dwarf small nation-states in terms of assets and annual budgets. But in terms of social, cultural, and political consequences, they have had a diversifying and fragmenting impact. 5 For a useful summary of these issues and themes, see Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, and Life in Fragments.

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274

Notes to pages 213–17

6 For these archetypes, use of them by scholars, and their connection to the study of religion, see Beckford, Religion and Industrial Society. In “Consumers and Citizens” I describe the decline of civic values and life as secularization. Werner Sollors has described this shift as one from identity being a matter of “descent” to “consent”; see Beyond Ethnicity. 7 I have reflected on issues relating to multiculturalism, identity, and democracy in several essays. See “Consumers and Citizens” and “The Irony of Identity.” 8 This irony is crucial to understanding modernity, including the contemporary crisis. For example, globalizing cultural trends, from religion to consumer capitalism, include both parochial, or local, and universal trends. See my essay “Consumers and Citizens,” for commentary on this and for some of the literature. 9 This debate is discussed clearly in Alan Guelzo’s work; see For the Union. Most histories of the pecusa fit the consensus model. The best of them is Chorley, Men and Movements, which does a thorough job of weaving party conflict into a general story of growing liberal consensus. 10 On this, see Wuthnow, Restructuring. Note also Hunter, Culture Wars. 11 This is not to say that the myth has had no impact on the Church of England. Just the opposite. The myth originated with the Church of England. However, it took on unique importance in North America because there Anglicanism lost its identity as an established state church. 12 On this, for England, see Kenneth Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals, part 5. For Canada, see my essay in Rawlyk, Aspects. For the United States, see Albright, Protestant Episcopal Church. 13 I am obviously painting with a very broad brush here. I have explained some of the reasons for these developments in earlier chapters. Here I am not primarily interested in why these developments happened. Rather, I am concerned with reflecting on their consequences for the Anglican identity. 14 For some of these themes, see Kew and White, New Millennium; Egerton, Anglican Essentials. The liberal-conservative divide is older than World War II (see Szasz, The Divided Mind), but after 1945 these lines became more and more prominent, and (more importantly) members of historically conflicting traditions began to recognize that they had more in common with like-minded members of other denominations (liberal or conservative) than with people in their own denomination (see Wuthnow, Restructuring). 15 On hypermodernity, see Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide. For more on religious identities in the 1960s, with more citations of the historical and sociological literature, see my essay, “Citizens and Consumers.” 16 See chapter two of this study, and note Fahey, In His Name.

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275 Notes to pages 219–23 17 See Hervieu-Léger, “Present-Day Emotional Renewals.” 18 For liberals the appeal of catholicism, broadly defined, often is aesthetic and consumer-oriented, in the sense of focussing on personal experience of ritual and tradition. The embrace of catholicism remains “protestant” in its suspicion of authority and boundaries. For many conservatives, however, tradition and its authority are the appeal in a modern or postmodern culture that denies structure and authority. For them protestantism and evangelicalism are too modern-postmodern. 19 See Wuthnow, Restructuring. For a classic celebratory statement of denominations as a modern way of promoting religious unity in the United States amidst religious pluralism, see Mead, Old Religion. 20 See Bibby, Unknown Gods, and Anglitrends. 21 See the special issue of Christian Week, 20 September 1994. 22 Green, quoted in Christian Week, 20 September 1994, 8. 23 Pountney, “Anglicans Attempt to Come to Grips with the Future,” Christian Week, 11 July 1995, 8. 24 Quoted in Christian Week, 20 September 1994, 8. 25 Admittedly, this is a low-church or protestant viewpoint. The institutional integrity of catholic traditions, from a high-church Anglican, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox point of view depends on the lineage of the episcopacy from the ancient apostles. It remains to be seen if this element of Anglican and other Catholic traditions can adapt. The history of the ancient church may be instructive; bishops once were local leaders not unified under a universalizing institution and hierarchy. 26 Note that some growth in the pecusa occurred in the mid-1990s; it was not matched by the acc, which continued to decline (see the appendix). Such statistics are difficult to interpret and, apart from longer-term trends over the next two decades, cannot be made to signify anything with confidence. 27 On this see Walls, Missionary Movement, especially chap. 1. 28 See Jaroslav Pelikan for this distinction, in The Melody of Theology. 29 Wuthnow, Christianity; see especially chaps. 2, 3, 13. His analysis makes a few points that echo Hervieu-Léger’s analysis, emphasizing the growing importance of therapeutic-emotional movements in contemporary religion. Wuthnow focuses on small groups but, like Hervieu-Léger, highlights antidoctrinal attitudes. 30 For example, see Casanova, Public Religions; Featherstone, Undoing Culture. On transnational Catholicism since World War II, see Casanova’s essay in Rudolph and Piscatori, Transnational Religion and Fading States. 31 See Wingate, Anglicanism; Wilson, All One Body. 32 Though I have not drawn specifically on Allen Guelzo’s work here, his emphasis on the ironies of developments in the Reformed Episcopal

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Notes to pages 223–4

Church and the Episcopal tradition more generally have implicitly influenced these conclusions; see For the Union and “Ritual, Romanism, and Rebellion.” 33 “The Open Door,” Seventy Sermons, no. 47. 34 “Life’s Oases,” Seventy Sermons, no. 20.

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Bibliography

primary sources Archives Anglican Diocese of Ontario Archives (adoa), Kingston, Ontario Canon A.S. Spencer Letters St Paul’s Church, Brockville, Vestry Book, 1885 to 1905

Anglican Diocese of Toronto Archives (adta) Church of the Epiphany, Toronto. Minute Book of the Advisory Committee and Executive Committee, 1929 to 1936 Synod Journals

Dallas Theological Seminary (dts) Archives, Dallas, tx Correspondence

Episcopal Diocese of New York Archives, New York Bishop William T. Manning Papers. Correspondence, pamphlets, news clippings

General Theological Seminary (gts) Archives, New York Bishop William T. Manning Collection. Correspondence, pamphlets, clippings, books

Public Archives of Ontario (pao), Toronto Rev. Henry J. Cody Papers

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278 Bibliography Church Correspondence, 1890–1951 and n.d., mu 4952–63 General Correspondence, 1889–1918, mu 4970 Sermons, mu 4991–9, 7001, 7002 Miscellaneous, mu 7023, 7028, 7030 Notebooks, mu 7010–11 Pamphlets, mu 7018, 7031

Wycliffe College Archives, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Ontario Institutional Records: Minutes of Council, Executive Committee and Trustees Meetings, 1880s-1970s Principal Thomas R. O’Meara Papers. Correspondence Material was also obtained from the Anglican Church of Canada General Synod Archives (accgsa) and the Wycliffe College Archives (wca), both located in Toronto, Ontario. Books, pamphlets, and articles obtained from the various archives are in the bibliography with the acronym of the archive following the citation. Note also that many pamphlets and newspaper and magazine articles are not listed in the bibliography. They are cited fully in the footnotes, with the acronym for the archive or library in which they can be found.

Periodicals Bibliotheca Sacra Canadian Churchman (cc) Evangelical Churchman (ec), wca Evangelical Quarterly Our Hope Sunday School Times

Books, Pamphlets, Articles Allen, Alexander V.G. Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks. 2 vols. New York: Dutton, 1900. Anglican Liberalism. By twelve churchmen. London: Williams and Norgate, 1908. Basic Principles Proposed for the Union of the Presbyterian Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church. 1942. Blake, S.H. Wycliffe College: An Historical Sketch. Toronto: Wycliffe College, 1910. Cheney, Charles Edward. What Do Reformed Episcopalians Believe? Philadelphia: Reformed Episcopal Publication Society, 1888. The Church of the Epiphany, Toronto, Diamond Jubilee, 1887–1947. Historical Review. N.p., n.d. (adta).

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279 Bibliography Cody, Henry John. An Address Delivered by the Hon. and Rev. H.J. Cody, ma, d.d., ll.d. at the Funeral of the Rev. Dyson Hague, ma, dd, in the Church of the Epiphany, Toronto, 8 May 1935. N.p., n.d. (accgsa). – The History and Significance of the National Anthem. An Address … before the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, 21 December 1916. [Toronto, 1916] (accgsa). – Introduction to James Elgin Wetherell, ed., The Great War in Verse and Prose. Toronto: King’s Printer, 1919. – Lambeth and Malines. A sermon preached at St Paul’s Church, Toronto, Sunday, 20 January 1924. Toronto: Canadian Churchman, [1924] (accgsa). – Seventy Sermons. Excerpts and Selections from Seventy Sermons. Edited and compiled by William C. White. Published privately in Toronto, 1954. (pao). – The War: A Survey of the Struggle and a Prophecy. An address … before a gathering of Canada Life Men, Thursday, 11 January 1917. Toronto, 1917 (accgsa). – Why Is It Wrong to Gamble? An address delivered before the Ministerial Association of Toronto. Toronto: Moral and Social Reform Council, [19–?] (accgsa). Creeds and Loyalty: Essays on the History, Interpretation and Use of Creeds. By seven members of the Faculty of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, ma. New York, 1924. Crossman, R.H.S., ed. Oxford and the Groups. Oxford, 1934. Cummins, A.M. Memoir of George David Cummins, dd, First Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church. New York: E. Claxton, 1878. DuBose, William Porcher. The Ecumenical Councils. New York, 1897. – The Gospel According to St Paul. New York, 1907. – The Gospel in the Gospels. New York, 1906. – The Reason of Life. New York, 1911. – The Soteriology of the New Testament. New York, 1892. – Turning Points in My Life. New York, 1912. Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Critical and Historical Estimates and the Oxford Movement. Philadelphia: The Platt, n.d. The Fundamentals: A Testimony to Truth, 12 vol. Chicago: Testimony Publishing, n.d. Gavin, Frank S.B. Liberal Catholicism and the Modern World. New York, 1934. Gore, Charles, ed. Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation. London: 1889 (14th ed., 1895). Grammer, Carl Eckhardt. An Examination of the So-Called American Missal. Philadelphia 1931. – Jesus as a Teacher of Eternal Verities. Philadelphia: [Evangelical Education Society] 1935. – Things That Remain. New York: Macmillan, 1929. – ed. Abiding Values of Evangelicalism. Papers and Addresses at the SeventyFifth Anniversary. Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1938.

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280 Bibliography Grammer, Carl Eckhardt, Norman Sykes, and James S. Besant. Critical and Historical Estimates of the Oxford Movement. Philadelphia, 1933. Hague, Dyson. “At-One-Ment by Propitiation.” In The Fundamentals: A Testimony to Truth. Vol. 11. Chicago: Testimony Publishing, n.d. – Bishop Baldwin: A Brief Sketch of One of Canada’s Greatest Preachers and Noblest Church Leaders. Toronto: Evangelical Press, 1927. – The Church of England before the Reformation. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1897. – The Church of England: the Centre of Unity. Halifax, ns: Norton, 1892. – Confirmation: Why We Have It; What It Means; What it Requires. Toronto: Musson Book Company, 1903. Several editions, 1917, 1924 (accgsa). – Cranmer: An Historical Study. Toronto: Church Record, [19–?] (accgsa). – “The Doctrinal Value of the First Chapters of Genesis.” The Fundamentals: A Testimony to Truth. Vol. 8. Chicago: Testimony Publishing, n.d. – The Evangelical and Scholarship. Reprinted from the English Church Record and the American Bible Champion, with Emendations and Additions. Toronto: Macoomb Press, [192?]. – The Evangelical Future: A Call to Faith and Action. The Inaugural Address of the President of the Wycliffe College Jubilee Alumni, September 1927. Toronto: Macoomb Press, 1927 (accgsa). – “The History of Higher Criticism.” The Fundamentals: A Testimony to Truth. Vol. 1. Chicago: Testimony Publishing, n.d. – “The History of Wycliffe College.” In The Jubilee Volume of Wycliffe College. Toronto: Wycliffe College, 1927. – The Holy Communion of the Church of England. Preface by E.A. Knox. London: Church Book Room, [191–?] (wca). – Jonah: The Book and the Man: A Twentieth Century Message. Toronto: Haynes Press, [191–?] (accgsa). – The Jubilee Catechism: Concerning the Church. A Series of Questions and Answers for the Young People of the Church in the Diocese of Huron. 1907 (accgsa). – Justification. London: Thynne & Jarvis, [192–?]. – The Life and Work of John Wycliffe. London: Church Book Room, 1935. Originally published in a smaller version, 1909 (accgsa). – The Protestantism of the Prayer Book. Toronto: The J.E. Bryant Company, 1890. – St Andrews Work: The Best Work in the World. Halifax, ns: n.p., [1890?]. – The Story of the English Prayer Book. London: Longmans, Green, 1926. – Through the Prayer Book: An Exposition of Its Teaching and Language … with Special Reference to the More Recent Features of the Canadian Prayer Book. London: Church Book Room Press, 1932 (wca). – The Value of the Prayer Book. N.p. [1911?] (accgsa). – Who Are the Higher Critics and What is the Higher Criticism? N.p. [19–?] (accgsa).

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281 Bibliography – The Wonder of the Book. Toronto: Evangelical Publishers, n.d. Originally published in 1912. Enlarged edition, 1925 (wca, accgsa). – The Wonder of the Gospel. Toronto: Evangelical Publishers, 1925 (wca). Harris, J.A. “Evangelical Doctrine and Modern Thought.” Churchman (October, 1907): 586–8. Howden, J. Russell, ed. Evangelicalism: By Members of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churchman. London: Thynne and Jarvis, 1925. The Inner Life: Essays in Liberal Evangelicalism. By Members of the Church of England. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925. The Jubilee Volume of Wycliffe College. Toronto: Wycliffe College, 1927. The Liberal Evangelicals: Purpose, Program, and Organization. N.p., 1933. Manning, William T. Be Strong in the Lord. Collected Sermons and Addresses on Significant Occasions. N.p., 1947. – The Call to Unity. The Bedell Lectures for 1919, delivered at Kenyon College, 24, 25 May, 1920. New York: Macmillan, 1920. – Neither Fundamentalism nor Modernism, but Belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. New York: Bishop’s Office, 1923. Morgan, C. Lloyd. Emergent Evolution. 2d ed. London: Williams and Norgate, 1927. – Life, Mind, and Spirit. London: Williams and Norgate, 1926. Obligation of the Universities to the Social Order, The. New York, 1933. Rainsford, William S. The Story of a Varied Life: An Autobiography. New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. (First published in 1922.) Rogers, T. Guy, ed. Liberal Evangelicalism. An Interpretation by Members of the Church of England. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923. Scott, R.B.Y., and Gregory Vlastos. Towards the Christian Revolution. Kingston, on: Ronald P. Frye, 1989. (Originally published in 1936.) Selwyn, Edward G., ed. Essays Catholic and Critical by Members of the Anglican Communion. London: spck, 1926. Thomas, W.H. Griffith. The Acts of the Apostles: Studies in Primitive Christianity. Chicago: Moody, 1947 (wca). – The Apostle John: Studies in His Life and Writings. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1946. (Originally published in 1923.) – The Apostle Peter: Outline Studies in His Life and Writings. New York: Fleming H. Revell, [1910?]. – “The Bible and the Spiritual Life.” In The Ministry of Keswick: A Selection from the Bible Readings Delivered at the Keswick Convention. First Series. 1892– 1919. – Books That Stand for the Faith. Philadelphia: Sunday School Times, 1922. – The Catholic Faith: A Manual of Introduction for Members of the Church of England. London: Longmans, Green, 1904. New edition, New York: Longmans, Green, 1920 (wca). – Christ Pre-eminent: Studies in the Epistle to the Colossians. The Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1923.

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282 Bibliography – The Christian Life and How to Live It. Chicago: Moody Press, 1919 (wca). – Christianity is Christ. Chicago: Inter-Varsity, Zondervan, n.d. New York: Longmans, Green, 1919. Originally published in London by the Church Book Room, 1909 (wca). – The Conflict of Ideas in the English Church. [Toronto] 1910 (accgsa). – The Essentials of Life. London: Pickering and Inglis, n.d. (accgsa). – An Evangelical View of Cardinal Newman. N.p., n.d. – Evolution and the Supernatural. Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, [191?]. Reprinted from Bibliotheca Sacra. – Genesis: A Devotional Commentary. 3 vols. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1909. Published in a single volume by Eerdmans, 1946 (wca). – And God Spake These Words: How We Got Our Bible and Why We Believe It Is God’s Word. Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times Company, 1926 (wca). – Grace and Power: Some Aspects of the Spiritual Life. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1916 (Erdmans, 1949). Reprint, Nashville, tn: T. Nelson, 1984 (wca). – Hebrews: A Devotional Commentary. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, n.d. Based on lectures given 1905–10, 1911, and 1922, at Keswick (wca). – The Holy Spirit of God. London: Longmans, Green, 1913 (wca). – How We Got Our Bible. Lincoln, ne: Back to the Bible Publishers, 1926. – Introduction to William James Armitage, The Fruit of the Spirit. London: Marshall, [18–?]. – “Let Us Go On”: The Secret of Christian Progress in the Epistle of Hebrews. Chicago: The Bible Institute Colportage Association. Originally given as lectures, 1905–10, 1911, and at Keswick, 1922 (wca). – Life Abiding and Abounding: Bible Studies in Prayer and Meditation. Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, [191?]. – Methods of Bible Study. London: Marshall Brothers, n.d. [1910?]. Numerous impressions, while Vicar of St Paul’s (wca). – Ministerial Life and Work. Abridged by Alice Thomas. Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1927. – Modernism in China. Philadelphia: Sunday School Times, 1922. First published in the Princeton Theological Review 19 (1921): 630–71. – Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity. Sterling: Drummond Tract Depot [189?] (accgsa). – Outline Studies in the Gospel of Matthew. Winifred G.T. Gillespie, ed. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1961 (wca). – The Prayers of St Paul. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1914 (wca). – The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles. London: Longmans, Green, 1930. Foreword by Dyson Hague (wca). – Romans: A Devotional Commentary. 3 vols. London: Religious Tract Society, 1911–[1912?].

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283 Bibliography – “A Sacrament of Our Redemption”: An Inquiry into the Meaning of the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament and the Church of England. London: Bemrose, n.d. [1903?] (wca). – Some Factors in the Problem of Church Reunion. London: C.H. Kelly, [1913?] (accgsa). – Some Tests of Old Testament Criticism. Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1922. – St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: A Devotional Commentary. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1946, 1974 (wca). – Stronghold of Truth. Los Angeles: Biola Book Room, 1915. – Through the Pentateuch Chapter by Chapter. Winifred G.T. Gillespie, ed. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1957. 1985 edition by Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, mi (wca). – The Work of Ministry. London: Hodder and Stoughton, [191?] (wca). Troop, G. Osbourne. Prophet, Presbyter, and Servant of Mankind: A Memoir of the Reverend Canon G. Osbourne Troop, ma. Ed. and introd. by Dyson Hague. N.p., [1935?] (accgsa). “Victorious Life, The.” Princeton Theological Review 16 (July 1918). Victorious Life Conference. The Victorious Life. Messages from the summer conferences at Whittier, California, June; Princeton, New Jersey, July; Cedar Lake, Indiana, August. Philadelphia: Victorious Life Conference, 1918. – Victorious Life Testimony. Messages from conferences held by the Victorious Life Testimony in 1922. Philadelphia: Sunday School Times, 1922. Warfield, Benjamin. The Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin R. Warfield. Vol. 2. Ed. John E. Meeter. Nutley, nj, 1973.

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284 Bibliography Alexander, Ruth Ann. “Women in South Dakota Missions.” Anglican and Episcopal History 63 (1994). Allen, Charlotte. “The Postmodern Mission.” Lingua Franca 9:9 (December– January 2000). Allen, Richard. The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada, 1914– 1928. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. Altholz, J.L. “The Mind of Victorian Orthodoxy: Anglican Responses to ’Essays and Reviews,’ 1860–1864.” Church History 51:2 (1982). Ammerman, Nancy Tate. Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World. New Brunswick, nj: Rutgers University Press, 1988. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised ed. New York: Verso, 1991. Anderson, Walter Truett. Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be. San Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1990. Andrews, Margaret W. “St Luke’s Home, Vancouver, 1886–1936: A Transitional Hospital.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 24:2 (1982). Armentrout, D. Episcopal Splinter Groups: A Study of Groups Which Have Left the Episcopal Church, 1873–1985. Sewanee, tn: School of Theology of the University of the South, 1985. Armitage, William James. The Story of the Canadian Revision of the Prayer Book. With a foreword by the Most Rev. S.P. Matheson, dd Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1922. Austin, Alvin J. Saving China: Canadian Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom, 1888–1959. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Avery, Donald. Reluctant Hosts: Canada’s Response to Immigrant Workers, 1896– 1994. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995. Balleine, G.R. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England. London, 1908, 1951. Barr, James. Fundamentalism. London: scm Press, 1977. Barron, Hal S. Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth-Century New England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Bauman, Zygmunt. Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. – Modernity and Ambivalence. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1991. Bebbington, David. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. – The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1970–1914. London, 1982. – “The Oxford Group Movement between the Wars.” In W.J. Sheils and D. Wood, ed., Voluntary Religion. Studies in Church History, vol. 23. Oxford, 1986. Becker, Carl. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1932. Beckford, James A. Religion and Advanced Industrial Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

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285 Bibliography Bellah, Robert N., et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1985. Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1996. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Berger, Carl. Science, God, and Nature in Victorian Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. – The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867–1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970. – The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing since 1900. 2d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Berman, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts into Air. New York: Penguin, 1988. Best, Geoffrey F.A. “The Evangelicals and the Established Church in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1959). Bibby, Reginald W. Anglitrends: A Profile and Prognosis. Diocese of Toronto, April 1986 (wca). – Fragmented Gods: The Power and Potential of Religion in Canada. Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1987. – Unknown Gods: The Ongoing Story of Religion in Canada. Toronto: Stoddart, 1993. Bliss, J.M. “The Methodist Church and World War I.” Canadian Historical Review 49: 3 (1968). Bloom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Boon, T.C.B. The Anglican Church from the Bay to the Rockies: A History of the Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert’s Land and Its Dioceses from 1820–1950. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1962. Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Bowden, H.W., ed. Dictionary of American Religious Biography. Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 1977. Bowen, Desmond. The Idea of the Victorian Church: A Study of the Church of England, 1833–1889. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1968. Boylan. Anne M. Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790–1880. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1988. Bozeman, Theodore Dwight. Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought. Chapel Hill, mc: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Bradbrook, Pauline. “A Brief Account of the Church of England Women’s Association in Newfoundland.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 27 (1986).

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286 Bibliography Bradley, I. The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians. London, 1976. Brent, R. Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion and Reform, 1830–1841. Oxford, 1987. Brereton, Virginia Lieson. Training God’s Army: The American Bible School, 1880–1940. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 1990. Bridenbaugh, Carl. Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775. New York, 1962. Bridgeman, Charles Thorley, Morgan Dix, et al. A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York. Seven parts. New York: Putnam, 1898–. (later volumes published by various presses). Brilioth, Y. The Anglican Revival: Studies in the Oxford Movement. London: Longmans, Green, 1925, 1933. – [Three Lectures on] Evangelicalism and the Oxford Movement. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Brown, Lawrence L. The Episcopal Church in Texas. Austin, tx: Church Historical Society, 1938. Browning, W.R.F., ed. The Anglican Synthesis: Essays by Catholics and Evangelicals. Derby, England: P. Smith 1964. Burkinshaw, Robert K. Pilgrims in Lotus Land: Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917–1981. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Butler, Diana. Standing against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Carpenter, Joel. Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Carpenter, Joel, and Wilbert R. Shenk, eds. Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals and Foreign Missions, 1880–1980. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1990. Carrington, Philip. The Anglican Church in Canada: A History. Toronto: Collins, 1963. Carter, Paul A. The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel: Social and Political Liberalism in American Protestant Churches, 1920–1940. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1954. – The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age. DeKalb, il: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. Carwardine, Richard. Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865. Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 1978. Casanova, Jose. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. Chadwick, Owen. From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.

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287 Bibliography – The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. – The Spirit of the Oxford Movement: Tractarian Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. – The Victorian Church. 2 vols. London, 1969–70. – ed. The Mind of the Oxford Movement. Stanford, ca: Stanford University Press: 1960. Chorley, E. Clowes. Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church. Hamden, ct: Archon Books, 1961. – Quarter of a Millennium: Trinity Church in the City of New York. Philadelphia: Church Historical Society: 1947. Christie, Nancy, and Michael Gauvreau. A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare, 1900–1940. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. Church, Richard. The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years, 1833–1845. Edited with an introduction by Geoffrey Best. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Clark, M. Guthrie. William Henry Griffith Thomas, 1861–1924: Minister, Scholar, Teacher, Great Churchman. London: Church Book Room Press, 1949. Cliff, P.B. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England, 1780–1980. Nutfield, England: National Christian Education Council, 1986. Clifford, N. Keith. “His Dominion: A Vision in Crisis.” In Peter Slater, ed., Religion and Culture in Canada/Religion et culture au Canada. Waterloo, on: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1977. – “The Interpreters of the United Church of Canada.” Church History 46:2 (1977). – The Resistance to Church Union in Canada, 1904–1939. Vancouver, bc: University of British Columbia Press, 1985. Coates, Kenneth. “Send Only Those Who Rise a Peg: Anglican Clergy in the Yukon, 1858–1932.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 29 (1987). Coben, Stanley. “The Assault on Victorianism in the Twentieth Century.” American Quarterly 29 (1975). Cocksworth, Christopher J. Evangelical Eucharistic Thought in the Church of England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Cook, Ramsay. The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Cooper, John Irwin. The Blessed Communion: The Origins and History of the Diocese of Montreal, 1760–1960. Montreal: Archives Committee of the Diocese of Montreal, 1960. – “Irish Immigration and the Canadian Church before the Middle of the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 2 (May 1955).

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288 Bibliography Crerar, Duff. Padres in No Man’s Land: Canadian Chaplains and the Great War. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Croce, Paul Jerome. Science and Religion in the Era of William James. Vol. 1, Eclipse of Certainty, 1820–1880. Chapel Hill, nc: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Crowfoot, Alfred Henchman. Benjamin Cronyn – First Bishop of Huron. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1957. – This Dreamer: Isaac Hellmuth, Second Bishop of Huron. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1963. Crunden, Robert. Ministers of Reform: The Progressive’s Achievement in American Civilization, 1889–1920. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Curtis, Susan. A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture. Baltimore, md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Davies, Horton. Worship and Theology in England. 5 vols. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1961–75. Dawley, Powell Mills. The Story of General Theological Seminary. New York, 1969. Dayton, Donald W., and Robert K. Johnston, eds. The Variety of American Evangelicalism. Knoxville, tn: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. DeBerg, Betty A. Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism. Minneapolis, mn: Fortress Press, 1990. DeMille, George. The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church. 2d ed., revised and enlarged. Philadelphia, 1950. Desmond, Adrian. Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest. London: Penguin, 1998. Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist. New York: Warner Books, 1991. Dictionary of American Biography. 20 vol. and supplements. New York, [1928–]. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Edited by Daniel G. Reid et al., Downers Grove, il: InterVarsity Press, 1990. Diggins, John Patrick. Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1972. – The Rise and Fall of the American Left. New York: Norton, 1992. Dix, Morgan, et al. A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York. 6 vols. New York, 1898–1962. Dolan, Jay P. The American Catholic Experience. Garden City, ny: Image Books, 1985. – Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience, 1830–1900. Notre Dame, in: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978. Donovan, Mary Sudman. “Women as Foreign Missionaries in the Episcopal Church, 1830–1920.” Anglican and Episcopal History 61 (1992). Dubinsky, Karen. The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1999.

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292 Bibliography Hill, Meredith. “The Women Workers of the Diocese of Athabaska, 1930– 1970.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 28 (1986). Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hooke, Katharine N. “Women’s Teaching and Service: An Anglican Perspective in Ontario, 1867–1930.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 33: 2 (1990). Horn, Michael. The League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the Democratic Left in Canada, 1930–1942. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Houghton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1957. Hughes, Richard T., ed. The American Quest for the Primitive Church. Urbana, il: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Hughes, W.D.F. Prudently with Power: William Thomas Manning, Tenth Bishop of New York. New York: Holy Cross Publications, 1964. Hunter, James Davison. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books, 1991. Hutchison, William R. Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. – The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Hutchison, William R., ed. Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Hylson-Smith, K. Evangelicals in the Church of England, 1734–1984. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987. Iggers, Georg G. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Hanover, nh: Wesleyan University Press, 1997. Ingham, Ernest Graham, and Clement L. Burrows. Sketches in Western Canada. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913. Jay, Elizabeth. The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth Century Novel. Oxford, 1979. Jenkins, Keith, ed. The Postmodern History Reader. London: Routledge, 1997. Johnson, Curtis D. Redeeming America: Evangelicals and the Road to the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993. Jordan, Philip. The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, 1847– 1900: Ecumenism, Identity, and the Religion of the Republic. New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1982. Kantrow, Alan. “Anglican Custom, American Consciousness.” New England Quarterly 52 (1979).

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293 Bibliography Katerberg, William H. “’A Born Again Propagandist’: Dyson Hague and Evangelical Anglicanism in Canada, 1857–1935.” ma thesis, Queen’s University, 1991. – “Consumers and Citizens: Religion, Identity, and Politics in Canada and the usa.” In David Lyon, ed., Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity: Canada between Europe and the usa. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. – “Gospel and Party: The Varied Course of Evangelicalism in the Anglican Communion in North America, 1880–1950.” phd diss., Queen’s University, 1995. – “History as Identity: Subjectivity, Religion, and the Historical Profession.” In Canadian Society of Church History, Historical Papers, 1997. – “The Irony of Identity: An Essay on Nativism, Liberal Democracy, and Parochial Identities in Canada and the United States.” American Quarterly 47 (1995). – “Protecting Christian Liberty: Mainline Protestantism, Racial Thought, and Political Culture in Canada, 1918–1939.” In Canadian Society of Church History, Historical Papers 1995. Kelley, Robert. The Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone. New Brunswick, nj: Transaction Publishers, 1990. (Originally published in 1969.) Kenyon, John. “The Influence of the Oxford Movement on the Church of England in Upper Canada.” Ontario History 51 (spring 1959). Kew, Richard, and Roger J. White. New Millennium, New Church: Trends Shaping the Episcopal Church. Cambridge, ma: Cowley Publications, 1992. Kilgore, C.W. “William Henry Griffith Thomas.” thm thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1974. Knudson, Albert. The Philosophy of Personalism. New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969. Lane, Hannah. “Tribalism, Proselytism, and Pluralism: Lay Protestants and Denominational Identity in Mid–nineteenth Century St Stephen, New Brunswick.” Manuscript. Forthcoming in Nancy Christie, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Popular Religion in Canada, 1760–1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lawrence, Bruce B. Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York: Vintage, 1993. Lears, T.J. Jackson. “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities.” American Historical Review 90:3 (1985), 567–93. – No Place of Grace: Anti-Modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981. Lewis, Donald Munro. “The History of the Reformed Episcopal Church in Canada.” Master of Christian Studies thesis, Regent College, Vancouver, 1977.

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294 Bibliography – Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828–1860. Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 1986. Ligterwood, John, ed. Frontiers Then and Now: The Canadian Anglican Episcopate, 1878–1987. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1989. Lindsley, James Elliot. The Planted Vine: A Narrative History of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Livingstone, David N. Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1987. Lloyd, Roger. The Church of England 1900–1965. London: scm, 1966. Longfield, Bradley J. The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates. New York: Oxford, 1991. Loucks, Clarence Melvin. “The Theological Foundations of the Victorious Life.” phd diss.: Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984. Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Lum, Richard. “W.H. Griffith Thomas and Emergent American Fundamentalism.” phd thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1994. Lyon, David. Living Stones: St James’ Church, Kingston, 1845–1995. Kingston, on: Quarry Press, 1995. – Postmodernity. Minneapolis, mn: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. – The Steeple’s Shadow: On the Myths and Realities of Secularization. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1985. – ed. Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity: Canada between Europe and the usa. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. MacDonald, Heidi. “Anglican Women Religious in Two Nova Scotian Hospitals.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 37 (1995). McKillop, A.B. A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979. – Matters of the Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791–1951. Toroniversity of Toronto Press, 1994. Mackintosh, W.H. Disestablishment and Liberation: The Movement for the Separation of the Anglican Church from State Control. London, 1972. McNeill, William H. Mythhistory and Other Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Manross, William W. “The Episcopal Church and Social Reform.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 12 (1943). – A History of the American Episcopal Church. New York: Morehouse, 1935. Manschreck, Clyde, ed., A History of Christianity: Readings in the History of the Church. 2 vols. Grand Rapids, mi: Baker Book House, 1981. Manwaring, Randle. From Controversy to Co-existence: Evangelicals in the Church of England, 1914–1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Marchant, Sir James, ed. The Reunion of Christendom. New York: H. Holt, 1929.

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295 Bibliography Marks, Lynne. Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Marsden, George M. The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1970. – Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. – “Fundamentalism as an American Phenomenon: A Comparison with English Evangelicalism.” Church History 46 (1977). – “J. Greshem Machen, History, and Truth.” Westminster Theological Journal 42:1 (1987). – Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, mt: Eerdmans, 1987. – The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. – ed. Evangelicalism and Modern America. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1984. Marsden, George M., and Bradley J. Longfield, eds. The Secularization of the Academy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Marshall, David. “Methodism Embattled: A Reconsideration of the Methodist Church and World War I.” Canadian Historical Review 66: 1 (1985). – Secularizing the Faith: Canadian Protestant Clergy and the Crisis of Belief, 1850– 1940. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Martin, David. A General Theory of Secularization. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978. – Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Martin, Roger H. Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795–1830. Metuchen, nj: Scarecrow Press, 1983. Marty, Martin. Modern American Religion. Vol. 1, The Irony of It All, 1893–1919; vol. 2, The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, 1991. – Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America. New York: Dial Press, 1970. Masters, D.C. “The Anglican Evangelicals in Toronto, 1870–1900.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 20 (1978). – Henry John Cody: An Outstanding Life. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995. – “H.J. Cody and the Toronto Episcopal Election of 1909.” Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 30:2 (October 1988). – Protestant Church Colleges in Canada: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966. May, Henry F. The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Time, 1912–1917. New York: Knopf, 1959. – The Enlightenment in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

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296 Bibliography – Protestant Churches and Industrial America. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949. Mead, Sidney. The Old Religion in the Brave New World: Reflections on the Relation between Christendom and the Republic. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 1977. Meyer, Donald. The Protestant Search for Political Realism. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 1960. Middleton, J. Richard, and Brian J. Walsh. Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age. Downers Grove, il: InterVarsity, 1995. Millman, Thomas R. “The Conference on Christian Unity, 1889.” Journal of Canadian Theology 3 (1957). – The Life of Charles James Stewart. London, on: Huron College Press, 1953. Millman, T.R., and A.R. Kelley. Atlantic Canada to 1900: A History of Anglicanism. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1983. Moberg, David. The Great Reversal: Evangelicalism versus Social Concern. Philadelphia, 1972. Moir, J.S. Church and State in Canada West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959. – “The Correspondence of Bishop Strachan and John Henry Newman.” Canadian Journal of Theology 3 (October 1957). – Enduring Witness: A History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Eagle Press Printers, 1987. – A History of Biblical Studies in Canada: A Sense of Proportion. Chico, ca: Scholars Press, 1982. Moore, James R. The Post-Darwinian Controversies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Moore, R. Laurence. In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. – Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. – Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Moorehead, James H. “Between Progress and Apocalypse: A Reassessment of Millennialism in American Religious Thought, 1800–1880.” Journal of American History 71:3 (1984). Moorman, John R.H. A History of the Church in England. 3d ed. London: A. & C. Black, 1986. Muir, Elizabeth Gillan, and Marilyn Färdig Whitelely, eds. Changing Roles of Women within the Christian Church in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Mullin, Robert Bruce. Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1986.

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297 Bibliography Mullin, Robert Bruce, and Russell E. Richey, eds. Reimagining Denominationalism: Interpretive Essays. New York, Oxford University Press, 1994. Murphy, Terrence, and Roberto Perin, eds., A Concise History of Christianity in Canada. Toronto: Oxford, 1996. Newsome, David. “The Evangelical Sources of Newman’s Power.” In J. Coulson and A.M. Allchin, eds. The Rediscovery of Newman. London: S.P.C.K., 1967. – “Justification and Sanctification: Newman and the Evangelicals.” Journal of Theological Studies 15:1 (1964). – The Parting of Friends: A Study of the Wilberforces and Henry Manning. London: J. Murray, 1966. Nichols, James H. Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1951. – The Kingdom of God in America. Middleton, ct: Wesleyan University Press, 1988. (Originally published by Harper and Row, 1937.) Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Trans. Peter Pruess. Indianapolis, in: Hackett, 1980. Noel, Jan. Canada Dry: Temperance Crusades before Confederation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Noll, Mark A. Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America. 2d ed. Grand Rapids, mi: Baker Book House, 1991. – “Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical Thought.” American Quarterly 37:2 (1985). – A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1992. – The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1994. – ed. Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Noll, Mark A., David Bebbington, and George Rawlyk, eds. Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Nugent, Walter. Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870–1914. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 1992. O’Connell, Marvin R. The Oxford Conspirators: A History of the Oxford Movement. New York, 1969. Office of Research, Evaluation, and Planning of the National Council of Churches. Year book of American and Canadian Churches. Nashville, tn: Abingdon Press, 1982, 1992, 1998. Owram, Douglas. Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby Boom Generation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

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298 Bibliography Packer, J.I. The Evangelical Anglican Identity Problem. Latimer House Studies, 1. Oxford: Latimer House, 1978. – A Kind of Noah’s Ark: The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. Oxford: Latimer House, 1981. – “New Lease of Life: A Preface to Principles of Theology by W.H. Griffith Thomas.” Churchman 92 (1978). Parent, Mark. “The Christology of T. T. Shields: The Irony of Fundamentalism.” phd diss., McGill University, 1991. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. – The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Penner, Norman. The Canadian Left. Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 1977. Pointer, Stephen R. “J.B. Lightfoot as a Christian Historian of Early Christian Literature.” Christian Scholar’s Review 23: 4 (June 1994). Prelinger, Catherine, ed. Episcopal Women: Gender, Spirituality and Commitment in an American Mainline Denomination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Prichard, Robert W. A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Harrisburg, pa: Morehouse Publishing, 1991. – The Nature of Salvation: Theological Consensus in the Episcopal Church, 1801– 73. Urbana, il: University of Illinois, 1997. Pulker, Edward. We Stand on Their Shoulders: The Growth of Social Concern in Canadian Anglicanism. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1986. Putney, Clifford. “Men and Religion: Aspects of the Church Brotherhood Movement, 1880–1920.” Anglican and Episcopal History 63: 4 (1994). – The New Charismatics: How a Christian Renewal Movement Became Part of the American Religious Mainstream. New York: Harper and Row, 1983. Radner, Ephraim, and George R. Sumner, eds. Reclaiming the Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1993. Ramirez, Bruno. On the Move: French-Canadian and Italian Migrants in the North Atlantic Economy, 1860–1914. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991. Ramsey, A.M. From Gore to Temple: The Development of Anglican Theology between ’Lux Mundi’ and the Second World War, 1889–1939. London: Longmans, 1960. Rawlyk, George A. The Canada Fire: Radical Evangelicalism in British North America, 1775–1812. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. – Champions of the Truth: Fundamentalism, Modernism and the Maritime Baptists. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990. – Ravished by the Spirit: Religious Revivals, Baptists, and Henry Alline. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984. – ed. Aspects of the Evangelical Experience in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997.

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299 Bibliography – The Canadian Protestant Experience, 1760–1990. Burlington, on: Welch Publishing, 1990. Rawlyk, George A., and Mark A. Noll, eds. Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. Reed, John Shelton. ‹A Female Movement’: The Feminization of Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Catholicism.” Anglican and Episcopal History 57 (1988). Reid, Daniel G., et al. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downer’s Grove, il: InterVarsity Press, 1990. Reisner, M.E. Strangers and Pilgrims: A History of the Anglican Diocese of Quebec, 1793–1993. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1995. Renalds, J.S. Canon Christopher of St Aldate’s, Oxford. Abingdon, England: The Abbey Press, 1967. Renfer, Rudolph A. “A History of Dallas Theological Seminary.” phd diss., University of Texas, 1959. – “Giant in the Church, The Life and Ministry of W.H. Griffith Thomas.” Sunday School Times 103: 38 (September 23, 1961). Reynolds, John. Evangelicals at Oxford, 1735–1871. Oxford, 1953. Ribuffo, Leo P. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983. Roof, Wade Clark. Community and Commitment: Religious Plausibility in a Liberal Protestant Church. New York: Elsevier, 1978. Rosenau, Pauline. Postmodernism and the Social Sciences. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1991. Ross, Dorothy. “Historical Consciousness in Nineteenth Century America.” American Historical Review 89 (1984). Rowell, Geoffrey. The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism. New York: Oxford, 1983. Rudolph, Susan Hoeber, and James Piscatori, eds. Transnational Religion and Fading States. Boulder, co: Westview Press, 1997. Ruggle, Richard, ed. Some Men and Some Controversies. Erin, on: Porcepic Press, 1974. Rutherdale, Myra. “Revisiting Colonization Through Gender: Anglican Missionary Women in the Pacific Northwest and the Arctic, 1860–1945.” bc Studies 104 (winter 1994). Russell, C. Allyn. Voices of American Fundamentalism. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976. Russell, G.W.E. A Short History of the Evangelical Movement. London, 1915. Sack, Daniel, “Reaching the ‘Up-And-Outers’: Sam Shoemaker and Modern Evangelicalism,” Anglican and Episcopal History 64:1 (1995). Samuel, D.N., ed. The Evangelical Succession in the Church of England. Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1979.

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300 Bibliography Sandeen, Ernest. The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Sawatsky, Ronald G. “’Looking for That Blessed Hope’: The Roots of Fundamentalism in Canada, 1870–1914.” phd diss., University of Toronto, 1985. Schnorrenberg, Barbara Brandon. “Set Apart: Alabama Deaconesses, 1864– 1915.” Anglican and Episcopal History 63 (1994). Schurman, Donald M. A Bishop and His People: John Travers Lewis and the Diocese of Ontario, 1862–1902. Kingston, on: Anglican Church of Canada, Ontario Diocesan Synod, 1991. Scott, David. “Anglican and Episcopal Theologians: A Usable Past for Postliberal Theology.” Anglican and Episcopal History 56: 1 (March 1987). Sheils, W.J., and Sheridan Gilley, eds. A History of Religion in Britain. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Silk, Mark. Spiritual Politics: Religion and America since World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Smith, Allan. Canada – An American Nation? Essays on Continentalism, Identity, and the Canadian Frame of Mind. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War. New York: Harper and Row, 1957. Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Spong, Bishop John Shelby. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture. New York: Harper and Row, 1991. Stackhouse, John G., Jr. Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Stephenson, A.M.G. Anglicanism and the Lambeth Conferences. Windsor on: Canterbury College, University of Windsor, 1978. Stott, John. Fundamentalism and Evangelism. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1956. Stott, John, and David L. Edwards. Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988. Stout, Harry S. The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 1991. Stunt, T.C.F. “John Henry Newman and the Evangelicals.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21: 1 (1970). Swatos, William H. Into Denominationalism: The Anglican Metamorphosis. Storrs, ct: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1979. Symondson, Anthony, ed. The Victorian Crisis of Faith. London: S.P.C.K., 1970. Szasz, Ferenc Morton. The Divided Mind of Protestant America, 1880–1930. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Taylor, Charles. The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, on: Anansi, 1991.

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301 Bibliography – Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. Thompson, John Herd, and Stephen J. Randall. Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. Toon, Peter. The Development of Doctrine in the Church. Grand Rapids, mt: Eerdmans, 1979. – Evangelical Theology, 1833–1856: A Response to Tractarianism. Atlanta, ga; John Knox Press, 1979. Toon, Peter, and Michael Smout. John Charles Ryle, Evangelical Bishop. Swengel, pa: Reiner Publications, 1976. Toulmin, Stephen. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Trollinger, William Vance Jr. God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. Turner, James. Without God, without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America. Baltimore, md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Underwood, Brian. Faith at the Frontiers: Anglican Evangelicals and Their Countrymen Overseas. London: Commonwealth and Continental Church Society, 1974. Valverde, Mariana. The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991. Vance, Norman. The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Van Die, Marguerite. An Evangelical Mind: Nathaniel Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839–1918. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. Vernon, C.W. The Old Church in the New Dominion: The Story of the Anglican Church in Canada. London: spck, 1929. Vipond, Mary. “Canadian National Consciousness and the Formation of the United Church of Canada.” Bulletin of the United Church of Canada 24 (1975). – “National Consciousness in English-Speaking Canada in the 1920s: Seven Studies.” phd diss., University of Toronto, 1974. Voll, Dieter. Catholic Evangelicalism: The Acceptance of Evangelical Traditions by the Oxford Movement during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. Trans. Veronica Ruffer. London: Faith Press, 1963. Wacker, Grant. Augustus Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness. Macon, ga: Mercer University Press, 1985. – “The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age in American Protestantism, 1880–1910.” Journal of American History 72:1 (1985). Walden, Keith. Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

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302 Bibliography Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movements in Christian History. Maryknoll, ny: Orbis Books, 1996. Ward, W.R. The Protestant Evangelical Awakening. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Webber, Robert E. Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. Waco, tx: Word Books, 1985. Weber, Timothy. Living in the Shadown of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism. Grand Rapids, mi: Zondervan, 1983. Welch, Claude. Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century. 2 vols. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1972, 1985. Welsby, P.A. A History of the Church of England, 1945–1980. Oxford, 1984. Westfall, William. “The Church of England in Victorian Canada: An Ongoing Establishment.” Unpublished paper given at conference, Religion and Public Life in Canada, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, May 1999. – Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. White, William Charles. Canon Cody of St Paul’s Church. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1953. Wilson, Timothy, ed. All One Body: Bishops of the Anglican Church Speak of Christian Faith and Action in Different Parts of the World Today. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1969. Wingate, Andrew, ed. Anglicanism: A Global Communion. New York: Church Publishers, 1998. Woolverton, John Frederick. Colonial Anglicanism in North America. Detroit, mi: Wayne State University Press, 1984. – “Toward an Overview of Episcopal Church History.” Anglican and Episcopal History 62: 4 (1993). Wright, Robert. A World Mission: Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for a New International Order, 1918–1939. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991. Wuthnow, Robert. Christianity in the Twenty-First Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. – The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1988. Zabriskie, Alexander Clinton, ed. Anglican Evangelicalism. Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1943. – “The Rise and Main Characteristics of the Anglican Evangelical Movement in England and America.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 12 (1943).

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Index

American Missal, 173–5 American Revolution, 21–2 Anderson, Benedict, 18 Anglican Church of Canada (acc), 3, 26, 58; the English Church and, 24– 5; evangelical revivals and, 24; and immigration, 25, 35; loss of establishment status, 26–8 Anglican Essentials Conference, 220–1 Anglicanism, 20; and fundamentalism, 105–6. See also North American Anglicanism anglo-catholicism: in the Anglican Church of Canada, 25–6, 146–7; in the Protestant Episcopal Church, 29–30, 150; ritualism, 26, 54, 147; tractarianism, 13, 14, 26, 29. See also Manning, William T. apologetics, 92 Bethune, George Washington, 28

Bibby, Reginald, 3, 218 Bible Union of China, 98 Book of Common Prayer, 11 broad church Anglicanism. See liberal Anglicanism Bushnell, Horace, 162 Caroline Divines, 12 Charles I, 12 Charles Briggs case, 71 Chicago Quadrilateral, 75 Chorley, E. Clowes, 135–7, 149 church establishment, 22; decline of in North America, 8, 26–7, 28–30 Church of England, 10–14; evangelical revival in, 13 Church of England in Canada. See Anglican Church of Canada Church of Scotland, 27 church parties, 146–50; conflict, 24–6, 34, 69–70, 78, 136, 179–80, 216–17; definitions of, 9; Dyson Hague and, 40–1 Civil War, 70 clergy reserves, 27

Cody, Henry John, 15, 40, 148, 181, 218, 223; on Christ, 192–4; Christian scholarship, 192–3, 204– 5; churchmanship, 184, 186–7; and the Conservative Party, 201–2; and dilemmas of identity, 208–9; early career and influence, 184–6; early years, 182–3; on fascism in Italy, 203, 206; on the future, 201; growing conservatism during the 1930s, 205; on immortality, 193–4; international relations, 189; last years, 207; as a liberal evangelical, 187, 198–9; his liberal orthodoxy, 194; on miracles, 192; on modernity, 196–7, 199–200; on nationalism, 188–9; pastoral content of his sermons, 181, 183, 192, 194– 8; problems with activist faculty members, 202, 203–4; on the Resurrection, 191–2; on Roman Catholicism, 186–7; on

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304 Index secularization, 204–5; and secularization in Canada, 207–8; on “socialized individualism,” 190; society and politics, 187–8; spirituality, 198; student days, 183; University of Toronto, 201– 8; on worldliness, 199– 200; and World War I, 188–9, 190; and World War II, 189–90 Colenso, John, 31 comprehensiveness, ideology and myth of, 69–70, 75–7, 135–6, 210, 212–13, 215–17 Cranmer, Thomas, 7, 11 Cronyn, Benjamin, 26 Cummins, Alexander Griswold, 117 Cummins, George David, 64 Darwinism, 68 de Soyres, John, 51 dilemmas of identity, 211 dispensationalism, 59 diversity, 65 DuBose, William Porcher, 109–10 ecumenical movement, 77 ecumenism, 45, 77, 142–3 Edward Tudor, 11 Eliot, George, 15 Elizabeth I, 11 emergent evolution. See personalism English and Irish migration, 25 English evangelicals, 59 Episcopal Church. See Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States Essays and Reviews (1860), 14 evangelical Anglicanism, 9, 13, 28, 30, 73, 135; in the Anglican Church of Canada, 24, 72–4, 146–9;

and liberal Anglicanism, 175–6; and lowchurch Anglicanism, 153–4; in the Protestant Episcopal Church, 28–9, 70–1, 149–51. See also Cody, Henry John; Grammer, Carl E.; Hague, Dyson; Thomas, William Henry Griffith Evangelical Alliance, 38 evangelical catholicism, 120 Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 155, 165 Evangelical Group Movement, 167 Evangelical Theology College, 79, 101 evolution, 67 Fahey, Curtis, 8, 23, 217 fragmentation and modernity, 10, 219–20, 222 fundamentalism, 94, 103– 4; American fundamentalism, 59–60. See also Hague, Dyson; Manning, William T.; Thomas, William Henry Griffith fundamentalist-modernist crisis (conflicts), 98–9, 104, 124–6, 138, 166 Fundamentals, The, 50 Glorious Revolution, 12 Grammer, Carl E., 15, 150, 152, 218; on anglocatholicism, 172–5, 177; on the Bible, 164; and Calvinism, 156; on Christ, 163, 168–70; on comprehensiveness, 176; conversion, 154; death of, 178; early years, 154– 7; and evangelicalism, 166–8; on faith and trust, 161; fundamentalistmodernist conflict, 166;

his historical identity, 153, 156, 176–8; identification with the modern world, 159; on the immanence and transcendence of God, 162–3; low-church influences, 161; on miracles, 159–60; modernist leanings, 163– 4, 179; modernity, 176; on naturalism, 160–1; on neo-orthodoxy, 164–5; personalism and mysticism, 169–70, 171; Romanticism, influence of, 162; self-identity, 159, 165–6, 172, 178–9; social progress, 164; spiritual evolution, 155–7; spiritual experience and reason, 156, 161–2, 170–1; tensions within his thought, 171–2, 187–9; union with the Presbyterian Church, 175; use of the past, 177 Great Depression, 139 Green, Michael, 220–1 Hague, Dyson, 15, 36–7, 147, 218; on atonement, 50–1; character, 40–1; early life and career, 38– 41; on ecumenism, 45–6; faith, basis of, 41–2; on faith, reason, and scholarship, 51–2; and fundamentalism, 58–9; the future of evangelical Anglicanism, 37–41; higher criticism, 50; historical consciousness, 58–60; Hymn Book revisions, 44–5; last months, 61; on liberal doctrinal innovations and anglo-catholicism, 45, 49–50, 54–5; liturgical reform, 44; on modernity, 48–9; prayer, 47; Prayer Book, 42–4; on premillennialism, 57– 8; religious identity, 46;

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305 Index response to modern uncertainty, 53; revival and renewal, calls for, 52–3, 55–6; social reform, views of, 47–8; spiritual lineage, 39–40, 59–60; spirituality and activism, 46–8; spirituality of history, 56–7; ThirtyNine Articles, 43; on voluntary organizations, 47; written work, 39 Henry VIII, 11 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, 219 high-church Anglicanism. See anglo-catholicism historical consciousness, 67–9, 210–12, 224 Hobart, John Henry, 29, 122 Hockin, William, 4 Hooker, Richard, 11 Hopkins, John Henry Jr, 71 Hunt, Leslie, 61–2 Huntington, William Reed, 75 Hutchison, William, 158 identity, 18–19, 69; evolution of Anglo-Canadian identities, 145, 215; and history, 69 Inglis, Charles, 20, 22 institutional growth, 24 Jarrett, Devereux, 24 Jewel, John, 11 Keswick Movement, 46. See also Victorious Life Movement Kew, Richard, 4 Kip, William, 75 Lambeth Conference of 1888, 75 Lambeth Quadrilateral, 75–6 latitudinarians, 12. See also liberal Anglicanism Laud, William, 7

Law, William, 12 liberal Anglicanism, 31, 157–9, 178; in the Anglican Church of Canada, 146–9; and evangelical Anglicanism, 167–8; and high-church Anglicanism, 175; and low-church Anglicanism, 153–4; in the Protestant Episcopal Church, 71–2, 149–50. See also Cody, Henry John; Grammer, Carl E. liberal-conservative divisions, 69, 143 liberal protestantism and evangelicalism, 158–9 low-church Anglicanism. See evangelical anglicanism; Grammar, Carl E. Lowry, Rev. Charles W., 165 Loyalism, 22, 23 McElheran, Robert, 146–8 Manning, William T., 16, 107, 146, 216–17; on the Bible and tradition, 107– 8, 125–6; bishop of the diocese of New York, 115–17; Christian unity, 113–15, 129–32; comprehensiveness, 132–4; on conversion, 118; death, 132; dilemmas of modernity and identity, 124, 134; William Porcher Dubose, influence of, 109–10; early years, 108– 9; evangelical piety, influence of, 123–4; and fundamentalism, 124, 126–9; Bishop John Henry Hobart, 122–3; on holiness, 121; last years, 132; modernism, opposition to, 125–7; modernity of his spirituality, 117, 122, 124; in New York, 111; on the Oxford Movement, 128; reunion with the Catholic

Church, 114; on the sacraments, 119–20; on social-political issues, 120–1; spiritual crisis of the interwar years, 129, 131; on spiritual renewal and revivals, 110, 118–19, 121; union with the Presbyterian Church, opposition to, 130–1; World War I, 112 Maritime provinces, 22, 26, 147 Marsden, George, 59, 66, 94 Martin, David, 7 Mary Tudor, 11 Matheson, S.P., 40 Maurice, F.D., 70 migration, 140 modernism, religious, 158 modernity, 8, 18, 28, 30, 33, 67, 211–12; Anglicanism and, 6–7, 30–1; and antimodernism, 190–1; and cultural disembedding, 6, 33; and dilemmas of identity, 211–12; and fundamentalism, 80, 104–5; and postmodernity, 212–13; and progress, 211 modernization, 66 Moore, Lawrence, 66 Morgan, C. Lloyd, 169 Mullin, Robert, 8 National Council of Churches, 138 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 96, 210 North American Anglicanism, 14, 21–3, 31–3; Canadian-American comparisons, 35–6, 59, 62, 64–5, 74, 137, 145–6; contemporary renewal movements in, 4–5, 218–24; and the global Anglican Communion, 218, 222–3; identities and establishment

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306 Index status, 215–17; institutional growth, 34–5, 65, 72; and modernity, 213– 16; and women in parish life, 32–4, 72, 140–1 O’Meara, Thomas, 39, 84 open frontier, 35 Oxford Movement, 13, 25, 29, 128 personalism, 169, 170 Pilcher, C.V., 148 pluralism, 77, 132 Pountney, Michael, 4, 221 premillennialism, 57 Presbyterian Church, 130 Pritchard, Robert, 31–2 Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (pecusa), 3, 28, 140–1; contemporary situation, 4–5; evangelical revivals in, 24, 28; growth at the end of the nineteenth century, 70– 2; origins of, 22 Protestant Episcopal Divinity School (Toronto). See Wycliffe College protestant establishment, 137–40, 143–4; in nineteenth-century protestant Ontario, 60; and protestant extremists, 138. See also secularization protestant evangelicalism, 158 protestant modernism, 158 Rainsford, William S., 70, 110–11 Raven, C.E., 169 Reformed Episcopal Church (rec), 9, 64; secession from the Episcopal Church, 70–1 ritualism. See anglocatholicism

Robinson, Harry, 221 role of women, 32 Seabury, Samuel, 22 search for the “historical Jesus,” 68 secularization, 5–6, 8, 27, 66–7, 144–5, 212–14, 219–20 Simcoe, Governor John Graves, 22 Smith, Al, 139 Smith, Sidney Earle, 205–6 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (spck), 25 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (spg), 25 Steen, Frederick, 40 Strachan, John, 20 student “unsettlement” during the 1920s, 148 Taylor, W.E., 147 Thirty-Nine Articles, 11 Thomas, William Henry Griffith, 15, 79, 218; Bible Union of China, 98; early life, 80–2; and ecumenism, 83–4; in England, 83–4; eschatology, 100; on evolution, 97; fundamentalism, 97–8, 99–102; on German Christianity, 96; on the Holy Spirit, 82–3, 85, 89, 91–4; interdenominational cooperation, 83; and the Keswick–Victorious Life movement, 81, 87–8, 90–1, 102; last years, 103; later writing, 82; missions, 98–9; modernity, 80, 99; move to Wycliffe College, 84–5; as a pastor, 82; personal disaffection at Wycliffe College, 85–6, 94–5; popular audiences and,

88; on scriptural authority, 88–9, 96, 101; on the search for the historical Jesus, 87; self-identity, 102–3; spiritual experience and reason, 89; Warfield, Benjamin, disagreements with, 91–3; work outside the Anglican Church, 85; World War I, influence of, 86, 88, 96–7 Thomas, Winifred, 85 Toronto evangelicals, 73 tractarianism. See anglocatholicism travail, 138, 139, 141 Trinity College, 73 Underhill, Frank, 202 United Church of Canada (ucc), 142–3 Victorious Life Movement, 81, 90. See also Keswick Movement Virginia Theological Seminary, 152 Warfield, Benjamin, 91–3 Westfall, William, 8 White, Roger, 4 William of Orange, 12 World Christian Fundamentals Association (wcfa), 79, 101 World Council of Churches, 133 World War I, 96 Wuthnow, Robert, 219, 222 Wycliffe College, 15, 73, 146–9 Yeats, William Butler, 3 Young, George Paxton, 183