Today, we commemorated the consecration of Samuel Seabury as the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in America. As I was preparing for this evening’s Eucharist, the appropriateness of his story for our current situation struck me. Before the American Revolution, Anglicans in the colonies were under the authority of the Bishop of London, which meant that all clergy for the American church came from England, and there was no direct episcopal care of the faithful in the colonies. On top of that, the Book of Common Prayer was the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, which included prayers for the king.

In my old parish in Newburyport, MA, we had the prayer book of the priest who served that parish during the Revolution, Edward Bass, who would later become the first bishop of Massachusetts. He crossed out all of the prayers to the king in his prayer book and wrote in prayers for the Congress. In New England, Anglicans like him were viewed with suspicion by most revolutionaries, because they tended to be supporters of the crown.

After the peace was signed, Seabury was sent by a group of Connecticut clergy to seek episcopal ordination in England. After waiting a year, he abandoned his efforts in England, because he would not vow allegiance to the British crown, and the English bishops would not consecrate him without that vow. So he went to Scotland, where the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church were not kindly disposed to English rule. They agreed to consecrate him if he would agree to seek the American Church’s adoption of the Scottish Book of Common Prayer.

From the perspective of the twenty-first century, a vow of allegiance to the British crown seems a minor thing to hold up the consecration of a bishop. I wonder what Anglicans in the twenty-fourth century will make of our current controversies?