James B. Bell’s A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution, contains a chapter on Samuel and John Adams’ resistance to the appointment of a Church of England bishop for the colonies in the 1760s. The book presents the controversy over the potential appointment of a bishop throughout the century, and it is fascinating to look over the book in whole and see how strident the resistance was. It’s difficult to look at this and not think of the problem the nascent Episcopal Church would find itself in after the Revolution, without a bishop to perform ordinations and confirmations, needing to find a work around with an English church hierarchy which had little incentive to help American Anglicans.
I’ve always thought of this as an example of English disregard for the colonies, but had not previously realized that there was actual American resistance to the idea of an American bishop. And the Adamses were key voices in that resistance. John Adams seems to see the establishment of an American bishop as an event that would inevitably lead to the establishment of canon law within the Colonies, and would lead to the people developing superstition that is incompatible with republican government (Bell 95, citing Adams Papers I: 213-214). Samuel Seabury only manages to become bishop later, when religious pluralism is firmly established in the new United States, and the need for Episcopalians to still have a bishop is existential.
It seems a bit strange on this side of the Revolution to think that they would have feared the establishment of the canon law as a threat to New England Puritanism, but perhaps it was. It’s easy to think that it would have just applied to the more-Anglican colonies, to Virginia and the Carolinas, and that any American bishop would not have had practical jurisdiction in Massachusetts. But that’s not how they would have seen things trending, given Parliament’s derogation of their charters and the passing of the Intolerable Acts.
Perhaps this too has important implications for an original understanding of the First Amendment, if establishment meant ecclesiastical law.
It also makes me wonder about reliance on English institutions. My tour guide for the Inns of Court noted that there were several members of the Inns who were signors of the Declaration of Independence. Of course, being a member was not a prerequisite for being a lawyer in the colonies, with John Adams being a prominent example. But the colonists did not want to take away the rights to “enjoy […] the free exercise of their religion,” (106) and while their efforts to obtain an American bishop were seen as a threat to the religious liberty of other sects within the Colonies, their inability to have one left them reliant on London for episcopal governance–which is something that is key to their exercise.
James B. Bell, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution. Palgrave MacMillan (2008).
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