The American Revolution placed Anglican clergy in a unique situation, for on ordination they swore oaths to support the English monarch. Nevertheless, almost half of the colonial Anglican clergy decided to support the Revolution. Emotionally and financially dependent on England, SPG clergy generally became Loyalists; clergy paid directly by parishes typically became Patriots. The vast majority of Anglican lay people supported the Revolutionary cause. More than half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and many of the American military leaders were Anglicans.
During or immediately after the Revolution, the Church of England was disestablished (or deprived of state support) in all colonies in which it had been established. In several meetings held in Philadelphia in the 1780s, lay and clerical delegates from Anglican parishes in most states established a constitution, drafted an American version of the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, and arranged for the American church to secure the consecration of its own bishops in England. The delegates adopted a unitary form of government headed by a General Convention (normally meeting every three years) presided over by a presiding bishop. The Convention consists of a House of Bishops in which all bishops have seats, and a House of Deputies composed of an equal number of clerical and lay delegates.
Dioceses (geographical areas administered by a bishop, divided into self-supporting units called parishes) elect the delegates. Elected bodies of laypeople called vestries govern the parishes and also hire the chief minister, or rector.
The first bishops consecrated—all Patriots—came from Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia. Preceding them was Samuel Seabury the bishop of Connecticut, a Loyalist whose consecration in 1785 at the hands of Scottish bishops was controversial. Following the consecration in 1790 of the president of the College of William and Mary, the “Protestant Episcopal Church” fulfilled its parent church’s mandate that it must have three bishops commissioned in England before it could consecrate its own bishops. These Episcopal bishops immediately began to ordain clergy and to consecrate additional bishops. But many states lacked bishops for years, and from the Revolutionary War until late in the twentieth century, the Episcopal Church suffered from a shortage of clergy.
The reorganized church confronted numerous difficulties. To many Patriots it was, in the memorable words of one Episcopalian, “a piece of baggage left on the shores by the retreating British troops.” In addition, the post-Revolutionary period was a time of decline in American religion, when many denominations—and the Episcopal Church above all—lost members to DEISM. Simultaneously, the church lost many members from its lower economic classes to the more egalitarian and emotional BAPTISTS and Methodists (see METHODISM, NORTH AMERICA). Once intended as an evangelical leaven for Anglicanism, Methodism broke away from the Episcopal Church in 1784.
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