The American High Church Tradition - Parts I and II

John Henry Hobart

When I check the stats for Anglicans Ablaze, I make a note of articles in which readers are interested but which the links are no longer working. In some cases the page no longer exists or the article has been removed. In a few cases the website has been taken down or otherwise is no longer accessible. Jordan Lavendar’s articles on Protestant High Church Anglicanism are still online on the Hackney Hub. For those who may be interested, I am posting links to two of Jordan’s articles on the American High Church tradition, “The American High Church Tradition (Part One)” and “The American High Church Tradition (Part II)” I am also posting a link to the Hackney Hub’s home page. Jordan took a break from blogging in 2014, coming to a point in his life where he was reevaluating a number of his earlier opinions and other demands on his time were making blogging more difficult for him and were affecting the quality of his articles. I do recommend that readers take a look at his articles.

In his first article “The American High Church Tradition (Part One)” Jordan refers to the Puritans in New England. While the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and established a settlement in what was then called Northern Virginia were separatists, the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony were not. They belonged to a party within the Church of England that sought to further reform the English Church. They had suffered persecution at the hands of Archbishop William Laud and established a colony in the New England as a safe haven from this persecution. They embarked on a experiment in church government and adopted a Congregationalist polity.

Archbishop Laud was aware of their colony and threatened to appoint a bishop for New England to bring them into line. However, he never carried out his threat.

The English Civil War would halt the Puritan emigration to New England. A significant number of the Massachusetts colonists returned to England to join the Parliamentary forces. Oliver Cromwell and the New Army would eventually defeat Charles I and the Royalists. They established Congregationalism as the new form of church government for the Church of England. Parliament had already abolished episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer .

The Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony may be considered “non-conformists” in so far as they did not go along with Laud’s reforms of the Church of England during the reign of Charles I.

After the restoration of the English monarchy and the ascension of Charles II to the English throne the Massachusetts Bay Colony rejected Charles’ attempts to make the Church of England the established church of the colony. This would have replaced the Congregationalist polity of the colony’s churches with an Episcopal polity and required the use of the Book of Common Prayer. In this regard they may be considered Non-Conformists or Dissenters along with the English Puritan clergy who refused to accept the restoration of episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer in England.

After the Restoration the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to experience divisions over religion as more non-Puritans settled in the colony. The High Church congregations to which Jordan refers in his first article were congregations of these non-Puritan colonists.