The Consecration of Samuel Seabury, First Bishop of Connecticut

Today the Church commemorates the consecration of Samuel Seabury in 1784 by the Scottish Episcopal Church, through which the Episcopal Church in the United States received its first Bishop.

As the War of Independence drew to its close, Anglican congregations in America faced a future they could not secure for themselves. Their Priests could preach, baptize, and celebrate the Eucharist. They could not ordain the clergy who would succeed them. For generations, candidates for holy orders had crossed the Atlantic to receive ordination from English Bishops. Now the churches of an independent country needed Bishops who could serve among them and carry that ministry into another generation.

In March 1783, Connecticut clergy gathered at Woodbury to choose a Bishop. Jeremiah Leaming declined the journey to England, and they turned to Samuel Seabury. He had served as a Priest for thirty years in New Jersey and New York, and fellow clergy commended his learning, ability, and character. His political allegiance made the choice difficult. Seabury had opposed independence and served as a chaplain to British forces; one elector objected to sending a Loyalist refugee. The others believed that he had the best prospect of obtaining consecration. Seabury accepted the charge to seek it and return as their Bishop.

That year he sailed to England. The Bishops there could not consecrate him under the existing law, which required allegiance to the British Crown from those receiving episcopal orders. He had come seeking a Bishop’s ministry for churches that now lived beyond the Crown’s authority. More than a year passed in negotiations. By the late summer of 1784, another winter abroad threatened expense he could ill afford, while a winter crossing would make the voyage home more dangerous.

He now turned to the Scottish Episcopal Church. Its Bishops had preserved their succession after losing their established position, and their congregations had endured laws that severely restricted worship. Priests had faced imprisonment for gathering more than a handful of people. Yet the ministry had continued, and these Bishops could consecrate him without demanding allegiance to the British sovereign. Seabury wrote of his hope that God had sustained their Church through its hardships so that they might now share the episcopate with America.

Seeking consecration in Scotland might endanger the financial support the American clergy received from England. Seabury wanted to protect his fellow Priests’ salaries. His own he was willing to surrender. “I am ready to part with it,” he wrote. The Scottish Bishops agreed to receive him, and he traveled north to Aberdeen.

In Aberdeen, John Skinner had made a chapel in the two upper floors of his house in Longacre. The laws restricting their worship were still in force. Here, on Sunday, November 14, 1784, Robert Kilgour, Arthur Petrie, and John Skinner laid their hands upon Seabury and consecrated him a Bishop in the Church of God. They had examined his testimonials and the request of the Connecticut clergy. Now they entrusted him with the ministry they themselves had received: to guard the faith, ordain ministers, confirm the baptized, and shepherd Christ’s people. Through their hands, the churches waiting across the Atlantic received a Bishop who could continue that work among them.

The following day, Seabury and his consecrators pledged to maintain communion between their churches. They named the Holy Eucharist as the principal bond of Christian unity and asked that their fellowship find expression in the way they celebrated it. The Scottish Bishops commended their Communion service to him. Seabury agreed to examine it in the light of the ancient Church’s worship. If he found it faithful to that inheritance, he would encourage its use through patient persuasion, without compulsion.

Back in Connecticut in 1785, Seabury was received as Bishop by the clergy who had sent him. The following year he recommended a Communion service drawn from the Scottish rite. He also took part in the wider debate over an American Prayer Book. Proposed revisions had omitted the Nicene Creed and removed the language of new birth from the baptismal service. Seabury urged the churches to retain both. He feared that abandoning the Creed would weaken their confession of Christ’s divinity, and that silence about new birth would obscure the gift God bestowed in baptism. The Church entering a new political order was to remain faithful to the life it had received in Christ.

Changes in English law allowed William White and Samuel Provoost to be consecrated in England in 1787. Bishops whose ministries had come through England and Scotland now had to work together. In 1789, representatives of the churches adopted a constitution uniting them under one General Convention. Seabury and White sat together in its House of Bishops. With the clergy and lay representatives in the other house, they completed an American Prayer Book. White later remembered Seabury’s willingness to seek agreement and the Christian spirit he had shown throughout their work.

At Seabury’s urging, the American book drew upon the Scottish prayer of consecration. At the altar, the Priest offered the bread and wine to the Father. He asked God to bless and sanctify the gifts by his Word and Holy Spirit, that those receiving them might partake of Christ’s body and blood. The fellowship pledged at Aberdeen had begun to take form at the altars of congregations far beyond Connecticut.

In An Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Communion, published in 1789, Seabury pleaded with Christians who worshiped devoutly but seldom received the sacrament. He compared those who lamented their spiritual weakness while neglecting Communion to someone who complained of bodily weakness but refused to eat. The life begun in baptism needed nourishment, and Christ gave his body and blood to sustain it.

He was anxious for himself as well as for his people. He feared that negligence in his own ministry might encourage them to neglect Christ’s command. His desire was to lead them to the God of love, into “the arms of the blessed Redeemer,” and to the consolation of the Holy Spirit. He sought their union with Christ and, through Christ, with the Father.

As we give thanks for the consecration of our Church’s first Bishop, let us pray for those who bear that ministry today. May God give them patience to shepherd his people, courage to guard the faith, and love that seeks our growth in Christ. And may we come to the altar with repentance and desire, ready to receive the life God gives and to spend that life in the service of our neighbors.