Matriculation
The Consecration of Samuel Seabury
Gary Hall
Seabury-Western
Septermber 14, 2007
There is some kind
of divine wit at work in the assignment of preaching responsibilities. On
Matriculation Day this school always observes the feast of the Consecration
of Samuel Seabury, normally appointed for November 14, the actual day of
Seabury’s ordination as a bishop. For the third year in a row
it has been my charge to preach at this occasion and to extol a man about
whom I have very mixed feelings. Seabury was a complicated person. He
had studied medicine at Edinburgh, been ordained in England, and had served
as a missionary in Long Island and New Jersey. At the outbreak of the
Revolutionary war he was rector of the parish in Westchester, New York. As
an outspoken Tory and advocate of the British cause, he was imprisoned by
the Continental Army, escaped, and took refuge with the British Army on Long
Island where he became the chaplain of a British infantry regiment. For
the rest of his life he was supported by a pension from the British Army. Let’s
say he was not the poster child of the American Revolution.
So in his politics, Seabury was a fairly conservative man. He was also
unapologetically clericalist in his ecclesiological views: in his contest
with Bishop White over the makeup of the General Convention, Seabury advocated
for a church governed exclusively by bishops and presbyters with no provision
for structural lay authority. Happily for us, he lost that argument. Though
he was a person of undoubted piety and personal rectitude and some pastoral gifts,
Seabury was on the wrong side of almost every political and ecclesiastical question. And
yet we all live, work, study, and pray together at a school which bears his name. Go
figure.
As I say, there is some divine wit working itself out in this. For the
last several years I have found myself straining against this assignment, grumbling
to myself, my wife, my dog, and anyone else who would listen about what a bummer
it is to have to preach about someone like Seabury at our yearly matriculation
service. And then I had a conversation with a priest friend of mine who
said that I shouldn’t grumble so much about Seabury because, in his
own way he was a pioneer of prophetic ecclesiastical disobedience.
Say what? Samuel Seabury a church revolutionary? Sure, my friend
said. In 1784 Seabury went to Lambeth seeking ordination as the first American
bishop, having been elected by the clergy of the Diocese of Connecticut. There
was in England then no provision for the ordination of a bishop who could not
swear allegiance to the crown, so after extensive discussions about amending
the law, Seabury forced the issue by going to Scotland and being consecrated
by nonjuring bishops there. In exchange for that irregular episcopal
ordination, Seabury promised to advocate for the highly Calvinistic Scottish
Eucharistic Prayer in the first American prayer book, a text we were stuck
with exclusively until Services for Trial Use appeared in 1970.
It’s in that spirit
of trans-oceanic renewal that we use the New Zealand Prayer Book tonight.
Now I had always seen this as a bad bargain, but my friend persuaded me
otherwise. What
was Seabury to do? The American church needed a bishop—we had never
had one in North America—and Parliament and the English bishops were content
to delay us indefinitely. By going to Scotland, my friend opined, Seabury
was like Bishop Dewitt and the eleven women he ordained to the priesthood in
Philadelphia in 1974: Samuel Seabury forced a non-canonical theological
issue and confronted the English church with a choice: it could either
disregard us and turn the American church into a virtual replica of the Calvinistic
Scottish church, or it could amend its ordination vows and help grow a partner
church built on the more comprehensive English model. In many ways, Seabury
was a political and theological dinosaur, but in this radical step he was a real
revolutionary. His act of ecclesiastical daring and disobedience opened
the way for an Episcopal Church in the United States which would be both autonomous
and, ultimately, connected to the Church of England. The British relented,
removed the required oath for foreign bishops, and soon Bishops White of
Philadelphia and Provoost of New York were ordained to the episcopate, giving
the American church the three bishops it required for episcopal ordinations.
Now I go into this excursus tonight for three reasons. First, I do so to
repent of the crabby words I have said here in the past about Samuel Seabury. Though
I still think he held extremely hierarchical views about matters of church order,
seeing his Scottish consecration as ecclesiastical disobedience raises him several
notches in my eyes. I am, after all, a product of the Civil Rights and
Anti-War protests of the 1960s. I tend to think of the church as more of
a movement than an institution. So thinking of Samuel Seabury as Eldridge
Cleaver or Abbie Hoffman helps me like him a lot more than seeing him as
a stuffy wannabe English Lord.
And there’s a second reason as well: when you examine it, the actual name for the occasion we celebrate today is “the Consecration of Samuel Seabury.” The church, in its wisdom, has given not his ontological essence but his ordination as a bishop this day in our common calendar. What is sacred about this occasion has less to do with the debatable ideas Seabury had as a church leader than it does with the event which made him a bishop and gave America, if even irregularly, an episcopal ministry. Tonight’s Gospel tells us that “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.” [Matthew 9] The Anglican church in America would not have survived without indigenous bishops, and Seabury’s bold act allowed us not only to ordain clergy but ultimately to organize dioceses and start new congregations. At the heart of our celebration today is an event, one which allowed the liberating ministry of Jesus to go forward in this country. This event forced the issue and opened the way for us as a church to force the theological and liturgical issues of our own day: desegregation of our churches, the ordination of women, openly gay bishops, same sex blessings, and maybe even open communion, to name a few. It is into the education for that liberating ministry of Jesus that many of you here are matriculating tonight.
And that leads me to the third reason we give thanks for the Consecration of
Samuel Seabury. This newly restored chapel, these vestments and academic
regalia, the word matriculation itself—all these connote ideas
of the church as stately, staid, stable, and established. But do not be
misled. The ecclesiastical pomp and circumstance may trick you into believing
that you are being initiated into the fellowship of those who protect the status
quo. But when you begin to see yourself that way, think back to Samuel
Seabury and his ordination as a bishop in the church. Things will never
change if we don not occasionally force the issue. You are being admitted to
a community of people who sometimes do risky, crazy things on behalf of the One
who taught and proclaimed good news and cured every disease and sickness. We
all live and work and teach at a school named after a priest and then bishop
who forced the issue of his own day in the service of a greater good. Samuel
Seabury did that because he knew himself as the servant of some One who forced
his issues on occasion too. May you, as you matriculate, see all this ecclesiastical
finery as your warrant, when emergent occasions arise in your community, world,
and church, to be forcers of God’s issues, too. Amen.