A new bishop, a new building, a new beginning
This is the second of an occasional series about St. James Episcopal Church of New London, which will celebrate its 300th anniversary in 2025.
IN 1783, SAMUEL SEABURY boarded a ship for England, seeking consecration as an Episcopal bishop. He’d been selected by a group of Connecticut clergymen for this honor. However, Samuel must have been a worried man. He was setting out on a dangerous voyage in an era when Atlantic crossings frequently ended in death, either by shipwreck or disease.
Ocean passages were expensive, and there were political problems, too, but if St. James Episcopal Church in New London, or indeed the Episcopal Church in America, were to survive, this journey must be undertaken.
Only a bishop could ordain priests and confirm new communicants into full church membership, so without a bishop, the new Episcopal Church in America would wither and die. Only a group of three bishops could consecrate a new bishop, and there were no Church of England bishops in the British colonies or in the new United States. Furthermore, the Order of Consecration required a pledge of loyalty to the crown, something a citizen from a country that had just waged war against the monarchy couldn’t promise. The English might not be in the mood to grant an exception.
Samuel was born in North Groton (Ledyard) in 1729. His father was rector of St. James Episcopal Church from 1730 to 1742. After studying at Yale and Edinburgh Medical School, Samuel followed his father’s career path as Church of England missioner, financed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, serving in churches in New Jersey and New York.
In the lead-up to the Revolution and throughout the conflict, he’d been a vocal supporter of the crown. He engaged in a spirited pamphlet war with Alexander Hamilton on the issue of independence, was arrested
and imprisoned for his Tory stance, and served as chaplain to the British army in New York. He must have found it galling to go to the British hat-in-hand as an American citizen.
Meantime, in New London, there was a brick-and-mortar problem to solve. In 1781, St. James Church, situated on the Parade, had been burned to the ground during Benedict Arnold’s attack on the city. Sifting through the ashes a month after the arson, all that could be salvaged were the nails that had held it together; decades later a church historian would characterize the mood at the time as “cast down but not destroyed.”
On Easter Monday, 1783, after the war was over, members held a meeting to make plans for a new building.
They needed a builder, a new site, and, most of all, money, which was in critically short supply. They sold the old site to New London for the expansion of State Street, and selected land on the corner of Church and Main (now Eugene O’Neill Drive). Progress was slow, but by 1787, the Greek Revival-style church was complete and ready to be consecrated. Very likely, it was the first Episcopal church in America to be officially dedicated. Bishop Samuel Seabury was there to officiate.
Samuel had spent two maddening years in England trying to persuade authorities to waive the pledge of loyalty requirement, and had finally gone to Scotland where no such oath was expected. He was consecrated in Aberdeen on November 14, 1784; in November, 2024, St. James Church in New London will celebrate the 240th anniversary of this seminal event. In 1787, two more Americans were ordained bishops, making the American church fully functioning and independent.
Samuel and his parishioners had come a long way.
The post-war economy was terrible, but soon the whaling industry would bring new prosperity to
New London and growth to the church. Samuel died in 1796, a revered leader who’d sought consecration under daunting circumstances.
His perseverance had saved the church. His body lies in Hallam Chapel in St. James, and a stained-glass window in the sanctuary depicts his consecration ceremony.
Unlike many Loyalists who moved to Canada or England after the war, Samuel stayed in America. The reason for his decision seems to have been the hard-won opportunity to serve his God and church. I admire him for somehow finding the grace to set aside bitter disappointment and nurture the spiritual life of the country he’d once opposed.