The Seeds of Discord: An English Church Established in Boston

Abstract

Forty years after the history-making events at Lexington and Concord, John Adams wrote to Jedidiah Morse, a geographer and historian as well as a Congregational minister, remarking strongly that the episcopacy question had been a lively and divisive issue at the time of the Revolution.¹ Adams asked Morse rhetorically, ‘Where is the man to be found at this day, when we see Methodistical bishops, bishops of the church of England, and bishops, archbishops, and Jesuits of the church of Rome, with indifference, who will believe that the apprehension of Episcopacy contributed fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the attention, not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common people, and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional authority of parliament over the colonies?’² The former president of the United States was certain that ‘The objection was not merely to the office of bishop, though even that was dreaded, but to the authority of parliament, on which it must be founded’.³ Continuing, Adams remarked, ‘But if parliament can erect dioceses and appoint bishops, they may introduce the whole hierarchy, establish tithes, forbid marriages and funerals, establish religions, forbid Dissenters, make schism heresy, impose penalties extending to life and limb as well as to liberty and property’.⁴