 William White, (1748 - 1836-07-17), Bishop, Episcopal Church, USA, Oil Painting at the bequest of William White. Public Domain. Source: https://anglicanhistory.org/usa/wwhite/ Changes in the social and cultural circumstances of post-revolutionary America required religious groups that had been closely linked to Great Britain to become denominations capable of self-government in a new nation. Anglicans were especially involved in a process of institutional reorganization. The American Revolution had brought their denominations to near total collapse. Thousands had fled to Canada and England, and patriots who were ashamed of the loyalist taint left the church. The remaining church leaders were forced to preserve their distinctive theological and liturgical Anglican features and still shed those features that closely tied them to the Church of England. William White, the rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, who had worked with many of the “founding fathers” like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin emulated their political skills within the councils of the church. He published in 1782 The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States which set forth ideas on how the Anglican Church might reconstitute itself. He proposed a three-tiered system of church government. Conventions would be composed of clergy and laity making decisions at each level: local, regional, and national. All three levels would operate their powers in a democratic fashion. He proposed retaining the historic orders of bishop, priest, and deacon. In 1783, Anglican conventions in Maryland and Pennsylvania accepted White’s principles and the concept of the “Protestant Episcopal Church” which was to conform as closely as possible to the Church of England. Delegates in New York and New Jersey passed similar resolutions. The delegates then agreed to the calling of the church’s “general convention” in Philadelphia in September 1785. The establishment of a bishop was still controversial because of its association with the monarchy. Two former colonists went to London for ordination, but they could not be ordained because of their inability to swear allegiance to the crown. White proposed having three priests laying hands upon American ordinands because earliest Christian communities recognized this procedure as valid.  Samuel Seabury by Ralph Earl 1785 - Public Domain. Source: https://npg.si.edu It was a high church Anglican like Samuel Seabury, a former missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) in New York, to argue strongly that the episcopate was to be the foundation of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He strongly stressed that bishops were successors of the apostles and represented one of the fundamental links to the first-century church. As a result, a small group of Connecticut priests met secretly in Woodbury, Connecticut in March 1783 to reorganize the church in Connecticut. In addition, they chose two priests as candidates for the episcopate: Jeremiah Leaming and Samuel Seabury. When Leaming refused his selection, Seabury quickly accepted it and set sail for London in search of three bishops—the minimum required by canon law to consecrate him as a bishop for America.
Since Seabury could not take an oath of allegiance, he could not be consecrated as a bishop. After a year of unproductive negotiations with the Church of England, Seabury, determined to be consecrated as a bishop, traveled northward to meet with bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Since Presbyterianism, not Anglicanism, was the legally established faith in Scotland, the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church agreed to consecrate Seabury. He had to sign an agreement to make every effort to have the liturgical practices and beliefs of the Episcopal Church of Scotland adopted by the American Episcopal Church. Seabury’s consecration took place in Aberdeen, Scotland on November 14, 1784. He returned to the United States in the spring of 1785 and immediately summoned a convocation of the clergy in Connecticut and ordained four deacons. Many prospective ordinands sought ordination from Seabury, but the Episcopal Church of America was divided between followers of Seabury and his high church practices and White and his low church members who wanted more lay participation in the governance of the church. Church matters were complicated by the fact that the Church of England disapproved of Seabury’s consecration by schismatic bishops in Scotland. In late September and early October of 1785, the lay clerical representatives from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia met at Christ Church in Philadelphia for the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church. The churches in North Carolina and Georgia were too small to attend. No one attended from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island because Bishop Seabury was not allowed to preside. In a 10-day meeting the convention under the leadership of William White and William Smith accomplished the following:
The General Convention met again in two sessions in 1786. The consecration of Seabury continued to divide the Episcopalians. His episcopal orders were recognized, but he was prevented from exercising ecclesiastical authority outside of Connecticut. Finally, Parliament passed legislation that allowed the archbishops of Canterbury and York to consecrate candidates for the episcopate who were not British citizens. The convention then sent Samuel Provoost, the rector of Trinity Church in New York and White to travel to London to be consecrated by four English bishops on February 4, 1787. To avoid Episcopalians from splitting into two denominations, White and Seabury reached a compromise. At the next General Convention in 1789 in Philadelphia the convention recognized the legitimacy of Seabury’s Scottish consecration. Another compromise at the 1789 convention was the creation of a separate “House of Bishops,” which would have a partial veto over the House of Deputies which included the clerical and lay delegates at a convention. This move gave the bishops powers similar to those of Anglican prelates and had the support of followers of White and Seabury. According to historians, this process was similar to the drafting of the United States Constitution because it was designed to reflect republican political ideas and balanced the competing interests of various political ideas. In September 1789, the second session of the convention made further concessions to Seabury and his followers. It increased the bishops’ veto power over the House of Deputies, and it gave the bishops the right to originate and to reject legislation. Delegates from all the states formally approved both the church’s constitution and canons. It also adopted a final version of the American Book of Common Prayer and made its use obligatory. When the General Convention adjourned in October 1789, the various state churches finally achieved a measure of organizational unity.
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