Daily Reading for July 17 • William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1836
In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, many believed that the Church of England was doomed to become extinct in the New World. . . . William White, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, was one of the few who believed that the pattern of Christian life established in the Book of Common Prayer could have a place in the new nation. In 1787, he went to England and was consecrated a Bishop for Pennsylvania by English bishops. He set to work with Bishop Seabury of Connecticut and others to establish an Anglican Church in the United States. That a united Episcopal Church did indeed emerge out of the conflict is due in no small part to White’s judicious wisdom and perseverance.
White was not by temperament an evangelist. He protested against the notion that a bishop should spend time to travel on the grounds that it was “inconsistent with the expectation of a learned episcopate” and “oppressive on a bishop advanced in years.” Furthermore he noted, “a bishop will generally have a family, to whom a reasonable portion of his time will be as much due, as are any of his services to the church.”
But perhaps such a cool and dispassionate approach was exactly what the Episcopal Church needed in those early days. If the Connecticut clergy thought laity should be excluded from the government of the church while Virginians were inclined to place church government in the hands of the laity, White could reason with both and find a way to settle the differences.
From the introduction to William White in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org