This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGES 91forms of ritual and clerical dress, patterned self-consciously on medieval models.Through the efforts of the English priest John Mason Neale and of members ofthe Camden Society of Cambridge, high church Anglicans not only examined thearchitecture and rituals of the pre-Reformation church but also advocated thewearing of vestments (e.g., chasubles and cassocks) that had fallen into disuse inthe seventeenth century. A new interest in Gothic architecture similarly emergedin the 1840s, when U.S. architects such as Richard Upjohn of Boston began tobuild impressive buildings—Trinity Church, New York (completed in 1846) beingthe most notable—in that style. 24Although William Augustus Muhlenberg did not consider himself Anglo-Catholic and was opposed to elaborate rituals of “the Romish type,” he wasresponsible for introducing a number of liturgical innovations in the places wherehe served in the 1830s and 1840s. Muhlenberg stressed the need for beauty inworship. This emphasis included the placing of candles and flowers on the altaras well as the hanging of evocative images of the Virgin Mary and of the crucifiedJesus in the nave and sanctuary of the church. 25 Muhlenberg’s liturgical concernswere also closely related to his hope that the Episcopal Church would becomemore accessible and attractive to ordinary Americans—an idea clearly expressedin his 1853 memorial. 26The modest aspirations of the first proponents of ritualism notwithstanding, theincreasing presence and visibility of such innovations within the EpiscopalChurch became a significant source of conflict in the 1860s. Over the next twodecades, Anglo-Catholics gradually introduced a host of liturgical changes intoworship in their parishes and dioceses: stone altars (rather than wooden tables),eucharistic vestments, crucifixes, elevation of the communion bread and wine,bowing and genuflection, prayers to saints and prayers for the dead, incense, choirprocessions, and the like. Whereas Anglo-Catholics believed that such practiceshad been commonplace in the mid-sixteenth century and had not been offensiveto the earliest English reformers, evangelical Episcopalians and even some olderhigh churchmen were shocked by what they regarded as a “Romanizing” trend.In tandem with their liturgical objections, the opponents of ritualism also fearedthat the rising tide of Catholicism in their denomination was part of a largerconspiracy, inspired by the papacy, to undermine American religious and politicalliberties. Thus, when Charles Pettit McIlvaine, the evangelical bishop of Ohio,spoke out against ritualism in 1864, he was concerned about far more than theway churches were furnished or clergy were dressed. The Anglo-Catholics’ plan“to promote a taste for a ceremonial sensuous religion,” he declared, was “thevery essence of Popery.” 27This controversy further escalated in 1866, when John Henry Hopkins, thepresiding bishop of the church, published a small book (bearing on its cover theprovocative image of a smoking censer) entitled The Law of Ritualism. In anattempt to resolve the dispute between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, Hopkinsaffirmed that many of the liturgical practices desired by the ritualists had beenlegally mandated by the church when the first English Prayer Book was published