This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

HOPKINS, JOHN HENRY 223burgh, 1818–23; rector, Trinity Church, Pittsburgh, 1823–31; assistant minister,Trinity Church, Boston, 1831–32; bishop, diocese of Vermont, 1832–68; rectorof St. Paul’s Church, Burlington, Vt., 1832–65; presiding bishop of the EpiscopalChurch, 1865–68.A bishop, high church leader, and notable proslavery advocate, John HenryHopkins was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1792. When he was eight years old, heemigrated with his family to the United States, settling near Philadelphia. He latermoved to Pittsburgh as a young man and worked for several years in the ironindustry. Finding little success in that field, he took up the practice of law, butafter the accidental death of his wife’s brother, he began to reexamine both hislife and his professional commitments. During this period, the vestry of TrinityChurch, Pittsburgh (where he served as organist) asked him to be rector. AlthoughHopkins lacked a formal theological education and had not yet been ordained, heaccepted the vestry’s call. Within nine months he completed the course of studyprescribed by the bishop of Pennsylvania, and he was ordained both a deacon(December 1823) and a priest (May 1824).Hopkins’s eight years at Trinity were active and successful. An able evangelist,he saw the number of communicants in his parish increase almost tenfold, andhe established seven other churches in the Pittsburgh area. In 1831 he went toBoston to be the assistant minister at Trinity Church. He remained in Boston onlya short time, for in 1832 he accepted election as the first bishop of the diocese ofVermont, which had recently split off from the Eastern diocese. Since the newdiocese, which consisted of only 13 parishes and missions, could not afford topay him an adequate salary, he supplemented his income by serving as the rectorof St. Paul’s Church, Burlington.A powerful controversialist and prolific writer, Hopkins’s theological guideswere the Bible and the testimony of the early Christian church. Like most Episcopaliansof his day, he was very antagonistic toward Roman Catholicism, andby 1844 he had also come out strongly against the Oxford movement, scoringthe Tractarians’ theological “novelties.” Hopkins was careful, however, to distinguishbetween ecclesiastical practice and church doctrine, between ritualism and“popery.” Consequently, in The Law of Ritualism (1866), he supported the use ofeucharistic vestments, incense, and stone altars without subscribing to the RomanCatholic beliefs (e.g., transubstantiation) that many Episcopalians assumed thosepractices signified. Hopkins accurately predicted that many liturgical innovationsseen by his peers as exceptional and disturbing would one day be accepted asnormal within the Episcopal Church. His published works (more than 50 books,sermons, and pamphlets) included the first book on Gothic architecture by anAmerican, and he was also an able artist and lithographer. In addition, his 1851letter to the archbishop of Canterbury helped lead to the calling of the first Lambethconference of Anglican bishops in 1867.Hopkins’s most crucial and disturbing writings concerned American slavery.