This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

72THE EPISCOPALIANSdonk of Pennsylvania, to trial on charges of immorality and intemperance. Eachman was eventually convicted and suspended from his episcopal duties. 30Whereas the cases of Carey and the two Onderdonks reveal as much about theprejudices of nineteenth-century evangelicals as they do about the attractions ofRoman Catholicism to high church Episcopalians, one prominent American Tractarianleader voluntarily renounced his membership in the Episcopal Church duringthis period of controversy. Beginning in 1844, Levi Silliman Ives, the bishopof North Carolina, came under scrutiny from evangelicals in his diocese whoaccused him of favoring such Catholic customs as the making the sign of thecross in worship and prayer. Ives responded to criticism by reaffirming his commitmentto the devotional reforms introduced by the Tractarians. “Churches arebeginning to assume a more Church-like appearance—to be more in keeping withtheir divine and holy purpose,” he said, while “the reverence of both clergy andpeople is manifestly increasing” because of the Tractarian influence. 31Ives’s response infuriated evangelicals, and the dispute over Catholic influenceswithin the Episcopal Church soon became a matter for public debate throughoutNorth Carolina. Evangelical writers also whipped up anti-Catholic hysteria bylinking Tractarianism to predatory sexual behavior. Focusing on the practice ofauricular confession, which Ives was encouraging within his diocese, evangelicalscharged that it allowed lascivious priests to use the intimacy of the confessionalas a means of seducing vulnerable female penitents. 32 Such venomous attackseventually took their toll on Ives. After being granted a leave of absence for travelin 1852, he wrote to members of his diocese from Italy and announced his conversionto Roman Catholicism—an event that further demonstrated to evangelicalsthe dangers inherent in permitting clergy with Tractarian views to ministerin the Episcopal Church. 33SISTERHOODS AND WOMEN’S RELIGIOUS ORDERSOne of the most significant long-term consequences of the spread of Tractarianinfluences was the revival of the monastic tradition both in England and in theUnited States in the 1840s. Because women seeking full-time involvement in thelife and work of the church had been allowed few options prior to the nineteenthcentury, it is not surprising that religious orders for women were the first onesorganized. Edward Bouverie Pusey, a leading figure in the Oxford movement,was instrumental in promoting this trend, which began when he received theprofession of English churchwoman Marion Hughes in 1841. True to the reformmindedreligious temper of the time, these Anglican sisterhoods were orientedfar more to charitable than to contemplative pursuits, and the women who joinedthem generally dedicated themselves to practical activities such as teaching, nursing,reforming prostitutes, and offering other forms of social ministry. 34While clergymen were usually responsible for the founding of sisterhoods inEngland, women led the way in the United States. According to Anne Ayres, whofounded the first American order (the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion), there