Episcopal history …

THE CENTURY reports (News, March 22) that "the Episcopal Church was one of the few American churches to survive the Civil War intact as slavery splintered the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists into separate camps." Actually, the Episcopal Church divided north and south like the other major Protestant denominations. Just as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S. came into being when England's colonies became the United States, so the Confederate Episcopal Church came into being when the South seceded.

Consider the case of the Rt. Rev. Richard Hooker Wilmer. Elected bishop of Alabama in 1861, Wilmer was the only bishop elected and consecrated in the Episcopal Church of the Confederate States of America. When the Civil War ended, Bishop Wilmer was forced to seek admission to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S. as though he was coming from another communion.

However, the CENTURY is correct in noting that the Episcopal Church did not split over slavery. With a few exceptions (notably evangelical leaders such as Bishop McIlvaine of Ohio and Phillips Brooks of Philadelphia) the Episcopal Church and its leaders were mostly silent on the issue of slavery. To have maintained the church's unity by being more or less silent about slavery is not something to be proud of.

J. Barry Vaughn

Warrior, Ala.

COPYRIGHT 2005 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning