| WILLIAM WHITE (July 17th) is the true “founder” of the Episcopal Church in the United States after the American Revolution severed ties with the Church of England. Born in Philadelphia in 1747, he graduated from college locally and went to England for theological studies. He was ordained a priest in 1772 and returned to America where he served Christ Church, Philadelphia, first as an assistant and, from 1779, as Rector. He was an ardent patriot for American independence, serving as Chaplain of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1789.
After independence, White argued for a “Protestant Episcopal” Church (meaning a Church with bishops in apostolic succession apart from Rome) and he insisted that the faith and order of the Church of England could be continued in the new country. He published his plan, The Case of the Protestant Episcopal Church Considered. This was a brilliant work, diplomatic and visionary, that steered the middle course between arguing factions. White’s framework was accepted in 1785 at the first General Convention.
In 1786, he was unanimously elected as first Bishop of Pennsylvania. He worked out the agreement with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for the American succession of bishops and then was himself consecrated a bishop in London. Thus, White was both the architect and the fulfillment of a separate Church in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time in history.
He served as the first Presiding Bishop at the Church’s organizing Convention in 1789, and then again from 1795 until his death on July 17, 1836. For 50 years, he was the wise, tactful, and strong patriarch of the Episcopal Church in its very first generation. |
