Bishop Cheney, Aunt Hazel, and Hope for Traditional Anglicanism

The Episcopal Church was the Church of England’s first overseas franchise and was determined from the beginning to conform its theology and worship to the mother church. This meant conformity to the traditional Edwardian and Elizabethan formularies that define Anglicanism. On the first day of the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1784, it was proposed and passed: “That the said Church shall maintain the Doctrines of the Gospel as now held by the Church of England, and shall adhere to the Liturgy of the said Church, as far as shall be consistent with the American Revolution and the Constitutions of the respective States” (Clara O. Loveland, The Critical Years: The Reconstruction of the Anglican Church in the United States of America: 1780-1789).

This didn’t mean, however, that there wouldn’t be battles between those who anchor their identity in the formularies and those who don’t (the Thirty-nine Articles, the Homilies, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer). The 1830’s Oxford Movement and the Broad Church Movement and its various iterations of progressivism have taken a shotgun to the traditional Anglican formularies and tried their hardest to relegate them to the basement where Aunt Hazel was kept when she visited.

But there were always some in the American church who have grounded their identity in the Anglican formularies. Such a leader was Charles Edward Cheney, who in 1860 was ordained priest and became the rector of Christ Church in Chicago. On this day, February 18, 1869, Cheney and others signed the “Chicago Protest” against the “unprotestantizing” of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was brought to trial in an ecclesiastical court for intentionally omitting the words ‘regeneration’ and ‘regenerate’ whenever they occurred in the Baptism service. English evangelicals, from the reformers on, have opposed rites which purportedly automatically convey the grace of God apart from faith (this understanding of the sacraments was affirmed by the Gorham Trial in 1850 which accepted the view that baptismal regeneration is conditional and dependent on faith). Cheney lost in court and he was suspended from the ministry. He refused to withdraw from his church, and the Episcopal Church deposed him and removed him and his congregation from the Episcopal Church. They never wanted to leave the church; they were forced out. In their exile they joined others in helping form the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873. In support of Cheney, a significant group of clergy and laity wrote a letter supporting him that, in part, said: “We feel that it would indeed be a sad day for the Protestant Episcopal Church if it should authoritatively declare that no verbal deviation from any of its prescriptions, on the part of those who are true to its formularies of faith, is to be tolerated under any stress of conscience or circumstances of expediency whatsoever” (E. Clowes Chorley, Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church). Cheney was elected missionary bishop in the newly formed REC and continued to serve as rector of Christ Church and as bishop until his death in 1916.

Bishop Cheney did not leave the Episcopal Church; he was forced out by a church that refused his evangelical convictions. The schismatic is the one who “causes” the separation, not the one who separates (schismaticus est qui separationem causat, non qui separate). Unfortunately, our Anglican history is littered with tragic stories of men and women who have lost their livelihoods and forced out of their churches, and sometimes even lost their lives, for their convictions of faith.