On Monday we celebrate Presidents’ Day, officially known at the federal level as Washington’s Birthday. George Washington was, as about ten of our Presidents have been, an Episcopalian. Or rather—he was a devoted member of the Church of England, who nevertheless found that his loyalties lay with the colony in which he lived rather than with the Crown, and who therefore found himself numbered among the most prominent members of the nascent “Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.”
The Episcopal Church’s relationship to political power has changed over the course of its history. Colonial parishes began as parishes of the Church of England under the authority of the Bishop of London, and subject to the Supreme Governor of the Church—the King of England. After independence, these colonial Anglican parishes reorganized themselves along democratic lines and formed the Episcopal Church.
This new church inherited much of the political establishment, especially in Virginia, and so the early Episcopal Church counted Washington, Madison, and Monroe among its members, not to mention many non-presidential names. And yet even in the early days, these Episcopalian Presidents were fierce advocates for the separation of church and state, and for the value of religious pluralism in the young republic. As the nation grew and diversified, this early influence waned. And yet the Episcopal Church retained a kind of cultural cachet and elite appeal. The Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington was built to serve as the “National Cathedral,” an almost-but-not-quite-ecumenical center for national events, and families like the Roosevelts and Bushes found a home in their local Episcopal parishes.
Over time, of course, the church has lost much of this cachet. The National Cathedral still stands, and still hosts events like prayer services and funerals for Presidents with no connection to the Episcopal Church. But the Episcopal Church’s days of the being the establishment at prayer, the go-to pew for the wealthy and educated (but not particular pious?), are long gone.
That’s not such a bad thing. On the one hand, a church that includes people with great influence can have a great influence; it can have the potential to shape their actions for good. But on the other hand, there has always been some danger to being the established church, or being the church of the establishment: the danger of being “captured” by establishment concerns. A church whose Supreme Governor wears the crown, a church whose members fill the highest roles in government and the most prestigious titles in the professions, can easily lose sight of the challenging moral witness of the Gospels and lapse into a kind of milquetoast moderation. (And so these prominent early Episcopalians, for example, enslaved their fellow human beings, and the Episcopal Church was notable for its reticence in opposing slavery and its eagerness to reunify with the Confederate branch of the church.)
This Sunday, we’ll read the Beatitudes from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Plain.” I wonder if you might think to yourself, this Presidents’ Day weekend, this George Washington’s Birthday weekend: How would George III have heard these words? What about George Washington? How might they have shaped the work of Franklin Delano Roosevelt? How might they shape the Church’s witness today? How do Jesus’ words speak to you, in your own circumstances, now?
20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.