Read Online America's Prophet by Bruce Feiler - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bruce Feiler
Ads: Link
Whitefield was invited to preach here. Christ Church was a royal building but open to change. And with bells, it superseded its crosstown twin: The State House had one; the church had eight.
“The reason this church was the largest building in the colonies was to send a message,” explained Tim Safford, the nineteenth rector. With his WASPy good looks and staunch commitment to social justice, he could be the poster preacher for the contemporary Anglican Church. He is also a voracious student of the Revolution. “And the king was the ruler of the church. What happened in the State House was fine, but not until it happened in the church did independence hit home. That’s why Jacob Duché was such a hero.”
Jacob Duché was the rector of the most important church in America at a time when the most important Americans sat in his pews every Sunday. His father had been a mayor of Philadelphia, and the Duchés were descended from Huguenots, antiestablishment French Protestants. “He’s steeped in the intense cauldron of Philadelphia,” Safford said, “where blacksmith is living next to banker, banker next to seamstress, and they all meet in Christ Church. Only in Philadelphia could Betsy Ross sit next to the president of the United States in church, even though she could afford only a cheap pew.”
Stained-glass window at Philadelphia’s Christ Church depicting the Reverend Jacob Duché’s reading of Psalm 35 at the first Continental Congress, Carpenter’s Hall, 1774. (Courtesy of Christ Church, Philadelphia; photograph by Will Brown)
That diversity threatened many of the delegates who gathered in Philadelphia on September 6, 1774, for the first Continental Congress. The meeting was held at Carpenter’s Hall, around the corner from the State House. A lawyer from Boston motioned that the assembly open with a prayer, but delegates from New York and Charleston objected. The members were simply too divided by religious sentiments, with Episcopalians, Quakers, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians among them. Samuel Adams suggested they invite Duché, who he had heard was a “Friend to his Country.” The next morning Duché, dressed in clerical garb and white wig, read that day’s appointed psalm from the Book of Common Prayer, the thirty-fifth. “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me.”
“I never saw a greater Effect upon an Audience,” John Adams wrote his wife, Abigail. “It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that Morning.” But then Duché did something even more extraordinary. He deviated from the prescribed Anglican readings and, in homage to the revivalist spirit of the time, offered what Adams called “an extemporary Prayer, which filled the Bosom of every Man present. I must confess I never heard a better Prayer or one so well pronounced…. It has had an excellent Effect upon every Body here.”
“This was the ultimate Great Awakening moment,” Tim Safford said. “Many of the delegates just fell to their knees and began to cry. The antiauthoritarian spirit of the Awakening had suddenly been transported into the command center of the Revolution.”
But Duché’s revolutionary fervor reached its climax, along with that of the rest of the city, on July 4, 1776. That Thursday afternoon, after the Congress had approved the Declaration of Independence but before the text had been printed, signed, or read aloud, Jacob Duché strode to Christ Church and convened a special meeting of the vestry. The members unanimously agreed that Duché could strike out all homages to the king from the Book of Common Prayer. The minutes of that meeting are stored in this basement room and were the first book Safford pulled from the shelves to show me: “Whereas the honourable Congress have resolved to declare the American Colonies to be free and independent States, in consequence of which it will be proper to omit those petitions in
“The reason this church was the largest building in the colonies was to send a message,” explained Tim Safford, the nineteenth rector. With his WASPy good looks and staunch commitment to social justice, he could be the poster preacher for the contemporary Anglican Church. He is also a voracious student of the Revolution. “And the king was the ruler of the church. What happened in the State House was fine, but not until it happened in the church did independence hit home. That’s why Jacob Duché was such a hero.”
Jacob Duché was the rector of the most important church in America at a time when the most important Americans sat in his pews every Sunday. His father had been a mayor of Philadelphia, and the Duchés were descended from Huguenots, antiestablishment French Protestants. “He’s steeped in the intense cauldron of Philadelphia,” Safford said, “where blacksmith is living next to banker, banker next to seamstress, and they all meet in Christ Church. Only in Philadelphia could Betsy Ross sit next to the president of the United States in church, even though she could afford only a cheap pew.”
Stained-glass window at Philadelphia’s Christ Church depicting the Reverend Jacob Duché’s reading of Psalm 35 at the first Continental Congress, Carpenter’s Hall, 1774. (Courtesy of Christ Church, Philadelphia; photograph by Will Brown)
That diversity threatened many of the delegates who gathered in Philadelphia on September 6, 1774, for the first Continental Congress. The meeting was held at Carpenter’s Hall, around the corner from the State House. A lawyer from Boston motioned that the assembly open with a prayer, but delegates from New York and Charleston objected. The members were simply too divided by religious sentiments, with Episcopalians, Quakers, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians among them. Samuel Adams suggested they invite Duché, who he had heard was a “Friend to his Country.” The next morning Duché, dressed in clerical garb and white wig, read that day’s appointed psalm from the Book of Common Prayer, the thirty-fifth. “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me.”
“I never saw a greater Effect upon an Audience,” John Adams wrote his wife, Abigail. “It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that Morning.” But then Duché did something even more extraordinary. He deviated from the prescribed Anglican readings and, in homage to the revivalist spirit of the time, offered what Adams called “an extemporary Prayer, which filled the Bosom of every Man present. I must confess I never heard a better Prayer or one so well pronounced…. It has had an excellent Effect upon every Body here.”
“This was the ultimate Great Awakening moment,” Tim Safford said. “Many of the delegates just fell to their knees and began to cry. The antiauthoritarian spirit of the Awakening had suddenly been transported into the command center of the Revolution.”
But Duché’s revolutionary fervor reached its climax, along with that of the rest of the city, on July 4, 1776. That Thursday afternoon, after the Congress had approved the Declaration of Independence but before the text had been printed, signed, or read aloud, Jacob Duché strode to Christ Church and convened a special meeting of the vestry. The members unanimously agreed that Duché could strike out all homages to the king from the Book of Common Prayer. The minutes of that meeting are stored in this basement room and were the first book Safford pulled from the shelves to show me: “Whereas the honourable Congress have resolved to declare the American Colonies to be free and independent States, in consequence of which it will be proper to omit those petitions in
Similar Books
