Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

29 Apr 1607 AD: First Anglican Worship Service in America


29 April 1607 A.D.  First Anglican Worship Service in America.
The 1559 Book of Common Prayer would have been used.  Also, inferrably, the 1599 Geneva Bible?  There was no King James Bible or version at this point. Also, we know the 1599 Geneva version was used even by leading Churchmen into the 17th century.  Also, had the privilege to participate in an Anglican worship service in 2007 for the 400th anniversary of this event. I remember taking with an Englishman, a tourist, after the service.  I asked him, "Did you recognize the service  "Oh yes," he politely replied.  But, we digress and here’s one version of that first Anglican service.
The English first attempted to settle the New World in Virginia. The first Anglican worship ceremony of the Jamestown party in the new world was held on this day, April 29, 1607. "The nine and twentieth day, we set up a Crosse at Chesupioc [Chesapeake] Bay, and named that place Cape Henry," wrote Captain John Smith. Reverend Robert Hunt led them in a service. The colonists would soon establish a place of worship.

If Christians erect a facility to worship in, what should it look like? The Virginia sanctuary was not a typical church building. It was a simple shrine in the forest covered with a tattered sailcloth. The altar was a plank nailed between two trees.

By the end of that summer, however, the colonists had built a wooden church inside the Jamestown fort. John Smith said it looked more like a barn than anything else. By January of the next year it had burned down.
The colonists built a new sanctuary to take its place. This is where Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married in 1614.

Three years later, yet another wooden church building was erected, this one outside the walls of the fort. Virginia's House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in America, met in this church in 1619; obviously the much talked-about wall of separation between the church and state had not yet been erected!

Virginia itself was a parish of the Church of England, an overseas extension of the diocese of London. Robert Hunt was the first chaplain of the Jamestown settlement. His task was difficult, because most of the early colonists to Virginia were more interested in this world's riches than in spiritual treasures. Rev. Hunt held regular services in the Jamestown church while also working diligently for the physical well-being of the colony. It was he who built the first colonial grist mill. Much of his time, however, was spent caring for the many sick and dying in the colony and defusing quarrels among the settlers.

In 1639 the prospering colonists built a new brick church in Jamestown, and added a brick tower in the 1640s. The remains of this church tower can still be seen--one of the oldest English-built edifices standing in the United States today. The Anglican faith (now known as Episcopal) was in America to stay.
Bibliography:
1.      Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
 
 
 


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