A Revolution at St. Philip’s: Past and Present

“Nothing is more self-evident, than that we are a system of beings, related to, and dependent upon one another. We cannot subsist, in any order, or with any comfort, without one another’s concurrence and support.”––The Reverend Robert Smith, 1768.
The American Revolution liberated the colonies––but devastated the Anglican Church in America. One of the first casualties of the conflict was the St. Philip’s School. The Bishop of London and its founder, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), immediately cut off all their vital support. South Carolina’s disestablishment of the provincial Anglican Church in 1778 slashed public contributions. Private donations dried up with the exigencies of war. Teachers and clergy unwilling to denounce the King, titular head of the Church of England, were banished from the province. The parish school fell into total disarray.
At the time the British occupied Charleston in 1780, their commander denounced “the neglected and deplorable state of the education of the youth in the province” due to the “late usurpation” by the American rebels. Attempts were made by the occupiers to restart what was by then being called the Provincial Free School, but only if Loyalists could be found to teach the principles of Grammar, Greek, and Latin.
When victory came at last for the Americans in 1782, St. Philip’s parish was saved from the utter disintegration visited upon so many Anglican churches because its rector, the Reverend Robert Smith, unlike the majority of the Anglican clergy in America, had sided with the patriot cause. Having himself been banished during the British occupation, he eventually returned home to a hero’s welcome from his greatly reduced congregation. Facing the challenge of charting a new course for St. Philip’s with faith, courage, ingenuity, and scarce resources, he would become a leading figure in the tendentious unification of the Episcopal Church of the United States and South Carolina’s first bishop.
One of Smith’s first goals was to resurrect, as best he could, the educational mission of his church so dear to his heart. An ordained graduate of Cambridge University sponsored by the SPG, he had first come to St. Philip’s to serve as an assistant to the rector and to lead its Free School. By the time he assumed the role of rector in 1759, he had won a local reputation for his skilled preaching and teaching, a tradition that is very much alive at St. Philip’s today. The lectures he offered three mornings a week on moral and natural philosophy attracted large audiences seeking both “Entertainment and Improvement.” In 1760, he was named a director of St. Philip’s School, along with some of the wealthiest men in Charleston. In 1775, he would side with many of them in support of the rights of the American colonies.
In July 1785, while continuing his pastoral duties, Smith opened an upper-level academy for the youth of Charleston at his own parsonage on Glebe Street, serving as its principal until 1798. The stated curriculum remained much the same as before the war, offering “the English, Latin, Greek, and French Languages; Writing, Arithmetic and Geography, with the use of globes.” This academy and its students would over time became the foundation for the College of Charleston, America’s first municipal college. The school’s tutor, the Reverend Nathaniel Bowen, had been raised in Smith’s household and would become a rector of St. Michael’s and later the Bishop of South Carolina, playing an extraordinary role in revivifying the faltering Episcopal Church during the 1830s.
Deeply concerned over the lack of qualified candidates for Holy Orders, Bowen was “urgent” in his promotion of religious education for children, who were the future of the Church and the nation. He dreamed of having an Episcopal college, or even a general seminary, in South Carolina.
But Smith and Bowen found themselves rowing against the cultural tide. Across America, educational theorists promoted a civil religion designed to train and unify diverse Americans in their common role of citizens. By the 1830s, even in Charleston’s Free School, Christian and classical studies were being deemphasized in favor of “practical” skills more useful in business and in an effort to become more denominationally inclusive. To Bishop Bowen’s severe disappointment, the National Convention of the Episcopal Church held at St. Michael’s opposed his proposal that they follow the lead of other Protestant denominations in opening their own parochial schools to counter the growing secularism of American culture. After his plan was denounced as “bigoted” and “hierarchal,” Bowen warned that the Church risked “liberalizing away of all the moral influences of education” at a time when only about one percent of Christians were Episcopalians.
In 1835, Bishop Bowen stated a truth still relevant today: “The young of our Communion will either grow into life, with no religion at all, or with any, rather than that which we think best for them, unless we cause religion, as we hold it, to be incorporated with academical education. It is surely time, … that we should be awake to the effect of education without religion in our academic institutions. The experiment has been sorrowfully made, conspicuously enough to have conveyed to all our minds the lesson which it should be allowed to teach.” Four years later, Bishop Bowen despaired “it may be too late to redeem” America’s educational system. Indeed, later attempts by St. Philip’s to start another school faltered, though the church would become a pioneer in the American Sunday School movement.
But God works in His own time. Like the Revolutionary Generation led by Bishop Smith, today’s congregation of St. Philip’s Anglican Church has been given the rare opportunity of starting anew. We too have the talented leadership and the vision, but in contrast to earlier times, we also have among us the blessing of wealth to share. Today, the need for a classical Christian school in our post-Christian world is even more urgent, perhaps truly our nation’s “last best hope.” What better way to acknowledge our debts to a loving God than by providing “a nursery of sound religious character” for our children. Or in Bishop Bowen’s words, a Christian haven from a coarse secular culture that would be based upon the “principles of virtue and happiness, with the whole character of the mind and life in their growth to maturity.”
Our own church leaders have been working hard for over two years sorting out the big questions and planning all the details. We have a seemingly tireless clergy. We have a school building (with parking!) to remodel. We have volunteer advisors with a remarkable depth of experience. We have parents eager for their young children to have a God-centered education. Now we need you and your family. Come be part of something extraordinary. Please consider a generous, even sacrificial, donation. Join our congregation in making history and praising the Glory of God for bringing us to this place in our time.
Sources:
• Frederick Dalcho, M.D. - An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina: From the First Settlement of the Province to the War of the Revolution. [1820]
• Edward McCrady - The History of South Carolina Under the Royal Government, 1719-1776 [1899]
• Edward McCrady - A Sketch of St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, S.C.: From the Establishment of the Church of England Under the Royal Charter of 1665 to July 1897. [1901]
• The Reverend John Kershaw, “The Episcopate of Bishop Bowen 1818-1839,” and “Religious Education in the Diocese” in Albert Sidney Thomas, A Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, 1820-1957: Being a continuation of Dalcho’s Account, 1670-1820. [1957]
• The South Carolina Gazette, 10 Nov. 1758
• The South-Carolina and American General Gazette, 27 Sept. 1780:4.
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