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Huntington's Quadrilateral—A Critical Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John F. Woolverton
John F. Woolverton
Affiliation:
Mr. Woolverton is professor of church history in Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia
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Extract

Over one hundred years have passed since the conception in 1865 of what became known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. This statement of Episcopalian, ecumenical principles was conceived by William R. Huntington (1838–1909), acknowledged leader of the denomination's House of Deputies, liturgical scholar, and “first presbyter” of his generation.1 Huntington was inspired by the national disunity of the Civil War years and by the reunion of the states in 1865 to seek some means of uniting the country's churches. At the same time he recognized that the Episcopal church stood in need reform if it were to serve in any way whatever as an agent of reconciliation. The result was the famous Quadrilateral. Its author designed his proposal both as a statement of “the true Anglican position” and as a basis for church unity, soon to be expressed, it was hoped, in a comprehensive, national church for America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 198 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1970

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References

1. William Reed Huntington came from a New England Puritan family turned high church Episcopalian. He graduated from Harvard College in the class of 1859. In 1862 he became rector of All Saints Church, Worcester, Massachusetts where he remained until 1883 at which time he became rector of Grace Church in New York City until his death in 1909. From the early 1870s until 1909 he regularly served as a deputy in the House of Deputies of the Episcopalian General Convention. There he led the way in liturgical renewal and efforts toward church unity.

2. Huntington, William Reed, the Church-Idea, An Essay towards Unity, 5th edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 125 ff.Google Scholar

3. Handy, Robert T., “The Protessant Quest for a Christian America 1830–1930,” Church History, 22, (03, 1953), 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Documents on Church Unity (Greenwich, Connecticut: Seabury Press, 1962), 3.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 16.

6. Ibid., 15.

7. See DeMille, George E., The Episcopal Church Since 1900 (New York: MorehouseGorham, 1955), 146 ff.Google Scholar

8. Lowrie, Walter et al. , Minister of Christ (New York: Seabury Press, 1964), 75.Google Scholar

9. Fairweather, E. R. and Hettlinger, R. F., Episcopacy and Reunion (London: Mowbray 1953), 48 ff.Google Scholar

10. Macquarrie, John, “On the Apostolic Ministry,” Realistic Reflections on Church Union (Forward Movement Miniature Books, 1967), 31Google Scholar; cf. Reginald H. Fuller, “The Anglican Ecumenical” Ibid., 11.

11. Kelley, Alden Drew, “The Episcopal Church and Church Unity,” Approaches Toward Unity (Nashville, Tennessee: Parthenon Press, 1952), 29.Google Scholar

12. Brown, William Adams, Toward a United Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), 44.Google Scholar

13. Rawlinson, A. E. J., The Anglican Communion in Christendom (London: S.P.C.K., 1960), 17.Google Scholar

14. Grant, Frederick C., “The Episcopal Church: Its Contribution to the Religious Life of America,” Anglican Theological Review, 19, (01, 1937), 11.Google Scholar

15. See Woolverton, John F., “W. R. Huntington: Liturgical Renewal and Church Unity in the 1880's,” Anglican Theological Review, 48, (04, 1966), 177, 197 ff.Google Scholar; for a fuller treatment see my William Reed Huntington and Church Unity: The Historical and Theological Background of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1963)Google Scholar especially chapters II and III. For treatment of the varied sources of late nineteenth century Episcopalian liberalism as a whole, see Brown, C. G., “Christocentric Liberalism in the Episcopal Church,” Historical Magazine, 37, (03, 1968), 3–38Google Scholar, as well as for criticisms of my own thesis vis à vis the influence of Horace Bushnell.

16. Huntington, , The Church Idea, 118.Google Scholar

17. Huntington, William Reed, A National Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899), 36.Google Scholar

18. Huntington Collection (hereafter, H. C.): “Sermons and Papers of William Reed Huntington” (unpublished, handwritten volumes), 25, 796, November 1898. This collection is now in the library of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

19. H. C.: Letter from William Reed Huntington to Josiah Strong, October 1900.

20. H. C.: 25, 796.

21. H. C.: Letter from E. L. Godkin to William Reed Huntington, November 13, 1899.

22. Quoted in Woolverton, , Huntington and Church Unity, 263.Google Scholar

23. Huntington, , A National Church, 14Google Scholar; cf. Huntington, William Reed, The Peace of the Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), 229 ff.Google Scholar

24. Huntington, , The Church-Idea, 100.Google Scholar

25. Woolverton, op. cit., 71 ff and 109; cf. Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar, passim.

26. Huntington, William Reed, The Four Theories of Visible Church Unity (New York: J. H. Smith, 1909), 4 ff.Google Scholar

27. Ibid. 10; cf. White, William, The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered, Salomon, R. G., ed. (Church Historical Society, 1954), 46 ffGoogle Scholar. For White the assembling of the “body of Christ” for public worship, the dominical sacraments, obedience to God's law in scripture are immutable; other than these “a certain peculiar preference” guides Episcopalians regarding their church government “as they coiweive [italics White's] from its being most agreeable to reason and scripture, and its most nearly resembling the pattern of the purest ages of the church.”

28. See Woolverton, , “Huntington: Liturgical Renewal,” 7.Google Scholar

29. See Woolverton, , Huntington on and Church Unity, 126 ff.Google Scholar

30. Huntington, op. cit., 15.

31. Sanford, Charles L., The Quest for Paradise (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 187 ffGoogle Scholar, passim. For Huntington's Puritanism see, Huntington, William Reed, The Puritan strain (New York: A. G. Sherwood, 1901), 7 ffGoogle Scholar. and H. C.: 2, 52, November 1863.

32. Quoted in Suter, John W., Life and Letters of William Reed Huntington (New York: The Century Co., 1925), 46.Google Scholar

33. Huntington, William Reed, Theology's Eminent Domain (New York: T. Whittaker, 1902), 72.Google Scholar

34. Woolverton, op. cit., 139; cf. Suter, op. cit., 27–28, 38 and Brown, “Christocentric Liberalism,” 32. We know that Huntington read and valued Bushnell's works during a theological crisis as an undergraduate at Harvard College in 1869 though without specific citation. Later he commented: “I start in my theology from Christ as centre. I recognize in him ‘God manifested in the flesh’.”

35. Bushnell, Horace, “Forgiveness and Law” in Horace Bushnell, Smith, H. Shelton, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 330.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., 333 ff; cf. Huntington, op. cit., 73.

37. Huntington, William Reed, The Spiritual House (New York: James Pott & Co., 1895), 66.Google Scholar

38. Huntington, , Theology's Eminent Domain, 77.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 120.

40. Huntington, , The Church-Idea, 31.Google Scholar

41. Richardson, Herbert W., Toward An American Theology (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 109Google Scholar; Huntington further exemplifies certain of Richardson's categories such a “The Sabbath as Sacrament” as in his-Huntington's-Shall We Slur Sunday?, (New York: New York Sabbath Committee, 1901)Google Scholar as well as the theme “God With Us” which finds expression in The Church-Idea, 18 ff.

42. Huntington, , The Church-Idea, 111.Google Scholar

43. William, Reed Huntington, The Peace of the Church, 36.Google Scholar

44. H. C.: “Our Church and State,” 9, 232, October 1869.

45. Huntington, , The Church-Idea, 94.Google Scholar

46. The Churchman, October 26, 1895, quoted in Woolverton, Huntington and Church Unity, 110.

47. Huntington, , A National Church, 17.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., 19.

49. Ibid., 23.

50. Ibid., 39–73.

51. Ibid., 71; cf. Woolverton, , Huntington and Unity, 276 ffGoogle Scholar. and Yoder, Don Herbert, “Christian Unity in Nineteenth Century,” in A History of the Ecwmenical Movement, Ruth Ronae and Stephen Neill, eds., 2nd Edition (London: S.P.C.K., 1967), 251.Google Scholar

52. Hudson, Winthrop S., American Protestantism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 65 ff.Google Scholar