James Blair's Plan of 1699 to Reform the Clergy of Virginia

Abstract

T n HE Biblical Lesson, which reveals only too clearly the impossibility of pouring new wine into old bottles, can well be applied to the attempts of the Anglican church to fit the new and different conditions of colonial Virginia into the old and prescribed patterns of the traditional English organization. From the very beginning this proved well-nigh impossible. Although the basic theological doctrines of the colonial and the English establishment were identical, there were broad differences between the two in organization, government, and form of worship. During the seventeenth century the Church in Virginia was adversely affected by the sparse population, which meant large parishes, small salaries, and inadequate livings for the clergymen; by the plantation system, which by its very nature was basically inimical to correct conformity to the liturgy because it encouraged the extensive use of lay readers, the incorrect administration of sacraments, and the burying of the dead in private cemeteries; and by the government of the Virginia Church, which placed ecclesiastical matters under the control of the governors of the colony. Since most seventeenth-century governors were uninterested in being the head of the Church, they neglected their ecclesiastical duties, and the colonial Church following the local secular pattern tended toward a democratic practice.' Weaknesses in the Church, resulting from these conditions, were very soon apparent. Because the clergy were paid by local taxation, and because the people, through the vestries, controlled parish affairs, the clergy suffered not only from poor salaries, but also from insecurity of tenure. The act of March i661/2 insisted that a clergyman's salary be paid in