The Bishop Controversy

Abstract

Considering the origins of the American Revolution, John Adams wrote in 1815, ‘the apprehension of Episcopacy contributed fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the attention … of the common people.’1 Indeed, significant religious forces helped to shape the American Revolution, including eighteenth-century revivalism, controversy over the possible creation of colonial Anglican bishops, and Parliament’s enactment of the Quebec Act in 1774.2 To one pamphleteer, the Quebec Act, in conjunction with the other Coercive Acts, demonstrated that Britain was implementing ‘a settled fix’d plan for inslaving the colonies, or bringing them under arbitrary government.’3 A decade earlier, rumors proliferated that the British government intended to undermine religious and civil liberties by establishing a colonial Anglican episcopate.