Church of England in Virginia Anglicanism came to Virginia in 1607 with the settlers who founded
Jamestown. The charter of the
London Company instructed them to adhere to the practices of the
Church of England, and between 1607 and its dissolution in 1624, the company sent 22 ministers to the colony. These ministers were not only concerned for the spiritual lives of the colonists but also attempted (largely unsuccessfully) to convert the
Native Americans. When
Virginia's General Assembly first met in 1619, it passed a series of laws concerning the church, including formally designating the Church of England as the
established church of the colony. To keep pace with the colony's growth, the
Burgesses ordered each settlement to set aside a house or room as a place to hold regular worship services. After Virginia was made a
royal colony in 1624, it would face an acute and serious clergy shortage until the end of the 17th century. The shortage was fueled by an expanding population and insufficient clergy recruitment despite efforts to attract ministers by offering incentives, such as tax breaks. This forced parishes to rely on
lay readers to lead prayers and read published sermons. The absence of North American
bishops necessitated that colonists desiring
ordination make the dangerous trip to and from England. It also meant children could not be
confirmed, which meant (prior to 1662) that they could not receive
communion, although many clergymen overlooked this requirement. The Anglican priests were supervised directly by the distant
Bishop of London, who paid little attention. Each county court gave tax money to the local vestry, composed of prominent layman. The vestry provided the priest a
glebe of 200 or , a house, and perhaps some livestock. The vestry paid him an annual salary of . of tobacco, plus 20 shillings for every wedding and funeral. While not poor, the priests lived modestly and their opportunities for improvement were slim. Ministers reported that the colonists were typically inattentive, uninterested, and bored during church services. According to the ministers' complaints, the people were sleeping, whispering, ogling the fashionably-dressed women, walking about and coming and going, or at best looking out the windows or staring blankly into space. By 1740, the acute shortage of clergy was easing, and by 1776, there were more Anglican clergy living in Virginia than there were parishes. Devout parishioners used the Book of Common Prayer for private prayer and devotion. This allowed devout Anglicans to lead an active and sincere religious life in addition to the formal church services. However the stress on private devotion weakened the need for a bishop or a large institutional church of the sort Blair wanted. The stress on personal piety opened the way for the
First Great Awakening, which pulled people away from the established church.
Revolution The
American Revolution was a difficult time for the Anglican Church in America. Clergymen were divided between allegiance to their
king and their
state. As public officials, ministers were required to swear loyalty to the state, breaking the
Oath of Supremacy in the process. Some were able to do this, but those who could not either resigned or withdrew from parish duties while continuing to provide pastoral care. There were calls for dis-establishment, but powerful church members resisted drastic change. In 1777, the legislature passed bills recognizing the church's right to its property and the right of the clergy to occupy the
glebes. Clerical salaries were suspended and ended entirely in 1780. Thus for much of the war the Anglican Church faced an identity crisis. It was a state church controlled by a government refusing to fund it. The war also led to the breakdown of the vestry system as refugees strained parish resources and desperate vestrymen resigned or petitioned the state to dissolve their vestries.
Postwar Episcopalians After the American Revolution, when
freedom of religion and the
separation of church and state became dominant ideas, the Church of England was dis-established in Virginia. A few ministers were Loyalists and had returned to England. When it began organizing as a diocese after the Revolution about 50 Episcopal clergy were still active in the state. The lack of a steady means of pay and natural aging continued to reduce the number of clergy. Reforms at the College of William and Mary resulted in no place for Episcopal clergy to study for ordination. The clergy shortage deepened over time. When possible, worship continued in the usual fashion, but the local vestry was no longer the unit of local government and no longer handled tax money. After the war ended, Episcopalians (as Anglicans were now calling themselves) recognized the need to be in control of their own church. In April 1784, a meeting of Virginia ministers asked the legislature to relinquish control over the church and to issue an act of incorporation. In October, it passed an incorporation bill which placed the government of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the hands of an annual convention with both lay and clerical representatives. However, the state continued to create new parishes and set parish boundaries, oversee vestry elections, and require county courts to review parish finances for several more years. For its part, the Episcopal Church continued to hold a monopoly on performing marriages. In 1786, the Virginia Assembly passed the
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by
Thomas Jefferson and supported by
James Madison. It also repealed the act of incorporation for the Virginia church and took from the vestries the oversight of poor relief. Baptists and Presbyterians were proposing that all property of the colonial parishes—glebes, church buildings, church yards, communion silver, and Bibles—be sold for the benefit of all Virginians. Even with a 1788 law confirming the Episcopal Church's rights to the colonial church's property and the repeal of all laws creating an established church in 1799, efforts to dis-endow the Episcopal Church continued. In 1801, the General Assembly passed a law authorizing county overseers of the poor to sell property of the former established church, using the money for education and the poor. As late as 1814, the General Assembly was still authorizing the sale of specific parishes' silver and bells, and in 1841, the
Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled in a case involving the seizure of a parish glebe.
Recent history In recent decades, the diocese has experienced the effects of
Anglican realignment as some conservative congregations withdrew from the diocese and the national Episcopal Church. Many of these congregations formed the Anglican
Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic. In 2012, the diocese reclaimed legal access to Episcopal church properties that had been claimed by seven of the departing congregations, which included an unsuccessful appeal to the
Supreme Court by Anglican members at
The Falls Church. ==Bishops==