About Saint John's

 

Historical notes: Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut


The Episcopal Church in Connecticut (ECCT) is the oldest Episcopal Diocese in The Episcopal Church (TEC). The Diocese began formally with the Service of Consecration and Ordination of The Rev’d Samuel Seabury as Bishop of Connecticut in1784 by bishops of the Anglican Church in Scotland. Prior to Bishop Seabury’s election at the historic Glebe House in Woodbury, Anglican priests from the Church of England were quite active in Connecticut, at the time a Colonial Territory of the British Empire. The earliest record of Anglican Worship services conducted in Connecticut were held in New London in 1702 by two missionary priests of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG). The first parish established in Colonial Connecticut, Christ Church, Stratford, was gathered in 1692, and the first church sanctuary erected in 1704. The growth of the Anglican Church in heavily Congregationalist colony was spurred on in 1722 when Dr. Timothy Cutler, president of Yale College, Samuel Johnson, Daniel Brown and James Wetmore announced their conversion to Anglicanism and the Church of England. By the time the American War of Independence ended there were 44 Anglican parishes in Connecticut.  What came to be known as The Episcopal Church, USA was organized after the conclusion of the American Revolution when it be came separate from the Church of England whose clergy, at their ordination must swear allegiance to the British monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. From the very beginning The Episcopal Church has described itself as “catholic and reformed”, tracing its bishops back to the apostles via Holy Orders in an unbroken line of “Apostolic Succession”