Opinion ID: 2505697
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Revolution to 1823.

Text: After the Revolution, former Church of England congregations in the United States were called episcopal churches. In October 1789, episcopal congregations in nine of the American states (but not Georgia) sent delegations of clergy and lay members to an assembly in New York. The delegations formed a General Convention and adopted a constitution and canons organizing the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America as the successor to the Church of England for the orphaned episcopal churches in the United States. Article II of the 1789 constitution guaranteed each state in union with the Episcopal Church the right to representation at the denomination's triennial General Conventions but also provided that if a state delegation sent no representatives, the Church in such State shall nevertheless be bound by the acts of such Convention. Article V stated that A Protestant Episcopal Church in any of the United States, not now represented, may, at any time hereafter, be admitted, on acceding to this Constitution. Canon III required regular visits by an Episcopal Church bishop to all parishes within his geographically defined jurisdiction for the purpose[] of examining the state of his church. (Emphasis added.) Just two months after the Episcopal Church was organized in October 1789, the Georgia General Assembly enacted a statute incorporating Christ Church as the Episcopal church in Savannah. The 1789 Act gave Christ Church both the ability to own property and ownership of the property it had held as a parish of the Church of England, as one of the new corporations of the Episcopalian denomination. Christ Church v. Savannah, 82 Ga. at 664, 9 S.E. 537. [11] Although unable at the time to affiliate formally with the Episcopal Church because Georgia did not yet have the three active episcopal churches needed to form a state diocese, Christ Church placed itself under the authority of the Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina. In 1811, Christ Church attempted to achieve formal union with the Episcopal Church even though Georgia still lacked the three episcopal churches needed to organize a state diocese. Christ Church sent its rector, an ordained Episcopal Church priest named John Bartow, to the General Convention in Connecticut with certificates authorizing him to attend as a representative of the Episcopal Church in the city of Savannah. The General Convention decided that Rev. Bartow could not be seated as a voting member because a Georgia diocese had not yet been organized, but it did seat him as an honorary member. In 1790, the Episcopal Church had formulated a consecration rite for church buildings, which required the leaders of the local church to present to the bishop, in front of the congregation, the instruments of donation and endowment for the property. In 1815, Christ Church finished the reconstruction of its sanctuary, which had been destroyed, and invited the Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina to consecrate its new sanctuary in accordance with the Episcopal Church's rite. In 1822, Rev. Abiel Carter, another ordained Episcopal Church priest, became the rector of Christ Church. Christ Church's efforts to organize a Georgia Diocese culminated in 1823 with the first diocesan convention. [12] Rev. Carter chaired the convention, and three of the five lay delegates came from Christ Church. The convention unanimously adopted a diocesan constitution, the preamble to which stated that nothing in it shall be so construed, as to contravene any part of the Constitution or Canons, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the United States of America. The first article then stated: The several congregations of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State, now represented in this Convention, shall be considered as one Church or Diocess [sic]; to be known and designated by the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Georgia, with a view to union with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The convention chose seven delegates to attend the 1823 Episcopal Church General Convention and passed a resolution inviting the Bishop of South Carolina to perform Episcopal offices in this State under the regulations prescribed by the 20th canon of the Episcopal Church relating to provisional bishops. At the 1823 General Convention, the Episcopal Church accepted the Georgia Diocese's accession, formally making the Georgia Diocese and its parishes, including Christ Church, components of the Episcopal Church. Accordingly, after the 1823 General Convention, the Georgia churches attending diocesan conventions referred to themselves as parishes instead of congregations and gave parochial reports.