Origin from 1717
Sixteen years after King William III chartered the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701, already recorded here, and sixty seven years before the Episcopal Church separated from the Church of England in 1784, also recorded here, a sermon preached before King George I set off the dispute that silenced the Church of England's own governing assembly for more than a century. On 31 March 1717, Benjamin Hoadly, the Whig bishop of Bangor, preached The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ, arguing from John 18:36 that Christ left his church no visible earthly government or courts of its own. The sermon provoked over two hundred pamphlets from fifty three writers, and the Lower House of Convocation moved to censure Hoadly for denying the church's visible authority. Rather than let the censure proceed, George I prorogued Convocation before it could vote, and the assembly was not permitted to transact business again until 1852. Gerald B. Switzer's peer reviewed study in the journal Church History traces the prorogation as the clearest instance of the Crown subordinating the church's own governing voice to the state. Norman Sykes's standard academic history of church and state in eighteenth century England situates the controversy within the wider Erastian settlement that followed the Hanoverian succession.
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Dates
StatusSuppressed marks the Bangorian Controversy of 1717, in which King George I prorogued the Church of England's Convocation rather than let it censure Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, silencing Convocation as a governing body until 1852, a milestone between William III chartering the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701, already recorded here, and the Episcopal Church separating from the Church of England in 1784, also recorded here. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names The Episcopal Church directly: "here, and sixty seven years before the Episcopal Church separated from the Church of England in 1784, also recorded here, a sermon preached before King George I set off the dispute that silenced the..."
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Adds a milestone in Anglican history between William III chartering the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701 and the Episcopal Church separating from the Church of England in 1784, both already recorded here: the Bangorian Controversy of 1717, in which King George I prorogued the Church of England's own Convocation rather than let it censure Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, silencing Convocation as a governing body until 1852.
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