A monthly feature brought to you by the St. Peter’s History Committee. This article was written by parishioner Gretchen Cowell.
In its early years, St. Peter’s was a “low church”—meaning it stressed the importance of preaching, while sacraments had a subordinate place in church life. At its beginning, St. Peter’s was a simple rectangular building with communion services a few times a year, black preaching gowns for clergy, and sermons were the central part of the service. In time, St. Peter’s embraced more “high church” elements, including weekly communion, a spire with a gilded cross, drapery on the altar, and stained glass over the chancel. Many Episcopal churches became more liturgy-based during the 19th century, but at St. Peter’s that shift is associated with one rector, William Henry Odenheimer.
Odenheimer was a disciple of the Oxford Movement. This Movement, started in England, was a shift away from the evangelism influenced by John Wesley in England and by the Great Awakening in the United States and back to traditional liturgy. Its adherents insisted they were moving closer to their Anglo-Catholic roots.
Odenheimer was officially elected rector by the Vestry in April of 1840 at age 22. The Vestry records note his statement that without being confident of God’s help he would not have accepted this position “from which the oldest head and stoutest heart might well shrink.”
Despite his young age and avowed modesty, he pushed St. Peter’s in a direction new to it. Three years after his election, according to the Vestry minutes, “The Rector suggested an earnest wish that he had long cherished for the adoption… of an ancient and pious usage … He alluded to the opening of the Church daily for Public Worship… a practice contemplated by the framers which provides for the Holy Scriptures lessons and a psalter of our sublime and copious liturgy, …for every day of our lives.” The Vestry agreed, and expected that daily public worship “will be hailed as an example throughout the land.”
Also early in his tenure, the Church was gifted a “chime of bells,” that is eight bells forming an octave. These bells needed a space, and the Vestry voted to build a “turret” to receive them. Most vestry decisions were not contested but this one was. Vestryman Phillips lodged a protest in the record, based on finances, and referring to the proposed structure as a “spire.”
A bigger controversy followed. At a special meeting on August 17, 1842, the Vestry resolved to put a cross at the top of the spire. No mention of controversy or who was there is in the minutes, but nine days later the Vestry decided to reconsider the cross. Ten days after that, on September 5, 1842, “after considerable discussion” a vote was taken on the question of reconsideration: six Vestry members including Phillips voted in favor of reconsideration, with six members plus the rector against reconsideration, so the resolution favoring a cross was not reconsidered. The cross went up, the first for an Episcopal church in the United States.
People continued to come to St. Peter’s, whether because they liked the daily public worship, or were beckoned by the cross, bell ringing, Odenheimer’s sermons, or the social outreach of St. Peter’s (done largely by laymen and women), it is hard to tell. But when Odenheimer left St. Peter’s in 1859 to become the bishop of New Jersey, his liturgical stamp remained.