The History of St. Peter’s Church, Ashtabula

Pioneer Episcopal Church of the Western Reserve

Chapter Three – St. Peter’s and the Great “High Church” Controversy

After trailblazing in Episcopal Church history in the 1810s as the first regularly-organized parish west of the Alleghenies, St. Peter’s, Ashtabula in the 1820-1860s was again in the national Episcopal spotlight, this time as one of the national and diocesan lightning rod centers of the Episcopal Church’s great 1800s church fight over “High Church” initiatives to recapture Anglicanism’s Roman Catholic roots and embrace the evangelical “Oxford” or “Tractarian” Movement.

The Tractarian or Oxford Movement had its roots in England in the 1700s as part of an attempt to recapture for Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church part of its historic pre-Anglican Reformation roots in the Roman Catholic tradition, both in terms of theology and liturgical, sacramental worship. In the 1800s, the movement crossed the Atlantic to the U.S. shores, where it found a willing and kindred cousin in the established and growing High Church movement, which sought to reform existing church theology, worship, and tradition by recapturing its lost ancient roots.

Among the movement’s leaders would be several clergy now included among the saints of the Episcopal Church, including trailblazing U.S. bishop Samuel Seabury, John Henry Hobart, James Lloyd Breck, missionary High Church bishop Jackson Kemper, and Wisconsin’s James DeKoven, a Racine College dean who was twice rejected by General Convention for his proposed elections as bishop of Illinois and Wisconsin on the basis of his High Church Anglo-Catholic views, including the use of vestments and altar candles.

Under High Churchman parish founder Rev. Roger Searle, Sunday Schools were established in most Western Reserve parishes under his jurisdiction by the early 1820s, including St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, which was the first Episcopal parish in Ohio to organize a Sunday School program. By 1828, St. Peters’ 60-student Sunday School program had joined the newly-formed General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union by 1828, founded by High Church Episcopal bishops William White and John Henry Hobart.

At St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, the High Church observations of Anglo-Catholic tradition began in earnest in 1842 under Searle’s successor, beloved early longtime rector Rev. John Hall, self-described in 1829 as a “strict Episcopalian.”

Recalled Rev. Hall’s grandson, Rev. Francis Hall, of his grandfather’s Anglo-Catholic roots, “From his study of the Prayer Book my Grandfather derived very high Church convictions, these being confirmed by the instruction of the Rev. Roger Searle, who brought the Bishop Seabury traditions to Ohio. As time went on my Grandfather laid more and more stress on sacramental doctrine. He taught Confession and heard many confessions--this before he had heard anything about the Tractarian movement. A visiting Clergyman accused him of being a "Puseyite." Inquiring what that meant, he procured the Tracts for the Times. When he next met his visitor he said to him, ‘You are mistaken. Dr. Pusey is a Hallite. I have held his principles throughout my ministry.’ He, of course, knew nothing of the ceremonial developments of later time. He would not solemnize a marriage when either party was unbaptized; and he invariably published the Banns, and when he could persuade the parties, married them before the Congregation in the Sunday Morning Service. Having for several years increased the frequency of his Eucharistic celebrations, he began weekly celebrations--the first in America--in the fall of 1842. His example was quickly followed at Nashotah, Dr. Adams being in frequent correspondence with him, and by Dr. Odenheimer, subsequently Bishop of New Jersey…The weekly Eucharist has ever since been the rule of St. Peter's Church, Ashtabula. God be thanked!”

At the time of Rev. Hall’s rectorate, monthly celebrations of the Holy Eucharist were the norm in the Episcopal Church, including the “Low Church” Diocese of Ohio. In September 1842, the Tractarian- and High Church-leaning Hall, an earnest teacher and profound believer in the efficacy of the sacraments, established St. Peters’ then-controversial and trailblazing custom of the weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist, including Communion services on all weekday Feast Days of the Episcopal Church.

Wrote Rev. Hall in the parish record book on Easter 1843, “I am determined (God willing) hereafter to observe in the church all the festivals and fasts of the church and to administer the Holy Communion every Lord’s Day…”

It was a historic moment in Ashtabula County and U.S. Church history, duly recorded for posterity by historian William W. Williams in his 1878 History of Ashtabula County: “…Another distinction of this church is it was the first parish of the Episcopal Church on the American continent to inaugurate and maintain the weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist.”

So strong was Rev. Hall in his convictions on the subject that absence from Holy Communion for six months or more saw Rev. Hall deprive the communicant from the privilege of voting at the parish’s annual meeting.

Other hallmarks of the active and evangelizing High Church movement and the kindred Tractarian or Oxford Movements included the use of liturgical vestments, altars, altar candles and sanctuary crosses, the use of hymns, chorale services and vested choirs, the practice of kneeling during the consecration of the Eucharist, the observance of the Daily Offices, the reverencing of the sacrament, the hearing of confessions, the establishment of Episcopal orders of monks and nuns, the establishment of Sunday Schools for Christian education, and the adoption of New York bishop John Henry Hobart’s “three-decker” sanctuary arrangement consisting of a lectern, pulpit, and central altar to replace the prevailing Low Church sanctuary arrangement, which used massive central pulpits that blocked off the chancel.

By 1842, a High Church seminary had been established west of Milwaukee, the enduring High Church- and orthodox-leaning Nashotah House Theological Seminary. Other seminaries historically associated with the High Church and Tractarian or Oxford Movements in years past included General Seminary in New York and Chicago’s Western Theological Seminary (now the merged Seabury-Western). The tradition continues today with the 1970s establishment of the theologically orthodox, evangelical Trinity Theological Seminary in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

Critics within the Episcopal Church derided the various Anglo-Catholic observances and practices as dangerous “popery.” Today, most of these “popish” hallmarks of the High Church and Tractarian/Oxford movements are commonplace mainstays across the Episcopal Church, with many of the liturgical and sacramental practices incorporated into the current 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

By the 1830s-40s, adherents to the High Church movement in the U.S. Episcopal Church found a kindred cousin in the Church of England’s evangelical Tractarian or Oxford Movement, known for their publication of various educational tracts on the importance of evangelism and the need to recapture some of Anglicanism’s lost Roman Catholic roots.

The strength and growth of the High Church and Oxford Movements in the U.S. became worrisome to the overwhelmingly Low Church hierarchy of the Episcopal Church. At the 1844 General Convention, there was a failed attempt to secure a condemnation the High Church and Oxford Movements for  “serious errors in doctrine and practice.”

Though the resolution was defeated, the fight within the Episcopal Church escalated, with the deposition of several High Church bishops, including New York’s Benjamin T. Onderdonk, who was deposed by a majority of his fellow bishops for “immoral conduct” – in this case ordaining a High Church-leaning seminary graduate to the priesthood. In each case of depositions, the real cause was adherence to High Churchmanship or Tractarianism, rather than the trumped-up charges alleged.

Petty persecution of High Churchmen continued.

In Massachusetts, the bishop refused to perform confirmations because of the “superstitious puerilities” presented by altar candles and a cross hung over the altar. The assistant was subsequently presented for a church trial for preaching in a surplice and such heretical acts as recommending confession and teaching on the sinless nature of the Virgin Mary.

In the Diocese of Ohio, Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine, who had written against the Tractarians in 1840 to head off attempts to “unprotestantize” the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, refused to consecrate the new church at St. Paul’s, Columbus on the grounds that it had an altar instead of a table with legs, arguing that the altar implied a "real propitiary sacrifice" in the Holy Eucharist and insisting that the altar be replaced by a table before any consecration would occur.  The parish relented, but made its view known that while it made the change out of regard for his wish, they would “not recognize the right of the Bishop of the Diocese to interfere in the matter.”

Tensions also ran high between Bishop McIlvaine and St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, one of the few bastions of High Churchmanship in the otherwise Low Church Episcopal Diocese of Ohio.

In 1834, St. Peters’ Rev. John Hall was one of only three clergy in the diocese to wear a white surplice while conducting worship services, a custom also maintained at St. Paul’s, Cincinnati and the Searle-founded Trinity, Cleveland. The practice was later instituted at Zanesville in 1838 and Steubenville in 1839. The prevailing custom in the diocese was for clergy to perform worship services in a black “preaching gown,” with or without a black cassock.

But the biggest controversy between the parish and the diocese arose from its public expression of support of New York’s deposed Bishop Onderdonk. The wardens and vestry of St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, in Easter Week 1845, published an article in the New York Churchman, later circulated in pamphlet form. Ohio’s Bishop McIlvaine had voted for Bishop Onderdonk’s deposition.

Began the letter, “The undersigned, members of the Parish attached to this church, also embracing the entire Vestry of the same, being together and engaged in an interchange of opinion upon the late trial and sentence of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of New York, with the train of causes which produced the result, and finding themselves to be of one mind as to the character of the proceeding, unanimously agreed upon the following expression of their views, and ordered the same to be entered upon the Parish Records, for the examination of their successors…”

Recorded George Franklin Smythe in his 1931 History of the Diocese of Ohio, published by the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, of the diocese’s response:

“The Western Episcopalian, published at Gambier, commented severely upon this document, and Mr. R.W. Griswold, a member of the Ashtabula vestry, and probably the author of the ‘expression of their views,’ replied at great length in the columns of the Ashtabula Sentinel. This reply was by no means conciliatory. The Rev. John Hall, rector of St. Peter’s, took no public part in the controversy, yet he sympathized with Mr. Griswold’s views, and, in a letter to the Rev. Ephraim Punderson, of Lyme, he proposed that they two, with the Rev. H.L. Richards of St. Paul’s, Columbus, and any other of the Ohio clergy who might be like-minded, should meet in conference, with a view to being prepared to advance sound principles at the next diocesan convention. ‘We might,’ he said, ‘be able, as you expressed it in one of your letters, to throw a small pebble under the wheels of this Juggernaut car of Lowism in Ohio.’

“It is not known whether than conference was ever held, but certainly a ‘pebble,’ and not such a very small one, was thrown into the convention that met a Cincinnati in September. The Diocesan Journal contains little evidence of the sensation that was created when Judge John N. Bayless, a delegate from St. James’ Parish, Cross Creek, offered a resolution in which he proposed an enquiry into the theological soundness of the teaching at Bexley Hall; but a full account has been otherwise preserved (1845 and 1846 correspondence between Bayless and St. Peters’ Griswold). Judge Bayless was evidently something of a wag, and was disposed to give ‘the Juggernaut car” a jolt; so he prepared a resolution embodying a long series of questions which the faculty of Bexley Hall should be required to answer. The House of Bishops had recently addressed to the professors of General Seminary questions intended principally to discover whether any Tractarian doctrines were taught there. Judge Bayless now proposed that the same questions be put to the Bexley professors; and to these questions he added others, ‘hastily prepared to meet the peculiar atmosphere at Gambier’ – that is to say, designed to find out whether any of the errors in doctrine and practice what were attributed to the Evangelicals (Low Churchmen) were inculcated by Bishop McIlvaine and the other teachers at Bexley Hall. It was said that when Judge Bayless rose, and in the most serious manner read his preamble, resolution, and questions, there was at first amazement on the face of every member of convention, but soon convulsive laughter followed. There was indeed something irresistibly funny in the proposal that Bishop McIlvaine and the professors at Bexley be asked such questions…Bishop McIlvaine ruled the resolution out of order, on the valid grounds that the members of the Bexley faculty, as such, were not responsible to the convention. The mover appealed the decision, but the decision was promptly laid on the table. Thereupon he so amended his resolution that the questions were not addressed directly to the members of the Bexley faculty; but the trustees of the theological seminary, who were answerable to the convention, were called upon to present those questions to the faculty, and report the answers to the next convention. In this revised form the resolution was presented the next day, but the convention would have nothing to do with it; and Judge Bayless, seeing that no good could come to his cause from the crushing defeat of his motion, asked leave to withdraw it, which was granted. He had done more than his party could expect of him, and had done it almost entirely without their support. Of the clergy, neither Hall, nor Punderson, nor Richards, had said a word, and even Mr. Griswold had sat silent. They knew that convention was overwhelmingly opposed to their views; they felt that time was required to educate men to see things as they saw them; they postponed the great battle to the next convention, but at once set about making ready for it.”

The battlefront between High Churchmen and the adherents of the Tractarian and Oxford Movements and the predominant cadre of Low Churchmen in the Diocese of Ohio moved to Ashtabula.

Records Smythe in the diocesan history, “Now that the pebble has been thrown, and ‘the Juggernaut car’ still continues to roll on in its progress, our history returns to Ashtabula. It may seem unnecessary, and perhaps uncharitable…to revive the memory of the unhappy altercation between Bishop McIlvaine and the noble parish of St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, than which none occupies a more honorable place in the history of the diocese; but this controversy cannot be passed over in silence, for it occupied the attention of all Ohio churchmen, and split them sharply into two parties, and was the main subject of discussion at several successive diocesan conventions. For a number of years, Ashtabula was the chief storm center, minor storms developing at Cleveland and Columbus.”

In May 1846, Bishop McIlvaine made his episcopal visitation to St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, in part to confirm a class of confirmands put forth by Rev. Hall. While at St. Peter’s, Bishop McIlvaine used his visitation to address the parish about the St. Peters vestry’s public Easter 1845 letter in support of the deposed Bishop Onderdonk, a High Churchman who had been deposed for ordaining a High Church ordinand to the priesthood, a public statement that also included a rebuke of the bishops that had condemned and deposed Bishop Onderdonk, a group that included Bishop McIlvaine himself.

In his sermon to the parish, Bishop McIlvaine said the aim of the vestry’s letter had been to cast dishonor upon a majority of the court in most undignified and disrespectful ways. Since he had voted with the majority to depose Bishop Onderdonk, Bishop McIlvaine noted that he considered himself among those that had been dishonored by the parish, though he had not been mentioned specifically by name.  As the letter, published in the New York Churchman, had been entered into the parish records, Bishop McIlvaine informed the parish that the entire parish was responsible for the letter, noting that so long as the letter remained on the parish records, he must consider the entire parish of St. Peter’s, Ashtabula to be tacitly sanctioning the letter. As the parish had power over its records and could purge them of the offending letter, Bishop McIlvaine said that his future relations with St. Peter’s Church rested on its future course of action over the letter and he awaited their response.

As his episcopal address was in writing, the bishop promised to furnish a copy if requested to do so by any person authorized to ask for it. While the bishop was requested to provide a copy by several parishioners, the bishop didn’t feel the requests came from anyone he considered authorized to do so by the parish. Instead, Bishop McIlvaine printed the text of his Episcopal address rebuking St. Peter’s, Ashtabula in the Western Episcopalian.

In response to the bishop in September 1846, 400 copies of the pamphlet Remonstrance of the Wardens and Vestrymen of St. Peter’s Church, Ashtabula, Ohio were printed and distributed.

Unfortunately, no copies of the pamphlet have survived in the parish archives and the only account surviving is that of the official diocesan history, which reads as follows:

“It was addressed to Bishop McIlvaine, and was disrespectful in the extreme, and even vituperative. Though it dealt chiefly with his treatment of the Ashtabula parish, it also ranged over the entire diocese, and collected everything that could be found or invented, whereon to base a charge against the bishop. This was one of the most improper documents ever published by a vestry, and one of the most ineffective, for it condemned itself on every page. The rector, Mr. Hall, said of it; “I think our defenses weakened by the Remonstrance, however true its contents…Perhaps neither friends nor enemies will attempt to justify it.”

In addition to St. Peter’s, Ashtabula and St. Paul’s, Columbus, the High Church parishes of Trinity and Grace in Cleveland also found themselves at odds with Bishop McIlvaine, albeit under different circumstances. Both parishes were at odds with Bishop McIlvaine over his plans to usurp their parish jurisdictions and establish a Low Church parish in the city. After the exchange of increasingly sharper letters between the parishes and the bishop, a long period of estrangement ensued between the two parishes and Bishop McIlvaine.

Wrote Grace Church rector Rev. Varian to Ashtabula’s Griswold of the situation at Cleveland, “I cannot pretend to give anything like a true idea of the grossness of the outrage against the Church, perpetrated in this place…Here is a clear infraction of the canon…refusing redress and abetting schism.”

Things came to a head at the diocesan convention of 1846, when Bishop McIlvaine railed against the growing “popery” about the Real Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist as a real propitiary sacrifice for sin, noting his view that the Holy Communion was rather a commemorative feast of Christ’s sacrifice. As such, Bishop McIlvaine noted, he “must refuse to consecrate any church in which there is an altar-form structure for the Lord’s Supper, and in which there is not a proper table in the usual sense, as the furniture.”

Noted Smythe in the diocesan history, “Without question Bishop McIlvaine’s view was shared by the great majority of Ohio Churchmen; but to the group of High Churchmen on the Western Reserve, it was very exasperating. They regarded his address as an arbitrary…assumption of authority in putting such parishes as do not submit to his will and dictation, in regard to what shape the table shall be, whether it shall be a kitchen-like, or an altar-like table, under penalty of having their churches stand unconsecrated.”

At the 1847 diocesan convention, two anti-High Church resolutions were put forward in the efforts of squashing the growing High Church and Tractarian or Oxford Movement influences in the diocese.

The first resolution articulated the “solemn duty of every true and consistent Protestant Episcopal Churchman to oppose, in every appropriate position, and by all proper means, all the essential and distinguishing features of that system of error which is known by the name of Tractarianism.” A like-minded second resolution called for the diocese’s delegates to General Convention to “confer with the delegates…opposed to Tractarian errors, and to take such action against the same as such a consultation may indicate to be wise and expedient.”

Both resolutions were both overwhelmingly approved by both clerical and lay delegates to the diocesan convention, with only a handful of High Church opponents. Most, like Rev. Hall and the St. Peter’s, Ashtabula delegation, “were not in attendance upon the convention.”

In July 1848, Bishop McIlvaine returned to Ashtabula for his Episcopal visitation and confirmations, reminding the parish that they had never replied to his May 1846 address to the congregation.

Wrote Smythe in the diocesan history, “He said that he must regard them as acquiescing in the objectionable paper issued by the vestry on Easter Monday, 1845, for they had twice since that time elected the same men to be wardens and vestrymen. He could not preach to them: the precious pearls of the gospel must not be cast before such a people. He should not again visit them until the existing situation was rectified. Should he receive no satisfactory answer, he should lay the whole matter before the next convention with a view to the disciplining of the parish. Shortly afterwards, in compliance with a request from St. Peter’s vestry, the bishop informed them of the conditions on which he would refrain from laying the matter before the convention. First, the statement of Easter Monday, 1845, must be removed from the records of the parish. Second, they must recall a communication in which they had characterized his first address to them as ‘a merely private affair.’ Third, they must take back entirely the Remonstrance, and especially the part in which he had been accused of falsehood. To this, the vestry replied on the fifteenth of August, in a long and extraordinary letter which seems to have been intended to add to the provocation that already existed; and the bishop laid the matter before the convention that met in Columbus in September. It was referred to a committee, which, after two days reported at length, reviewing the whole controversy, and justifying the bishop’s action at every step. It declared that the parish had been guilty of ‘rebellion and spurning of established authority, tending to revolution and the breaking up of the union which constitutes the diocese,’ and had forfeited its right to the benefit of such union. But, in the hope that ‘a mild admonition’ would overcome existing difficulties, they proposed two resolutions, emphatically condemning the parish for its conduct toward the bishop, and approving his determination to abstain from visiting it until its authorities should comply with the conditions laid down by him…

”No mention of the prolonged debate that ensued on the matter was recorded in the convention’s Journal. Little survives of St. Peters’ side of the story, save for a few sketchy fragments in Rev. Hall’s papers of October 1848.Wrote Smythe, “Mr. Hall, in a letter to Mr. Penderson, briefly enumerates the things that made for the Ashtabula side of the question: ‘Dr. Brooke’s doubts of the jurisdiction of the convention; our protests against its action, as an incompetent and illegitimate tribunal; Mr. Windsor’s able speech against its illegal proceedings; Mr. Griswold’s reiterated charges against the Bishop; the bishop’s humble and degrading posture as defendant; Mr. Freeman’s comparison of the convention to the inquisition; Mr. Windsor’s second able speech; my little speech and protest…”

In 1849, members of St. Peters elected a new slate of wardens and vestrymen, who asked the convention to repeal its actions of 1848. The convention advised the parish to comply without delay with the conditions that had been set before the parish at the previous convention.

Seeking a compromise, Bishop McIlvaine visited the parish in 1850 and performed confirmations. Noting that while he did not yield anything, Bishop McIlvaine said he harbored no ill thoughts toward the parish and hoped that his visitation might “lead to a proper state of feeling on their part.” Reporting to the convention on his visitation at Ashtabula, the Committee on Canons thought it inexpedient to take any steps on its 1848 resolution against the parish, noting that the parish remained “justly liable to discipline.”

At the 1851 convention, St. Peters’ Mr. Windsor reported to the convention regarding a “memorial” that the wardens and vestry had made to “officially repudiate for the Vestry and Congregation all the acts of the predecessors in any way relating to said correspondence or controversy between them and the bishop, especially such of their acts as in the opinion of the convention are official and obnoxious, leaving the merits of the same entirely with the parties really or in fact concerned.”

The action was accepted with “great gratification that this subject has been thus pacifically and amicably brought to a final settlement.”

Noted Smythe in the diocesan history, “The resolutions were carried unanimously. Although the memorial did not comply with the conditions laid down, yet, since the bona fides of the rector, wardens, and vestrymen of St. Peter’s could not be called into question, they must have been considered as intending substantially to comply with these conditions; and the convention was glad to be through with the matter.”

In the face of these and other persecutions across the Episcopal Church, several High Churchmen and adherents of the Oxford Movement, clergy and laity alike, gave up their hopes for the Episcopal Church and left, received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Still, the movement toward weekly Communion continued its gradual spread, often combined with the movement for free churches that eschewed the old practice of levying pew rents in support of the church and its ministry.

At St. Peter’s, Ashtabula, Rev. Hall, a devoted High Church adherent of weekly celebrations of the Holy Eucharist, noted that he was “determined (God willing)…to receive no pew rents.”

With the major High Church controversy in the diocese having died down in Ashtabula following the 1851 convention, lower levels of High Church controversies continued in Ohio into the 1860s, when Bishop McIlvaine was pained to find a vested choir in a parish that twenty years prior had attempted to introduce a high altar. In his Diocesan Convention address of 1868, Bishop McIlvaine argued against the practice of vested choirs at some length, his final argument against vested choirs being his view that the clergy would have to wear eucharistic vestments to distinguish themselves from the parish choir – and to wear eucharistic vestments would require priests to proclaim themselves as sacrificing priests.

But by the 1880s, many of the hallmarks of the High Church and Tractarian or Oxford Movements had become mainstreamed into the Episcopal Church, though Ohio remains to this day a relative Low Church diocese in comparison to the larger Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.

As many of the High Church and Tractarian or Oxford Movement elements became mainstreamed into the life and worship of the Episcopal Church, the Holy Eucharist was given its primary place as the chief act of worship, the Real Presence of Christ was acknowledged in the communion bread and wine, rites were developed for Confession, oil began to be blessed by bishops for Anointing of the Sick, and Oblations were offered for the departed, and retreats for clergy became a commonplace practice.

The number of High Church Anglo-Catholic parishes rose dramatically nationally between the 1880s-1920s, including whole dioceses in the Indiana-Illinois-Wisconsin “Biretta Belt,” including Northern Indiana, Quincy, Springfield, Chicago, Milwaukee, Fond du Lac, and Eau Claire.

Despite their past difficulties with Ohio’s Low Church bishops and the larger Low Church diocese, St. Peter’s continued in its longstanding tradition as a High Church parish within the Diocese of Ohio.

In 1889, under the rectorate of Rev. Holbrook, internal parish tensions between High Church and Low Church adherents began moving toward a climax, which culminated in the 1890 exodus of some 80 parish families to form Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church, with little ill effect on St. Peter’s, which continued its steady growth. Many of the Trinity Reformed splinter group and their descendants returned to St. Peter’s in 1934.

Numerous hallmarks of the parish’s High Church roots continue at St. Peter’s, Ashtabula today, including weekly celebrations of Holy Communion, the use of Sunday School programs for Christian education, hymns and music, a vested choir, liturgical vestments, the practice of kneeling during the consecration of the Eucharist, and the use of various sanctuary decorations and furnishings including altar candles, a sanctuary cross, and a high altar.

Both church buildings in use at St. Peter’s since 1829 have reflected Bishop Hobart’s High Church ‘three-decker sanctuary design encompassing a central altar, flanked at the sides by a lectern and pulpit.