St. John's Cathedral, founded as King's Church in Providence in 1722, was one of the four colonial Episcopal churches whose representatives gathered in Newport in November 1790 to form the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. The other three charter members of the diocese were Trinity Church in Newport (1702), St. Paul's in Narragansett (1707), and St. Michael's in Bristol (1720).
The Episcopal church in Rhode Island owes its founding largely to an expatriate French Huguenot named Gabriel Bernon . Bernon, a well-to-do French merchant, was persecuted for his religious beliefs and fled France for Amsterdam in 1686 and London in 1687. While in England, Bernon converted to the Anglican faith and shortly thereafter, in 1690, moved to Boston. He finally made his way to Newport in 1697. Two years later Bernon's name appeared on a petition to Lord Bellomont, Royal Governor of Massachusetts, for assistance in obtaining a permanent minister for an Anglican congregation in Newport. Thus was Trinity Church born. Bernon also played a role in the founding of St. Paul's Church in Narragansett in 1707.
Between 1706 and 1718, Bernon moved back and forth between Kingston and Providence before finally settling in Providence on Towne (now North Main) Street in 1718. At that time, Providence did not have an Anglican church and Bernon and his fellow Anglicans relied on visiting ministers who held services in private homes and in the open air when the weather allowed. Among those who preached in Providence was the Rev. James Honyman, Bernon's former rector at Trinity Church in Newport.
With the encouragement of Honyman, Bernon and several other prominent citizens of Providence, including Colonel Joseph Whipple, Nathaniel Brown, Joseph Abbott, and Robert Currie, organized to raise the 770 pounds needed to build a new church. Whipple contributed 100 pounds, Brown donated land on Towne (now North Main) Street on which to build the church, and Bernon vigorously raised funds for construction. For example, he wrote to his friend Sir Francis Nicholson, Royal Governor of South Carolina, describing the project and asking for a donation. (Bernon's letter to Nicholson is in Series I of this Manuscript Group).
The funds were raised and construction of King's Church began on June 11, 1722, now celebrated as the founding date of the parish. The simple wooden church that was erected served its parishioners for nearly 100 years as the only Anglican church in Providence and one of only four in Rhode Island. Its first rector was the Rev. George Pigot . Pigot, like his first nine successors at King's Church, was appointed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.), the London-based missionary organization which supplied clergy for the American colonies.
With a steady supply of clergy from the S.P.G. and a growing congregation, King's Church prospered through the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The coming of the American Revolution, however, brought an abrupt end to the tranquil life of King's Church. As part of every Anglican service, the minister included prayers for the king and royal family. With tension rising between Great Britain and its American colonies, continued recitation of such prayers became a divisive issue between the clergy and their congregations. Rev. John Graves, rector of King's Church, refused to omit the prayers for the king from the services, as did most Anglican clergy in the American colonies. The ensuing controversy split the congregation and resulted in the closing of King's Church in 1776 for nearly ten years. It did not reopen until 1785.
The parish and its church survived the Revolution and began to rebuild the good will that had been lost during the war. In 1790, delegates from the four Episcopal churches in Rhode Island met at Trinity Church in Newport to organize a Diocese of Rhode Island . Moses Badger, Rector of King's Church, presided over this first Diocesan Convention which voted to create a diocese and named Samuel Seabury, bishop of Connecticut, as the first bishop of Rhode Island.
In deference to patriotic sensibilities, the vestry obtained a new charter and changed the name of King's Church to St. John's Church in 1794. The church had so far recovered from the Revolutionary War that the vestry in 1810 voted to demolish its old wooden church and replace it with a larger more substantial stone edifice. The cornerstone for the new St. John's Church was laid in June 1810 on the site of the old church. The new St. John's Church was dedicated on June 11, 1811, the eighty-ninth anniversary of the founding of the parish. The structure dedicated on that date is today's Cathedral of St. John.
St. John's Church had only two rectors for most of the nineteenth century, Nathan Bourne Crocker (1808-1865) and Charles A.L. Richards (1869-1901). Under their leadership, the parish became a social as well as religious center of the community in the second half of the nineteenth century. Between 1870 and 1895, the church built a lodging house for impoverished travelers, established a kindergarten, sewing classes, a free library and reading room, and built a parish house which served as a center of community life.
As the diocese continued to grow in the early years of the twentieth century, church leaders began to voice the need for a cathedral as the administrative center and the religious focal point of the diocese. Bishop William McVickar first broached the issue in 1907 and was instrumental in forming a Cathedral Corporation in 1909. It was not until 1929, however, that St. John's Church was designated as the Cathedral of St. John and the bishop of the diocese became the rector of the cathedral parish.
The former King's Church founded by Gabriel Bernon had become the religious and administrative hub of the diocese. In the forty years after its designation as the cathedral, the diocese gradually developed the area around St. John's as the Cathedral Close, the center of diocesan life. By 1972, when Bishop John Seville Higgins retired, the Cathedral Close project had been completed and the cathedral completely renovated inside and out. As a tribute to the role of Gabriel Bernon in the founding of St. John's, his remains were entombed under the high altar of the renovated cathedral.
Though it is a cathedral and the center of diocesan life, St. John's is also a parish church and continues to serve the community of which it is a part. It has served the religious, social, and cultural needs of the community from the same location on North Main Street for 270 years. The small wooden church which Gabriel Bernon founded in 1722 has grown into the stately Cathedral of St. John in 1991, but it is still imbued with the same spirit of service that motivated Bernon and his co-founders to establish their church in the wilderness.
From the guide to the Records of St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, Rhode Island, 1715-1991, (University of Rhode Island Library Special Collections and Archives Unit)
