The Cross: Church Symbol and Contest in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

In 1834 the rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Burlington, New Jersey desired to place a cross atop his newly-refurbished sanctuary. No ordinary rector, George Washington Doane also served as the Episcopal bishop of New Jersey. Shortly after taking charge of St. Mary's in 1833, he and his vestry had decided to renovate their old church, and their ambitious new design featured a cruciform plan with Greek details, including a pediment adorned with lotus leaves and a tower “derived from that built at Athens… commonly called the Tower of the Winds.” But when Doane carried out the plans for “an enriched Greek Cross” to be mounted on the roof, the community stood aghast. A local Presbyterian minister chronicled the confrontation, and he began by asserting that most of St. Mary's vestrymen had originally approved the designs without “noticing the Crossat the time.” The project was thus completed, and to the vestry's “great surprise, as well as that of many in the community, of all ‘denominations’—lo! a Cross made quite a Catholic appearance on the apex of the pediment!” Controversy arose, “both in the Vestry and out of it,” and “after a very warm meeting, one of the Vestry shortly after declared that unless the Cross was taken down very soon, it should be pulled down.”