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Thinking of the Reverend James Chisholm, the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1855, and the Calls of Ministry

Thinking of the Reverend James Chisholm, the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1855, and the Calls of Ministry

Last updated on: September 15, 2022 at 7:39 am by James Ford

Thinking of the Reverend James Chisholm, the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1855, and the Calls of Ministry 2022-09-15T07:39:46-07:00 James Ford

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I’ve been thinking about ministry of late.

In the Christian tradition there are two general views of ministry, the technical terms are ontological and functional. The ontological view is the high view, it is seen as a shift in the nature of a person conferred by ancient rites. The functional view is that ministers are people doing ministry. The etymology of the word is circuitous but ultimately means to serve.

Within Christianity Catholics, the Orthodox both Eastern and Oriental, the majority of Anglicans and the occasional Lutheran hold the ontological view. The majority of Protestants fit somewhere in the functional view.

Along the way I’ve noticed despite the official positions, actual clergy have mixed and sometimes contradictory understandings of what they are as ministers. And this isn’t limited to Christians. In my largely convert Zen Buddhist circles I’ve learned of a similar tension in view about the nature of priesthood.

As it happens within the Episcopal church today, the 15th of September, is celebrated as a feast for a minister, the Reverend James Chisholm. I believe he shows up some of the questions, the tensions about who and what is involved in ministry and being a minister.

James was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 30th of September, in 1815. His father died when he was twelve. His memoir by David Holmes Conrad cites his rectitude and natural spirituality from childhood. His older brothers provided for his continuing education, allowing him to finish Salem’s Latin School, and then sending him to Harvard College.

The author of the memoir takes considerable pains to separate Chisholm from the taint of Unitarianism. He suggests that maybe, possibly Chisholm was raised Baptist. But all this is contradicted by the memoirist’s own citations. A lengthy quotations from his classmate and friend, Jones Very, who would be remembered as a mystic and Transcendentalist would in time become a Unitarian minister, is quoted referring to “small society for religious improvement,” to which both young men belonged. A second citation from a classmate, Dr Henry Bigelow, who would become a founding member of the Channing Unitarian Church in Newton, Massachusetts. (Which in a small passing way gives me a connection, as the Channing Church was eventually folded into the First Unitarian Society of Newton, which I would serve as minister many years later.) Whatever his formal affiliations, it seems that old New England liberal spiritual tradition was the air he breathed at the very least during his college years. And he breathed it in deeply.

It was generally assumed Chisholm would enter the ministry. But when he graduated he accepted a teaching post in Virginia. It was in Charleston, Virginia, where the young Chisholm found his spiritual home. He joined the Episcopal church, and it seems he was principally captured by the dignity and profound spiritual invitation of the Eucharist. Conrad writes, “The beautiful simplicity of the ancient ritual spoke to his taste; the subdued and chastened emotions of the communicants, to his better feelings; the deep import of the whole, to his heart. It was the first direct appeal of the Spirit, and was not unheeded.”

And it was in this community of faith and practice that he felt his own stirrings to ministry. In 1839 he entered the Virginia Theological Seminary. On the 10th of October, 1840, he was ordained deacon. I didn’t give the memoir a close reading, but I was unable to find a reference to his priesting. As he was called as a rector, a chief minister of several Episcopal churches, he had to have been ordained priest. However, given what would follow, this holding up that specific ministry, deacon, a ministry of service somehow feels right. Even if his calling into that church and eventually ministry was informed by a priestly office, the celebration of communion.

In 1847 he married Jane Byrd. They had two sons.

He served several parishes before being called as rector of St John’s church in Portsmouth.

Then in February, 1855 his wife died. In the same year in July, Yellow Fever spread through the city. His youngest son was weakened by measles, and he decided it was critical to send both boys to safety. He stayed.

I think about the callings of ministry. And how they might be summed up in that phrase “he stayed.”

Some note this was a disease that came from Africa by way of the slave trade as if it were a divine judgment. Whatever, it was horrific. Many of the rich, of course, fled. Most all who could, did. Including among those who fled were nearly all the doctors as well as, it seems, most of the clergy. And leaving a lot of suffering, dying people, the majority desperately poor, slaves, some freed but all poor, and Irish workers. The lost and the left behind.

James Chisholm remained. He stayed.

He provided pastoral care to the sick and the dying. He took food to the hungry. And he assisted with treating the ill. He even helped dig graves. Most of all, what he did, was stay. And, as he could, he helped. By all accounts he had no religious tests for helping people. It seems he offered up no color tests, either.

He served those who needed help, but by staying when those with means fled, he ended up serving the poorest of the poor. He lived communion as the rite of intimacy. This is where the words ontological, so high and beautiful, and functional, so grounded, so down to earth, begin to feel simply angles, views of something from one side or another.

As the epidemic was waning, he caught the fever, lingered briefly, I don’t know if he learned of his youngest child’s death first, but just a few days after the boy died, on the 15th of September, 1855, James Chisholm died.

His funeral was a modest affair. It was conducted by a Baptist minister, another of the few clergy who did not flee. That about twenty people attending was itself a testimonial, as at the moment people did not go to funerals for fear of the fever.

I think about him and his life. By all accounts a modest, scholarly man. From my perspective, and frankly from the perspective of many in his time, his accommodation of slavery, which was required of anyone seeking a place in the society of that time and place, was a profound moral compromise. He was a New Englander, he knew this accommodation of slavery was a moral compromise.

I find myself thinking of the Whisky priest in Graham Green’s the Power and the Glory. The worst of the clergy. But when push came to shove, when the bishop and the good clergy all fled, he stayed. Of course James Chisholm was not a whisky priest. He was a good man. The only blot on his character was ignoring a pervasive and socially accepted evil. Only blot. Certainly a nasty thing.

And. We are none of us one thing. Such a piece of work is man. Such a mess are we humans.

Then, not in a novel, but in a way that rarely comes to us in quite such a stark way, there was a push and a shove in his life. Most of the good and great fled, and he stayed. He stayed and served those who needed him to be there.

In 2010 James Chisholm was included in the list of names celebrated in the calendar of the Episcopal Church. Their modest way of acknowledging sanctity, what other streams of the churches would call saints.

Sounds about right.

And his life invites a consideration of ministry. When I was younger, over the years I’ve held differing views of the nature of ministry. It was something that called to me in my Baptist childhood, then was realized in a sense with my ordination as a Zen priest, but found its fullest expression with my ordination as a Unitarian minister and many years of parish ministry. On occasion I’ve felt that ontological sense, even if I didn’t believe in a soul as something separate or separable from the rest of the parts that made me, me. At least without death. When, as the stories go, the constituent parts of that me separate back to play of causes and conditions. For most of my years ministry was a thing to be done. Service.

Now?

Out of my years on the edges of faith, out of my failures, out of my dreams, out of my life. Out of my ministry.

I no longer know. Ministry is all mystery. Like the rest of life. Like the rest of death. Like the great play.

But it has something to do with presence. Something where life and death the past and future collapse into intimacy. Into communion.

Like with the mass, the eucharist, communion. The service to the sick and dying, the lost and the left behind. Ministry all about intimacy. And service to intimacy. Ministry is who we are. It is an inner urge, but also of necessity calling for a confirmation from others. Ministry is what we do. it is never something alone. Ministry is what we become. Always becoming. Always moving.

Moving closer in some strange dance.

Ever closer.

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