Charles Henry Brent (April 9, 1862 – March 27, 1929) was the Episcopal Church's first Missionary Bishop of the Philippine Islands (1902–1918); Chaplain General of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I (1917–1918); and Bishop of the Episcopal Church's Diocese of Western New York (1918–1929).Charles Henry Brent The historian and Episcopal minister Frederick Ward Kates characterised him as a "gallant, daring, and consecrated soldier and servant of Christ" who was "one of modern Christendom's foremost leaders, prophets, and seers."Trinity College School Record October 1946-August 1947 (Trinity College School, 1946), 4, 10. Retrieved October 17, 2016.
Brent's suggestion led to the founding of the International Opium Commission in 1909 and the subsequent First International Opium Conference in 1912, which adopted the International Opium Convention – "the world's first international drug control treaty".
Early life and education Charles Henry Brent was born on April 9, 1862, in Newcastle, Ontario. He was the third of ten children of the Reverend Henry Brent, who was the Anglican rector in Newcastle for forty-two years, and Sophia Francis Brent. and Episcopal Church Glossary: Charles Henry Brent. Retrieved October 22, 2016. By his own account, Brent's childhood in the rural village was happy and secure.A. H. Humble, The School on the Hill: Trinity College School, 1865-1965 (Trinity College School, 1965), 48.
Education Brent was educated in Ontario.For All the Saints Prayers and Readings for Saints' Days According to the Calendar of the Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada (ABC Publishing, Anglican Book Centre, 2007), 126. He planned his education to prepare him for the ordained ministry. First, Brent attended the town's public schools until 1880. Second, Brent's college preparation was done in 1880–1881 at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. Third, he attended Trinity College, Toronto, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in classical honors in 1884. Throughout his education, Brent was both "a gifted and apt scholar" and "a formidable athlete." After graduating from Trinity College, he returned to Port Hope where from 1884 to 1886 he both taught at Trinity College School and studied privately for ordination.Trinity College School Record October 1946-August 1947 (Trinity College School, 1946), 4–5. Retrieved October 17, 2016. and and David Hein and Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., The Episcopalians (Praeger, 2003), 174.
Ordination From Brent's earliest memories he felt called to the ordained ministry. He once said, "I do not recall an instant of my life when I aspired to any vocation excepting that of the Ministry, but on one brief occasion when I faced the possibility of becoming a musician. As a boy at school the Ministry seemed to me the one vocation worth considering. ... Were I again on the threshold of life I would choose as I have chosen."Trinity College School Record October 1946-August 1947 (Trinity College School, 1946), 4. Retrieved October 17, 2016.
Brent was ordained a deacon on March 21, 1886, in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto in the Anglican Church of Canada in 1886. However, there were no openings for him in his diocese, so he looked for a position in the United States. In 1887, he was ordained to the priesthood on March 6, 1887. After that, he was called to his first ministerial position in Buffalo, New York. and Episcopal Church Glossary: Charles Henry Brent. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
Ministry Before being elected bishop, Brent had "pastorates" in Buffalo, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts. During that time he was naturalized as a United States citizen.David Shavit, The United States in Asia: A Historical Dictionary (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 57.
Throughout his ministry, Brent was "essentially a pastor with a prophetic vision."James Hastings Nichols, Review of Alexander C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity in The Journal of Religion, Volume 29, Number 1 (Jan., 1949). His biographer Eleanor Slater wrote that Brent "was born a poet; he made himself a prophet."Eleanor Slater, Charles Henry Brent: Everybody's Bishop (Morehouse Publishing, 1932), 123-124.
Brent was also "a popular preacher."Episcopal Church Glossary: Charles Henry Brent. Retrieved October 22, 2016. His biographer Eleanor Slater wrote that Brent "gradually learned to be a great preacher. ... His eloquence was the eloquence of simplicity, of self-forgetfulness, of the inner compulsion to share his treasure."Eleanor Slater, Charles Henry Brent: Everybody's Bishop (Morehouse Publishing, 1932), 114–115.
Buffalo In 1884, Brent accepted a position as curate and organist at St. John's Church, Buffalo in the Diocese of Western New York. He remained in that position until 1887.David Hein and Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., The Episcopalians (Praeger, 2003), 174.
In 1887, Brent was ordained to the priesthood on March 6 and accepted a position as a curate at St. Paul's Episcopal Church (now Cathedral) in Buffalo. He was assigned to St. Andrew's Mission Chapel in Buffalo.Episcopal Church Glossary: Charles Henry Brent. Retrieved October 22, 2016. and Brent to Buffalo 1887. Retrieved October 24, 2016. While at St. Andrew's, Brent placed candles on the altar, but the bishop of the diocese Arthur Coxe ordered him to remove them. As a result, Brent resigned and moved to Boston. Later, he explained his resignation: "I did not set such store by the candles as I did by my rights as a priest."Eleanor Slater, Charles Henry Brent: Everybody's Bishop (Morehouse Publishing, 1932), 9. and Trinity College School Record October 1946-August 1947 (Trinity College School, 1946), 5. Retrieved October 17, 2016. and Alexander C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity (Westminster Press, 1948), 24.
Boston In 1887, Brent had met and been influenced by Father Hall, a member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic order, often called the Cowley Fathers. Thus, when he resigned his St. Andrew's assignment, Brent moved to the Cowley monastery in Boston.Alexander C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity (Westminster Press, 1948), 14. The Cowley Fathers placed Brent in charge of St. Augustine's chapel which had been built to minister to African-Americans living in the West End of Boston.
Leaving monastery. Brent lived and worked with the Society of St. John the Evangelist from 1888 until 1891, but he never took monastic vows.Episcopal Church Glossary: Charles Henry Brent. Retrieved October 22, 2016. It is likely that Brent would have taken his final vows and become a member of the order if a disagreement had not occurred between the Father Superior of the order in England and the Boston house. The disagreement had to do with the election of Phillips Brooks as Bishop of Massachusetts which was opposed by the Father Superior. The Father Superior's highhandedness led Brent to leave the order.Alexander C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity (Westminster Press, 1948), 29-31.
Time with Cowley Fathers was crucial. The years he spent with the Cowley Fathers (1888-1891) were crucial to Brent's spiritual formation. The monks taught him how to live "an ordered and disciplined spiritual life." These lessons were invaluable for his future ministry.Alexander C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity (Westminster Press, 1948), 31. Thirty-five years later, Brent reflected that the lessons he learned from the Cowley Fathers were "so sound and inspiring that I could covet it for every young priest." More specifically, he said that the "daily meditation was a severe and joyous task." Meditating on "the love of Jesus Christ, the application to modern life of principles by which He lived, and the overwhelming importance of the unseen, were instilled into my being in a manner and to a degree from which there is, thirty-five years later, no escape."
St. Stephen's: 1891–1901. After leaving the Cowley monastery, Brent's bishop Phillips Brooks appointed him to serve as assistant minister at what had been an abandoned church, St. Stephen's Church, Boston. St. Stephen's was in one of Boston's poorest neighborhoods, the South End of Boston. Brent ministered in St. Stephen's from 1891 until 1901. Under the leadership of Brent and the rector Father Henry Martyn Torbert, the parish flourished. After Torbert's death on September 29, 1901, Brent served as rector for two months before his election as bishop.Episcopal Church Glossary: Charles Henry Brent. Retrieved October 22, 2016. and and Alexander C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent: Crusader for Christian Unity (Westminster Press, 1948), 32-37. and Eleanor Slater, Charles Henry Brent: Everybody's Bishop (Morehouse Publishing, 1932), 13-14. and Trinity College School Record October 1946-August 1947 (Trinity College School, 1946), 5. Retrieved October 17, 2016.
During the ten years of their work together, Brent and Torbert had built St. Stephen's into an impressive mission. Its "physical plant was expanded to include a parish house, a settlement house, a rescue mission, a lodging house, and a wood and coal yard that allowed men to earn money for their meals and housing for the night." The purpose of these ministries was "to minister to the physical, mental and spiritual needs of people in the loving spirit of Christian neighborliness."
Regarding Brent's ministry in St. Stephen's, Frederick Ward Kates (one of Brent's biographers) wrote that Brent's "humble work in a struggling parish in a crowded neighborhood of underprivileged people proved good schooling for his naturally aristocratic mind. These years deepened not only his ideas of religion but also his insight into human character. … He came to know people, all sorts of people."Trinity College School Record October 1946-August 1947 (Trinity College School, 1946), 5. Retrieved October 17, 2016.
Social gospel As Brent ministered in Boston's slums, "he became receptive to the social gospel, then in vogue with urban churches throughout the United States." In his "theology of the social gospel," Brent held that the church was "responsible for all of society" and that society would be "regenerated by its participation in the life of the church." Therefore, for Brent the purpose of "the Christian mission" was to renew "the spiritual, social, and economic life of a people."Hans J. Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Protestantism: Volume One (Routledge, 2004), 489.
Brent was influenced by F. D. Maurice and other Anglican Socialists. During his Boston days, he made friends with American Christian Socialists William Dwight Porter Bliss and Vida Dutton Scudder and with leaders of the settlement movement. Brent's "theology of social reform" was based on Jesus' two great commandments: to love God and to love one's neighbor. These commandments can be read in full at Jesus' two great commandments. Regarding these two commandments, Brent wrote in his first book, With God in the World (1900), "God never considers men apart from, but always as part of, a great social order—a social order that is not a concourse of independent units, but a body instinct with life, a society which is not an organization but an organism." Therefore, in Brent's theology, the command to love one's neighbor "applied to the whole of humanity."
1901: a milestone The year 1901 was a milestone for Brent. He suffered losses in the death of his mother and the death of his friend and fellow-worker Torbert. He also had new opportunities. The Reverend William S. Rainsford, rector of the prestigious St. George's Episcopal Church (Manhattan), offered Brent a position on the staff. He was elected to the faculty of the University of the South. The General Theological Seminary in New York City, was "seriously considering him for the position of dean."