"Churchmanship": Party Quarrels

From the 1830s many Canadian Anglicans began to identify themselves with theological and liturgical factions which came to be known as "church parties".   The "evangelical party" emphasized the ministry of the laity, the Church as the fellowship of believers, and a relatively simple style of worship.  The "church party" emphasized the authority of bishops and clergy, the Church as a divinely ordered society with the power to dispense or withhold God's grace, and a relatively elaborate style of worship.  Of course, within each party, there were the more extreme and the more moderate members, and many Canadian Anglicans avoided both parties.  

From the middle of the 1860s to the middle of the 1880s, the conflicts of what was called "churchmanship" were especially heated, even bitter.  

 John Medley
The first clearly anglo-catholic bishop in the Anglican world (unless one counts Edward Feild of Newfoundland) was John Medley, first bishop of Fredericton.  One cause which he championed was the cathedral.  The Episcopal Church in the United States had no cathedrals; and Anglican evangelicals feared that they would magnify bishops, focus unduly on liturgical ritual, and cause unnecessary conflict with non-Anglican Protestants,  Medley ignored the opposition and built his cathedral.  At the laying of the cornerstone in 1845, he offered his rationale, building on analogies between the Old Testament priesthood and the Christian priesthood.  You may take the link to Medley's speech.  

Benjamin Cronyn
A pronounced evangelical, Cronyn, the first bishop of Huron, believed that the professor of divinity at Trinity College, Toronto, George Whitaker, was teaching his students to despise the Protestant doctrine of the Reformation.  Since Cronyn was a member of the Board of Trinity, and since he was expected to send his theological students there, his views could not be ignored.  In an address of 1862, linked here, he summarized his opposition to the teaching at Trinity.  In the aftermath, other members of the Board protected Whitaker; and Cronyn created a new theological school for his own diocese, called Huron College.  

John Travers Lewis
Lewis, the first bishop of Ontario, a champion of the "church party", supported Trinity against Cronyn.  In 1877, when Wycliffe College was formed in Toronto by the "evangelical party", he was outraged, and refused to ordain any of its graduates.  In 1895 one of his clergy defiantly challenged his views on Wycliffe, an in an address to his clergy he explained some of the reasons he opposed the teaching of that college.