The Power of Their Glory: America's Ruling Class, The Episcopalians

...Kit and Frederica also have a very odd sense of language and style...

...The Anglican Chiirch is the Church of England-the established church of the country, supported by grants from the kings since England went Christian in A.D...

...Not only do factual inaccuracies mark almost every page of this book...

...Finally, the attention span of the authors is suggested by their discussion of various presiding bishops of the church, which they end with this sentence on Bishop (but not presiding) Paul Moore, Jr.: "But the most prominent Episcopal clergyman of the present day, hero of the radical-chic, New York-oriented types who are the spiritual descendants of the social Episcocrats of the late nineteenth century, is the personally wealthy and socially impeccable Bostonian Paul Moore, Jr...

...Similarly, according to the Konoliges, Ralph Adams Cram, famous advocate of high-church Episcopalianism and Gothic revival architecture, must have graduated from Groton, even though he was the son of an impecunious clergyman and was well into manhood before Groton was founded...

...Its authors have little respect for facts, no feeling for grammar or language, and, above all, seem to suffer from what child psychologists call a "short attention span...

...Not only do Kit and Frederica have a curious sense of our language...

...BOOKREVIEW The Power of Their Glory: America's Ruling Class, The Episcopalians Kit and Frederica Konolige /Wyden Books / $12.95 E. Digby Baltzell It is hard to write any book, even a bad one, and so as a rule I prefer to ignore obviously bad books rather than review them...

...One would have thought that the editors at least might have cleaned up the following sentence in the section of acknowledgments : "And it is fair to say the book would not have been done at all without Peter Wyden, who had the original idea, and arranged for further ideas to emerge out of the manuscript by close and painstaking editing [italics mine...

...What a book...

...A few pages later, the authors discuss how Bishop William Lawrence was not only a founding trustee of Groton School but also a leader of Bar Harbor society...

...such an inexcusably bad book that it should be reviewed...

...its old-family clergymen encouraged by their words and presence the development of these institutions of exclusivity and involvement in them by the new-weal thy converts who were flocking to the church...

...Mussolini, so I was told in my youth, fed castor oil to those he disapproved of...

...How in the world does one "practice" a cosmology...

...Anecdotal paragraph follows anecdotal paragraph, with no factual, temporal, or logical connection between them...

...I suggest that the professors who taught Kit and Frederica at Haverford and Yale be made to read this book word for word, cover to cover...

...I never knew that the social register was a place like Baltimore or Fisher's Island...

...How many square miles per bishop, or bishops per square mile...

...nor was he a self-made millionaire but rather an amateur explorer with a Harvard Ph.D...

...I know a lot of non-Episcocrats who drink cocktails on all possible occasions Moore, moreover, may be a Bostonian in the authors' minds, but he was born and raised in the Mojrristown area of northern New Jersey...

...Let us hope it is not a symbol of things to come...

...The book has been well-publicized (a six-page news release announces "Now meet America's ruling class"), but it is both badly written and badly edited...

...According to them, and in accord with their thesis, Representative Bingham is "the son of Hiram Bingham, a self-made New York millionaire who capped his career by heading to Washington as a senator, much in the tradition of many other rich businessmen at the turn of the century, when the Senate was known, perhaps with even more justice than today, as the 'Millionaires' Club.' " But Hiram Bingham went to the Senate from Connecticut where he had previously served as governor...

...Thus, in their chapter on the "Church of Contradictions," they note that Episcopalians practice "an elaborate, Catholic ritual and fullblown cosmology...

...Henry VIII of course is never mentioned...

...One of the Mellon Bay's pillars," they write, "is carved with the fagade of the National Gallery...

...One would have thought that a more convenient tool might have been used...

...On the same page, they discuss the Mellon Bay in the National Cathedral in Washington, which was donated by the Presbyterian Mellons, Episcocrats who also support the National Gallery...

...Powerof 'Their Glory' (whatever that means) is...

...Moreover, neither John D. Rockefeller, Jr., ftor any of his sons attended St...

...What does "warped through" mean...

...Thus, ' 'Episcopalians warped through all these social developments...

...Paul's School, according to Kit and Frederica, is a great breeder of Episcocrats, John D. Rockefeller-"the richest and most devoutly low-Protestant capitalist of the nineteenth century"-must have sent his only son there...

...He may, finally, be a biological descendant of "social Episcocrats of the late nineteenth century," but he is surely not their "spiritual descendant...

...John D. Jr.," they write, ' 'had begun gentling the family money by attending St...

...Then they cover the history of Anglicanism: "Anglican means English...

...Yet Kit Konolige, according to the dust jacket, is a magna cum laude graduate from Haverford, and his wife and co-author, Frederica, has a Ph.D...

...Gentling low-Protestants is surely a novel sociological process...

...And, by the way, neither Groton nor St...

...Among Lawrence, Bishop Duane, and Bishop Greer of New York, Mount Desert Island supported a greater per capita population of Episcopal clerical heavyweights than any other square miles in the country...

...he was also the son and grandson of Congregationalist missionaries to the Pacific Islands (he was born in Honolulu...

...from Yale...

...As St...

...On the following page, the authors find that "the Kin-solvings have continued to sprout clergymen frpm their roots in Baltimore and their place in the Social Register and on Fisher's Island with the likes of the Du Ponts...

...This is indeed a new and spongy concept, and the authors have an ingenious ability to make anyone of wealth and privilege into an Episcocrat...

...The reader now expects some discussion of Moore, but he is not mentioned again until some three hundred pages later, when the authors describe a banquet at the Plaza Hotel in New'York where "after an exercise in the quintessential Episcopal social occasion-cocktails-Moore was his charming, storytelling, old-family best...

...Paul's...

...But The...

...their sense of history and theology is weird...

...597, the church whose bishops are members of the House of Lords...

...Paul's...

...Thus the assistant secretaryship of the navy is "a post that is catnip to Episcocrats, including FDR...

...Kit and Frederica have nothing but nice things to say about most Episcocrats, including Jonathan Bingham, a graduate of Groton who represents the Bronx in the House of Representatives...

...In a chapter oddly entitled "Cultivating 'Episcopal Emotions,' "things become curiouser and curiouser...

...Paul's nor any other New England "prep school" was founded or run by the Episcopal Church...

...It well illustrates what is wrong with American publishing-and American education...

...who taught for various periods of time at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton...

...Sometimes, as with the prep schools, the church founded and led these developments from the beginning...

...According to the Konoliges, the members of America's ruling class are "Episco-crats...

...An , awful lot of history is misunderstood in that sentence...