Lewis Balch

Lewis Penn Witherspoon Balch (1814-1875) served briefly as an assistant minister at St. Andrew’s Church, Philadelphia, prior to becoming the second rector at the newly-formed St. Bartholomew’s Church (Episcopal) in New York City in October 1838. Originally from Virginia, Balch graduated from Princeton in 1834; he then studied for two years at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. He was one of many evangelical ministers who formed a prominent group within the Episcopal Church in America in the 1830s. Upon his arrival at St. Bartholomew’s, however, Balch discovered that the diocese was markedly High Church. He maintained his evangelical position, even weathering the trial and suspension of his Bishop, Benjamin T. Onderdonk, for his Anglo-Catholic tendencies. Not long after his arrival at St. Batholomew’s, Balch organized a Sunday school, doubling the church’s membership in his first year; by 1844 the church had grown from 56 communicants to over 400. In 1839 Balch married the granddaughter of John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States. He remained at St. Bartholomew’s until 1850, during which time he published several editions of Edward Bickersteth’s A Treatise on the Lord’s Supper (1845, 1849, and 1855), and at least one original work, God in the Storm: A Narrative . . . Prepared on Board the Great Western, after the Storm Encountered on her Recent Voyage (1846). See E. Clowes Chorley, The Centennial History of St. Bartholomew’s Church in the City of New York, 1835-1935 (New York: n.p., 1935), 69-82; for his correspondence with the BMS Committee concerning the potential missionary Edgar Anthony Low, see Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845  [Macon: Baptist History Series, Mercer University Press, 2009], 221-26, 264-67, 270-76.