Shades of the Gorham controversy! You remember that. No? Great jumping dust bunnies: must Google do everything for you? In 1850 a secular court reversed an ecclesiastical court’s finding that one George Cornelius Gorham was unfit for a post in the Church of England because he denied baptismal regeneration. Not only did the state interfere in church matters (which should not have been thought all that strange given that the British monarch is the de facto head of the church in England), but it permitted a broadening of interpretation of what baptism meant. Evangelicals and Calvinists were delighted, as Gorham’s opinion apparently mirrored their own. High-Church types, who saw the CofE as a branch of the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church, not so much, as baptismal regeneration had been the traditional understanding of what the sacrament in fact did—conferred the Spirit, washed away sins, and made you a child of God and a servant of Christ. Henry Manning and other members of the Oxford Movement threw up their hands, donned their water wings, and swam the Tiber, where baptism was one thing only and not a matter of mere opinion.
Fast forward. Really fast. More. More. Stop. (Oh, you went too far. Why don’t you listen?) Reports are that a movement is afoot to abridge and amend the baptismal language currently found in the Book of Common Prayer. Whether this would be a matter of employing colloquial language; dumbing down the theology, with its supposedly antiquated talk of sin, death, and the devil; or leaving Christ out of it altogether, offering a “spiritual but not religious” initiation into the glories of Erastianism, remains unclear. But given that the CofE has only one thing that holds together, however tenuously, its various factions and wings, namely the Book of Common Prayer, messing with its initiatory sacrament will be seen by many as just one more hammer in the already overstuffed coffin that is organized religion in England.
Let’s face it: if anyone thinks that “earthing” the language of baptism will miraculously enthuse millions of unchurched Britons, I have a birth rite to sell you for a mess of porridge. I have no idea what the average Anglican vicar or bishop believes about baptism. I’m sure there are as many opinions as there are prelates. And so I guess this should not be seen as all that scandalous. And that’s the problem. Nothing, apparently, is sacred. In a church. Including what it means to be a member. Of a church.
It’s easy to mock this kind of stuff, but frankly, it always makes me sad. Think what you want of Hank 8’s break or Betts I’s compromise, the Church of England has produced some of the more outstanding and astounding Christian thinkers, artists, and witnesses of the past four and a half centuries: consider Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker and the translators of the King James Bible and George Herbert and John Donne and John Wesley and Samuel Johnson and William Wilberforce and Christina Rossetti and the G.K. Chesterton who wrote The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Was Thursday and and C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and John Stott and Alister McGrath and N.T. Wright.
To those who insist that this theological insanity/inanity is the result of a rebellion against authority, true enough. Had the church in England remained faithful to Rome, what’s happening regarding faith and morals would not be happening regarding faith and morals. But I do wonder if the above-mentioned greats would have been permitted the freedom to express their faith exactly as they did (and do) if they were members of a more controlling institution obedient to a universal bishop. Freedom is never free. It costs, even kills when used recklessly. But it can also give life where before there were ecclesiastical chains.*
If that’s not offensive enough, try this: I believe the solution may be not more authority but less. Given that the one book that historically had bound Anglicans together, that of Common Prayer, is so easily mangled, well, can anyone spell anti-anti-disestablishmentarianism? Let those various factions finally stand on their own. We’ll see whether the High Church or the Broad Church or the Low Church survives if each must rely on the tithes and offerings of its congregants and not the public coffers.
Bet on the evangelicals. Just not with real money. They hate that.
(*Yes, yes, I know: the CofE in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was hardly a model of open-minded inquiry and freedom of conscience. It, too, knew how to rein in—and drive out—dissidents. The Puritans come to mind. But after the Armada invasion and Guy Fawkes, on the one hand, and Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads on the other, religious violence was dreaded precisely because it had comprised all-too-real chapters in the nation’s history.)
January 21st, 2011 | 10:10 am
de facto or de jure? I thought that the British monarch had been merely de jure for some time; the de facto head would be the Archbishop of Canterbury, or perhaps the councils/synods they hold every now and then (sorry; I’m not Anglican, so I don’t know the term).
January 21st, 2011 | 11:19 am
Well, this will pave the way for more easily for the pet baptisms PD James foretold.
January 21st, 2011 | 11:54 am
Some legislation by the Synod requires the approval of Parliament and the Third Commissioner (who is always an MP) answers questions in parliament about Church finances, just like a minister does for his department
The final court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes is the Supreme Court, except for cases of doctrine, when it is the Court for Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved, where Judges and Bishops both sit. In both, the Sovereign can grant a Commission of Review, with a mix of Supreme Court Judges and Archbishops and Bishops
The Archbisop of Canterbuty has rather limited powers over his suffragans and virtually none in the Province of York, except in relation to licences and dispensations. In practice, both Archbishops appoint the same judge to preside in the Provincial Courts (The Arches Court of Canterbury and the Chancery Court of York) He must be a QC of 10 years standing
January 21st, 2011 | 12:11 pm
Thanks, Michael PS!
January 21st, 2011 | 12:37 pm
I agree about disestablishmentarianism. I’ve been following the travails of the Church of Norway, somewhat idly, for a while, and it would appear that a state church is simply unsuited to the world we live in. People who want to belong to churches that actually believe in something will have to find “free” churches, or start them. Let the institutional dead bury their own dead.
January 21st, 2011 | 12:53 pm
Your fifth paragraph is an important reminder. We often pretend, when viewing history “Oh, if only A hadn’t happened, B wouldn’t have followed, and everything would have been good in the garden!” We can’t replay history, and we don’t know. Whenever we are most sure that we do know is likely the very spot we are rooting for a particular vindication, and thus overlooking contrary possibilities.
January 21st, 2011 | 1:34 pm
Would these greats (Donne, Samuel Johnson, Chesterton, etc) have been great and able to use their gifts had there been no English Reformation? That kind of “counterfactual conditional” question is almost certainly meaningless in most (but not all) cases.
Since Cranmer’s gift was writing liturgical prayers in English, doubtless he would not have had scope for his gift as a Catholic. Not so clear with the translators of the King James Version of the Bible, however. Had there been no English Reformation, there may still very well have been something like the KJV.
But what does it mean to ask whether John Donne would have been a great religious poet had he (who was raised in a very devout Catholic family) not become an Anglican as an adult? Would John Dryden have been a great poet had he not converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism?
Samuel Johnson had a great respect for the “Old Religion,” and often defended various aspects of it in conversation. (For instance, when someone criticized Catholics for genuflecting, he said “Sir, they believe their God is on the altar; why should they NOT bend the knee to Him?” Astonishingly, he even defended the Inquisition at one point, though whether he was just exercising his argumentative skills is unclear.) I don’t see why a Catholic Samuel Johnson would have been much different from an Anglican Samuel Johnson.
Chesterton? He was practically a Catholic already when he wrote Orthodoxy, long before his formal reception into the Catholic Church.
Even though Catholics were a very small proportion of the English population after the Reformation, English Catholics have contributed an astonishing amount in various fields of culture, including theology and religious literature, art and music: Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Bl. J.H. Newman, Lord Acton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Edward Elgar, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh, Frederick Copleston, Alec Guinness, Edith Sitwell, Alfred Hitchcock, Malcolm Muggeridge, etc., etc., etc. (And let us not forget Hugh Lofting, Anthony! Where would we be without Doctor Doolittle :) )
I don’t see why England could not or would not have contributed just as much to Christian culture had she remained Catholic. It is an unanswerable question; but certainly the little part that continued to be Catholic contributed mightily.
January 21st, 2011 | 4:36 pm
I suppose that somewhere in this conversation someone should point out that correlation does not imply causation. So it may as well be me. In addition to the possibilities that (1) England’s going Anglican caused it to have an overabundance of gifted Christians and (2) England’s having an overabundance of gifted Christians caused it to go Anglican, there are the possibilities that (3) some third factor caused England to go Anglican and create an overabundance of gifted Christians and (4) there’s no connection at all between England’s going Anglican and its creating an overabundance of gifted Christians. Unfortunately, however, from a Catholic standpoint—and by the way, I’m not Catholic—it seems to me that none of those four possibilities is particularly attractive. 1 suggests that Anglicanism was more likely to produce gifted Christians than was Catholicism, 2 suggests that gifted Christians were more likely to produce Anglicanism over Catholicism, 3 suggests that whatever was marvelous enough to produce an overabundance of gifted Christians was also marvelous enough to produce Anglicanism rather than Catholicism, and 4 suggests that no other denomination—including Catholicism—was better suited to develop gifted Christians than was Anglicanism. I might add, of course, that the same could be said of any other denomination in England at the time.
January 21st, 2011 | 5:53 pm
Dear JB,
Anthony Sacramone did not say that Anglicanism produced an “overabundance” of great Christian figures. He merely said that it produced many great figures who enriched Christendom, and that had there been no Anglicanism perhaps their contributions would have been lost or diminished. He did not compare their contributions to those of other Christian nations or ecclesiastical groups. Every nation can make equally impressive — and in some cases more impressive lists. Italy can point to St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, Palestrina, Dante, Don Bosco, Michelangelo, Bernini, … Spain can point to St. Francis Xavier, St. Dominic, El Greco (admittedly from Crete), Tomas Luis de Victoria, Bartolome de las Casas, St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa of Avila, …
Yes, Anglicans have enriched us in many ways. But so have Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, etc.
So, your premise — which Anthony Sacramone did NOT assert — of an Anglican “overabundance” is at best dubious, and almost certainly wrong.
January 21st, 2011 | 11:37 pm
Among the first acts of the newly formed Church of England was the destruction of monasteries, religious artwork, and traditional worship (see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580), so I must say I am somewhat less than surprised at this latest assault on the Faith.
January 22nd, 2011 | 1:17 am
There was a political-cultural revolution in England as it passed from the later Medieval world to the infancy of the Modern era. This was the main thrust of what happened in England between 1530 (or so) and 1603. It only secondarily was religious/theological [unlike Wittenburg-Augsburg and Geneva's religious/theological revolutions that had political/cultural overtones.
The blessing that came from that period of time was a wonderful ability to 'create' the English Language [we now call it Elizabethan or Shakespearean English] that would accompany the rise of the English nation into an English Empire and a ‘national church’ into a ‘communion’ united around the same English translation of its Prayer Book. My hat goes off to Archbishop Cranmer for his sense of the budding English Language
However, in Cranmer we have also the root of a ‘problem’ still being experienced by the Anglican Communion. He purposefully translated the ancient Latin Sarum texts in a way that were ambigious-that could be understood and thus believed by those seeking to maintain Catholic continuity or Evangelical interpretations. This was problematic enough however his real intent-since he was totally ‘sold’ on the King’s right to rule the Church-was that the words meant what the King wanted them to mean.
Catholic and Evangelical can still argue out their theological disputes quietly or not. Now however, times have changed. While not agreeing on some issues, Catholics and Evangelicals recognizing that we have far more to ‘fear’ from the ‘secularizing’ forces both ancient and ‘post-modern’, are entering more and more into ecumenical dialogue, respect and in certain areas cooperation. However-what happens to Cranmer’s sense of the King defining the meaning of the Prayers? Instead of a king or queen ‘dictating’ what the prayer book means what becomes the authoritative norm?
We thus come to the confusion we are witnessing within the Anglican Communion these days.
Quo Vadis Canterbury? Quo Vadis Britannia?
January 22nd, 2011 | 6:31 am
“Non angli, sed angeli” – Not Angles, but Anglicans?
January 22nd, 2011 | 8:11 am
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