laudable Practice

The King's state visit to the United States, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, had me searching online for photographs of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II attending Episcopal services during their respective state visits.  During his state visit, George VI, with FDR, attended divine service at St. James Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, New York City on Sunday 11th June 1939. The first photograph, taken after the service, shows the King and Queen, President and Mrs. Roosevelt, Bishop Henry St. George Tucker (then PECUSA Presiding Bishop), and two Episcopal clergy.  The second and third photographs are of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attending divine service in Old North Church on Sunday 11th July 1976, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.  The photographs evoke something that, in many ways, been lost. Reflecting on the photographs, however, is neither a counsel of despair nor a call for reactionary outrage. It is, instead, an i...

As for the reformed churches, except our neighbor Church, they haue abandoned daies dedicated to Saints. For those who passionately opposed the Articles of Perth , the Church of England loomed large. The Articles were, it was asserted, a means of conforming the Church of Scotland to the 'but half-reformed' national Church south of the border. This explains why, although the Articles of Perth restored to the Church of Scotland the observance of the five principal festivals of our Lord but not the saints' days commemorated by the Church of England, the Articles' opponents raised the spectre of 'popish' saints' days. In the defence of the Articles of Perth given by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth - the attack on the Church of England's saints' days is directly address, Firstly, Lindsay challenges the allegation on Hooker...

Today marks a return to a genre of post on laudable Practice that I particularly enjoy: reflections on episcopal charges from the 'long 18th century'.  I find them all the more enjoyable when the bishop in question is little known. This adds to the sense that we are looking into what life was actually like in the pre-1833 Church of England, what concerns motivated bishops, what clerical life might have been like, what was the ethos of 18th century Anglicanism.  Thomas Burgess was born in 1756, just four years before George III acceded to the Throne. George III, of course, reigned until 1820. The vast majority of Burgess' life, therefore, was lived under good King George. In 1784 Burgess received holy orders and the following year was appointed examining and domestic chaplain to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Salisbury. 40 years later, during the reign of George IV, Burgess himself would become Bishop of Salisbury, translated from St Davids. In the charge delivered to the cle...

Cosmopolitanism has been a theme running through these readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull : from the influence of Episcopius on the younger Bull, to a later critical but still admiring response to Episcopius, to the warm relationship with the Gallican Bossuet. Today's reading offers another example of the cosmopolitan context both for Bull and wider 18th Anglicanism.  In 1703, John Ernest Grabe - of whom Nelson notes, "his particular friend and mine" - published a new Latin edition of Bull's works: with his [i.e. Grabe's] own many learned Annotations, and introduced it into the World with an admirable Preface, which did great Justice to our excellent Author, as well as to his learned and judicious Writings. Grabe had been born at Königsberg, in the Kingdom of Prussia, in 1666. Settling in Oxford in 1697, he received Church of England orders in 1700, becoming chaplain of Christ Church. While the son of a Lutheran divine and a subject of the Kin...

It is not at all original to read Hooker's exposition of the Sacraments in Book V of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity alongside the Consensus Tigurinus (the Consensus of Zurich), the 1549 agreement between the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on the Sacraments. Torrance Kirby , for example, has said that Hooker's teaching on the Sacraments as 'moral instruments' is "demonstrably in agreement with the Consensus Tigurinus". Similarly, Diarmaid MacCulloch regards Hooker's eucharistic views as being at home in "Bullinger's Zurich".  The purpose of this post, therefore, is not to offer any original commentary but to consider how the Consensus Tigurinus is significantly reflected in Hooker. The focus of this post is V.57.3-5 of the Laws . We begin, however, with a passage from the Laws just prior to V.57, as Hooker considers "The union or mutuall participation which is betweene Christ and the Church of Christ in this present worlde". In...

The picture is of this year's annual Lantern Service in Old North Church , Boston. The service commemorates the lighting of two lanterns in the church's steeple on 18th April 1775, leading to Paul Revere's famous midnight ride before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In the 50 years since the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, the service has been an annual fixture. In the words of the Old North Church website: [it] recalls the lights of liberty that shone from Old North’s steeple on April 18, 1775, while reflecting on the meaning of faith, freedom, and American democracy today. The service culminates with the lighting of the church's two historic lanterns. When I looked at photographs of this year's service, what immediately struck me was this photograph. It encapsulates the 'Publick Religion' that traditionally has been part of the Anglican vocation: surplice, tippet, hood, bands - noble and modest; a historic church; a national commemoration.  It is,...