Can a polity go to heaven? Thoughts on Accession Day

Forms of association, belonging, and common projects are integral to who and what we are: no recognisable Andrew Davison without Corpus, Merton, Westcott, St Stephen’s House. Entering into eternal life (let us hope), we would bring along with us all the bonds of belonging and association that have shaped us.

If I am to be redeemed, and I am a member of various communities, won’t something of their character feature in that future life - at the very least, in the effect that they have had on me, and so many others?

Andrew Davison's words come from a recent Church Times article, 'Can the Royal Horticultural Society go to heaven?', based on his 2018 Cambridge University sermon, 'Can a University go to heaven?'.

Davison's insight does, I think, remind us of the significance of the Book of Common Prayer provision for today, Accession Day. This is also the case with, for example, the provision in PECUSA 1928 for Independence Day, and in Canada 1962 for Dominion Day. Likewise, with the historic 'state services' in the BCP 1662 - 30th January, Oak Apple Day, and 5th November.

The liturgical provision for each of these days in the Prayer Book tradition draws us to perceive our belonging to this community - nation and polity - as no 'secular' experience, removed from our daily petition 'thy kingdom come'. Into that petition is gathered our common life life in this community, to be ordered towards the life of de civitate Dei. This is what the various state commemorations of the Prayer Book tradition proclaim.

As Davison states:

Can a collective enterprise go to heaven? Yes, if it is part of who we are, and that is honourable, just, and worthy of praise. Yes, if it is the fruit of labour, and that has a glory and honour to it. No, if it is woven out of hay or straw; yes, if it is a building in gold, silver, and precious stones ...

But no — just as firmly, no — if they are marked by “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy” (Galatians 5.20-21). Whatever has that character, Paul writes, has no place in the Kingdom of God.

This why the state commemorations and state prayers of the Prayer Book tradition are significant: because our belonging and association in the nation and state can be redeemed, can be that which - in Davison's words - "builds, even now, the foundations of the city that is to come".

At the same time, this underlines the significance of the absence of state commemorations from some contemporary Anglican liturgies. The Church of Ireland BCP 2004, for example, omits the Accession Day provision contained in BCP 1926. Abandoning the state commemorations - whether out of progressive embarrassment or a Hauerwas-like rejection of Christendom - contributes to the secular city's rejection of the petition 'thy kingdom come'.

It represents a narrowing of the redemptive vision, a decarlation that those "forms of association, belonging, and common projects" that are the nation and polity are somehow excluded from "the dispensation of the fulness of times [when God the Father] might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth" (Ephesians 1:10).

It also militates against rightly ordering the life of the earthly city after the pattern of de civitate Dei, a failure to set before nation and polity a vision of flourishing shaped by"truth and justice, holiness and righteousness, peace and charity" (from the prayer 'Almighty God, who rulest over all the kingdoms of the world' in the Accession Day service).

The liturgical commemoration of Accession Day, then, is no ecclesial equivalent of historical role-play. In an age in which the political, economic, and cultural exhaustion of the liberal order is very evident, in which the common life of many polities is characterised by "enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy", the Prayer Book provision for Accession Day sets before us the hope of the redemption of the polity, of the nation. This is the hope that our common life therein - rather than being damned to the emptiness of secular existence - is called to be rightly ordered towards de civitate Dei, sharing in the life of God.

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