The relevance of Anglican agrarianism

Spending time connecting with the natural world is the perfect antidote to the pressures of modern life. Getting close to nature – and especially listening to birdsong – doesn’t just bring us physical benefits – it also helps improve our mental and emotional health, happiness and wellbeing. And this isn’t just some warm, fuzzy feeling.

Scientists at the University of Surrey have been studying the “restorative benefits of birdsong”, testing whether it really does improve our mood. They discovered that, of all the natural sounds, bird songs and calls were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress, and allowing them to restore and refocus their attention.

So said a Guardian article on Saturday, ahead of International Dawn Chorus Day on Sunday. It is another reminder that criticism of the Anglican imagination being shaped by agrarian experience is itself now a rather dated and woefully narrow understanding. Rachel Mann, for example, has criticised the "Anglican Imagination" for being chiefly defined by "non-industrial and pre-industrial settings", in which "industry is essentially concealed".

Such an agrarian imagination - pastoral, ecclesial, liturgical, artistic - is what is needed in the contemporary Church amidst the various environmental crises now faced. An Anglican Imagination rooted in agrarian experience challenges the assumptions which underpin, and the behaviour which gives expression to, contemporary urban, consumerist, technological culture.

To again quote from the article:

But as we contemplate what has happened to Britain’s birdlife over the past half century, can we really be sure that they will still be singing in 50 years’ time? I’m not sure that we can.

In such a context, how can it be a weakness that the Anglican Imagination is shaped by an agrarianism which leads us to value nature, wildlife, and landscape, and to desire rhythms and patterns of life more in harmony with the natural environment? As Professor Sandra Diaz - a co-chair of the recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - has said:

We need to change the way we think about what a good life is, we need to change the social narrative that puts an emphasis on a good life depending on a high consumption and quick disposal.

The agrarianism of the Anglican Imagination offers a response to this call, a response weakened and undermined if that agrarianism is held to be a cause of ecclesial embarrassment, rather than a gift to be shared.

Close to the beginning of his A Sand County Almanac (1949), the great US naturalist and conservationist Aldo Leopold stated:

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

The agrarianism of the Anglican Imagination can - through its rhythms and patterns, experiences and artistic expressions - help us both recognise and address such "spiritual dangers". It can recall us to an experience of the created order, the natural environment, as gift; of what it is to live in harmony with this gift of the Creator; and of the vocation to be good stewards of the created order. In other words, the agrarianism of the Anglican Imagination is deeply contemporary, profoundly relevant.

As philosopher and New Agrarian writer Norman Wirbza has said:

Our practical separation from the sources of life - photosynthesis, humus, earthworms, bees, chickens, communal memory and tradition, family nurture, neighborly support - is of immense theological significance because what is at issue is our separation from the ways of God at work there.

To call for the Anglican Imagination to be less agrarian is to compromise the Church's response to, and its mission in, an age of threatening ecological catastrophe. Rather than abandoning such agrarian rhythms, patterns, and experiences, it is a time to renew, deepen, and more fully live out Anglican agrarianism.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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