Against the Weird: the Old High Church celebration of the ordinary

... Christianity’s only viable future in a secular age: as a spiritually saturated rejection of the American political binary and the limited possibilities of a culture that denies transcendence.

The words are from Tara Isabella Burton's recent NYT piece, 'Christianity Gets Weird':

More and more young Christians, disillusioned by the political binaries, economic uncertainties and spiritual emptiness that have come to define modern America, are finding solace in a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith. As the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns throw the failures of the current social order into stark relief, old forms of religiosity offer a glimpse of the transcendent beyond the present.

Many of us call ourselves “Weird Christians,” albeit partly in jest. What we have in common is that we see a return to old-school forms of worship as a way of escaping from the crisis of modernity and the liberal-capitalist faith in individualism.

It is difficult not to take delight in the angst this must produce in those who for decades have been promoting liturgical reform and a theological agenda of demythologising: all that work and now young Christians are throwing it overboard with, for example, a return to "the Episcopal Rite I, a form of worship that draws on Elizabethan-era language" and "more supernatural elements of the faith (like miracles, say, or the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ)".

This delight is, however, tempered by some reservations prompted by an Old High Church vision and its distrust of 'enthusiasm' and of sectarianism. 

The purpose of "old-school forms of worship" should not be to provide a means "of escaping from the crisis of modernity and the liberal-capitalist faith in individualism".  As G.W.O. Addleshaw emphasised in his classic study The High Church Tradition (1941), the purpose of the liturgy is not escapism but "integration".  Yes, this does challenge "the disintegrating forces of liberalism, individualism, and secularism", but it does so not through escapism but in the gathering up of the 'secular' into Christ:

The High Churchmen viewed the whole nation as the potential Body of Christ; it was with the life of the nation that the liturgy had to do, and so their message is not only for their own communion, it is for the whole nation.

The "divine order" set forth in the liturgy is not an escape from but, rather, the sanctification of the ordinary:

[It] must embrace the whole of man's life, bringing politics, industry, commerce, home, and leisure under the rule of the divine justice and charity proclaimed by the liturgy.

Part of the problem with the nomenclature 'Weird' is that it at least hints at a quite different sectarian vision: of mystery cult rather than Christendom (and, as John Milbank reminds us, "Christianity is Christendom, as the older history of the coinciding usage of these words suggests").

Sectarianism is also indicated in the implied criticism of 'cultural Christianity', "those for whom religion is a primarily social or communal affair".  In its place, we have something more demanding:

The totalizing demands of a faith like Christianity - from its radical rejection of earthly power and success to its condemnation of premarital sex - are becoming appealing only to those who want something totally demanding in the first place.

A number of difficulties arise here.  Denigrating the significance of social and communal norms and habits in shaping and sustaining Faith suggests what John Hughes termed "an overly angelic anthropology", overlooking or denying the fact that we are inherently social and cultural beings.  The numerical collapse - and subsequent cultural marginalisation - of Anglicanism in North Atlantic societies over the past generation can at least partly be attributed to the failure to continue to nurture and cherish social and communal norms and habits which sustained Anglican identity and practice.

Similarly, caution must be exercised regarding claims of the "totalizing demands of a faith like Christianity".  That Christians are called to holy living is evident from the New Testament.  This, however, is must definitely not a rejection of the ordinary.  It finds expression in domestic relationships and civic duties, not in a denial of these. 

Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.

The Apostle's exhortation is a reminder that the dominical call to die to self is lived out in the ordinary.  Here is the basis for Articles 37, 38, and 39 (written precisely, of course, against Anabaptist sectarianism).  Rather than "radical rejection" characterising Christianity's approach to power, money, or sex, the concern of both Scripture and most Christian experience over centuries has been to rightly order power, money, and sex for human flourishing, for grace does not destroy nature and our nature includes political society, economic activity, and sexual love.

Against the 'enthusiasm' of certain readings of "totalizing demands", the High Church tradition has embodied the wisdom of centuries of Christian reflection upon the reading of call and commandment in Scripture.  As Jeremy Taylor stated in Ductor dubitantium of the Lord's teaching in the Gospels:

Some things are given to all; others but to a few; and some commands were to single persons and single states: God having regard to the well-being of societies, and to the health even of every single Christian. That there is a necessity of making a distinction is certain, but how this distinction is to be made is very uncertain, and no measures have yet been described, and we are very much to seek for a certain path in this intricacy. If we doe not distinguish precept from precept, and persons from states of life, and states of life from communities of men, it will be very easy for witty men to bind burdens upon other men's shoulders with which they ought not to be press'd (Vol. 1, Chpt. III).

There is a real sense in which an 'enthusiastic' reading of "totalizing demands" actually contributes to and reinforces "the limited possibilities of a culture that denies transcendence", through a denial of the sanctity of ordinary settings, experiences, and vocations, a denial that God has "regard to the well-being of societies".

It is not in being Weird, then, that Anglicanism offers "something transcendent, politically meaningful, personally challenging".  Anglicanism does so through being ordinary.  Through the occasional offices, drawing us to see how birth, marriage, and death are caught up in the loving and gracious economy of God.  Through the sanctification of civic duty and allegiance, ordering the polity towards love of neighbour, justice, and righteousness (supported by the communitarian commitments of classical Anglican political theology).  Through the parish gathering up place, memory, and community, for - in the words of Addleshaw - "divorced from the life of those who worship the liturgy becomes an academic or aesthetic thing".

It is in being ordinary, not Weird, that Anglicanism can set forth, in words from the article's closing paragraph, "a version of our common life more robust than individual pursuit of desire-fulfillment or profit".