'At the Reformation the primitive practice was restored': on the 1662 rubric for administering the Sacrament into the hand

"It is to be delivered into their hands." We have the unanimous testimony of the Fathers, that the communicants always received the elements into their own hands ... During the corrupter ages, when the sacramental bread and wine were believed to be the actual Body and Blood of Christ, a wafer was substituted for bread, and that was by the priest put into the mouth of the communicant, that no particle of the Body of Christ should be wasted or lost. And lest the blood should be spilt, or any accident happen, the cup was totally withheld from the laity. At the Reformation the primitive practice was restored, and the Communion in both kinds delivered into the hands of the people.

It is but a brief extract from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), addressing the 1662 rubric after the Prayer of Consecration and before administration of the Bread and Cup. What this extract suggests, however, is what was obscured in Anglicanism by the Ritualism and advanced Anglo-catholicism of the later 19th century.

By the end of that century, in Ritualist and advanced Anglo-catholic parishes, the wafer was being placed in the mouth of communicants, and the chalice firmly held by the cleric administering it - when, that is, the main Sunday service was not a non-communicating High Mass. A movement which had started in 1833 with self-proclaimed intentions of renewing the Church of England's fidelity to patristic faith and practice, resulted in the adoption of what the Church of Ireland's Declaration of 1870 rightly termed "innovations in doctrine and worship, whereby the Primitive Faith hath been from time to time defaced or overlaid, and which at the Reformation this Church did disown and reject". Or, to put it another way, the late Georgian Anglicanism of Shepherd was much closer to "the primitive practice" than the Tridentine norms of late Victorian advanced Anglo-catholicism.

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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...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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