'Some definite truth to teach the nation': a late 19th century Old High critique of liberal Anglicanism

Having offered robust critiques of advanced Anglo-catholicism and neo-Puritan Evangelicalism, William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, in his 1872 primary visitation charge, turns his attention to "a third School of thought", the liberal stream within the Church of England. He described this stream as those who declared that "if the Church is to remain established she must learn to be less dogmatic, and to put herself more in accord with the 'liberal and enlightened spirit of the age'":

And though we should be as far as possible from charging all of this School of thought with aiming at these results, yet we cannot fail to see amongst them tendencies in this direction - demands, for instance, for the abolition of all doctrinal tests for admission to the ministry of our Church; complaints of the too dogmatic character of our Creeds; proposals for the admission of any one and every one, schismatic, heretic, or unbeliever to her pulpits, or to a share in councils which are to regulate the minutest details of her worship; attempts at still further relaxing her discipline, already far too lax; all put forward under the attractive and doubtless the honest plea of preserving the Establishment by widening the basis of our Church, and so making her more truly national. All these seem to me tainted with the same error, and fraught with the same peril; the error of supposing that our Church is national only because she is Established, the peril of destroying her really national character without saving her Establishment. 

While addressing the context of the late 19th century Church of England, it is a critique with a strikingly contemporary ring, highlighting how the empty slogan of 'inclusion' utterly, inevitably fails to define a church and its witnesses. The consequence of this is plainly stated by Magee, in almost prophetic fashion:

I say without saving her Establishment, for after all this exists because she is believed to have some definite truth to teach to the nation. Once let it be clearly understood that she really has nothing particular to say to the people, while any other religious body might say that nothing with just as much authority as she possesses — that in short she has only to tell them that it does not much matter what they believe, provided that they only believe that it does not matter — and the English people will have less common-sense than they are generally given credit for, if they fail to draw the conclusion that it is hardly worth while maintaining an Establishment for this.

There are two points that might be noted regarding Magee's critique of liberal Anglicanism.

Firstly, that Magee in 1872 could identify the logical outworking of an advanced liberal Anglicanism is a significant reminder that there was nothing inevitable about the process by which an insipid liberalism prevailed in the Church of England of the late 20th century. Significant voices were raised against this throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. As Sam Brewitt-Taylor demonstrates in his superb study of the post-1945 Church of England, it was a deliberate theological, political, and cultural choice by radical Anglican thought to promote a secularity defined by a rejection of a post-war moral culture shaped by public Christianity and the Established Church.

Secondly, Magee here identifies what is essential for a National Church: it must have "some definite truth to teach the nation". As he has already made clear in his critique of neo-Puritan Evangelicalism, this cannot be a narrow sectarianism, "within the limits of one school of thought", but, rather, must be "that fulness of doctrinal statement and breadth of comprehensiveness" that is "the broad stream of Catholic doctrine". A National Church must, in other words, faithfully, meaningfully proclaim the Christ of the catholic creeds - not less, not more.

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A note on laudable Practice and Lent

With Lent approaching, the pattern of posts on this blog will change for the penitential season. The weekly readings from Nelson's biography of Bull, Shepherd's commentary on the 1662 Holy Communion, and Magee's 1872 primary visitation charge will pause, returning in Eastertide. In their place will be readings from Latitudinarian Lenten sermons (principally by Tillotson), from Taylor's sermon on the invalidity of late repentance, and short reflections on aspects of the Prayer Book's penitential provision.