On the importance of pumpkins at Hallowtide

Because religion is about mediation, it naturally refuses any duality of nature and culture. Reality, as the true nature of things, is sacred, but it must be mediated by particular human relations and practices - John Milbank.

If the Church - as suggested in yesterday's post - is "to retrieve, revive and confidently celebrate the festival of All Saints", this necessarily means more than liturgy. Yes, the liturgical celebration may be at the heart of All Saints' Day, but it also requires a cultural presence - mediation - which reflects and embodies the reality that we are cultural beings.

In the absence of such cultural practices, it is difficult to see how the celebration of All Saints can truly resonate, for then the liturgical celebration fails to be embodied in the cultural fabric of our lives. To again quote Milbank, "mission is impossible without a strong cultural mediation and presence".

Within classical Anglican theology, there is significant recognition of this need for cultural mediation. Richard Hooker's defence of "celebrating festivall dayes" sets out three characteristics of festivals:

The most naturall testimonies of our rejoycinge in God are first his praises sett forth with a cheerefull alacritie of minde, secondlie our comforte and delight expressed by a charitable largenes of somewhat more then common bountie, thirdlie sequestration from ordinarie labors, the toiles and cares whereof are not meete to be companions of such gladnes. Festivall solemnitite therefore is nothing but the due mixture as it were of these three elementes, praise, and bountie, and rest - LEP V.70.2.

Bounty and rest, therefore, are naturally required alongside our celebration of All Saints. The bounty of Autumn - apples, pumpkins, nuts - should mark our celebration of the feast. Festivity should characterise the days before the feast, being in some form a "sequestration from ordinarie labours".

This Anglican defence of festivity was given authoritative expression in James I's Book of Sports, reissued by Charles I:

And as for Our good peoples lawfull Recreation, Our Pleasure like is, That after the end of Diuine Seruice, Our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawfull recreation, Such as dauncing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmlesse Recreation, nor from hauing of May-Games, Whitson Ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting vp of May-poles & other sports therewith vsed, so as the same be had in due & conuenient time, without impediment or neglect of Diuine Seruice: And that women shall haue leaue to carry rushes to the Churches for the decoring of it, according to their old custome.

This affirmation of seasonal festivity, bounty, and customs was a recognition that such cultural practices more deeply embedded "Sundayes & holydaies" in the popular imagination. It was also a rebuttal of both "Papist and Puritanes" who - obviously for different reasons - declared that "no honest mirth or recreation is lawfull or tolerable in Our Religion". To propose a celebration of All Saints without 'old customs', without mirth, without 'harmless recreation', is to prevent the liturgical celebration from having a joyful presence in our lives outside the liturgy. It is, in other words, to collude with the secular - to give the feast no real presence in time and culture.

The classical Anglican defence of festivity, therefore, reminds us of the necessity of cultural mediation for the celebration of All Saints. In home and parish, the signs - the 'old customs' - of Hallowtide should be encouraged; the bounty of the season should be enjoyed; and 'harmless recreation' should mark All Hallows' Eve. These are not optional extras, they are not distractions. They embody and enable festivity. In the words of Hooker:

the hallowinge of festivall daies must consist in the shape or countenance which wee put upon thaffaires that are incident upon those daies - LEP V.70.1.

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

Search This Blog