This is not to engage in an exercise in British Anglican chauvinism. Rather, it to suggest that the Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving appointed for this day captures a significant aspect of a classical Anglican understanding of the polity. Consider words from one of the appointed collects referring to the Restoration:
didst restore also unto us the publick and free profession of thy true Religion and Worship, together with our former peace and prosperity, to the great comfort and joy of our hearts.
It is, in words from the regular liturgy, a celebration of the gift and blessing of being "godly and quietly governed". This itself is a vision of common life deeply embedded in Scripture. Take, for example, the prophecy of Micah:
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.
Similarly, it is an aspect of Revelation's vision of the Heavenly City to be reflected and anticipated in earthly cities:
And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there ... In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Again, notice the prominence of themes which cohere with Rogationtide. There is another echo of this in what J.C.D. Clark describes as "Burke's Anglican Defence of the State":
whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud.
These Rogationtide echoes point to Hooker's emphasis that "politique societies" give expression to "a naturall inclination, wherby all men desire sociable life and fellowship", "which societies could not be without government" (LEP I.10.1). Government is, then, an integral part of the common ground we share in society, protecting and promoting "the law of a common weale". It is not an alien imposition or a contrived mechanism but a gift bestowed for our flourishing:
lawes of government ... serve to direct even nature depraved to a right end. All men desire to leade in this world an happie life. That life is led most happily, wherein all virtue is exercised without impediment or let (I.10.1).
To celebrate Oak Apple Day is to celebrate this gift given for the right and due ordering of our common life, enabling our flourishing and fruitfulness in the shared life of society, what Hooker terms our "peace, tranquilitie, and happy estate" (I.10.4). This rich political theology is reflected in the provisions for state and national occasions in other expressions of the Prayer Book tradition - Independence Day in PECUSA 1928 and Dominion Day in Canada 1962 - in which thanksgiving marks the gift of polity, government, and ordered liberty.
During these days of Rogationtide, laudable Practice has sought to reflect on the meaning of this observance in an era in which the emptiness and economic injustices of the prevailing liberal order have resulted in significant popular desire for a renewed ordering of our common life. With Oak Apple Day falling on this last day of Rogationtide, we also see how classical Anglican political theology offers a vision of polity and government enabling our flourising in that "virtue" of the Prayer for the Church Militant, contra the Right's minimalist state and the Left's technocratic government, both hostile to place, tradition, and communal flourishing.
Like Rogationtide, then, Oak Apple Day is a perhaps surprising resource for encouraging a resonant and an attractive contemporary Anglican account of how the common good and our shared life in the polity can be renewed and replenished.
It's been some time since I read Eliot's "The Idea of a Christian Society." But I remember being struck at how his vision of a Christian commonwealth entailed far more than a simple repudiation of liberalism, whether Right wing or Leftist. His understanding of Church and state assumes a hierarchy of common goods, chief of which is the life to come and the beatific vision. The distribution of all natural goods, therefore, have penultimate ends as instrumental blessings for the sake of virtue and the well-being of the whole community, and the attainment of a glorious resurrection in the world to come for those who have eyes to see it. In some ways it resonates with the emphases found in political Roman Catholicism, aka Integralism, especially the state abetting the Church in her commission to bring men to the achievement of their supreme blessedness, over against the purely negative condition of a religiously neutral and liberalized society.
ReplyDeleteIt is a deeply Augustinian vision which acknowledges God alone as that thing to which we cling with love for its own sake.
I think I agree with much of what you say here. Yes, a richly Augustinian social vision will be much more than a repudiation of liberalism, and that "hierarchy of common goods" is essential. Where I am hesitant is when it comes to the RC Integralist account of Church and State. The classical Anglican vision does not submit the polity to the Church. In Hooker's words, the institutions of the polity "are themselves agents in [God's] busines". The integrity and (I think) autonomy of the civil institutions of the polity are a crucial part of the Anglican experience. The phrase used by the late John Hughes, "integral humanism", perhaps captures the differences between the Anglican vision and RC Integralism.
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