Between fox hunting and cricket: A High Church Red Tory response to 'The Hour'

There is a pathological reticence to take our own history seriously as a spring for inspiration.

The words are from a post launching a new project, The Hour: Anglican, Catholic, Left.  There is much to welcome in the project, not the least of which is the commitment to Anglican ressourcement:

Anglicans are more likely to study Barth, Moltmann, or Balthasar than Mascall, Julian, or Laud. Seminarians learn about the mythical “stool” of Richard Hooker but the best modern work on him is in French. Few take the time to read him.

Such ressourcement is indeed necessary if "the myth of Anglican mediocrity" is to be exposed.

Alongside this, other aspects of the The Hour's agenda point to it being a positive force in the Anglican theological landscape.  That the first quarterly issue, to be released on Christmas Day, will focus on the Daily Office is an excellent expression of what a contemporary Tractarianism can offer wider Anglicanism (and see Tract 84 on this very matter as an example of the original Tractarianism at its best).

Similarly, the fact that The Hour stands unapologetically on the political Left, a revival of the honourable and vibrant Anglo-catholic socialist tradition, should similarly be welcomed.  The political ferment of the present age - the present hour - has resulted in a revivified Left.  Having a thoughtful, theologically articulate Anglican presence on the Left is therefore significant, a means of exemplifying how Anglicanism can both shape and heed the Left's insights and critique.  An age of political ferment requires a renewal of Anglican political theology, and The Hour can make a contribution to this as a contemporary expression of Anglo-catholic socialism.

All this being so, laudable Practice wishes the The Hour well and looks forward to its insights.

That said, I do have questions about aspects of the agenda outlined in the introductory post.  As a High Church Red Tory, significantly influenced by Radical Orthodoxy, a member of the Prayer Book Society and the Society of King Charles the Martyr, I certainly felt as if I belonged to the grouping the introductory post had in mind when condemning "sentimental, reactionary visions of Anglican renewal":

There is often a tendency within Anglicanism where identity is being contested to harken back to an imagined lost consensus. “If only we all still prayed the 1662 there wouldn’t be a problem with X;” “Would that we could make priests subscribe to the 39 Articles, then surely we wouldn’t have had a bishop Spong.”

Well, actually, yes I do happen to believe that Anglican faith and practice would be in a rather better place if 1662 had remained our normative liturgy.  And, yes, I also happen to believe that subscription to the Articles of Religion would aid a much more robustly Augustinian creedal orthodoxy than is the case with the rather pathetic offering of the TEC Catechism.  What gave me a wry smile, however, was the rather improbable suggestion that this tendency is "often" found within contemporary Anglicanism.  If this is so, I clearly have been looking in the wrong places.

As for the suggestion that this supposedly widespread tendency also results in support for the "Lost Cause of the Elizabethan Settlement", where does one begin?  Associating support for the ongoing relevance of the Elizabethan Settlement with the 'Lost Cause' is, to be frank, a rather disturbing and disappointing breach of the 9th Commandment (akin to accusing Christian Socialists of supporting Stalin's gulags).  What is more, however, the very next sentence in the post goes on to presume the continued existence and relevance of the Elizabethan Settlement:

It’s a kind of “Lost Cause of the Elizabethan Settlement;” an Anglican sedevacantism that seeks to cast doubt on the integrity of a church that worships with the 1979 and ordains women. 

A national church having the authority to revise the liturgy and ordain women is dependent upon the Elizabethan Settlement and, indeed, Article XXXIV.

How might we describe such a dismissive approach to BCP 1662, the Articles of Religion, and Elizabethan Settlement? Perhaps as "a pathological reticence to take our own history seriously as a spring for inspiration"?

Also striking was the somewhat Whiggish approach to Charles Gore and his case against the Anglican experience of establishment:

Moreover, because of his Catholic ecclesiology, Gore was able to discern that establishment fundamentally dulled the Church of England’s social conscience; an extension of the insights of the Tractarians. Gore would rather have seen the worldly glory of his church diminish than allow it to languish in thrall to the ownership class.

Leave aside for the moment the idea that establishment "dulled" rather than enabled and gave expression to the Church of England's social conscience.  Gore's concerns regarding establishment were far from being straightforwardly 'progressive'.  For example, in The Mission of the Church (1892), while praising the "noble ideal" of Hooker", he warns that "we now live under democratic influences", a state of affairs which threatens the Church's "liberty to express and enforce by moral discipline on her own members the unchanging law of Christ".  The particular example Gore here points to is marriage discipline:

the English State, as for example by the Divorce Act, has traversed the law of Christ.

We might have expected such a stance to be rejected by The Hour as "reactionary", "Anglican sedevacantism".  It does, however, illustrate how a simplistic Whig interpretation approach to establishment - 'A Bad Thing' - fails to engage with, for example, the contention of John Hughes, in his essay 'Anglicanism as Integral Humanism', that establishment "is more theologically interesting than the customary Erastian and latitudinarian lines about pragmatism, compromise, empty inclusion and not having to believe very much".

The introductory post also takes aim at Radical Orthodoxy, "a theological trend originating in the Church of England, at one point laying claim to the Anglican Catholic socialist tradition", but now over-run, it seems, by dastardly Red Tories:

“Red Tory” political theology predominates, explicitly advocating for inherited social hierarchies, and entertaining nostalgic fantasies for fox hunting and the golden years of cricket playing.

I read the introductory post on Sunday.  On Saturday the founder of Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank, declared on Twitter the need for "a fusion of Catholic Incarnational theology ... [and] Christian socialism".  Sound familiar?  Yes, it does indeed sound very like The Hour.  Milbank continued with this statement:

The idea that Radical Orthodoxy is not associated with a strong Christian Socialist critique of capitalism is itself a rather silly fantasy.

But what of those of us who are Red Tories?  The suggestion that this "political theology predominates" within Radical Orthodoxy is occasion for yet another wry smile.  Red Toryism has always been a minority stream within Radical Orthodoxy, overshadowed by Christian Socialism, with the political allegiances of most of those involved in the movement decidedly on the Left.  What is more, Red Toryism itself is hardly in robust ideological health.  As for the existence of a substantive Red Tory political theology, expounded in learned tomes ... I heartily wish it were so.

In his essay exploring the "affinities as well as differences" between Radical Orthodoxy and Red Tory philosopher George Grant, Ron Dart points to a shared "Laudian magisterial Anglican way".  At the heart of this, Dart insists, is "the commonweal and the role of the church and state in protecting such a good", in stark contrast to the "Blue Tory liberal way" and its insistence that "religion and capitalism ... were much more compatible".

In other words, even a rather brief engagement with writing on Red Toryism would let one know that it represents something much more significant than "nostalgic fantasies for fox hunting and the golden years of cricket playing", that it has deep roots in classical Anglican political theology, and that it offers a sustained critique of neo-liberalism.  This being so, it does appear to be an exercise in the "stale parochialism" condemned by The Hour to dismiss Red Toryism as a concern with fox hunting and cricket, rather than a noble expression of Anglican political theology which, as Dart notes, shares considerable common ground with Christian Socialism.

Anyway, time for me to go fox hunting, followed by some reading about cricket's glory years.