Sacrifice, sacred awe, and Remembrance-tide

When someone enters the moment of sacrifice, throwing away what is most precious, even life itself, then we encounter the supreme moment of gift. This is an act in which the I appears completely. It is also a revelation. In sacrifice and renunciation the I makes of its own being a gift, and thereby shows us that being is a gift. In the moment of sacrifice people come face to face with God, who is present too in those places where sorrow has left its mark or 'prayer has been valid'.

We should not be so surprised, therefore, if God is so rarely encountered now. The consumer culture is one without sacrifices; easy entertainment distracts us from our metaphysical loneliness ... It is inevitable, therefore, that moments of sacred awe should be rare among us - Roger Scruton, The Face of God (2012).

Scruton's words come to mind as we prepare for Remembrance Sunday. Throughout the United Kingdom, a culture now routinely described as thoroughly secular approaches the ceremonies, silence, and memories associated with Remembrance Sunday with a reverence that is religious. It is a moment of "sacred awe".

The analysis of sacrifice offered by Scruton helps us to understand why this is so. The immensity of the sacrifice in two World Wars pierces the secular assumptions of a consumer culture. The Good; the True; death; life; duty; liberty; 'we'. All these are revealed by sacrifice to have a weighty meaning, a weight and meaning which cannot be borne by a consumer culture defined by the emptiness of 'choice'.

As Rowan Williams has stated, "the moral world is not very satisfactorily defined" is terms of individual choice. Remembrance Sunday then comes as judgement, exposing the banalities of 'choice', of the consumer culture.

If the weight of Remembrance Sunday cannot be borne by secularism and consumerism, it similarly cannot be held by a false nationalism. A nationalism of blood and soil, invoking other gods, speaking darker stories, cannot meaningfully hold the pain of death nor the sorrow of loss. Such false nationalism may use the discourse of sacrifice, but it cannot comprehend sacrifice that is for peace rather than for subjugation, sacrifice in the service of war without end rather than, as Augustine asserted, to protect "the tranquillity of the commonwealth", "in order that peace may be obtained".

It is against both the emptiness of the consumer culture and the darkness of a false nationalism that the Church historically has shaped Remembrance Sunday. And so the sign of the Cross marks war graves and memorials in cities, towns, and villages; parish churches hold memorials bearing the names of those who fell; and prayer enfolds the country's acts of solemn of remembrance. The Church understands sacrifice in a manner that cannot be comprehended either by consumer culture or false nationalism.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

The Church understands sacrifice ordered towards peace not subjugation, flowing from love not hatred. Through Remembrance Sunday, what Alison Milbank terms "the Christian imaginary" holds the national memories and emotions of the sacrifices of two World Wars, and does so because sacrifice is neither alien concept nor triumph of the will for the Church. The pain and loss of sacrifice is recalled, the fruit of peace cherished, the love of neighbour expressed in patriotism and military service recognised, and the polity ordered towards peace and justice.

It is right and proper, then, that the Church addresses a culture which experiences what Scruton terms "sacred awe" in the face of the memory of sacrifice. It is a witness which orders our remembrance towards the author of peace and the lover of concord. The Church's Remembrance-tide presence and prayer seeks to enable the culture to perceive the meaning of sacrifice in the Cross of the Crucified, of how our earthly loves and sacrifices, and our desires for peace, flow from and are to return to the One who "having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself ... whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven".

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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