Laud and Anglicanism as Integral Humanism
In his essay 'Anglicanism as Integral Humanism: A de Lubacian Reading of the Church of England' (2013, to be found in the volume A Graced Life), the late John Hughes set out an understanding of what he regarded to be "a strong, perhaps dominant, tradition" within classical Anglicanism: an "integral humanism" which avoided "the theological and philosophical dualisms of the late medieval and early modern period", and given expression in "concrete material practices" within the Anglican tradition. The term itself - "integral humanism" - he took from the French Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian Jacques Maritain. This vision of a "theocentric humanism" is convincingly (and superbly) applied by Hughes to the Anglican experience.
Hooker's work, in particular, he identifies as advocating such an "integral humanism":
... a recognisably integralist rather than dualistic account of Christology, soteriology, anthropology and creation in this most Anglican of authors, where nature is always already oriented towards supernatural grace and where grace does not destroy nature but fulfils and perfects it.
This use of Hooker is suggestive of something Hughes did not address in the essay: how Anglicanism can also be understood as "integral humanism" outside of the specific English context of establishment. In fact, that Anglicanism continues to display the characteristics of integral humanism outside of this context adds further weight to this reading of the Anglican experience and tradition. Thus, outside of the English context of establishment, Anglicanism in other countries continues to be identified by pastoral offices characterised by hospitality and welcome, by celebrating the sanctity and vocation of civic life, and through national churches.
In other words, such a reading of the Anglican experience and tradition as "integral humanism" is not limited to the English context.
It also might be suggested that, alongside Hooker, a case can also be made for Laud being an exemplar of this understanding. I want to suggest three ways in which we can potentially regard Laud as such.
Firstly, in his robust defence of the Royal Supremacy against the pretensions of both Rome and Geneva, Laud secured what Hughes termed the "non-dualist, integralist ecclesiology of the first millennium". As Laud stated in 1637:
our being bishops jure divino, by divine right, takes nothing from the king's right or power over us. For though our office be from God and Christ immediately, yet we may not exercise that power, either of order or jurisdiction, but as God hath appointed us, that is, not in his Majesty's or any other Christian king's kingdoms, but by and under the power of the king given us so to do.
Similarly, the deeply Laudian Canons of 1640 declared:
For any person or persons to set up, maintain, or avow in any their said Realms or Territories respectively, under any pretence whatsoever, any independent Coactive power, either Papall or Popular (whether directly or indirectly) is to undermine their great Royall office, and cunningly to overthrow that most Sacred ordinance, which God himself hath established: And so is treasonable against God, as well as against the King.
This defence of the Royal Supremacy, far from being a reactionary stance and a cause for embarrassment amongst contemporary Anglicans, was, to use words from Hughes, a recognition of "the priestly nature of 'secular' authority". It was, in fact, a bulwark against clericalism and a rejection of a dualism which viewed polity and civil society as 'secular', a grace v. nature, spiritual v. secular dualism. As C.S. Lewis states of Hooker's 'Deity drenched' vision of our common life, "the commonwealth as well as the Church, are equally, though diversely, ‘of God’".
In other words, Laud's defence of the Royal Supremacy was a defence of Anglicanism as integral humanism.
Secondly, the most recent edition of Church and King - the magazine of the Society of King Charles the Martyr - included an article exploring Laud as a benefactor and patron of learning, particularly through his role as Chancellor of Oxford. He is described as "an energetic patron of learning in the finest humanist tradition", with particular reference made to his encouragement of Arabic studies, including his 1636 founding of the Laudian Chair of Arabic. The article concludes:
It is deeply unfortunate that 'Laudianism' has come to be more or less synonymous with Caroline liturgical ritualism. Intent though he was on establishing full and appropriate ceremonial observance, there was so much more to Laud than that.
The "so much more", we might suggest, was an "integral humanism", including a recognition that the idea of a university cannot be 'secular', for all wisdom is of God, and thus contributes to and enriches the common life of Church and Commonwealth. Note too Laud's concern for the study of Arabic culture, surely indicative of a theocentric humanism which rejoiced in the wisdom, beauty, and goodness which are the gift of God in diverse cultures.
Thirdly, answering the charges of impeachment in 1641, Laud stated that he enjoined only those liturgical ceremonies "settled either by law or custom". This invocation of "law or custom" has more than an echo of Hooker. As Hooker states of custom:
that which hath been received long since and is by custom now established, we keep as a law which we may not transgress - LEP I.10.8.
Similarly, regarding the laws made by rightful authority to govern the life of Church and Commonwealth, Hooker urges:
they which live within the bosom of that Church, must not think it a matter indifferent either to yield or not to yield obedience...It doth not stand with the duty which we owe to our heavenly father, that to ordinances of our mother the Church we should shew ourselves disobedient. Let us not say we keep the commandments of the one, when we break the law of the other: For unless we observe both, we obey neither - III.9.3.
And because God "is the author of all that we think or do by virtue of that light" - "the light of natural understanding, wit and reason" - laws, promulgated by rightful authority, "have God himself for their author", for "the author of that which causeth another thing to be, is the author of thing also, which thereby is caused". The alternative to this is the "loose and licentious opinion which the Anabaptists have embraced", fatal to the good ordering and peace of Church and Commonwealth.
Likewise, customs share and participate in this light and proceed in a similar manner from God:
there is cause why we should be slow and unwilling to change without very urgent necessity the ancient rites and long-approved customs of our venerable predecessors ... antiquity, custom, and consent in the Church of God making with that which law doth establish are themselves most sufficient reasons to uphold the same (I.7.3).
Laud's concern for conformity, then, both proceeded from the mindset of an "integral humanism" - for law and custom participate in the light, knowledge and wisdom of God's eternal law, and are thus means of communal well-being and flourishing - and sought to secure such a humanism against understandings of law and revelation setting up liberty v. authority and grace v. nature dualisms which undermined the peace and threatened to rupture the unity of both Church and Commonwealth.
Thus understood, in his defence of an integralist ecclesiology, his understanding of the idea of the university, and his emphasis on the importance of conformity to law and custom, we can see in Laud a convincing example of Anglicanism as integral humanism, contrasted with sectarian and secular alternatives, and also rather more compelling than the banally conventional Old Hat Whig portrayal of him as a defender of clericalism and arbitrary power.
What is more, this is also suggestive of a renewed significance of what we might term a Laudian vision for contemporary Anglicanism, contra both sectarian and latitudinarian alternatives. Neither of these alternatives can meaningfully respond to the emptiness of a secular age and an exhausted political and cultural order, and neither can offer an understanding of society and culture - to use words from the conclusion of John Hughes' essay - "as flowing from and to him, who is the Alpha and Omega of all things".
Which is another way of saying, perhaps, that "Anglicanism as integral humanism" means 'Laudian'.
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