laudable Practice

The quarrel is not between Christianity and humanism.  It is between two conceptions of humanism. The words are those of Jacques Maritain, quoted (p.42) by Alan Jacobs in his The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis (2018).  In many ways, Maritain's words stand at the heart of this insightful book.  As Jacobs states in the Preface: The war raised for each of the thinkers I have named a pressing set of questions about the relationship between Christianity and the Western democratic social order, and especially whether Christianity was uniquely suited to the moral understanding of that order (p.xvi). In the face of the rise of the totalitarian regimes, and the manner in which such ideologies could fascinate the mind and the imagination, Jacobs identifies and explores the articulation of a vibrant Christian humanist discourse, seeking to offer more substantive moral foundations for the Allied cause: liberal instrumentalism, that willingne...

In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, it has been noticeable that in many Anglican circles there has been a corresponding liturgical crisis.  How is worship to be sustained when churches are closed and public worship suspended?  What about the Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist? Should priests be celebrating the Eucharist 'privately'? How do people participate in streamed or recorded worship?  What liturgies should be used for streamed or recorded worship? What about the UK government's moratorium on Baptisms? What about funerals when restrictions require only a minimal service? At least part of the reason for the liturgical crisis has been the loss over previous decades of Common Prayer.  Classical editions of The Book of Common Prayer provide a means of sustaining the Church's life of prayer and worship in a way often absent from contemporary Anglican liturgies.  Two very practical considerations can be given at the outset.  Firstly, until late 20t...

... we have seen the sad effects, and therefore we pray against the causes. The words (quoted in Mant's Notes ) are those of Dean Comber on the petition in the Litany beseeching deliverance "From all sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion".  Comber notes that "rebellion" was added to this petition in 1662: and good reason was there so to do, since that rebellion and schism did murder one of our best kings, and thousands of his loyal subjects, and also pull the Church to pieces. The earlier petition "From all sedition and privy conspiracy" was, of course, similarly rooted in Edwardian and Elizabethan anxieties and fears for the commonwealth.  It is the fragility of our shared life in the commonwealth - its peace, well-being, and good order - which this petition in the Litany recognises.  This peace, well-being, and good order is dependent on government.  As Jeremy Taylor put it - also, of course, writing against the background of "the ...

Responding to Cartwright's criticism of frequent, regular praying of the Litany, Hooker offered these moving words, words which have particular resonance at this time: What dangers at any time are imminent, what evils hang over our heads God doth know and not we.  We find by daily experience that those calamities may be nearest at hand, readiest to break in suddenly upon us which we in regard of times or circumstances may imagine to be farthest off  LEP V.41.4.

Above all, in England, the clerical party fostered by Lancelot Andrewes - the 'avant garde conformists' who were being nicknamed 'Arminians' by the 1620s - gathered up Mary in their enterprise of rewriting the history and the theology of the English Church - Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'The Virgin Mary and Protestant Reformers' in All Things Made New: Writings on the Reformation . A new openness to things Marian was, so MacCulloch insists, evidence of how the avant garde and the Laudians were part of "another story", contrasted with the sensibilities of the Reformation as they had taken root in the reformed ecclesia Anglicana in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth.  This is part of his wider assertion (in the conclusion to the otherwise excellent The Tudor Church Militant ) that the Laudians represented something akin to the Oxford Movement: "They saw what they were doing as recovering the Catholic character of the Church". The avant garde a...

Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies - from the Second Collect, for Peace, at Mattins . O LORD, our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power - from the Third Collect, for Grace, at Mattins. ... that by thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness - from the Second Collect at Evening Prayer . ... and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night - from the Third Collect, for Aid against all Perils, at Evensong. "The Collects are not an ancient feature of the Hour Services."  So said Procter and Frere in a statement which later Anglican liturgists would exploit.  Cranmer's addition of the fixed Second and Third Collects at Mattins and Evensong is a development disapproved of in late 20th century Anglican revisions of the daily office.  And so the Second and Th...

Two statements made in recent days regarding the relevance of Prayer Book tradition are worth considering.  The first is a pastoral letter by the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Springfield, Daniel Martins: The petition in the Great Litany for deliverance from “plague, pestilence, and famine” has always struck me as a quaint holdover from an earlier era—a time before knowledge about microbes, a time before the discovery of antibiotics, a time before structured financial markets that keep prosperity on track. I have changed my estimation of this petition. It now feels very contemporary, very relevant. The COVID19 pandemic qualifies as plague and pestilence by any measure. All of our lives are disrupted, and some of our lives will be ended. And it qualifies as famine, I think, not because there are any actual food shortages looming on the horizon (the appearance of some grocery store shelves to the contrary), but because of the incalculable disruption to the national and w...

It was theologian Andrew Davison who I first read suggesting that the Litany be prayed daily during this pandemic.  It is a recommendation that should be acted upon by Anglicans across the globe.  Other traditions have their means of encouraging prayer and intercession at this time. Pope Francis, for example, called for Roman Catholics to pray the Rosary with him on Thursday evening.  In the Anglican tradition, it is the Litany which has been our 'go to' in times in crisis, a holding up of individuals and communities, Church, commonwealth, and world in sustained intercession. In their letter addressing the crisis, ++Canterbury and ++York urged "all clergy to continue their pattern of daily prayer" as "an offering of prayer and praise for the nation and the world".  We might be rather disappointed that they did not explicitly mention the Litany - which 1662 directs should be prayed "upon Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays" - but, after a gener...

We ought to pray, that his blessed will may be fulfilled here in this world amongst us his mortal creatures, as it is of his immortal angels, and of all the holy company of the heavenly spirits. We must pray for our daily bread, that is, for our necessary food and sustenance both of body and soul. Of body, as meat, drink, and necessary apparel, peace, health, and what soever God knoweth to be necessary for the behalf and conservation of the same, that we may do to our Lord God true service therewith, every man in his state and vocation, whereunto God hath called him. Of the soul, as the word of God, and the true knowledge of the same, the true conservation of our heavenly Father's holy and blessed commandements, the lively bread of the blessed body of our saviour Jesu Christ, the holy and sacred cup of the precious and blessed blood, which was shed for us upon the Cross, to purchase us pardon and forgiveness of our sins.  From Cranmer's Exhortation prefaced to the first En...

From Public Orthodoxy - a publication of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University - a good reflection on the present necessity of fasting from reception of the Holy Communion: Could there be positive side to obligatory deprivation of Holy Communion? Those who strictly observe the Orthodox lenten fast from meat, dairy, and animal products know the delight of that first cut of the lamb roast at the Paschal feast, the first bite of aged gouda after the vigil, or the first sip of vodka. These pleasures are sweeter after weeks (and weeks!) of deprivation. Abstaining from the comforts of food and drink creates a yearning and enhances the sweetness of tasting them once again.   Abstaining from the Body and Blood of Christ can also create such a yearning—for the sweetness of God. While the increase in frequency of Communion among Orthodox Christians in the recent decades is a certainly a positive development in our Church, there has also been the risk of rout...

This Time of the Virus unveils some less joyful things for Christians as well, failures in our common witness over the years. How is it that we have so little to say in formal prayer about these matters? The last century began with perhaps the most destructive pandemic in history: the 1918 flu epidemic that killed over 50 million and which continued afflicting wide parts of the world in the wake of World War I’s confusion. Then we had a pandemic of almost equally horrendous mortality, the HIV/AIDS crisis that lingers. And only ten years ago, we saw hundreds of thousands die in the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic. Yet our prayerbooks have no collects for diseases like this, even those undergoing proposed revisions.    It is as if the last century did not happen (let alone the history of the world). Our litanies are slimmed down and rarely said; the older seventeenth-century collects and thanksgivings for times of “plague” are long excised. We draw back from considering the way...

We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Cranmer's collect for the Third Sunday in Lent is based on that provided for the same Sunday in the Gregorian Sacramentary.  In other words, it is has deep roots in the prayer offered on this Sunday by Western Christians over centuries.  It has, however, no place in the contemporary Anglican liturgies, even those which provide traditional language rites. Thus, neither TEC 1979 or Ireland 2004 have Cranmer's collect in their provision for Lent III. The alternatives provided by both are interesting.  Here is the TEC 1979 alternative: Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and fro...

Some final extracts from Bancroft's 1588 sermon , highlighting what we might term the 'ecclesial patriotism' which was at the heart of the avant-garde disposition, the conviction that the ecclesia Anglicana was the jewel of the Reformed churches: The doctrine of the church of England, is pure and holie: the government thereof, both in respect of hir majestie, and of our Bishops is lawfull and godlie: the booke of common praier containeth nothing in it contrarie to the word of God. The Elizabethan Settlement, rather than being in need of 'further reformation' after the form of the continental Reformed churches, is rather what "your neighbors adjoining would thinke themselves most happie to attaine". The witness of the English Martyrs   is invoked by Bancroft in defence of the rites and ceremonies in defence of the rites and ceremonies of the ecclesia Anglicana : Is it not very absurd that we should seeke everie way to discredite them in matters ...

Againe, as touching the Communion booke, you knowe what quarels are picked against it, although for mine owne opinion there is not the like this day extant in Christendome ... In his 1588 sermon , Bancroft's praise for the BCP 1559 is significant because, of course, 1559 was 1552 with minor amendments.  Hence the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity was a voiding of the repeal by Mary's Parliament of the Edwardine Act of Uniformity requiring the use of the 1552 book.  The Elizabethan Act understood itself to be a restoration of BCP 1552: in such order and form as is mentioned in the said book, so authorized by Parliament in the said fifth and sixth years of the reign of King Edward VI, with one alteration or addition of certain lessons to be used on every Sunday in the year, and the form of the Litany altered and corrected, and two sentences only added in the delivery of the sacrament to the communicants, and none other or otherwise. When Bancroft praises "the Communion ...

In a post last week I drew attention to Laudian Peter Heylyn rejoicing in the Elizabethan Settlement for securing the Edwardine Reformation: a case of Laudians against Eamon Duffy.  This was also true of earlier avant-garde  conformist opinion.  From a 1588 sermon by Richard Bancroft: Afterward when it pleased almighty God to blesse this Realme with the happie governement of our Soveraigne Ladie the Queenes most excellent Majestie that now is (whom almightie God long preserve, with all health and prosperitie to rule & governe us) the saide booke [i.e. 1552] in some points bettered togither with the truth of christian religion, established in hir brothers daies, was againe through Gods favor and hir goodnes restored unto us.

If other sins come back into your mind afterwards, which you would have confessed had you remembered them, they should be confessed afterwards, because the forgiveness is conditional upon the completeness of the Confession. Completeness implies that there should be care and faithfulness in discovering sins, and that nothing so discovered should be held back - Pusey, Hints for a First Confession (1851). Pusey's advice highlights how the later Tractarian practice of private confession and absolution radically departed from Caroline and Old High Church practice and teaching.  Taylor exemplifies the Caroline understanding which shaped the Old High Church tradition.  While accepting that private confession and absolution can be "and a good instance, instrument, and ministry of repentance, and may serve many good ends in the church, and to the souls of needing persons", Taylor is robust in his rejection of the Tridentine understanding - taken up by Pusey - that private co...

Next to the Morning and Evening service in our Prayer-Book stands the Litany, or more earnest supplication for averting God's judgments, and procuring his mercy - Archbishop Secker, quoted in Mant's Notes . Today the UK government has stated that coronavirus "is going to spread in a significant way".  A UK supermarket chain has started to restrict sales of essential food and household items.  The Italian government has introduced a lock down in the north of country.  The virus has now spread to over 30 US states. It is a time for a "more earnest supplication for averting God's judgements, and procuring his mercy". It is a time when the Litany should be heard in Anglican cathedrals and parish churches. As Sparrow notes, the Litany is rooted in the traditional Christian approach to prayer "for the averting of God's wrath in publick calamities".  It gives fulsome expression to our dependence on God's mercy, grace, and providenc...