laudable Practice

It is ordered, that the same Psalms shall be read the day of the said months [i.e. those months with thirty-one days] which were read the day before - The Order How the Psalter is Appointed to be Read, 1662. Of all the disciplines and practices of the classical Prayer Book tradition, I find the most spiritually and emotionally significant to be the monthly reading of the Psalter.  Contemporary Anglican daily office lectionaries - often either reading the Psalter a mere four times a year, or replacing its ordered, monthly reading with thematic Psalms - losing the rich gift of, month by month, having our prayer shaped and sustained by the Psalms of Israel, the Psalms of Jesus Christ, the Psalms of the Church. As the years go by, the rhythms of the monthly reading of the Psalter become part of our prayer at Mattins and Evensong. There is the fact that each month begins with the words of Psalm 1, itself offering an description of the richness of the Psalter: And he shall be like a tre...

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 ...

Returning to William Bulman's idea of Anglican Enlightenment, words from a 1789 sermon by Horsley.  This is a good example of the High Church tradition rejecting obscurantism, affirming the good of scientific inquiry, and celebrating a Thomist and Hookerian understanding of the gift of Reason.  It is also a reminder, as Bulman insists, that Enlightenment discourse was not the preserve of Latitudinarians but was also embraced by the High Church tradition (and, indeed, throughout the 18th century, not ceasing, as Bulman suggests, early in the century), offering a conservative reading of the Enlightenment.  In this case, Horsley points to "the light which philosophy and revelation may be brought to throw upon each other".  The Age of Reason, then, coheres with and does not undermine the Church's proclamation: Nothing hath been more detrimental to the dearest interests of man - to his present and his future interests, – to his present interests, by obstructing the progr...

It is perhaps not without significance that the term 'postliberal', now so common in political theory and commentary, originated in theology.  Amidst much contemporary debate over the meaning of postliberalism in the political sphere, we should then return to those original theological sources in order to discern the term's meaning.  In the Foreword to The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (1984) George Lindbeck counselled: all the standard theological approaches are unhelpful.  The difficulties cannot be solved by, for example, abandoning modern developments and returning to some form of preliberal orthodoxy . Similarly in the Foreward to the German edition , Lindbeck observed the opposition "on the right" to the book's thesis: preliberalism seems safer than postliberalism . Such concerns have been reflected in influential statements of political postliberalism.  In Red Tory (2010), Phillip Blond explicitly rejected anti-liberal...

Part of the purpose of laudable Practice is to act in a small way as a means of ressourcement for the 18th century High Church tradition, drawing attention to the theological and spiritual richness of a tradition routinely overlooked or dismissed within Anglicanism.  Extracts of works from a range of figures have therefore been shared on this blog: Waterland, Secker, Van Mildert, Mant, those from the Hackney Phalanx.  Now we turn to Samuel Horsley (b.1733, consecrated to the episcopate 1788, d.1806).  F.C. Mather's excellent study of Horsely, High Church Prophet: Samuel Horsley and the Caroline Tradition in the Later Georgian Church  (1992), demonstrated how Horsley embodied the vitality of the High Church tradition in the later 18th century. Here in a sermon on I John 5:6 (Sermon IX in Volume One of his sermons), Horsley echoes Augustine's reading of the blood and water pouring forth from the Crucified Lord's pierced side as the fount of the Sacraments.  Th...

Amongst the significant differences between the classical forms of the Litany in traditional Anglican liturgies and contemporary forms of the Litany is how the Church is prayed for in the former.  In the classical form, the Church is prayed for amidst the other institutions which shape our common life.  Thus, for example, in the Irish BCP 1926 (using the variants for use in Northern Ireland), petitions for the Church are interspersed with petitions for the Crown, the Royal Family, Ministers of the Crown, Parliament, magistrates, and the armed forces.  At the outset there is a petition for "thy holy Church universal"; in the midst, a petition for bishops, priests and deacons; at the conclusion, a petition for "all thy people". It is possible to dismiss this as a reflection of a historic ecclesiastical establishment no longer applicable to Anglicanism outside of England: and even there, it embodies an understanding of establishment which is routinely dismissed by CofE...

From Daniel Waterland's A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, as laid down in Scripture and Antiquity (1737), Chapters XI and XII, a defence of Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth's understanding of the Eucharist as 'a feast upon a sacrifice' (the mainstream 18th century High Church view).  Waterland here particularly addresses the criticisms of Cudworth voiced by John Johnson's The Unbloody Sacrifice  (1714) and Lutheran theologians. It is further pleaded [quoting Johnson], that Dr, Cudworth’s notion seems "much of a piece with that conceit of the Calvinists, that we receive the natural body of Christ in the Eucharist, though as far distant from us as heaven is from the earth". But that conceit, as it is called, is a very sober truth, if understood of receiving the natural body into closer mystical union, as explained in a preceding chapter ... For how could Dr. Cudworth be supposed to make the Eucharist a bare memorial, when he professedly contends ...

One of the most intriguing books I have recently read has been William Bulman's Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715 (2017).  The book convincingly demonstrates how the Enlightenment discourse of civic peace became influential in the post-1660 High Church tradition, displacing public appeals to confessional and sacerdotal claims.  Bulman argues that in the early 18th century, amidst the rage of party in Church and State, the use of civic peace discourse was lost by the High Church tradition.  A strong case can be made, however, that the discourse (if it did disappear) returned to the High Church tradition and was profoundly influential.  In his 1758 sermon for the 5th November commemoration , Thomas Secker exemplified how the mid-18th century High Church tradition continued to deploy Enlightenment civic peace discourse:  For indeed the Spirit of Persecution is Rebellion against Christ, under Pretence of...

Ryan N. Danker's article in the latest New Directions - 'The Wesley Brothers and the Eucharist' - is a marvellous reminder of this "highly developed and beautifully rich tradition of Eucharistic piety and a thoroughly Anglican understanding of Christ's presence made known to us in the Eucharistc feast".  What is particularly significant is Danker's emphasis on the Wesleys' Eucharistic theology and spirituality being an expression of "Anglican piety".  Thus, "The Eucharistic hymns of Charles Wesley are one of the great treasures of Anglicanism".   The sacramental theology and piety of the Wesleys, then, stands as a rebuke to those who would condemn later 18th century Anglicanism as (at best) deficient in both Eucharistic theology and piety.  The Wesleys tell us otherwise, manifesting the sacramental vibrancy within Georgian Anglicanism.  We get a sense of this from an entry in John Wesley's Journal for 1785 : May 15. (Whit-Sund...

When you hear of our lady of Walsingham, our lady of Ipswich, our lady of Wilsdon, and such other; what is it but an imitation of the Gentiles idolaters? - from the Third Part of the Sermon against Peril of Idolatry . The tweet from the Church Union regarding the burning of the image of Our Lady of Walsingham brought to mind this reference from the Book of Homilies.  Taken alongside Thomas Cromwell destroying the image, it all suggests a violent state-sponsored Protestant iconoclasm, overturning the traditional populist piety of Merrie England, and leaving emptiness in its wake ('the stripping of the altars'). But is this the case?  To begin with, we need to recall that the medieval popularity of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham was due in many ways to royal patronage and favour.  This patronage also brought considerable wealth and property to the shrine.  In other words, the messy realities of power, politics, and money were not only the concern of Thomas Crom...

As part of a continuing series on Secker against the Weird (see here and here ), today we see Secker in his Sermon CXV (on the Apostle's exhortation 'Let your moderation be known unto all men') address the need for moderation in Christian daily living, not undoing natural affections, duties, and delights.  This offers an alternative to the Weird Christian emphasis on ' transcending our understanding of the flesh ', and is, in effect, a commentary on Hooker's affirmation of the classical Augustinian and Thomist insistence that "grace hath use of nature" ( LEP III.8.6).  Or in the words of Whichcote, "Religion does not destroy Nature but is built upon it". Not that either the affections or the appetites of our nature are to be extirpated, but only confined within due bounds. The necessaries of each one's condition in life are still to be provided, because they are necessaries. The duties, which we owe to each other here, are diligently ...

And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord - 1 Kings 6:1. So began the first lesson at Mattins on Monday past.  One of the joys of the methodical, ordered reading of Scripture in the daily office is encountering a small detail which can particularly capture our attention.  So it was with the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1. For 480 years after the Exodus, Israel had no temple.  Yes, there was the Tabernacle and there was Shiloh, but neither of these had quite the same meaning and significance as Solomon's Temple: But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded? Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Lord my God, to hearke...

Following on from yesterday's post , it is interesting to note both Waterland and Swift in their respective sermons for Restoration Day and the Martyrdom of King Charles I, while giving explicit recognition to the Royal Martyr, are critical of the use of the Royal prerogative during his Personal Rule. Waterland praised Charles I as the Church's "nursing father" who "had lost his head in defence of it".  This, however, does not prevent him from stating "faults there were, many and great, on all sides".  The first faults he lists are those on the side of the King: The churchmen and royalists, many of them, for being too full of heat and resentment, for taking unwarrantable steps at the beginning, and making use of unseasonable severities, and some unusual stretches of prerogative; which gave great offence, and first paved the way to our future troubles.  We might, of course, expect this of Waterland as a Church Whig, while noting his explicit conde...

Today, 13th July, falls between the commemoration of the Williamite victory at the Boyne (12th) and the commemoration of Bastille Day (14th).  As such, it is a rather appropriate day on which to consider an aspect of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France .  As J.C.D. Clark suggested in English Society 1660-1832 , Burke's account of political order in the Reflections was deeply and profoundly Anglican.  One example of this ( alongside others ) is his understanding of the Revolution of 1688.  Here Burke echoes a well-established High Church Anglican apologia for the Revolution. Two sermons particularly illustrate this.  The first is Daniel Waterland's  1723 Restoration Day sermon .  The second is Jonathan Swift's 1725 Sermon for on the anniversary of the Martyrdom of King Charles I .  Waterland was a Church Whig, Swift a Hanoverian Tory.   This itself is quite significant, indicative of a shared account of the Revolution which w...