"Domesticity not militarism": Stir-up Sunday and classical Anglican spirituality

That Anglican guides should avoid, and if possible forbid, spiritual "tension" is worth a heading to itself.  This evil is very prevalent, yet completely inconsistent with almost everything for which English spirituality stands.  Empirical guidance, not dogmatic direction; affectiveness curbed by doctrine; recollection, continuous and gentle, not set periods of stiff devotion; domesticity not militarism; optimism not rigour; all leads naturally into a balance, a sanity into what Julian called "full and homely" and what Taylor meant by "an amiable captivity of the Spirit" - Martin Thornton English Spirituality (1963). 

If we desired a summary of the differences between Stir-up Sunday and the feast of Christ the King, it might be suggested that it is offered here by Thornton.  Stir-up Sunday is a gentle, yearly recollection of the approach of Advent.  It is marked by domesticity: the familiar words, the cultural resonances, the echoes in the landscape of the closeness of Advent.  There is, too, a modest optimism: through the workings of grace - as Thornton goes on to say, "It really all returns to the doctrine of prevenient grace" - we can be those who bring "forth the fruit of good works".  This is "empirical guidance, not dogmatic direction".

The feast of Christ the King, by contrast, was instituted by Pius XI in 1925 to encourage the faithful to "fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King" against "the enemies of the Church", particularly "the plague of anti-clericalism".  Rather than offering a time of gentle recollection before Advent, it overwhelms with its proclamation of "the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord".  Even when the origins of the feast in Integralist fantasies are conveniently forgotten, we are still left with an odd, ill-fitting focus which does little to prepare us for Advent.  Indeed, if anything, the feast - whether in Integralist or Progressive form - embodies an overly-realized eschatology which obscures our preparations for the Advent hope. 

There is a liturgical wisdom in the modesty of Stir-up Sunday.  Rowan Williams warns us that Advent "sets out before us the richness of religious eros; it is a season of beautiful, elegiac hymns".  We need to take care, he says, to be alert to "the danger of religious eros, its capacity to become another vehicle for human self-reflection".  The quiet modesty of Stir-up Sunday, then, is what is needed before entering into Advent: a time to be reminded that the richness of Advent is not an end in itself but must be oriented towards "the fruit of good works".  By contrast, the gaudy proclamation of Christ the King on the very Sunday before Advent is just too much: too loud and too overwhelming, just as we are about to enter into a season with a depth of meaning that requires quiet and modest preparation.

At the same time, Christ the King also lacks the cultural resonances which assist in orienting us towards Advent.  Stir-up Sunday is recognised as heralding the closeness of Advent and the approach of the festive season.  It is caught up with the end of Autumn and the beginning of Winter.  It is, in other words, rooted in our experiences of this time of year, as Keble noted in an evocative introduction to one of his Stir-up Sunday sermons:

The time just before Advent is a very serious and thoughtful season to all who take notice of time as the Church invites them. It is just the season of decay: the last leaves are falling, and the last flowers are ceasing to blow. We naturally look back and begin to consider how the weeks and months have passed, since those leaves were fresh.

This reflects the correspondence that often occurs between the temporal and ecclesiastical seasons.  Christ the King, on the other hand, is rootless in this regard.  Christ's kingship properly belongs, of course, to our celebration of the Ascension at the close of the paschal season and in the days of late Spring/early Summer.  The feast has, however, no correspondence to late November.  It has no cultural hinterland, no domestic echoes, of Advent knocking at the door, of the approach of the festive season, of the passing year, of the dark days of late November.  It has all the character to be expected of a feast invented by a central authority amidst concerns over threats to its authority.

The feast of the Christ the King, therefore, has an abstract quality: abstracted from the grounds of the Lord's Kingship in His paschal mystery; abstracted from the ecclesiastical season which immediately follows it; abstracted from the temporal season and associated cultural observances amidst which it falls.  There is, then, much theological, liturgical, and pastoral wisdom in the observance of Stir-up Sunday, grounded as it is in season, landscape, and culture. The quiet modesty of this observance embodies the "balance" and "sanity" which Thornton rightly highlights as defining characteristics of classical Anglican spirituality.  May our observance of Stir-up Sunday - with its gentle recollection and domesticity, with its seasonal and cultural resonances - prepare us to be renewed in the Advent hope in all aspects of our living as those who (in Thornton's words) take our duties "seriously but gently".

(The photograph is of The Middle Church, in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country, on Stir-up Sunday, 2016.)