"This season of probation": a Hackney Phalanx sermon for Lent IV

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Here Pott demonstrates the ascetic seriousness which could accompany Lent in pre-1833 Anglicanism: a time for "harder passages and severer remedies". His exhortation against "mistaken zeal" was not only wise and prudent Old High pastoral advice: it is also itself suggestive of the presence of an ascetic seriousness that required such pastoral wisdom and prudence.

... there are Christian graces, of which repentance is one, which take their garb, and suit their aspect, to the present state of man, and adapt themselves to his occasional necessities; but which shall one day give place to qualities and dispositions which are, indeed, essential to the best condition of the reasonable soul and spiritual nature. Thus, patience under grief and sufferings; vigilance amidst surrounding perils; humility and self-denial, arising from a due sense of our own infirmities; resignation, flowing from a constant and entire conviction that we are in the hands of God; these have their turn here, in these days of probation, but they must not be augmented by mistaken zeal. Even here, they must not be allowed to shut out peace, goodwill, contentment, with a rational and free discretion; all which, in their best degrees, shall survive the temporary straits of this course of our pilgrimage, and shall endure for ever ...

The way of truth and reason, is the way of freedom to those who are indeed desirous to pursue it, only let us remember that this freedom, at all times, from all uneasy lamentations and all difficulties, never will be perfect here, where man is never perfect. The harder passages and the severer remedies will therefore find their place in the best course, and will challenge their turn in this day of our common travel, and this season of probation.

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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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