laudable Practice

On 7th September 1777, Charles Inglis - then Rector of Trinity Church, New York - preached at Kings-Bridge to a newly-formed Loyalist unit raised in service of the Crown. Preaching on the text "And the Soldiers likewise demanded of him - And what shall we do? And he said to them, Do Violence to no Man, neither accuse any falsely, but be content with your Wages" (Luke 3:14, the Baptist addressing the soldiers), Inglis pointed to the Forerunner's words as rejecting "crude Notions of those who assert the Unlawfulness of War, or of bearing Arms, on any Occasion".  This led Inglis to set the context for the moral justification for Loyalists bearing arms in defence of the constitutional order: This I judged a proper Subject to dwell on, when addressing you, my Brethren, who are now called into the Field, in Defence of legal Government, and of the just Authority of your rightful Sovereign—in Defence of your Lives, Liberties and Property—of all, in short, that is dear ...

In the parish of Croydon on 13th December 1776, East Apthorp entered his pulpit to preach the fast day sermon. Formerly a SPG missionary in Massachusetts and then vicar of Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was forced to flee the province in 1764 amidst rumours that he was going to be appointed a bishop for the colonies. He then became vicar of Croydon. Needless to say, this background gave added significance to Apthorp's fast day sermon .  He was well aware of the hostility to Church and Crown in Massachusetts, where the rebellion originated, a civil war (and note, again, the consistent use of this description in the fast day sermons) which he could only view as divine chastisement on Empire and colonies: The rebellion in America, and the civil war which has raged in our colonies for two campaigns, cannot, by any thinking mind, be resolved merely into political causes. The real or supposed grievances, that might affect the liberty or property of the Americans, were not a...

On 30th October 1776, King George III issued a proclamation for a general fast , to be observed on 13th December: in the most devout and solemn Manner, send up Our Prayers and Supplications to the Divine Majesty, for averting those heavy Judgements, which Our manifold Sins and Provocations have most justly deserved, and for imploring his Intervention and Blessing speedily to deliver Our loyal Subjects within Our Colonies and Provinces in North [235]  America from the Violence, Injustice, and Tyranny of those daring Rebels who have assumed to themselves the Exercise of Arbitrary Power, to open the Eyes of those who have been deluded by specious Falshoods, into Acts of Treason and Rebellion, to turn the Hearts of the Authors of these Calamities, and finally to restore Our People in those distracted Provinces and Colonies to the happy Condition of being free Subjects of a free State; under which heretofore they flourished so long and prospered so much.  Parson James Woodforde had...

As Joseph Butler was preaching to the House of Commons on the 13th December 1776 fast day on the occasion of the American War, Thomas Leland was delivering his sermon to the University of Dublin .  Like Butler, Leland set before his hearers the divine judgement that is civil war: We are at this day, not indeed at the conclusion, possibly but at the commencement of a civil war. It hath already proved far more obstinate, far more afflicting and alarming, than at first our pride suffered us to suspect: and from this beginning of strife the most bitter waters have already gushed out. One tribe, however divided from us by situation, yet of our own language and people, influenced, I do not say, by what motives, hath avowed, and seems to glory in its separation ... It is not the business of the present hour, to speculate on the causes and occasions of this contest. In the time of our visitation, we are to consider only, that we have been visited. There is an intestine war; the empire...

As today is the Fourth of July, laudable Practice will give this week over to various expressions of the Old High response to the Revolutionary War.   Peter Williams in his excellent  The Church Militant: The American Loyalist Clergy and the Making of the British Counterrevolution, 1701-92  powerfully demonstrates how the Loyalist clergy  played an "expansive role" in both the renewal of Anglican political and in the popular reaction against revolutionary ideology. While one of this week's posts will consider a sermon by a Loyalist cleric, the focus will be on how this process was at work within the Churches of England and Ireland in response to the Revolutionary War. Today, extracts from a sermon preached on the first fast day of the war, 13th December 1776, by Joseph Butler - then Archdeacon of Surrey, appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1777 - before the House of Commons. Butler insisted that the actions of the rebellious colonists were radically different to the...

A recent article by Alison Milbank - whose The Once and Future Parish will be published in the Autumn - in New Directions (the magazine of Forward in Faith) offers an excellent summary of the cause at the heart of the Save the Parish movement. She captures how the parish is a sign of the sacramentality of place: "Place itself is sacramental for a Christian and an Anglican Christian especially".  This reflects the insight of John Hughes , his identification of "a particular piety and sensibility which could be seen as characteristically Anglican: a sense of all creation being in God and God being in all creation, through Christ". Also of significance is how Milbank relates the parish to the Book of Common Prayer: the way of life of a traditional parish cherishes liturgy itself as rhythm, inhabits custom and ceremony, values natural and human bonds, and is inherently sacramental.  The widespread adherence to the Book of Common Prayer among rural congregations is ev...