Our Gloriana and the shape of a New Elizabethan Anglicanism

Over the past year or so, laudable Practice has been pondering if a New Elizabethan Anglicanism can be envisaged: an expression of Anglicanism flowing from the Elizabethan Settlement and mindful of how Elizabeth II embodied an Anglican piety with contemporary resonance.  My first attempt to outline what this might mean pointed to "the dignified simplicity of BCP, emphasis on moderation and reserve, Anglican patrimony in music and architecture, recognising the goodness of civic duties".

Following the death of Her late Majesty, some notable thoughts and reflections from others should be considered by those supportive of the idea of a New Elizabethan vision. To be clear, I am not saying that the authors explored in this post would necessarily support such a New Elizabethan stance: I am, however, proposing that their thoughts should contribute to the discussion.

Alison Milbank's excellent article "May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest": Elizabeth II and the virtues of a Christian monarchy appropriately opens with the Book of Common Prayer:

Like so many Anglican clergy at the altar on the Sunday following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, I carefully negotiated my way through the 1662 liturgy to change each "she" to "he" and each "Elizabeth" to "Charles".

Not only is this a reminder that, after decades of liturgical revision, 1662 remains in use in the Church of England. It also reflects the liturgical preferences of the late Queen, as seen in the services of the Chapel Royal and her funeral service. This points to the importance of the BCP (in its various iterations) to a New Elizabethan Anglicanism:

The Queen’s shaping by the rhythm of scripture and Anglican liturgy is undervalued by many in the Church today, yet it is sustaining.

No less appropriately, Milbank's article concludes with what a New Elizabethan Anglican will inevitably interpret as reference to the surplice:

So we clergy can wear our white vestments of hope with integrity ... in laying Elizabeth to rest and acknowledging the religious resources upon which she drew.

We might detect an echo here of Hooker's defence of the surplice, with his insistence that the white surplice spoke of "dignity" and "sacred use", reflecting "white garments being fit to use at marriage feasts and such other times of joy".

The surplice speaks of the modest ceremony of a New Elizabethan Anglicanism, as in the settlement of the first Elizabeth (and, indeed, the preferences of the second Elizabeth): surplice, kneeling to receive the holy Communion, the sign of the Cross at holy Baptism, the ring in matrimony. Such ceremonies are edifying precisely because of their modesty: to quote Cranmer, there is no "great excess and multitude of them". As a result, their significance is highlighted as means of effectively embodying aspects of the church's faith, life, and prayer.

Rowan Williams' account of the late Queen's faith emphasises that it was "Anglican faith", with a "deep, unshowy piety, nourished by the prayer book and the King James Bible".  What is particularly significant about the account offered by Williams, however, is how he interprets Elizabeth II's response to a period of immense social change - "colossal upheaval" - as characteristically Anglican:

a particular kind of Anglican faithfulness, confident without arrogance and generous to the entire community she and that church sought to serve. 

Here was a public expression of Anglican Christianity distinguished both from "Christian rigorists" and secularists intent on banishing religion from the public realm.  Instead, the late Queen - not least through her Christmas addresses - demonstrated how the Church could respond to a "more religiously plural and more secular" context precisely by being rooted in divine vocation and the Christian confession:

Never triumphalist, never aggressive, she simply reiterated her own commitment, her acknowledgment of God’s grace, and her insistence on the need to remember what the Christmas festival was actually about.

Without denying the radically different context of Elizabethan England, there is something of this which we might compare with the declaration of the first Elizabeth in her 1558 Injunctions:

Because in all alterations, and specially in rites and ceremonies, there happen discords amongst the people, and thereupon slanderous words and railings, whereby charity, the knot of all Christian society, is loosed; the queen's majesty being most desirous of all other earthly things, that her people should live in charity both towards God and man, and therein abound in good works, wills and straitly commands all manner her subjects to forbear all vain and contentious disputations in matters of religion.

Now, no, this is certainly not to propose a ridiculous Whiggish view of Elizabethan England as a precursor of Enlightened toleration, nor to deny the sufferings of the Recusant community and its clergy.  It is, however, to suggest that the first Elizabeth's recognition that the peace of the realm was a good to be cherished finds a contemporary echo in the second Elizabeth's ecumenism and profound respect for other faith traditions and communities.  This provides a contemporary expression of that deeply Anglican commitment to communal peace, for God is "the author of peace and lover of concord".

Graham Kings - honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ely - wrote the anthem 'Elizabeth the Gracious', sung for the first time at the eve of the state funeral vigil in St. Bartholomew-the-Great in the City of London, in the days following the death of Elizabeth II. 

‘Elizabeth The Gracious’

You set a crown of pure gold on her head.

She asked for life of you 

and you gave her long life.

You shall give her

everlasting felicity

and make her glad 

with the joy of your countenance.

The anthem was deeply rooted in the Prayer Book's 'A Prayer for the Queen's Majesty' and the Psalter:

A few years ago, I noticed the similarity of this prayer to Miles Coverdale’s translation of Psalm 21 (used in the BCP), which is a prayer about King David and includes the phrases "everlasting felicity" and "the joy of thy countenance". Professor Micheline White, a Canadian scholar, discovered in 2015 that Queen Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife, was the author of this prayer, which was later included in the BCP.

'Elizabeth the Gracious' wonderfully exemplifies significant Anglican commitments that a New Elizabethan Anglicanism will cherish.  To begin with, it reflects the choral tradition which was protected by the Injunctions of the first Elizabeth:

because in divers collegiate and also some parish churches heretofore there have been livings appointed for the maintenance of men and children to use singing in the church, by means whereof the laudable science of music has been had in estimation, and preserved in knowledge; the queen's majesty neither meaning in any wise the decay of anything that might conveniently tend to the use and continuance of the said science ... or the comforting of such that delight in music, it may be permitted, that in the beginning, or in the end of common prayers, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or suchlike song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised.

This aspect of the Anglican patrimony, which - of course - finds particular expression in Choral Evensong, would be valued by a New Elizabethan Anglicanism, mindful of how the choral tradition continues to attract and enchant in a secular culture.

The anthem also rather beautifully indicates how prayer and thanksgiving for civic and communal life have traditionally been a characteristic of Anglicanism. John Hughes described the theological root of this as "Anglicanism as integral humanism", "a sense of all creation being in God and God being in all creation, through Christ". The anthem echoes how the state prayers at Mattins and Evensong, together with civic commemorations (Accession Day in the UK and dominions, Canada Day, Independence Day in the United States), point to the dignity of communal life and the polity. In the glorious words of Hooker:

All thinges are therefore pertakers of God, they are his ofspringe, his influence is in them, and the personall wisdome of God is for that verie cause said to excell in nimbleness and agilitie, to pearce into all intellectuall pure and subtile spirites, to goe through all, and to reach unto everie thinge which is (LEP V.56.5).

For a New Elizabethan Anglicanism, this understanding contrasts sharply with the sectarian visions promoted by various constituencies and streams of thought in contemporary Anglicanism, both on the ecclesial left and right, with their various claims to 'prophetic' stances. Against these, a new Elizabethan Anglicanism will encourage quiet, generous, thoughtful civic participation, promoting the peace and well-being of the earthly city, so that we "may pass our time in rest and quietness". 

In a touching and insightful tribute, Bishop Anthony Burton, the retired Anglican Bishop of Saskatchewan, described Her late Majesty as "our Gloriana". In the second Elizabeth, we saw the outlines and the possibilities for a New Elizabethan Anglicanism, drawing from and standing in continuity with the Settlement upheld by the first Elizabeth.  For those pondering what a New Elizabethan Anglicanism might look like, it could be a suggestive description, hinting that it is a time for an Anglicanism shaped by the first and the second Gloriana.