'Clearest, plainest, most affecting manner': A May Day meditation on Old High piety and Georgian churches

Recently on Twitter, I shared pictures of Aquia Episcopal Church, Stafford, Virginia, built in 1757. Somewhat to my surprise, the tweet proved modestly popular. Perhaps the plain glass, Commandment boards, box pews directed to triple-decker pulpit, and quiet modesty of God's Board resonated in an age in which we are bombarded with the loud and the glaring.

As with last year, May Day - a gentle but joyous celebration of the yearly gift of Spring, not yet overwhelmed by the loud heat of raucous Summer - offers an opportunity for laudable Practice to reflect on the relationship between Old High piety and Georgian church interiors. There is a correspondence between the two. They cohere, with the modesty and reserve of the one reflected in and confirmed by the other.

We begin with the closing words of the Exhortation at Morning and Evening Prayer:

Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart and humble voice unto the throne of the heavenly grace, saying after me ...

It is a gentle exhortation, neither loud nor coercive.  It is not couched in the language of condemnation but graciously invites us, "dearly beloved brethren".

He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. A bruised reed he shall not break, and the smoking flax he will not quench.

As it begins, so the Exhortation concludes with gracious invitation. We - "as many as are here present" - are not called to embrace a radical asceticism or an urgent Enthusiasm, but to approach divine service with "a pure heart and humble voice". The invitation evokes the whitewashed walls of the Georgian parish church; plain, unglamorous but sanctified, a house of prayer. Read from a triple-decker pulpit, the words address us from within our midst, just as "the Scripture moveth us" to "an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart", not imposed from without but calling us within. 

When we turn to the Venite (including the version in PECUSA's BCP 1789), our praise is directed towards the Creator:

O come let us worship and fall down : and kneel before the LORD our Maker.

When the Jubilate is said or sung, this is repeated:

it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.

And the Creed opens with the confession that God the Father Almighty is "Maker of heaven and earth".

To rejoice before God as Creator is one of those elements of natural religion taken up into Christian faith.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

Renewing this natural acknowledgement of the Creator is, it might reasonably be suggested, profoundly significant for the Church's public witness in the contemporary cultural context. The Christian proclamation is nonsensical without the affirmation "Maker of heaven and earth". Joyfully praising the Creator and giving thanks for "our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life" is fundamental to restoring a reasonable, convincing Christian public witness. In the words of Scruton:

From a philosophical perspective, however, it is very strange that people should think that the psalmist and the scientist are mutually opposed ... Evolution tells us how the world is spread out in time, the story of creation tells us why. The best that science can offer is a theory of the how of things; but it is silent about the why.

The 'why', says Scruton, is to be found in the "tranquil words of the Jubilate", in which the celebration of God the Creator leads to the gratitude which "is the precondition of joy"

Which brings us to the plain glass of many Georgian churches.  Not that stained glass is in any way to be rejected, but the plain glass dismissed out of hand by those who promoted Victorian reordering of parish churches also has meaning and significance. It fills a church with natural light, the life-giving gift of God in and to the created order. Plain glass likewise brings us to behold, as we offer divine service, the world created, sustained, and redeemed by God. It is, in other words, the iconography provided by what Calvin termed "this glorious theatre" (Institutes I.5.8), theatrum gloriae.

Plain glass, therefore, gives expression to abiding features of Old High piety, captured in the words of the Third Collect at Morning Prayer, "who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day": the refusal of a false asceticism; the celebration of the ordinary; and a joyous natural theology. 

Natural religion I call such actions, which either are proper to the nature of the thing we worship; such as are giving praises to him, and speaking excellent things of him, and praying to him for such things as we need - Jeremy Taylor, The Great Exemplar (Preface, 7).

The petition in the Second Collect at Evening Prayer - "our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments" - is echoed throughout the Prayer Book liturgy. The vows at Holy Baptism include the promise to "obediently keep God's holy will and Commandments". In the Litany we pray "diligently to live after thy commandments". And "following the commandments of God", we are invited to the Holy Communion. 

John K. Nelson's study of Anglicanism in colonial Virginia, referring to the "distinctively Anglican" displaying of the Commandments, Creed, and Lord's Prayer, notes how Aquia Church is a particularly fine example of this. Such display, he says, "served as a constant and succinct reminder of a Christian's faith and duty". The prominent displaying of the Commandments embodied the Old High concern so aptly expressed by Taylor:

It is never out of season to preach good works; but when you do, be careful that you never indirectly disgrace them by telling how your adversaries spoil them. I do not speak this in vain; for too many of us account good works to be popery, and so not only dishonour our religion, and open wide the mouths of adversaries, but disparage Christianity itself, while we hear it preached in every pulpit, that they who preach good works, think they merit heaven by it; and so, for fear of merit, men let the work alone; to secure a true opinion, they neglect a good practice, and out of hatred of popery, we lay aside Christianity itself.

The quiet, modest living out of the Commandments, "in love and charity with your neighbours", was a feature of Old High preaching, offering a meaningful alternative to Revivalism and Enthusiasm. It also suggests a significance for Anglicanism in 21st century North Atlantic societies, for such a vision of the moral, good life can have contemporary resonance in cultures fractured and confused but yet seeking a wisdom to guide and shape individual and communal life.

Now, yes, Aquia Church represents the historic 'Virginia low church' ethos.  Former parsons and parishioners would, no doubt, be rather appalled at being described as High Church. Can we, then, meaningfully regard it Aquia as an expression of Old High piety? I think we can because this Georgian style, and the approach to liturgy it represented, was valued and defended by the Old High tradition in the face of Victorian innovations. It also, as we have seen, gives expression to key features of an Old High piety. The design of Aquia Church can be understood as an example of how Old High is 'New Low', an American expression of the 'Barchester Option'. Words from the Preface to PECUSA's BCP 1789 therefore provide an appropriate conclusion to this May Day meditation:

seriously considering what Christianity is, and what the truths of the Gospel are; and earnestly beseeching Almighty God to accompany with his blessing every endeavour for promulgating them to mankind, in the clearest, plainest, most affecting and majestic manner, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour.