'Now on the morning of Advent Sunday': Keble, the passage of the year, and Old High piety

During the weeks of Advent, laudable Practice will consider extracts from Keble's Advent sermons in his Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas Eve. Guiding these readings is my view that little, if anything, distinguished Keble's preaching (and the same could be said of Newman's Plain and Parochial Sermons) from the sermons delivered in Old High pulpits. In particular, Keble displays an understanding of Anglican piety that was distinctly traditional.

In this extract from an Advent Sunday sermon on the 1662 gospel reading (Matthew 21:1-13), Keble both evokes the piety of the Prayer Book and gently reflects on the passing of another year, with a characteristically Old High emphasis - contra the Enthusiasts - on "little silent ways" in the Christian life.

Our very Prayer books seem to ask us, now on the morning of Advent Sunday, how we have used them during the year that is past. We have turned over their leaves regularly. Have our minds and hearts gone along with what we saw there? We have seemed to be following Jesus so far on His way. Have we behaved like those His first followers, whom He so graciously approved?

To be like them, we should have stripped ourselves of our precious garments, the things we most value, our own worldly lusts and fancies, and laid them at His feet, at least for the time that we were in Church. The thoughts that were most welcome and delightful to us, if they were not holy and religious thoughts, should have been diligently banished from our minds, when we were at our prayers here. And not only here, but wherever we were, it should have been a study and a joy to us to find out continually little silent ways of giving up something to our Saviour; of making some sacrifice, more or less, for His sake ...

Every morning and evening that we have gone to Church we have joined in Psalms, with the Jewish multitude which went before Christ, and in hymns and canticles with the Christian multitude which followed after Him. We joined with them in appearance, perhaps in voice: did we always try to join with them in heart also? The very stones, our Lord tells us, that is to say, the rude Heathen will cry out, if we hold our peace they will put us to shame at the last Day, by their greater diligence in their ignorant worship. But might they not well cry out, if they could know the real life and heart of some of us, even during this one year that is now drawing to an end? I say, might not even the stones cry out, could they know how unthankful we have been for mercies, how careless of warnings, how apt to please ourselves, how ready to blame others, how forgetful of many duties, how negligent of doing as we would be done by, how wanting in improvement of our time? These are the offerings for which He looks Who is our Saviour and our King, as He passes on His way in the midst of us, towards the true and heavenly Jerusalem, and casts His Eye round to see if we are following Him, and waiting on Him as we ought.

(The picture is of Keble's parish church, All Saints, Hursley, Hampshire.)

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 ...

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