Against Puritans, Pietists, and Revivalists: in praise of the 18th century's 'Conventional Christianity'

This year's parish Lent book is Lent With The Beloved Disciple, by Michael Marshall. It is, as we would expect, a thoughtful, theologically serious work, inviting us into a deep, rich reading of the Fourth Gospel. One reference in the book, however, did rather annoy my Old High prejudices.  In the first chapter, Marshall notes how the Tractarian Edward King approvingly quoted John Wesley condemning 'Conventional Christianity', "prevalent in his day", as inferior to the "experiential religion" of the Revivalists. I have added this to the now rather large file entitled 'Contemporary Anglicans still not understanding 18th century Anglicanism'. (And, yes, it does give me an excuse to again point readers to my views on this matter.)

Shortly after encountering the above reference in Marshall, I happened to read a very fine Living Church article by Mark Clavier, reflecting on the meaning of rural churches in a secular culture:

Rural churches are testimonies to humility. They have drawn their strength to endure almost entirely from the domestic sphere rather than from flashy initiatives, new models of ministry, or grand schemes. The time that our forebears wasted in committee meetings, training programs, and workshops was minimal. Around 40 generations of local Christians would have known little more about the content of their faith than perhaps the Paternoster and Ave Maria. Their descendants probably differed only in what they learned by heart: the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the comforting words of the prayer book. Still, they believed enough to look after their families, care for their homes, and sustain their little churches. Their imperfect love of God and neighbor is memorialized by the venerability of their holy sites.

Here is 'Conventional Christianity', the quiet and peaceable living out of the Christian faith in daily living in parish and community; not defined by intense spiritual experiences but, rather, by common prayer and Commandments, by duty to God and duty to neighbour. The Catechism's use of 'duty', by the way, is not to be dismissed as 'legalism': it is in duties that the call to love God and neighbour is given expression in daily, domestic, and communal living.

A significant aspect of Clavier's description is the emphasis on continuity between the pre-Reformation and post-Reformation churches. Contrary to the view promoted by Duffy and - in a rather unholy alliance - MacCulloch, the Reformation did not produce a new way of 'being Christian'. The same parish church; more often that not, the same parson; the same font; the same rites giving shape to the Christian life - baptism, marriage, burial; the same faith confessed in the Triune God, the Incarnation, and the Passion; the same Commandments defining the moral life; the same Lord's Prayer offered routinely in parish church and home, at font and graveside; all this emphasises the profound continuity in the parish churches of the Elizabethan Settlement and beyond.

Something of this, and of Clavier's description, is found in the works of Jeremy Taylor, a significant influence on the 'Conventional Christianity' of the Anglophone 18th century. To some extent, this might be surprising. To use Thomas Palmer's term, Taylor was one of those Episcopalian theologians committed to "moral rigorism". However, alongside this - and, indeed, cohering with it - was Taylor's consistent emphasis on the simplicity of Christianity. The Christian life, as Taylor states in The Great Exemplar, does not require an interest in weighty doctrinal tomes:

Want of learning and disability to consider great secrets of theology, does not at all retard our progress to spiritual perfections: love to Jesus may be better promoted by the plainer understandings of honest and unlettered people, than by the finer and more exalted speculations of great clerks that have less devotion.

'Honest and unlettered people': it is hard not to think of those past generations in the parish churches of rural Wales, recalled by Mark Clavier. Taylor the theologian can hardly be accused of anti-intellectualism; but as a wise pastor he knew that avidly reading doctrinal works and engaging is doctrinal debates is not a mark of the Christian life. Even more crucially, this is certainly not true of a desire to engage in ecclesiastical debates and controversies.

When Clavier describes a faith given shape by the learning of "the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the comforting words of the prayer book" - as it was in pre-Reformation times by Paternoster and Ave - we see an understanding heartily endorsed by Taylor in Golden Grove:

That there is more solid comfort and material support to a Christian spirit in one Article of Faith, in one period of the Lords Prayer, in one holy Lesson, then in all the disputes of impertinent people ... Christian Religion is admirable for its wisdome, for its simplicity ...To believe the Christian Faith, and to understand it; to represent plain Rules of Good Life; to describe easie Formes of Prayer; to bring into your Assemblies Hymnes of Glorification and Thanksgiving, and Psalms of Prayer. By these easie paths they lead Christs little ones into the Fold of their great Bishop. 

It is a quite beautiful description of the good of 'Conventional Christianity', of ordinary lives embodying the Christian life in quiet faithfulness, over generations. Of Creed, Lord's Prayer, Commandments - heard in the parish church and daily life, learnt in the Catechism and from parents - shaping and guiding belief, prayer, and the moral life. 

In Holy Living, Taylor gives an expanded description of 'Conventional Christianity':

That Man does certainly belong to God, who Believes and is baptized into all the Articles of the Christian faith, and studies to improve his knowledge in the matters of God, so as may best make him to live a holy life. He that in obedience to Christ worships God diligently, frequently, and constantly with natural Religion, that is, of prayer, praises, and thanksgiving. He that takes all opportunities to remember Christs death by a frequent Sacrament (as it can be had) or else by inward acts of understanding, will, and memory (which is the spiritual communion) supplies the want of the external rite. He that lives chastly. And is merciful. And despises the World, using it as a Man, but never suffering it to rifle a duty. And is just in his dealing, and diligent in his calling. He that is humble in his spirit. And obedient to Government. And content in his fortune and imployment. He that does his duty because he loves God. And especially if after all this he be afflicted, & patient, or prepared to suffer affliction for the cause of God. 

Note how we are to "improve ... knowledge in the matters of God" not in an abstract sense, but "as may best make [us] to live a holy life". Also significant - and something that would be oft repeated by Anglican divines across the 18th century - Christian worship gathers up, rather than rejects, "natural Religion". As Burke would later say, "man is by his constitution a religious animal": worship is not an unnatural, 'Weird' act but is inherent to our created nature. 

Such 'Conventional Christianity' Taylor also expected to be taught from the pulpit. In his Rules and Advices to the clergy of his diocese, Taylor described how preaching in the parish church should set forth the simplicity and wisdom of the Christian life:

Let the business of your Sermons be to preach holy Life, Obedience, Peace, Love among neighbours, hearty love, to live as the old Christians did, and the new should; to do hurt to no man, to do good to every man: For in these things the honour of God consists, and the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus ...

Let not the Preacher make an Article of Faith to be a matter of dispute; but teach it with plainness and simplicity, and confirm it with easie arguments and plain words of Scripture, but without objection; let them be taught to believe, but not to argue, lest if the arguments meet with a scrupulous person, it rather shake the foundation by curious inquiry, than establish it by arguments too hard.

In Taylor, in other words, we see the 'Conventional Christianity' that was central to Anglican piety during the 'long 18th century' and, I would contend, far beyond: it continues to characterise much Anglican piety and spirituality. This should be a cause for gratitude: such a quiet, peaceable, faithful living out of the Christian life is rooted in the call of the Beatitudes and in apostolic exhortations. What is more, in a contemporary culture context in which religious belief is widely regarded as undermining human flourishing and social cohesion, such a quiet, peaceable living out of the Christian faith challenges these misconceptions of Christianity. There is also a resilience in such 'Conventional Christianity', precisely because it is not dependent on transitory experiential events. Parish church, common prayer, sacraments, the rites of the church, unglamorous but faithful preaching - these can sustain Christian witness over a lifetime and over generations.

We might also note that, while standing in continuity with pre-Reformation Christian life, such 'Conventional Christianity' is not 'unreformed'. Taylor's articulation of 'Conventional Christianity', rather than being an attempt at Laudian 'Counter-Reformation' (a ridiculous notion), was actually a defence of the Elizabethan Settlement and, crucially, of ecclesial life in many parts of Reformation Europe. Consider, for example, Diarmaid MacCulloch's description - in Reformation: Europe's House Divided - of how the peace of the Hungarian and Transylvanian Reformed churches was disturbed by Puritanism. The "older style of Reformed Protestantism, with more varied and cosmopolitan origins" was quite different to the ideological Calvinism of the Puritans:

what worried the [Hungarian and Transylvanian Reformed] clerical establishment about the new Puritanism was that these young enthusiasts would make religion an elitist matter, despising the bulk of Christians; one Transylvanian superintendent also said that the Puritans were privileging 'heart knowledge' or emotion over 'head knowledge', reflective understanding of religion. Others thought that Puritans' intensely personal and experiential piety devalued the role of the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist in Christian life.

The same tensions would be seen in the 18th century debates provoked by Pietist movement in Lutheran and Reformed Churches, with Anglicans actively supporting the 'Conventional Christianity' of the non-Pietist 'Orthodox'. Such 'Conventional Christianity', therefore, was a common inheritance of churches of the Reformation, defended against Puritans, Pietists, and Revivalists, with parish and parson, Creed and Commandments, common prayer and sacraments shaping and sustaining Christian lives "soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world".

(The first picture is of St David's, Manordeifi, Pembrokeshire, under the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches. The third illustration is István Csók's 1890 painting of the Sacrament administered in the Hungarian Reformed tradition.)