'I did not like that Clergy should meddle with matters of state': in praise of the wisdom of Anglican laity condemning political sermons

The Bishop of Chichester preached before the King, and made a great flattering sermon, which I did not like that Clergy should meddle with matters of state.

So Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on 8th July 1660. The comment stands as representative of the wisdom of Anglican laity over centuries regarding a particular type of 'political sermon'. While a loyal servant of the King and committed to the re-established Church of England, Pepys was no clericalist. A clergyman who "discoursed much" from the pulpit against marital relations during Lent was, in the words of Pepys, "the most comical man that ever I heard in my life" (7th March 1662). A "ridiculous, affected sermon ... made me angry, and some gentlemen that sat next to me" (14th June 1668). A sermon "full of words against the Nonconformists", preached at Whitsuntide, was not "proper for the day at all" (15th June 1663).

Pepys here reflected wider sentiment amongst Anglican laity at the Restoration. As Bosher notes in his description of the Restoration Settlement, the Royalist gentry who dominated Parliament were committed Episcopalians but no clericalists:

The Court of High Commission was not restored, the use of the ex officio oath was forbidden, and the authority of the Canons of 1641 disallowed. The Royalist gentry might now entrust their spiritual welfare to their Laudian allies, but they were resolved that the temporal power of the Church should derive solely from the will of Parliament.

The rights of the laity - as represented in Parliament - in the Restoration Settlement was a significant feature of what would become Anglicanism. Indeed, as Bosher states, the Restoration Settlement itself was "a parliamentary settlement of the church question". The rights and liberties of the laity in Parliament set limits to clerical power and influence and, what is more, asserted the political arena as the concern of the laity. 

It is this context which explains Pepys' critique of sermons 'meddling with matters of state'. There was - and is - an inherently clericalist presumption in such sermons: a presumption that clergy have particular insight and authority on 'matters of state', on the competing policies of political rivals, on political debate and controversy. 

Pepys did not at all deny that sermons could address issues which had political resonance. We see this most clearly in his comments on 30th January sermons:

The first time that this day hath been yet observed: and Mr. Mills made a most excellent sermon, upon “Lord forgive us our former iniquities" (1661);

Fast-day for the murthering of the late King. I went to church, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon upon David’s words, “Who can lay his hands upon the Lord’s Anoynted and be guiltless?” (1662);

I to church in the forenoon, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon upon David’s heart smiting him for cutting off the garment of Saul (1663).

Lamenting the execution and martyrdom of Charles I, however, was not quite a partisan issue in the early 1660s. The constitution in Church and State had been restored to great popular acclaim. The regicides were disgraced and despised. Presbyterians no less than Episcopalians, incipient Whigs and incipient Tories regarded the murder of Charles I as plunging the Kingdom into "the late unhappy troubles". In other words, the 30th January sermons heard by Pepys addressed a matter of consensus, an understanding which unified the polity, and called it to wise, peaceable, and quiet government. We might compare this observance and the accompanying sermons to contemporary observance of Remembrance Sunday, embodying a Christian civic vision but distinctly non-partisan.

From Pepys, we turn to another great and wise Anglican lay voice, Edmund Burke. In his 1798 The Life of Edmund Burke, Bisset describes Burke's participation in Anglican worship and the response when preachers delivered "political sermons":

He was devoutly attentive to the prayers, and also to the sermons, if the preachers kept within their sphere of moral and religious instruction; but when they departed from their official business, he could not always refrain from testifying his disapprobation. At this time there happened to be at Margate a popular preacher from the vicinity of London. That gentleman, like the Grecian declaimer who undertook to lecture before Hannibal on the art of war, delivered, in the presence of Burke in Margate church, a long political sermon. Burke manifested an impatience which was observed by the whole congregation. He several times stood up, and took his hat, as if he expected that the discourse was about to end, and afterwards sat down with visible marks of disappointment and dissatisfaction. This probably arose from his dislike to political sermons, as that one was not worse than discourses in general are by persons of common abilities, who speak flippantly on subjects beyond their reach.

In describing Burke's condemnation of "political sermons", Bisset highlights the clericalist presumption underlying such sermons: what qualifies clergy to publicly address political issues from the pulpit? The Scriptures are not a political philosophy nor are they a manual for political controversies. Burke, of course, as a Member of Parliament and a faithful Anglican would have been well-used to sermons on 30th January, 29th May, and 5th November. Again, however, these would usually have been civic sermons, expounding what it was to be "godly and quietly governed", in a manner which drew together the political nation, not partisan addresses in which clergy set forth their private opinion on matters of political controversy and debate.

Bisset then turned to an extract from the Reflections, in which Burke contrasted the divisiveness of "political sermons" with "the healing voice of Christian charity":

His disapprobation of such sermons he strongly testified in the following passage in his Reflections:  "Politics and pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character, to assume what does not belong to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave, and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of

politics but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind."

Importing the inherently divisive and transitory political divisions of the kingdoms of this fallen world into the pulpit necessarily wounds Christian charity and distracts from the eternal, peaceable kingdom of God. As Burke reminds us, it is "the healing voice" of the kingdom of God which is to be heard from the pulpit, not the partisan manifestos of this world. 

The voices of Pepys and Burke have been echoed by Anglican laity over the centuries when presumptuous clericalism has led to political sermons from the pulpit. It continues to be the case. Indeed, it is not unusual to find on social media contemporary Anglican clergy - usually, but not always, a certain type of progressive clergy - express their dissatisfaction with laity for either not obediently accepting clerical political declarations or having the temerity to express objections. When laity continue to echo Pepys and Burke, they are recalling the church to it mission and witness, a mission and witness of infinitely greater significance than the private opinions of clergy on political debates and controversies. 

Today's post, therefore, is in praise of such lay voices, following after Pepys and Burke, reminding presumptuous clericalists that the pulpit is for the proclamation of the Scriptures and the Kingdom of God, not private political opinions. May such lay voices continue to be heard in Anglican and Episcopal churches, challenging presumptuous clergy, their clericalist pretensions, and the use of the pulpit for private, partisan political opinions.

And, not least during general election campaigns, may we instead hear sermons like that heard by Pepys on 26th April 1663:

had a very good sermon of a country minister upon “How blessed a thing it is for brethren to live together in unity!”