'And all the blessings of this life': in praise of civic observances in the church calendar

This day being appointed a Fast on our Majesty’s arms against the rebel Americans, I went to Church this morning and read the Prayers appointed for the same. I had as full a congregation present as I have in an afternoon on a Sunday, very few that did not come.

Parson Woodforde's diary entry for 13th December 1776 captures something of a feature of Anglican experience over the centuries: civic and national observances often attract a good congregation. Woodforde's words came to mind when recently reading a US Episcopalian critique of such civic and national observances, lamenting the large congregations that services on Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day - what TEC BCP 1979 calls 'National Days' - often attract. This, we are told, represents an enthusiasm for such observances over Christian festivals, contradicting the Christian allegiance to our heavenly homeland, not earthly nations.

Against such a view, I think about the parishioners of good Parson Woodforde, gathering in Weston Longville parish church on that cold December day in 1776, praying for their country and sovereign. Those parishioners and their parson represent the wisdom of the Anglican tradition regarding civic and national observances.

Observance of 'National Days' has, of course, long been part of the Prayer Book tradition. The state services for 5th November, 30th January, and 29th May were included in BCP 1662 in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (with 23rd October also observed in Ireland) until 1858. As the example from Woodforde indicates, prayers were also often published by authority throughout the 'long 18th century' to commemorate particular national events: these were a routine part of the experience of Anglican worshippers.

PECUSA's BCP 1789 introduced a Thanksgiving provision for "the First Thursday in November, or on such other day as shall be appointed by the Civil Authority", a clear recognition of the communal and civic nature of this observance. England, Canada, and Ireland have Prayer Book provision for Accession Day. Canada also provides an excellent collect for Dominion Day and for the civic nature of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day:

O GOD, who didst lead the fathers of our nation into this land of Canada, and hast increased us by thy favour: Grant, we beseech thee, that we who now enter into their inheritance, may prove ourselves a people mindful of thy mercies and ready to do thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Added to these observances is Remembrance Sunday, firmly embedded in the liturgical life of Anglican churches in these Islands. The parish in which I serve is not at all unusual in seeing its Sunday attendance increase by as much as one third on Remembrance Sunday. The moving Act of Remembrance usually takes place within the worship, at the war memorial in the parish church.

Nor should we forget Harvest Thanksgiving, a still popular and resonant observance in many Anglican churches in these Islands. Contrary to the myth promoted by those who regard the communal and civic nature as Harvest Thanksgiving as somehow polluting the church's liturgy, this observance was no 19th century invention. Prayers for Harvest Thanksgiving were published by authority throughout the 18th century. The later 19th Harvest provision in, for example, the Church of Ireland's 1878 revision merely reflected a long established practice.

In other words, TEC's current provision for Thanksgiving and Independence Day stands very clearly within the Prayer Book tradition and the Anglican experience. To remove such observances from the authorised liturgy would represent a not insignificant rupture with Anglican tradition and experience.

This tradition and experience also has a firm theological foundation. Such gathering up of national and communal life in prayer and thanksgiving - ordering national and communal life towards the righteousness, love and peace of God - reflects the truth that the order of creation is no less a gift than the order of salvation. We do indeed give thanks "above all" for our salvation, but this does not mean that we are forgetful of the gift of the created, natural order: In the words of the General Thanksgiving:

We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.

Amongst "all the blessings of this life" are communal, civic, and national life. It is, therefore, meet and right that this is reflected in the church's worshipping life through civic and national observances, days during which particularly call us to offer prayer and thanksgiving for national and communal life, 

Criticism of such worldly, material concerns in the church's liturgy are not, of course, new. Hooker confronted the Disciplinarian Thomas Cartwright's complaint that - according to Cartwright's calculations - "a third part" of the prayers in the BCP 1559 were "spent in prayinge for, and prayinge against the commodities and incommodities of this life". Hooker responded in a wonderful pastoral manner. Yes, we might wish that "our desires to heavenward" should dominate our thoughts and desires, by most of us are "better able by sense to discerne the wantes of this present life, then by spirituall capacitie to apprehend things above sense" (LEP V.35.2). This being so, the liturgy's worldly and material petitions work by "a kind of heavenlie fraud":

These multiplied petitions of worldlie thinges in prayer have therefore, besides theire direct use a service whereby the Church under hand, through a kinde of heavenlie fraud, taketh therewith the soules of men as with certain baites. 

Demonstrating the reality of God, prayer, providence, and grace in worldly matters, the liturgy can also therefore draw us to the reality of the order of salvation. This can apply to observance of Remembrance, Thanksgiving, Accession Day, Independence Day: drawing our hearts and minds on such resonant and meaningful occasions to reflect on them in the light of the grace, mercy, truth, and love of the triune God in creation and redemption. The alternative, of course, is to abandon such observances to those who do not seek to order them towards the grace, mercy, truth, and love of God - hardly an outcome Christians should desire.

There is, then, good reason to welcome lay support for observing national holidays in worship: it both rightly understands these commemorations within the truth of God's grace and providence, and provides an opportunity to proclaim God's grace and goodness in the communal, civic, and national life. This is, therefore, another of those cases in which the wisdom of conventional lay piety is to be respected, not rejected. Communal, civic, and national life are not to be held at arm's length from the church's prayers and liturgy, but to be embraced and gathered up therein. 

There is a deeply un-Anglican sectarianism which resents the wisdom of this lay piety, preferring a 'pure' liturgy and spirituality, untouched by and aloof from civic allegiance and national life, as if life as social being in the created order does not inherently and rightly entail Christian participation in civic and national life, "which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving".

As for the complaint that this conventional lay piety has more time for Thanksgiving or Remembrance Sunday, than, say, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, I would suggest that most Anglican clergy and laity over the centuries would be rather bemused by such a view. Do we really expect packed churches on a weekday observance of Michaelmas? Jeremy Taylor certainly did not. He said of the observance of saints' days:

as every church is to be sparing in the number of days, so also should she be temperate in her injunctions, not imposing them but upon voluntary and unbusied persons, without snare or burden.

This reality is why many contemporary Anglican liturgical calendars provide for the translation of All Saints' Day to the Sunday closest to 1st November. It is a wise and prudent provision, reflecting how the church should be "temperate in her injunctions" regarding such feasts. 

Taylor also emphasised that the mysteries of our salvation are set forth in the four principal feasts of Our Lord:

What the church hath done in the article of the resurrection, she hath in some measure done in the other articles of the nativity, of the ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost - and so great blessings deserve an anniversary solemnity.

It is against these feasts, not Saint Michael and All Angels, that we should compare civic and national observances. This is reflected in the Prayer Book tradition. As Diarmaid MacCulloch  has pointed out, the centrality of these feasts is why 1662 provided additional observances around Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun: not as a recognition of 'sacred time' but for the practical purpose of facilitating the increased numbers of communicants at these feasts.

Against this benchmark - attendance at Christmas and Easter - we can see that attendances at civic and national observances are hardly unusual and do not indicate a supposedly greater enthusiasm for civic and national themes over the events of our salvation. Packed churches for Christmas Carol services and the usual significant increase in attendance on Easter Day demonstrate that these feasts rightly remain the cornerstones of the Christian year, with civic and national observances alongside but certainly not replacing them.

A long-standing, wise Anglican pastoral approach; embodied in the Prayer Book tradition; grounded in a theological understanding of "all the blessings of this life"; recognising that life as social beings in this world is rightly gathered up in the church's prayer and ordered towards the triune God; respecting the wisdom of lay piety; and acknowledging that civic and national observances do not detract from the foundational celebrations of the Incarnation and Resurrection. The case for civic and national observances in the church calendar is compelling. To refuse such observances is to overthrow a not insignificant aspect of Anglican pastoral and liturgical practice over centuries, and - what is more - to at least partially reject the rich theological understanding of the created order on which such practice was based. As C.S. Lewis said of Hooker's theological vision:

Every system offers us a model of the universe; Hooker’s model has unsurpassed grace and majesty.  from much that I have already said it might be inferred that the unconscious tendency of his mind was to secularise.  There could be no deeper mistake.  Few model universes are more filled–one might say, more drenched–with Deity than his.  'All things that are of God' (and only sin is not) 'have God in them and he them in himself likewise', yet 'their substance and his wholly differeth' (V.56.5).  God is unspeakably transcendent; but also unspeakably immanent.  It is this conviction which enables Hooker, with no anxiety, to resist any inaccurate claim that is made for revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular.  We must not honour even heavenly things with compliments that are not quite true: 'though it seem an honour, it is an injury' (II.8.7).  All good things, reason as well as revelation, Nature as well as Grace, the commonwealth as well as the Church, are equally, though diversely, 'of God'. 

Perhaps we should end by returning to those parishioners trudging to Weston Longville parish church on a mid-winter's day in 1776. If we had an opportunity to ask them why they were gathering in their parish church for an observance dedicated to prayer for their country and sovereign, I expect they would tell us that it is what they do as Church of England folk. And that is indeed why Anglicans and Episcopalians have civic and national observances in our church calendars. It is what we do as Anglicans and Episcopalians.

(The first picture is of the Form of Prayer issued for the 13th December 1776 Day of Fasting. The second is of the 'Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the Fruits of the Earth, and all the other blessings of his merciful Providence', PECUSA BCP 1789.)