'And all the blessings of this life': in praise of civic observances in the church calendar
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'.
(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.)
There is some ambivalence in the U.S. Episcopal Church regarding the national holiday of Independence Day on July 4 as a liturgical observance. In colonial America, many Anglican clergy were loyal to the crown. After the American Revolution, clergy who observed the proper liturgy for Independence Day in the 1786 proposed BCP were essentially admitting, via an act of worship, that their loyalty was in error. So this liturgical observance was not in the 1789 BCP, and wasn't included again in an American Prayer Book until 1928. Bishop William White noted that Independence Day was "only observed in two or three places in Philadelphia" and opposed inclusion of the holiday in the BCP. Independence Day is now a major feast in the 1979 American Prayer Book. The collect asserts that the nation's founders "won liberty for themselves and for us." Historically speaking, the nation's founders won liberty only for white, male property owners (some of whom owned enslaved persons). And there are Americans in the 21st century who still haven't secured the full blessings of liberty, all of "us." Many Episcopalian's find the collect offensive, even outrageous, and reject the idea that any national or civic holiday (other than Thanksgiving Day) should be a liturgical major feast. There are calls for Independence Day to be removed as a feast day in the next American Prayer Book. I grew up using the 1928 BCP, then the 1979 BCP. I have attended Holy Communion on Thanksgiving Day frequently. Never in my 60 years have I heard of any Episcopal Church offering any type of worship service on Independence Day. July 4 is a federal holiday and most churches and their offices are closed that day. American evangelicals and fundamentalists usually devote the Sunday closest to July 4 to "special patriotic services" with great enthusiasm. Their churches are festooned with flags and red, white and blue bunting. This is very common among Christian nationalists who seem to blur Christianity with patriotic sentiment. I spent most of my adult working life in the U.S. Army. I'm not unpatriotic. I relish Independence Day picnics and the occasional parade, and fireworks displays. I love my country, may God "mend its every flaw." But I am ambivalent about a self-congratulatory liturgical observance for Independence Day as a major feast.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your comment. I do, of course, disagree.
DeleteWhite rejected a liturgical observance for Independence Day because - as he explicitly stated - the majority of CofE clergy in the colonies were loyal to the Crown. This rather clearly suggests that his opposition was based entirely on a recognition of the circumstances then prevailing in early PECUSA, with a significant number of clergy being former Loyalists.
I am surprised that you have never heard of 4th July being observed in TEC. I have been at such a liturgy in Maine and even a brief internet search revealed a number of TEC churches using the propers on the Sunday nearest 4th July. Even as a loyal subject of the Crown, I found such services meet and right.
The collect's reference to "won liberty for themselves and for us", I would have thought, sets before the Republic the challenge to ensure that such liberty does embrace all citizens. It is that very liberty established in 1776 which sets the standard for judging the failures of the American Republic over the centuries. That such liberty has a deeper and more profound meaning and application than perceived by the Founders is historically unsurprising: all our polities organically develop, widening our understandings of liberties.
I am unsure as to why you refer to evangelicals and fundamentalists marking 4th July, or to 'Christian nationalists' - this has no significance for Anglican and Episcopal reflection on the long tradition of our civic and national observances (which, of course, pre-dates evangelical and fundamentalist activities).
So, yes, I do hope those Episcopalians who I know continue to mark 4th July as per the Book of Common Prayer and in line with the noble Anglican tradition of civic observances.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving,
Brian.
I think public prayers in church on days of civic significance are a laudable practice. It seems congruent with Scripture to seek the peace and welfare of the place of our earthly exile (Jeremiah 29:7) and to pray for all in authority (1 Timothy 2:1-3). I don't believe that such observances by American evangelicals and fundamentalists are always examples of Christian nationalism, but most fundamentalists and evangelicals I know are Christian nationalists who want to live in their understanding of a Christian nation, governed solely by their co religionists, and under their religious and cultural principles. Some even view Donald Trump as a messianic figure, "God's man sent to lead us." Also, in most communities (in my experience ) it is increasingly difficult to find any Episcopal Church which has a service on Independence Day, or the observance of any feast on a weekday. Our church was closed on All Saints Day. I pray the daily office privately and would love to attend church on feasts and holy days (even a brief service led by a lay reader). It's all about prioritizing what is important. That said, the Episcopal Church does have a good practice of regularly praying for the nation and it's leaders in a non-partisan manner on Sundays.
ReplyDeleteMark, many thanks for your comment. I entirely agree with you: public prayers on days of civic significance cohere with Scripture, as you set out.
DeleteI am relaxed about weekday observances insofar as they have been the exception rather than the norm throughout Anglican history. As long as the principal feasts of Our Lord are observed, I think there is space for other significant feasts, such as All Saints, to also be observed on Sundays.
Praying the Office privately, and thus observing the calendar, allows us to mark other feasts in prayer. This aids our own devotional life, without requiring churches and congregations to perhaps somewhat unrealistically to do so on weekdays.
Many thanks and blessings for Advent,
Brian.