A lost Anglicanism?

The King's state visit to the United States, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, had me searching online for photographs of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II attending Episcopal services during their respective state visits. 

During his state visit, George VI, with FDR, attended divine service at St. James Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, New York City on Sunday 11th June 1939. The first photograph, taken after the service, shows the King and Queen, President and Mrs. Roosevelt, Bishop Henry St. George Tucker (then PECUSA Presiding Bishop), and two Episcopal clergy. 

The second and third photographs are of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attending divine service in Old North Church on Sunday 11th July 1976, as part of the bicentennial celebrations. 

The photographs evoke something that, in many ways, been lost. Reflecting on the photographs, however, is neither a counsel of despair nor a call for reactionary outrage. It is, instead, an invitation to consider afresh part of the Anglican and Episcopal heritage and to re-receive it with gratitude.

The clerical attire in both photographs speaks of a pre-Liturgical Movement Anglican norm. Note how Presiding Bishop Tucker in 1939 is in rochet, chimere, and tippet. The clergy beside him are in surplice and stoles. As it was Whitsunday, the stoles suggest that the service was Holy Communion. At Old North Church in 1976, the clergy were in surplice, tippet, bands, and hood. 

No cope and mitre for the Presiding Bishop. Surplice, not alb for the clergy. At Old North Church, it was not alb and stole but surplice and tippet.

Such was the distinctive vesture of Anglican and Episcopal clergy before the Liturgical Movement led to the 'mess of pottage' that is the now ubiquitous alb and stole. To have - in many places - lost it for vesture which blandly represents a rather monolithic 'liturgical Protestant' and, to some extent, post-Vatican II context is a loss: a loss of a vesture which spoke of a distinctive ecclesial heritage. That heritage - which we might summarise as Protestant episcopacy and Prayer Book worship - was in many ways recognisable by the surplice. With this was also bound up with a particular set of ecclesial virtues, a modesty and reserve that stood in contrast to the excessive claims of both Enthusiasm and Sacerdotalism.

The attire of bishop and clergy in these photographs, therefore, speaks of a heritage and virtues to cherish.

The clergy attire at Old North Church on that Sunday in July 1976 also indicates that the form of divine service was Morning Prayer. It once, of course, was the form of divine service known on most Sunday in Anglican and Episcopal churches. As regular readers of Laudable Practice will know all too well, I have, over the years, frequently critiqued the Parish Communion Movement and the loss of Sunday Morning Prayer. This is not the place to repeat those critiques. The photographs from Old North Church in 1976, however, are a reminder that within our recent ecclesiastical past, Morning Prayer could be found as a main Sunday service in many Anglican and Episcopal churches. It is appropriate, then, when viewing those photographs, to question if the complete disappearance in very many places of Sunday Morning Prayer has aided the Anglican and Episcopal witness and vocation. Would we not benefit from a renewed tradition of Sunday Morning Prayer, with its focus on holy Scripture and serious preaching?

The photographs from 1939 (as war approached) and 1976 (amidst the bicentennial celebrations) are also suggestive of the cross-Atlantic cultural and political relationship to which Anglicanism and Episcopalianism contributed and for which it provided a spiritual expression. In a recent discussion with Andrew Robert exploring the relationship between Churchill and FDR, Jon Meacham stated that the fact that both leaders "understood a kind of Anglican world, they saw the world in that way" contributed to their relationship. He went on to describe the August 1941 church service on HMS Prince of Wales, during the FDR-Churchill conference which led to the signing of the Atlantic Charter, as "one of the most moving and also most politically effective moments of the 20th century". The service was led by two clergy, one Church of England, the other PECUSA. It was an expression of that "kind of Anglican world". 

This is also seen in a Time report of the 1940 PECUSA General Convention:

With their historic ties to the Church of England, Episcopalians were warm in their reception of their British colleagues. Canada’s Archbishop Owen (who same day the convention opened learned that his nephew in the naval air service had been shot down and killed in Africa) was cordially applauded when he said that the U. S. and the British Empire “must draw near to each other in our great common cause. . . of preserving democratic and Christian principles.”

Said stately, white-haired Dean Frederick Warren Beekman (who introduced himself at the convention as “dean of the church in Paris—Paris, Germany”): “It is no longer a question of the U. S. becoming involved in war. The war is coming at us so fast that we haven’t any choice in the matter. . . . It isn’t a question of England needing us; we need England.”

The photographs from 1939 and 1976 echo this. They say something of how Anglicanism and Episcopalianism inherited, respectively, from 1689 and 1776 an understanding that ordered liberty, representative government, and constitutional checks and balances are means for our polities to be, in the words of the Prayer for the Church Militant, "godly and quietly governed". That, in other words, such constitutional arrangements - without making excessive theological claims for them - are to be supported and defended for, to use a phrase from the Atlantic Charter, "realistic as well as spiritual reasons". 

Since 1976, however, there has been a catastrophic Anglican and Episcopal rejection of the vocation of national churches, providing a spiritual foundation for this constitutional order. The rejection has been most evident in TEC (and the other churches of the Protestant Mainline), chronically embarrassed about its historic role in the American Republic, preferring an ideological partisanship which has contributed to cultural irrelevance. On this side of the Atlantic, similar trends are to be found, with the same chronic embarrassment about patriotism, constitutional order, and historic vocation. 

The sad irony is that this is so in a time when loud and aggressive voices from populist radicals on Right and Left - supported by supposed 'prophetic voices' on the ecclesial Right and ecclesial Left -  rage against the constitutional order, invoking dark and often violent visions. In a time, then, when there is much to be said for the "kind of Anglican world" captured by these photographs, when spiritual wells are needed to refresh that constitutional order, Anglicanism and Episcopalianism have lost their historic voice.

I began by saying that these photographs evoke something that, in many ways, been lost. And yet, that something still echoes. We see it when Anglican and Episcopal clergy are still found in surplice, tippet, bands, and hood - at, for example, Choral Evensong, and civic services. Nor has Sunday Morning Prayer entirely disappeared. Indeed, there are hints here and there of another story, of Sunday Matins being continued or rediscovered. In 2022, for example, the Precentor of York Minster stated that "Choral Matins is our fastest growing service". As for that "Anglican kind of world", a constitutional order that allows us to be "pass out time in rest and quietness", it has had effective Anglican lay spokespersons, in particular, Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III. In the American context, President George H.W. Bush was also an exemplar of this.

These echoes should be heeded, for they show to Anglicanism and Episcopalianism a way to renew the goodly, virtuous ecclesial heritage embodied in the photographs from 1939 and 1976. 

Ahead of the King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, worshipping in St. James Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, New York City, in the Summer of 1939, the New York Times provided a description of the church::

It is a typical rural American church of a prosperous agricultural section in which King George and Queen Elizabeth will kneel in worship during their Hyde Park visit. Set back at least a hundred yards from the Albany Post Road beyond a grove of tall pines and sturdy maples, St. James's is situated north of Hyde Park village. In the burial ground to one side have been interred for generations the descendants of the Hudson Valley pioneers and sturdy Dutch settlers who carved Dutchess County civilization out of the wilderness centuries ago.

The exterior walls of the edifice, built of native stone and without undue regard for architectural beauty, are softened by the dark green of the ivy that reaches to its spire. On the interior walls, between stained glass windows are memorial plaques, and beneath them, on both sides of the red-carpeted aisle, are the box pews bearing on brass plates the names of their holders. 

The description fits more than a few Church of Ireland parish churches close to me here in Jeremy Taylor country. It could also be a very typical Church of England parish church. When we assemble for divine service in such churches - in buildings consecrated for Prayer Book worship, in which generations of parishioners have "assemble[d] and [met] together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands", amidst the memorials to those have gone before us in the faith, with kneelers often crafted by parishioners and representing an Anglican folk art - the echoes of that seemingly lost Anglicanism and Episcopalianism can be near, to be discerned and, with sober joy, to be re-found and lived.