New Georgians: a sensibility, a temperament, a disposition

Something of a tradition has emerged on Laudable Practice of marking the early May Bank Holiday with a reflection related to Georgian church interiors. While this holiday has other connotations, I enjoy it as quiet celebration of Spring, before the louder, garish days of Summer arrive. There is something about late Spring - its gentle light, the modest warmth after Winter, the fresh greenery of these days - which, I think, is reflected in the interior of Georgian churches.

This May Day, I am prompted to address the 'New Georgians' - yes, in the words of the well-known meme, 'There are dozens of us. Dozens!'. I have previously suggested that those of us who might be called New Georgians seek "to promote an appreciation of 18th century Anglicanism, Georgian churches, and the ordinary, stolid piety that characterised the Georgian Church of England".

Actually, it might be that there are a few more than 'dozens of us'. Something I enjoy posting on 'X' are pictures of Georgian era churches. A few days ago I posted pictures (included with this post) of the very fine Christ Church, Lancaster, Virginia, built in 1732-35, with its triple-decker pulpit, box pews, and clear windows. It appeared to strike a chord in my admittedly very small corner of the Anglican online world.

Perhaps, then, there are a few more New Georgians out there than might initially be expected. 

New Georgians, however, will certainly not be an ecclesiastical movement or, worse, a church party. In the famous words of Michael Oakeshott, "My theme is not a creed or a doctrine, but a disposition". To be New Georgian is to inhabit a sensibility, a temperament, a disposition. How might that sensibility, that temperament, that disposition find expression? Let me suggest five ways in which this might be so.

Firstly, the New Georgians will delight in Georgian Anglicanism. Now, yes, as with the characteristics of any ecclesiastical era (not least our own), Georgian Anglicanism knew profound moral failings. But, as with any ecclesiastical era, we are to express gratitude for and learn from that which is good (which, of course, we are to hope is how our successors will view us). Georgian Anglicanism has laboured under what mid-20th century Marxist historian E.P Thompson described, in another context, as "the enormous condescension of posterity". Recovering a gratitude and reverence for Georgian Anglicanism can have significance for contemporary Anglicans and Episcopalians. As I have said elsewhere on this topic:

Awareness of a revised account of 18th century Anglicanism could lead to a greater recognition of the ordinary, sober Anglican experience as a way of living out the Faith, and the possibilities this might provide for drawing those who dwell in 21st-century societies into an expression of the Faith marked by “sober delight and rational exultation.”

Something of a New Georgian sensibility is seen in an article by Bijan Omrani - author of the excellent God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England (2025) - encouraging participation in the life of the local parish church:

It is in your power, by God’s grace, to bring life to your local church, to preserve an ancient patrimony that has been handed down to you through the work of many dedicated generations, to help keep your church open as a place of faith and Christian fellowship for all who need it, and to get to work with some very splendid people in the process. Biscuits, bumf and lawn-mowing are your gold, frankincense and myrrh. A willingness to muck in with “drudgery divine” will bless and keep your church out of the estate agents’ clutches, safe for the generations to come. 

It's not dramatic, not heroic, and certainly not 'Weird' (cf. those calls by, amongst others, Tom Holland to 'Keep Christianity Weird'). It is about the ordinary routines, the relationships, and the duties of the Christian life in the parish. This is what New Georgians will encourage, share in, and recognise as part of a modest, sober Anglican and Episcopalian living out of the Christian faith.

Secondly, New Georgians will have a quiet joy in the architecture and style of Georgian churches. In the preface to his 1947 work Stuart and Georgian Churches: The Architecture of the Church of England outside London, 160-1837, Marcus Whiffen noted the need to "counteract Victorian prejudices". This noble work continues. And, as Whiffen suggests, it is "often the smaller country church that most repays the seeking out"". This is so "even when its architecture is of no exceptional distinction". He points, as a particular example, to St. Andrew's Wheatfield, Oxfordshire. We might likewise say this of Christ Church, Lancaster, Virginia.

What is it about Georgian churches that brings joy to the New Georgian heart? They tend to embody a modest, rational, dignified piety, with a quiet charm. For the New Georgians, such an embodiment of a modest, rational, dignified piety is certainly to be welcomed. As for how Georgian churches embody this, I turn to a perhaps surprising source. The commentator Niall Gooch in a recent article in The Critic, discussed his attraction to the early modernism of some inter-war house designs in the United Kingdom:

For myself, the emphasis placed on light and air and space would have been one of the main attractions. In the very best early modern designs, the formal simplicity somehow offers a feeling of possibility, an air of optimism, and an aid to mental clarity. 

This gives, I think, a rather good description of why New Georgians delight in the characteristics of Georgian era churches: "light and air and space ... the formal simplicity ... and aid to mental clarity". It is, of course, the case that most New Georgians will be worshipping in Georgian churches (although there will be a happy few). We can, however, search out and cherish echoes of Georgian architecture in our own churches, mindful that many Anglican parish churches are, in the words of Sir Roger Scruton, "noble, but bare and quiet". Georgian church interiors may have mostly gone, but Georgian characteristics can still be found.

Thirdly, there is that Georgian piety which we have already referenced. We might see it as summarised in two ways. There is Archbishop Tillotson, who - as Abbey and Overton state in their The English Church in the 18th Century (1896) state - exercised a defining influence over 18th century Anglicanism:

He lived and died in the seventeenth century, but is an essential part of the Church history of the eighteenth ... He struck the key-note which in his own day, and for two generations or more afterwards, governed the predominant tone of religious reasoning and sentiment.

In 1694, Sir Robert Howard, in the Preface to his History of Religion, said of Tillotson's sermons:

I like such sermons as Dr. Tillotson's, where all are taught a plain and certain way of salvation, and with all the charms of a calm and blessed temper and of pure reason are excited to the uncontroverted, indubitable duties of religion; where all are plainly shown that the means to obtain the eternal place of happy rest are those, and no other, which also give peace in the present life; and where everyone is encouraged and exhorted to learn, but withal to use his own care and reason in working out his own salvation.

Howard was, like Tillotson himself, a Whig. George Bull, a High Church Tory, in an 1708 episcopal visitation charge, demonstrated that such praise for Tillotson was certainly not the preserve of Whigs and Latitude men:

Among the printed Sermons, those of the late Archbishop Tillotson are well known and approved by all.

In an age of New Enthusiasms, forms of Christianity which emphasise 'The Weird', there is surely wisdom in the modesty, reasonableness and sobriety of a New Georgian sensibility which values Tillotson. 'The Weird' leads to a sectarianism which suggests Christianity is a mystery cult rather than a public religion in which (to quote Benjamin Whichcote) "God, as the author of Nature and of Grace, does agree perfectly with Himself".

Then there is the Book of Common Prayer. In his The Sunday Service of the Methodists, a 1788 revision of the Prayer Book, John Wesley praised the liturgy in very Georgian terms:

I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational Piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England.

'Solid, scriptural, rational': can there be a better description of a New Georgian piety? John Wesley, of course, may not entirely approve of the use to which we put his words, but they do emphasise how a piety formed by the Book of Common Prayer can root us in that which which rightly and reasonably nourishes the Christian life.

Fourthly, there are exemplars from Georgian Anglicanism in whom New Georgians can delight. There is Jane Austen, who, as Alison Milbank says, offers us, in a "specifically Anglican spirit", "good habits of virtue, self-examination and self-knowledge as well as the nature of true happiness, with a shared community". There is Samuel Johnson, who defends and enjoys the ordinary things of good life against the cant of philosophes and Enthusiasts. There is Edmund Burke's wise counsel in favour of the unity and accord valued by Georgian piety, against partisan sermons by self-appointed prophets, seeking to stir-up bitter division:

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.

After these three lay exemplars, we must also mention Parson Woodforde, as Fergus Butler-Gallie reminds us:

Woodforde is rarely thought of as a great theologian. That’s unfortunate - although I did know of one priest who used to read the parson’s diary as a Lent book each year. Woodforde has much to teach us about rootedness and pastoral care. But, above all, he has much to teach us about hospitality. To him, it wasn’t just something that he did, but a part of his vocation. Woodforde’s hospitality is theological.

Finally, there is - to quote the title of William Gibson's study of the Church of England 1688-1832 - the 'unity and accord' of Georgian Anglicanism. Across the 'long 18th century', says Gibson, "Anglican clergy returned to the theme of unity and peace in their sermons". The Church of England had an "orientation toward unity and accord". 

As the 18th century progressed, Burke stated:

Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant: not because we think it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more.

As an example of this, referring to a 1770 visit to France, he admired the Catholic clergy with whom he conversed:

I passed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who would have done honor to any church. They were all well-informed; two of them of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Oriental and Western, - particularly in their own profession. They had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy.

We might add to this, albeit contrary to Burke, the Quebec Act of 1774, with its guarantees of religious liberty and securing the rights of French Catholics in Quebec to hold political office. At the end of the Georgian era, William Wordsworth, in an 1827 sonnet, also celebrated the refuge given in the United Kingdom to French Catholic clergy fleeing the Terror:

More welcome to no land

The fugitives than to the British strand,

Where priest and layman with the vigilance

Of true compassion greet them. Creed and test

Vanish before the unreserved embrace

Of catholic humanity:—distrest

They came,—and, while the moral tempest roars

Throughout the Country they have left, our shores

Give to their Faith a fearless resting-place.

As for the Dissenting tradition in England, Gibson notes that "the spirit of concord generally marked the relationship between the Church and Dissenters":

In a pro-Hoadleian observation, and one that bore fruit in 1829, [the High Church Edmund] Gibson concluded "there ought to be no persecution purely for the sake of religion". Dissenters themselves were no strangers to communion with the Church. The staunch Dissenter Ralph Thoresby attended Anglican services when he travelled and was unable to attend a meeting house ... The most telling observations ... indicated that Anglicanism and Trinitarian Dissent self-consciously shared common doctrines. 

New Georgians, therefore, while rejoicing in our heritage as Anglicans and Episcopalians, especially as seen in Georgian Anglicanism, will have no time for ecclesiastical revanchism and the sectarianism which is often found amongst a particular type of denominational apologist on social media. We will, instead, seek to be peaceable bearers of unity and accord.

None of this is to remotely suggest that New Georgians will be in any sense revolutionaries, aspiring to tear down Victorian churches, unsettling the vast majority of our fellow-Anglicans who would (quite rightly) look at us oddly if we issued a New Georgian 'call to arms' or agitate with reactionary zeal for some form of counter-revolution. As Tillotson warns us:

There is nothing more commonly cried up than zeal in religion: and yet there is nothing in which men do more frequently and fatally mistake and miscarry, and in the expressions and effects whereof men ought to govern themselves with more care and caution ... An uncharitable zeal ... is an enemy to peace and order.

Instead, those who share a New Georgian sensibility, temperament, and disposition will be "sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious" sons and daughters of our Anglican and Episcopal churches while cherishing Georgian Anglicanism - its ethos, its churches, its sober piety, its exemplars, and its commitment to unity and accord - as a wise, prudent, and quietly joyful way of being Anglican.