laudable Practice

Today begins a series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846). In 1814, Wordsworth was Dean of Bocking; he would be Master of Trinity, Cambridge from 1820-41. He was associated with the Hackney Phalanx and was a chaplain to Archbishop of Canterbury Charles Manners-Sutton. Indeed, this volume was warmly dedicated to the Archbishop's son (to whom he had been tutor), then Judge Advocate General in the administration of Lord Liverpool.  As a recent excellent study of Liverpool has demonstrated, he was guided by and supportive of the Hackney Phalanx in his ecclesiastical policies. It was on the Archbishop's recommendation that Liverpool appointed Wordsworth Master of Trinity. In other words, we can regard this collection of sermons as expressive of the teaching and piety of the Hackney Phalanx. In this extract, Wordsworth offers a critique of populist evangelicalism and revivalism, reflecting characteristic Old High concerns: some,...

The '1859 Revival', which took place in the predominantly Protestant north-east of Ireland, has a particularly exalted place in the subculture of Ulster evangelicalism . The then moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland heralded the revival in his account,  Year of Grace: A History of the Ulster Revival of 1859 . No less significant than this revivalist narrative, however, is the counter-narrative provided by critics.  Isaac Nelson, a Presbyterian minister, condemned the revivalists from a robustly Reformed perspective in his The Year of Delusion (1860). Another leading critic was the Irish Episcopalian cleric William McIlwaine, a Belfast rector.   McIlwaine - a member of the Evangelical Alliance - might have been expected to join those Episcopalian clergy who endorsed the revivalists. Instead he provided a sustained critique of the 'revival', echoing traditional Anglican concerns concerning revivalism. A 2014 paper in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History b...

In his 1812 Bampton Lectures - An appeal to the Gospel, or, An inquiry into the justice of the charge, alleged by Methodists and other objectors, that the gospel is not preached by the national clergy - Richard Mant (received orders in 1802, consecrated to the episcopate in 1820) challenged the revivalist notion of the necessity of "a special and instantaneous conversion". Mant, referring to the "writings of the Founders of Methodism, and of the most eminent among those Ministers of the Establishment, who, like the professed Methodists, have been distinguished (I think unduly) by the appellation of Evangelical or Gospel Preachers", confronted the accusation from revivalists that "the Gospel is not preached in our Church": [those who] claim the appellation of Evangelical or Gospel preachers, thereby exclude, by implication at least, if not expressly, from a share in that appellation those of their fellow-labourers, whose opinions and style of preaching do ...

One year after Bishop Gibson issued his pastoral letter, Archibald Cummings - Gibson's commissary in the colony of Pennsylvania and rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia - took to his pulpit to challenge the teachings of George Whitefield, then preaching revivalism in the American colonies. Cummings had initially, in 1739, opened his pulpit to Whitefield as a fellow cleric of the Church of England.  Whitefield's teaching, however, appalled him : His doctrine turns mostly on the antinomian scheme and railing against the regular clergy ... I really think he is enthusiastically mad. On Whitefield's return to Philadelphia a year later, while the revivalist was attending Christ Church, Cumming's preached two sermons directly challenging Whitefield's teaching. They were published under the title ' Faith absolutely necssary but not sufficient to Salvation without good Works. In two Sermons ... Publish'd in their own Vindication, from the false and rash Reflections...

The 1739 pastoral letter - Against Lukewarmness on one hand, and Enthusiasm on the other -  issued by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, was a response to the revivalism of George Whitefield. Gibson quoted from Whitefield's journals to demonstrate the character of revivalism, showing how Whitefield words testified to his "boast of sudden and surprizing Effects as wrought by the Holy Ghost, in Consequence of [his] Preaching"; to claims of his Preaching and Expounding, and the Effects of them, as the sole Work of a divine Power"; and justifying his "own extraordinary Methods of teaching, by casting unworthy Reflections upon the Parochial Clergy" and the regular ministrations of the church. Against this, Gibson's pastoral letter provided an account of a characteristically Anglican theology and piety, contrasting revivalist claims that experience of 'new birth' was the evidence of the Spirit's workings, with the "gradual progress and improve...

With reporting of the 'Asbury Revival' now having reached these shores (e.g. reports in the Independent , Daily Mail , and Premier Christianity ), laudable Practice thought it might be an appropriate time to consider Anglican critiques of revivalism. There is an inevitability to calls for churches in these Islands to follow the pattern of the Asbury Revival. Indeed, such a call was issued in the Premier Christianity article already referenced:  It seems that those in Asbury got close enough to the flame of God’s presence for his fire to consume them. Long may it continue and may we all follow suit. Those words alone - with the assumption that an intense worship experience equates to the working of the Holy Spirit - are suggestive of the need for a renewed understanding of the historical Anglican critique of revivalism.  One of the most significant Anglican critiques of revivalism was given by John Tillotson (Archbishop of Canterbury 1691-94) in two sermons entitled 'Of t...