laudable Practice

As we approach the anniversary of the death of surely the most influential Anglican of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis, I share a wonderful extract from his English Literature in The Sixteenth Century , discussing Richard Hooker. While Lewis prefaces this extract with a reminder that "Hooker had never heard of a religion called Anglicanism", what would become Anglicanism, at its best, embodies this Hookerian ethos, in which an exhausting (and inherently deceptive) spiritual search for 'the true Church' is, thankfully, not ordinarily an Anglican concern. As Hooker declared, such searching is the pursuit of "they [who] define not the Church by that which the Church essentiallie is, but by that wherein they imagin their own more perfect than the rest are" ( LEP V.68.6).  In this, Lewis was truly Hookerian, his writings demonstrating a catholic spirit free of of such a stultifying, narrow spirit. If there is a 'patron saint' of the ordinary Anglican - con...

Today is the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, the Anglo-Allied and Prussian victory which delivered Europe from the decades of wars and invasions provoked by Napoleon's ambitions. On the eve of Waterloo, the Reverend George Griffin Stonestreet, chaplain to the Guards regiments, administered the Holy Communion in Brussels. Later that day, many of the officers and men in Brussels would be required to assemble and march with haste, as Napoleon's forces moved towards the Anglo-Allied positions at Waterloo. The chalice used at the service (pictured below) is kept in the Guards Museum . On the same day, there was a report that the Chaplain General, John Owen, "gave an address to British troops". Previously, as a Brigade Chaplain, Owen had been warned by officers and men about placing himself too close to the front line. His response had been that his primary duty was "to be of service to those now departing this life". It seems that seven chaplains wer...

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we consider the alternative canticle after the first reading, the Benedicite. Shepherd points to the evidence for its widespread use in East and West: the fourth council of Toledo enjoined it to be used in the Spanish churches, alleging as a reason, that it was sung all over the world. St. Chrysostom had before made the same observation, describing this as a hymn every where sung throughout the world, and which would continue to be sung by latest posterity. In the Gallic Lectionary, it is appointed to be sung after the reading of the Prophets, much in the same manner, as it is here ordered to be said or sung after the reading of the first Lesson.  While noting that patristic writers disagreed on the status of the text - "Ruffinus maintains against Jerome, that it is a portion of Holy Writ" - Shepherd, as with his earlier di...

It being the anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, and in the midst of leading a parish course on Lewis, I have been wondering about how we might situate Lewis' Anglicanism. Let me suggest something which might possibly provoke some push-back: C.S. Lewis was a 'Rowan Williams Anglican'. What is meant by a 'Rowan Williams Anglican'? By this I mean a Prayer Book Catholic; standing in succession to Lux Mundi ; deeply critical of the Liberal, demythologising theological project; and holding a generous vision of catholicity. What is the evidence for Lewis being a 'Rowan Williams Anglican'? Prayer Book Catholics together Perhaps the figure in later 20th century Anglicanism who most embodied what it is to be a Prayer Book Catholic is Austin Farrer.  He has been described as "a Prayer Book Anglican in the Tractarian tradition". Prepared to challenge the Roman tradition for its uncatholic claims , not joining with those Anglo-Catholics who opposed the Ch...

An Anglican should sound like a reformed Catholic Christian, grounded in the genuinely humanist implications of the Bible and the writings of the church Fathers. Someone committed to an authentic local and rooted expression of a universal faith. Someone with a strong sense of the integral unity of reason, scripture, and tradition. Of the unity, also, of artistic expression with care for nature and metaphysical vision. John Milbank, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham - Church Times 1st October 2021. John Milbank's words were in response to a Church Times request for "concise suggestions ... about what an Anglican sounded like".  Note, not a definition of doctrine (a debate for another time), more a description of ethos. I confess that I think Milbank has done so in a superb and deeply evocative manner.    Reading the description over the past week, I was particularly struck how it brings to mind what it...

[O]ne thing that becoming an RC resolves is a painful degree of complexity, about theology, authority, and belonging, which the C of E is incapable of solving because it goes to the heart of what it is ... Being a Anglican is a vocation, and living with complexity is a large part of what that means. So said Angela Tilby's Church Times column following the decision of Bishop Jonathan Goodall (of The Society) to abandon Anglicanism for Rome.  I find this to be a rather odd view.  After all, Anglican converts to Rome have to embrace - rather than reject - "a painful degree of complexity": about their past sacramental life; if ordained, about the orders they received; and years of affirming that they were fully members of the Church Catholic. As Caroline Moore - wife of journalist Charles Moore, a former Anglican who became a Roman Catholic - memorably stated , "It shot in upon me, with terrible force, that I could not join a church that taught that George Herbert was n...

A few years ago the Reformed thinker Jake Meador wrote an article entitled ' The Invisible Anglicanism of CS Lewis '. The invisibility of Lewis' Anglicanism was, Meador said, to "miss the most basic fact of all about Lewis the Christian".  We might, of course, expect evangelicals and those Roman Catholics who Meador terms "Chesterton’s warrior children" to minimise and overlook the Anglicanism of Lewis.  Stranger, however, is that Anglicans should do so.  It is difficult not to think that a degree of embarrassment and awkwardness surrounds that fact that Lewis was a popular Christian writer.  This itself betraying a woeful ignorance of Anglicanism's past in which popular writings - such as as The Whole Duty of Man , the most popular religious work in 18th century England - shaped popular religiosity.   Lewis also, however, positioned himself against the theological project which came to define the post-1945 Church of England establishment, challengi...