laudable Practice

In his Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (2018), William Anthony Hay notes that by 1825 "Tory opinion, both elite and popular, had moved from an earlier neutral or even sympathetic view of Catholicism to seeing a resurgent post-Napoleonic Church as a threat to Britain's Protestant constitution". This was the context in which debates surrounding a Roman Catholic Relief Act - enabling Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament without taking an oath denying transubstantiation - took place. It was also the background to Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, in his August 1826 primary visitation charge to his clergy in Salisbury Cathedral, addressing the matter. He began in an innocuous, fashion, referring to how Canon One of the Canons of 1604 required clergy to teach the Royal Supremacy: One of these subjects respects the very first Canon of our Church, by which you are required, four times every year at the least, in your Sermons and Lectures, to maintain the King's Supremac...

In the course an 1840 sermon entitled ' Prayer and Thanksgiving for Civil Rulers ', preached in the parish church of Iffley, Oxford, on the day appointed to give thanks for the preservation of the life of Queen Victoria after an assassination attempt, Old High divine William Jacobson (received orders in 1830, appointed Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford in 1848, appointed Bishop of Chester in 1865), expounded "the great Christian duty of praying and giving thanks for rulers and governors": For, remember, however much the form of government may be permitted to vary in different countries, whatever be the alterations in the working and administration of government which may be thought (and thought at times with the best reason) necessary and desirable in the same country, as one generation comes into the place of another, the duty remains as binding as ever, Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. This scriptural understanding, declared Jacobson, was particula...

Today is the Twelfth, the celebration of the Williamite victory at the Boyne which secured the Glorious Revolution.  Wednesday is Bastille Day, the celebration of the French Revolution.  As such, it is appropriate today to recall how the Old High Church tradition rejoiced in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution, and regarded the French Revolution as a dangerous experiment, destructive of peace and liberties.  This itself should alert us to the liberality which led the Old High tradition to look upon the French Revolution with fear.  It was not a reactionary response, angrily opposing the overthrow of a supposedly divinely-ordained ancien regime .  Rather, the Old High Church tradition rejected the French Revolution because the governing order which emerged from it was hostile to and destructive of the ordered liberty which the Glorious Revolution embodied. A 1799 sermon by Jacob Mountain , Bishop of Quebec, exemplifies the thinking of the O...

O Eternal God, through whose mighty power our fathers won their liberties of old; Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord - the collect for Independence Day, PECUSA BCP 1928. Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord - the collect for Independence Day, TEC BCP 1979. It is with some reserve that laudable Practice enters into the debate surrounding the TEC collect for Independence Day.  I am, after all, a loyal subject of Her Majesty the Queen.  I am an admirer of the Loyalist parsons Jonathan Boucher, Charles Inglis, and Samuel Seabury.  And "every particular or national Church hath authority t...

In his excellent Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (2019), Andrew Davison notes that the English legacy of "the organic weaving of statute, precedent, and tradition within a common law tradition" can be understood as an expression of "a participatory understanding".  Such a participatory understanding reflects the need for "human creativity and discernment ... since the natural law does not stipulate how to work out principles of human flourishing in detail, particularly as that pertains to individual human societies".  The process of "promulgation by parliament and Crown, observation of precedent, and interpretation by the judiciary" also has the character of "a common participation", a seeking out and discerning of the "the objectively just and good". In other words, there is a significant theological rationale for recognising and giving thanks for these political, constitutional, and legal...

Perhaps the most striking part of the ' Forms of Prayers with Thanksgiving to Almighty God ' appointed for Accession Day, 6th February, is the Te Deum which opens the service which "may also be used on the same day at any convenient time".  This ancient, solemn Christian hymn of thanksgiving, centred around the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, is used to give thanks on the anniversary of the monarch's accession to the throne.  Contrary to what some might suggest, this is an appropriate use of the Te Deum, a reminder that the doctrines which it celebrates - of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation - have significance and meaning beyond a narrowly ecclesial frame of reference. The first section of the Te Deum is a celebration of the Holy Trinity as Creator: "all the earth doth worship thee ... Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty: of thy glory".  Common life in the polity is part of this created order.  Hooker reminds us that "the cause of men...

And on Thursday morning, January 7, my teenage daughter asked me about what had happened on Epiphany, January 6, in our nation’s capitol building, And even after nearly twenty years of being formed in a supposedly alternate polis, I told her that the insurrectionists had “desecrated” it. And I truly believe that. I reached deep down into my heart of hearts and discovered that the American in my heart of hearts ran just as deep as the Christian did. The words are those of an Episcopal priest , shaped and and influenced by the theology of Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas came to mind last week when I saw Episcopal priests on my Twitter timeline lament the use of sacral discourse in condemnation of the events of 6th January 2020.  'Desecration' was used by a number of commentators.  David Brooks , for example, said: it felt like a desecration to me. I mean, this is our holy of the holies. This is where America comes, usually in awe. The Capitol was described by others as 'sacred...