As the faithful look forward to Easter and the Archbishop of Canterbury prepares to officiate at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, it may seem inappropriate to be discussing the future of his Church. But this Easter week, I can’t help feeling ”“ more than ever ”“ that the Church of England will not survive my children’s lifetime and quite possibly not even my own.
It’s not the archaism of state occasions that makes me doubt the relevance of the CofE, nor the sight this Lent of a dozen or more clergy crossing the floor to join the Roman Catholics that has made me despair of its future. Nor is it the statistics showing an ever-diminishing number of English attending their services, although these are bad enough. It’s not even the spectacle of the Church wrapping itself in knots around the issues of ordaining women and gay bishops.
These are certainly signals of an institution in decline; a community turning in on itself as its relevance diminishes. But the Church has been here before and revived.
Fancy reading this on my last day as an Anglican!
God bless you and watch over you.
Hebrews 11.8: ‘By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.’
Rugbyplayingpriest
Many Years to you!
Rejoice! Attendance is up!
[blockquote] “…the readiness to accept the miracles and even the Resurrection as a metaphor rather than absolute truth; the willingness to reinterpret views and pronouncements attributed to Christ in the Gospels – is what makes it attractive to those who, in their search of a relationship with their God, try to do so in humility and open-mindedness.” [/blockquote]
That, Adrian Hamilton, is why you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. It is abundantly clear by now that the Church of England cannot survive unless its bishops and priests accept that miracles (and “even the resurrection”) actually happened, and that Christ said what is written in the scriptures, and meant what he said. It is what we call “orthodoxy”.
The problem is that secularists and liberals have tried to force orthodox thought out of the Church of England, and are now finding that once they do that, there is nothing left. If you, Mr Hamilton, and your fellows will get out of the Church of England and stop using secular processes to dictate what it says and believes, then the Church will survive and can go back to doing the things that you are starting to miss: (a) ministering to the sick, dying, poor and those aware that they are spiritually lost, and (b) taking care of those buildings that you care so much about.
[blockquote] “The Church of England was founded as a political act against the wishes of much of the population …” [/blockquote]
Actually, it was very popular from the beginning, and has remained so for much of its history. This is no more than an excuse from a liberal sympathiser who wants to deny the hand that his own belief has had in causing the Church of England to become extremely unpopular.
[blockquote] “Nor is it the statistics showing an ever-diminishing number of English attending their services, although these are bad enough.” [/blockquote]
Sure, go to any church that teaches what you believe in, Adrian Hamilton, and that is indeed what you will find.
But go to All Souls Langham Place, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, St Ebbe’s in Oxford, or Jesmond Parish in Newcastle and you will find churches filled to overflowing, with hundreds in service each Sunday. Or look at a host of smaller churches across the land that are still full. These are the churches that believe in what the bible teaches, and act on it. They are going to survive, no matter what. But whether they will survive within the CofE – that depends on whether the liberal leaders like Rowan Williams want them. At present, he is doing his best to drive them away. That is your loss, not theirs.
Actually, MichaelA, I believe there was considerable popular resistance to Reform in England, especially outside of London. It was not quite as simple as partisans of either side like to remember it. However, that has little to do with the Church of England’s problems today, as you point out.
Katherine,
You are reading too much into my comment. I was responding to this statement in the article:
[blockquote] “The Church of England was founded as a political act against the wishes of much of the population …†[/blockquote]
This is not remotely true. The problem may lie partly in the writer’s fuzzy definition, since he refers to Henry’s acts, which were not always the same as what we today call the “English Reformation” (much of which Henry himself did not agree with and fought to keep out of the English church).
Henry had popular support for most of his measures, for the very reason that he kept an eye on public opinion (both in the general populace and as expressed in Parliament) and tended to limit his actions to those that would be generally approved. He was just as careful of public opinion as his daughter Elizabeth would later prove to be. Obviously he also manipulated it shamelessly, but that is consistent with my point.
Glad you brought that up, Katherine. I don’t think MichaelA (a lawyer IIRC?) could produce any historical evidence that the Church of England was popular widely in England from the beginning. A quick glance at Wikipedia gives this:
“The bulk of the population acceded to Elizabeth’s religious settlement with varying degrees of enthusiasm or resignation. [i]It was imposed by law,[/i] and secured Parliamentary approval [i]only by a narrow vote[/i] in which all the Roman Catholic bishops who were not imprisoned voted against. As well as those who continued to recognize papal supremacy, the more militant Protestants, or Puritans as they became known, opposed it. Both groups were punished and disenfranchised in various ways and cracks in the facade of religious unity in England appeared.” (my italics for emphasis)
So popular that it had to be imposed by law nearly 20 years after Henry VIII’s first Acts claiming supremacy and after the seizing of property! Not exactly supportive of the claim ‘very popular from the beginning’. I think it is well documented that in Cornwall for instance there was strong and widespread resistance.
TACit,
I suggest you read my #8. My original post referred to a quote from the article which dealt with Henry VIII’s acts, those which are now seen as establishing “the Church of England” (although they were not seen that way at the time).
In your post you pull together a plethora of unrelated issues to make a sort of historical montage.
Firstly you provide a quote from Wikipedia referring to “Elizabeth’s settlement” and “the Puritans”. Neither existed in Henry’s time.
You then jump back to the reign of Henry VIII with this comment:
[blockquote] “So popular that it had to be imposed by law nearly 20 years after Henry VIII’s first Acts claiming supremacy and after the seizing of property! Not exactly supportive of the claim ‘very popular from the beginning’.” [/blockquote]
The facts to which you (rather fuzzily) refer indicate nothing about popularity. Henry’s First Act of Supremacy was passed by Parliament in 1534. The Act was repealed by his daughter Mary in 1554. After the accession of Elizabeth it was reinstated in 1558.
I am also happy to take up your references to rebellions. There were three “rebellions” against Henry VIII with a religious connection, in 1536 and 1537. They are generally blown out of all proportion by Roman Catholic apologists.
They were confined to narrow areas – a small area of Lincolnshire (1536), the city of York (1536) and Cumberland (1537). In every case except Lincolnshire (a very brief affair) other issues were interwoven with the religious ones, particularly political and cultural. Nor could religious issues be easily classified – some of those who joined in Aske’s rebellion in York were angry at the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn!
When viewed in the context of the normal tumultuous public life in England, opposition to Henry’s measures was limited, muted and restricted to the backwaters.
[blockquote] “I think it is well documented that in Cornwall for instance there was strong and widespread resistance.” [/blockquote]
Right place, wrong reign. The rebellion in Cornwall took place during the reign of Henry’s successor, Edward VI. It had nothing to do with Henry’s Acts of Supremacy. The existence of the Church of England per se was not an issue, although other religious issues were, but interwoven with political and cultural issues as well.
Guess I asked for that with the lawyer comment, didn’t I! I was in fact writing #9 while you posted #8 so didn’t see it. But after looking it and #10 over I don’t really think we are ever going to agree enough to discuss this. I was looking for you to present any evidence at all that the ‘protestantized’ Church of England was in fact popular in Henry’s, Edward’s, Mary’s [i]or[/i] Elizabeth’s time. If Parliament had to impose by law the Elizabethan settlement with only a narrow margin of votes, it couldn’t have been terribly [i]popular[/i] even with the landed aristocracy – not that I expect Parliament represented the people in the way we Americans imagine an elected body to represent its people. Then you summarily dismiss any possible significance to Roman Catholic rebellions, suggesting they were ‘blown out of all proportion’ by RC apologists.
I suppose a lot of the Commonwealth may think that the Colonial Rebellion of 1776 was blown out of all proportion by the American apologists too.
The Catholics knew, however, they were rebelling against the imposition, by a State represented in the monarchy, of acceptance by Christians of non-belief in the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Holy Communion. St. Thomas More knew what he believed and why. Where did the imposition of Protestantism lead? Little more than 100 years later Oliver Cromwell – a beast from hell – slaughtered the Catholic Irish to make way for phalanxes of Protestants to occupy their productive land in Ulster and make profits for investors in London. And things didn’t improve after that. I offer the widespread decrepitude of parts of English society today as evidence that things haven’t ultimately improved. It occurs to me I would rather live and raise children in a country such as Italy (Berlusconi notwithstanding) where crucifixes are still permitted on the walls of school classrooms, than in the UK.
My colonial forebears arriving ‘Stateside’ between 1650 and the Revolution – Congregationalists from Chichester, English-speaking Quakers from Wales, Presbyterians from Donegal and Tyrone – leaving behind the various developments apparently hoped they could better serve God in a ‘Promised Land’. That would be a different historical perspective to yours, most likely, but no less valid.
The book *Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell 1532-1540* by G. R. Elton (1972, 1985) will give the disinterested reader some indication of the popularity, or lack thereof, of Henry’s various measures in the 1530s, especially in its first three chapters. The book’s subject is not the question of the popularity or unpopularity of the Henrician “reforms,” but, rather, what a Herculean task Cromwell had in enforcing them on a hostile and unwilling populace.
Nobody can stick the late Sir Geoffrey with the label of a “Catholic-leaning” historian; those who knew him (as I did; he was my Doktorvater) will know that his personal inclinations, as an agnostic Jew of German intellectual origins who became something of a Tory academic in his adopted homeland and had a dislike of Catholiicsm and a mild noncommital affection for the Church of England, ran entirely in the opposite direction.
I emailed Dr Bill Tighe, historian and professor at Muhlenberg College, to ask him to comment on the popular support (or lack thereof) of the Henrician reformation. His reply:
“The book [i]Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell 1532-1540[/i] by G. R. Elton (1972, 1985) will give the disinterested reader some indication of the popularity, or lack thereof, of Henry’s various measures in the 1530s, especially in its first three chapters. The book’s subject is not the question of the popularity or unpopularity of the Henrician “reforms,” but, rather, what a Herculean task Cromwell had in enforcing them on a hostile and unwilling populace.
“Nobody can stick the late Sir Geoffrey with the label of a “Catholic-leaning” historian; those who knew him (as I did; he was my Doktorvater) will know that his personal inclinations, as an agnostic Jew of German intellectual origins who became something of a Tory academic in his adopted homeland and had a dislike of Catholiicsm and a mild noncommital affection for the Church of England, ran entirely in the opposite direction.”
Thanks for doing that, #12. What a good idea – there could hardly be a better source person than Prof. Tighe.
TACit,
[blockquote] I was looking for you to present any evidence at all that the ‘protestantized’ Church of England was in fact popular in Henry’s, Edward’s, Mary’s or Elizabeth’s time. [/blockquote]
Since that simply wasn’t what my original comment was about, I trust you can see why I wasn’t going to be presenting such proofs!
In any case, it is meaningless to discuss whether “the ‘protestantized’ Church of England was in fact popular in Henry’s … time”. It makes as much sense as asking what Edward the Confessor thought about Magna Carta.
[blockquote] “If Parliament had to impose by law the Elizabethan settlement with only a narrow margin of votes, it couldn’t have been terribly popular even with the landed aristocracy…” [/blockquote]
That may or may not be the case, but what does it have to do with Henry? I know we moderns have a tendency to “telescope” past events, but this is really going overboard.
[blockquote] “Then you summarily dismiss any possible significance to Roman Catholic rebellions, suggesting they were ‘blown out of all proportion’ by RC apologists.
I suppose a lot of the Commonwealth may think that the Colonial Rebellion of 1776 was blown out of all proportion by the American apologists too.” [/blockquote]
Of course I summarily dismiss it. I have summarised the revolts that actually happened in Henry’s time and their limited scope. If you have a problem with my reasoning, then by all means explain why.
Re the Colonial Rebellion -that is my whole point: The small revolts of 1536 are not remotely comparable to the major rebellion of 1776.
[blockquote] “The Catholics knew, however, they were rebelling against the imposition, by a State represented in the monarchy, of acceptance by Christians of non-belief in the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Holy Communion.” [/blockquote]
That is 100% wrong. Henry always held to the doctrine of transubstantiation. Always.
This is the sort of error you stumble into if you just lump everything together from several reigns (Henry, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth) as though the issues and beliefs were the same for everyone.
[blockquote] “St. Thomas More knew what he believed and why.” [/blockquote]
Being an intelligent and educated man, Thomas More knew that he didn’t have a disagreement with Henry about the real presence.
[blockquote] “Little more than 100 years later Oliver Cromwell – a beast from hell – slaughtered the Catholic Irish …” [/blockquote]
Actually almost 200 years after Henry’s death, and now you seem to be just pulling anything in that you can. And I wouldn’t put too much blame on Cromwell for what happened to my Irish ancestors – his policies and actions in Ireland were no different to those of many other British monarchs both before and after him. Which is my point above – when you try to cast the net as widely as you are doing, you end up with an incredible array of irrelevant fish.
[blockquote] “That would be a different historical perspective to yours, most likely, but no less valid.” [/blockquote]
Indeed it would. My ancestors consisted of less than 2,000 convicts, guards and civil servants slowly starving in wattle-and-daub-huts, at about the same time your Congress was passing the first Amendment to the Constitution. But I have no idea what this has to do with Henry VIII.
Todd Granger,
A third-hand comment, which apparently deals with the whole range of issues taken up by Thomas Cromwell on Henry’s behalf, is simply not relevant.
My original comment was that the statement in the article: “The Church of England was founded as a political act against the wishes of much of the population …†was not remotely true. Nor was it. Spurious arguments that seek to harness opposition to every other measure promulgated by Henry (and which by your definition would also harness the opposition of the protestant reformers to Henry!) are not on point.
“Actually almost 200 years after Henry’s death,” – in fact I was relating the Cromwell developments to Henry’s 1534 break with Rome. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) led the campaigns in Ireland in the 1640s – Drogheda was in 1649 for example. I make that a little more, 15 in fact, than 100 years from 1534, and fully 85 years short of 200 following Parliament’s establishment of the Act of Supremacy in 1534. Just to clear up any misunderstanding there.
But I have been interested here in trends in history, more than specific events for their own sake. Henry VIII, despite holding Catholic beliefs, started something with his actions and those of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer and others, which played out through his succession and proved ultimately irreversible (for the fate of the monarch Charles I, e.g.), greatly affecting Western history. Thus when you make the remark, “Actually, it was very popular from the beginning, and has remained so for much of its history”, which describes a trend in history in reference to the Church of England’s establishment, I suggest its veracity deserves a bit of supporting historical evidence before the blog readership should just swallow it whole.
It is possible to see parallels or perhaps better put, consequences, to developments in England 450 years ago in the political developments now underway in the US, which is what makes the understanding of trends interesting. After 20 years in Australia I still have only a meagre grasp of its cultural and religious history compared to any educated citizen so must catch up.
MichaelA, simply to the mechanics of the comment:
I presume that by “third-hand” you refer to the fact that I posted a comment from Dr Tighe in which he commented on the academic work of a recognized – and dispassionate – authority on Henrician England, including Henry’s religious (or religiopolitical) acts. “Third-hand” is an odd way of referring to citations of academic material, but there it is. The vast majority of us – though not Dr Tighe – have no access to primary source documents (presumably, “second-hand” comments by this reckoning), so we rely on the investigative and synthesizing work of recognized authorities in the field of English ecclesiastical history. As to the popularity of the Edwardian Reformation, I direct interested readers to the worker of Eamon Duffy, Peter Marshall, Diarmuid MacCulloch, and others.
Dr Tighe’s comment does not in fact harness opposition to all of Henry’s acts. Elton’s book deals with a broad range, but also deals specifically and particularly with the religious/political acts.
Todd Granger,
No, you are still dodging the issue. It is as though I had commented on Julius Caesar’s Spanish campaign in 46-5 BC, and you had responded with a generalised comment about Caesar’s conduct of all of his 30+ campaigns.
I am simply not interested in who you “direct” readers to. I made a comment above about a clearly inaccurate statement in the article, and you have responded with a generalised quote that is not on point.
TACit,
You now say that you took exception to my remark “and has remained so [popular] for much of its history”. I agree that this goes beyond the passage from the article which referred to Henry’s foundation of the Church of England.
But you haven’t cited anything against that part of my comment either. You mentioned the Elizabethan settlement, yet you admit that many of those who opposed it did not do so because they favoured reunion with Rome, but rather the reverse. That hardly assists your argument.
Then you mention Oliver Cromwell. As I understand it, your argument is that Cromwell’s actions against forces in Ireland in 1649 (many of which were Roman Catholic although not all) somehow disproves my assertion that the Church of England has remained popular for much of its history.
Pardon me if I do not follow your logic at all!