Like an unwatched pan of milk, readers of the Church Times have seethed up and boiled over in response to an analysis of the Church of England by the ever-controversial historian Jonathan Clark.
Professor Clark, once the enfant terrible of Peterhouse and All Souls, now wields his scalpel from remote Kansas, but it cuts as sharply. The Church of England, he argues, is “losing command of its history”, thus losing its identity (as if a man had lost his memory, one might say).
In the 20th century, he notes, “Anglicanism was powered by German theology rather than by Anglican historiography”. One result is a loss of authority, which “is ultimately historically grounded”. That’s why, he says, “feminism and gay rights should today occupy so much of the attention of Anglicans”.
In my review on Amazon.co.uk of Canon Edward Norman’s fine book ‘Anglican Difficulties’ I wrote: ‘After reading Anglican Difficulties with care, one can only conclude that the whole enterprise has always been not much more than an erastian sham which finds itself (now that most people are educated and well-informed) finally unable to convincingly sustain the pretense of being an authentic Church at all, as distinct from the ecclesiastical pastiche which it truly is and always was. As a senior Anglican priest I was able to see the truth of what Canon Norman says quite clearly, alas.’
It seemed odd to me from the first that a these days Primate of All England should be a Welshman appointed by a Scotsman. After all, would it be permitted -or even imagined- that the Moderator of the Church of Scotland could be Englishman, or would the Welsh countenance an Englishman as their Primate? Not! This kind of entropy at its most basic level is characteristic of the C of E’s essential rootlessness these days.
“classical Anglicanism, looking back to Aidan and Augustine, could be said to be withering on the vine” – no longer catholic, no longer apostolic, no longer holy. Lord, have mercy.