Foundations of the Anglican Church CXXV

The young John
Henry Newman

 The “Father of the Oxford Movement” was really John Keble who preached the famous sermon “National Apostasy” on July 14, 1833 in the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford, but the main driver behind the movement—and the best known of its proponents—was John Henry Newman.  Indeed it was Newman who made the claim—which has stuck—that it was Keble’s sermon that gave birth to the movement. 

Newman had not always been a member of the High Church party and, in fact, was for the first thirty years of his life tied to the Low Church or Evangelical Party.  The oldest of six children of a prosperous London Banker he was sent to George Nicholas’ Great Ealing School where the faculty included Louis-Philip Bourbon (future King of France), and George Huxley (father of Thomas Henry Huxley, the English Biologist and advocate of Darwinism).  Fellow alumni included Thomas Huxley and W.S. Gilbert.)  The school was something of a hotbed of Evangelicalism and the Classics Master, Walter Mayers, loaned the young student books on Calvinism.  To be fair, Newman also read the religious skeptics at this point—Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, and Hume.  And more significant for his later career, he became immersed in the romantic novels of Walter Scott.  The skeptics had little influence on him other than to give him a life-long horror of Enlightenment liberalism, but Calvinism pierced his soul immediately.  Scott was only a seed that would later bloom as Newman moved away from Evangelicalism into High Church theology—but that is still a way off. 

The particular type of Calvinism to which Newman was exposed was, in the day, referred to as “Clapham Sect” Calvinism.  It was a movement within the Church of England that was classically Calvinist with its emphasis on double pre-destination and justification by faith alone but, perhaps somewhat incongruously, it was tied to social progressivism with opposition to slavery and the slave trade as well as to concern for England’s underclass.  Newman went on to Oxford, Trinity College, where his desire to succeed produced an anxiety that led him to flub his exams—graduating with only third honors.  Nevertheless, he was elected a Fellow of Oriel College the following year. A colleague at Oriel was Edward Bouverie Pusey who was to play a significant role in the Oxford movement as well.  In 1824 Newman was ordained deacon in the Church of England and ordained priest the following year. At Oxford he met Hurrell Froude, another young priest of the Church of England.  Froude and Newman developed a particularly intimate friendship which, while there is no evidence of sexual intimacy, would fall today at least under the theme of “bromance.” 

Our modern word, “homosexual” only appears in the last third of the 19^th century.  The word is a hybrid of the Greek (‘ομοσ, “same”) and the Latin (sexus, “sex” or “gender.”).  The creation of a word to describe same-sex attraction permitted people to organize their thoughts in a new way: understanding the difference between a person normally attracted to members of the opposite sex having sexual relations with a member of their same sex and a person whose sexual attraction was normally towards a person of their own sex.  In other words, the creation of the word “homosexual” helped people understand that sexual attraction to members of the opposite sex is not universal and same-sex attraction needs to be considered on its own terms rather than as an aberration form some imagined heterosexual norm.  Of course, this century and a half later, there are still some—notably in the backwoods of Kentucky—who just don’t get it, but I don’t want to wander down that path right now.  For the moment we will concentrate on John Henry Newman who, like his contemporaries, did not have the tools to understand the deeper levels of the human psyche but who were able to choose to conform the moral norms of both religion and society in that day. Newman and Froude could not have understood the probable complexities of their relationship but they did have clear sense of moral right and wrong and there is no evidence of them crossing the moral boundaries of the day. 

Froude was, tragically, ill with tuberculosis and Newman had accompanied him and his father on a tour of the Mediterranean in 1833 returning only just in time to hear the famous sermon that changed the course of the Church of England. 

In the latter 1820’s and 1830’s Newman’s own theology had gradually been evolving as his scholarship led him into reading the Fathers of the Church.  He came to see the weaknesses of Calvinism, in particular in its ecclesiology.  Calvin saw the Church as an invisible association of those pre-destined to salvation rather than the visible and concrete communion of the Baptized.  This overly spiritualized notion of Church made the Church irrelevant to salvation as, since it was known only to God who were in and who were out, the Church was of no human use.  Everything that mattered lay simply in the relationship of the individual soul to God—had God chosen that person for salvation or for damnation.  In Calvin’s scheme Church, sacraments, piety, prayer—all is quite irrelevant to the final outcome and Newman came to recognize that Calvinism offered him only that blind alley. 

Moreover, Newman and Froude—both fellows at Oriel—took a new approach to their role as tutors, offering spiritual guidance as well as intellectual vision to the young men entrusted to them.  This did not go over well with the liberal establishment in the University where Enlightenment secularism still held sway.  As Newman’s views grew more and more “High Church,” the Evangelical wing grew equally alarmed with his influence. 

As stated in a previous posting, Keble’s sermon “National Apostasy” triggered a series of tracts outlining and defending the High Church position.  Newman was most assiduous in his contribution to the Tracts For The Times, writing almost a third of the 90 Tracts.  Newman wrote the final “Tract 90” in which he asserted that there was nothing in the 39 Articles of the Church of England that could not legitimately be interpreted in a manner consistent with the Catholic Faith.  This was too much and the outcry caused the Bishop of Oxford, Richard Bagot, to insist on there being no further tracts published.  Bagot was actually sympathetic to the High Church party and ordered Newman and the other “Tractarians” to desist in order to protect them from being disciplined by the Church and even possibly by the Government as the Church was Established by Law as the State Church and the government, from the newly ascended Queen, Victoria down to her ministers, were quite avidly Protestant in their Churchmanship.

In all this it must be remembered that Newman’s role at Oxford was not primarily academic but priestly.  He held the vicarship of Saint Mary the Virgin, the University Church, which was a benefice in the gift of Oriel College.  In addition to the Tracts, Newman’s Sunday afternoon sermons were exceedingly popular with the undergraduates and his influence over the spiritual life of the University was quite marked.   This alarmed the Evangelical Faction and Newman was increasingly isolated from the Academic side of the University. 

In all this Newman was no ritualist.  His focus was always on the theological principals and he was no liturgical innovator but stuck quite close to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the official rites of the Church of England. While many others of the High Church party were rapidly introducing Catholic practices into their Anglican parishes: Eucharistic Vestments, candles and crucifixes on the altar, incense, processions, statues and even counterfeiting the rubrics of the Roman Mass upon the Anglican Holy Communion, Newman was sticking to his surplice and hood and a reverent but plain liturgy.  He would later write Edward Pusey about this stage in his spiritual journey.

The utmost delicacy was observed on all hands in giving me advice: only one warning remains on my mind, and it came from Dr. Griffiths, the late Vicar-Apostolic of the London district. He warned me against books of devotion of the Italian school, which were just at that time coming into England; and when I asked him what books he recommended as safe guides, he bade me get the works of Bishop Hay. By this I did not understand that he was jealous of all Italian books, or made himself responsible for all that Dr. Hay happens to have said; but I took him to caution me against a character and tone of religion, excellent in its place, not suited for England.

Newman never did embrace the Italian version of Catholicism which would appeal to so many of the Tractarians, both those who remained in the Church of England and those who “swam the Tiber” to become Catholics.  The faith into which he was evolving and the faith to which he would cling as a Catholic was the old English recusant Catholicism, understated and discreet without the bells and whistles so cherished by Mediterranean Catholics. 

As Newman’s influence declined in official Anglican circles (it was only growing among the High Church Party) he retired to a row of cottages in the dependent parish of Saint Mary, Littlemore—an Oxford suburb which was part of  his parish of Saint Mary the Virgin.  He was joined here by several friends who were each growing less comfortable with the Church of England and its Protestant history.  The other men at Littlemore were John Dobree Dalgairns, Ambrose Saint John, Frederick Oakeley, William Lockhart, and James Christie.  Like the Wesleys and the first Methodists, they adopted a sort of schema for piety with certain times for fasting, for Holy Communion, for various prayers.  Unlike the Wesleys and the Methodists, they were then suspected of being a “monastery.”  And in fact to some extent they were trying to adopt a common life though more on the model of Saint Augustine’s Rule for clergy than Benedict’s for monks. 

Lockhart was the first of the group to become a Catholic.  His conversion shook Newman who, about eight months later, preached his famous final sermon as an Anglican “The Parting of Friends” and resigned as Vicar of Saint Mary’s Oxford.  He continued living at Littlemore for two more years until his own conversion.   To be continued.   

Foundations of the Anglican Church CXXIII

The Hon. Frederick
Cornwallis, Arcbishop
of Canterbury at the
time of the American
Revolution and uncle of
the famous General

Well, let me get to the next chapter of the Church of England and then I will revisit the challenge the Church faces in preaching the Gospel in this “Postmodern” culture.  I also need to return to my series on why the Liturgical Reforms of and since the 1970 Missal are an improvement over the preconciliar rite.  But that in time.

By the end of the eighteenth century the Church of England still had its Latitudinarian leadership but there was a strong Evangelical movement that had over time morphed into what we generally call “Low Church.”  Today “Low Church” and “Evangelical” are somewhat synonymous terms.  I should also like to clarify my personal prejudices at this point.  I tend to prefer the Low Church/Evangelical approach, at least when it doesn’t shy away from sound Biblical scholarship in favor of a somewhat crazed fundamentalism.  I find, in my limited experience of Anglicanism, that the Diocese of Sydney and a number of Churches in the “Global South” are somewhat religious Neanderthals when it comes to a biblical literalism and gross ignorance of Christianity’s theological and intellectual heritage.  But then every religion has its Raymond Burkes and the accompanying entourage of flying monkeys.  I have always felt comfortable with the Church of Ireland brand of Anglicanism which has a tradition of theological (and musical) quality but avoids liturgical exaggerations.   In fact, when in Dublin I tend to prefer Sundays at Saint Patrick’s over the pro-Cathedral.  I especially like Sunday Evensong after a few gins and tonic and a plate of smoked salmon for lunch; it gives one a cozy feeling, especially when the Dean seems to have had his gins and tonic as well and officiates with that blasé indifference one can only find among the smarter set.  One gets all the sentiment of piety without any sort of ugly demands to take a serious look at one’s life.  

The Evangelicalism of 18^th century Anglicanism was not so much a return to the biblical roots of Christianity as it was a resurrection of its Calvinist heritage which had more or less been abandoned in the Anglicanism of the Anglican Divines and then whatever trace remained shoved into schism with some of the Non Conformist sectaries after 1660.   The theological cross-pollinizing of the First Great Awakening reintroduced to the Anglican evangelicals from the New England Congregationalists a terror that one might be among the pre-destined damned and a certainty that one’s neighbors of differing religious persuasions most definitely were.  Suddenly and once again the Pope was the Antichrist and the flames of hell were already licking the toes of anyone who was not prepared to give himself or herself totally and personally to Jesus in total repentance of sins, real and imagined. 

Now the Achilles’ heal of this sort of Evangelicalism is that it is so personal a religion that it does away with any role for the Christian community and the means of grace (such as the Sacraments) which we Catholics (and moderate Protestants) believe Christ has endowed his Church to assist us on our pilgrim journey.  It is pure “Jesus and Me” experience.  The Church is not a visible and tangible fellowship of believers but a spiritual and invisible association known only to God and comprised of those who are marked for salvation.  No wheat and tares growing together in this field, only the righteous.  No sinners need apply.  (It is interesting how this Calvinist ecclesiology has infected the Katholik Krazies and their desire for a “Church of the Pure” that pushes out the gates of heaven any one who does not conform to their particular moral code.)

Nevertheless Evangelicalism grew strong in late 18^th and early 19^th century Church of England.  It resonated with the English sense of propriety and at the same time gave some release to emotions the English so normally hold in reserve.  Since it stressed private—rather than corporate—devotion, this emotionalism was something most often expressed in one’s private prayer rather than in public.  It was usually intensely moralistic and quite black and white when it came to sin, especially sin of an alcoholic or sexual nature.  As it was linked to the banking and merchant class it didn’t trouble itself with most social sin, save for its abhorrence of slavery.  Most in this socio-economic class did not depend on slaves for their economic well-being though some did make their fortunes in the slave trade.  (The American situation was quite different, of course, but in the period after 1782 we need to examine the Episcopal Church in the United States separately from the Church of England.)

The Low Church party with its commitment to a Calvinist theology undermined the very nature of “Church.” But the doctrine of double predestination not only made the Sacraments in general somewhat superfluous practices, it abolished the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.  It was unnecessary to be “born again” if one was destined for salvation from all eternity and fruitless to be “born again” in baptism if one was damned from all eternity.  By the opening decades of the 19^th century the Church of England had removed itself from the heritage of the Church of the first millennium.  Yes, it had the prayer-book and its liturgy, children were still being baptized and Holy Communion was still being administered.  But the prayer-book was no more than a set of bland prayers and ceremonies to bring English order to chaos; baptism was a social convention; and Holy Communion was only for the pious who still took seriously the doctrine of the Atonement.  At Oxford, the few and bookish remnants of High Church Anglicanism realized that their Church had gone off the rails and severed its lifeline with classic Christianity.  Change was no longer an option.

Some Background About Baptists

  

First Baptist Church of
Providence, the oldest
Baptist Congregation
in the United States

Some readers weren’t overly happy with my pointing out that four of the dunces on the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus who expressed their outrage that Pope Francis recognized Palestinian Statehood were Baptists.  It makes Baptists look stupid was the gist of their complaint.  As long as we are at it, let me point out that the four are also Republicans. 

I don’t mean to imply that all Baptists or all Republicans are stupid.  Far from it.  True, I have no respect for anyone of any party or religion who drinks the ideological Kool-Aid and liberal Democrats and Katholik Krazies can do that as blindly and blithely as conservative whacko-Jesus Tea-partiers.  I have only contempt for those of any party or religion who serve up the toxic potion—they know better—and I would put our four Congressional horses’ asses of the Apocalypse in this category.  I can’t pray “Father, Forgive them for they know not what they do” as they very well know how they are manipulating the truth for the most unsavory of political ends.  But how does this relate to their being Baptists?

Let’s look at Baptist history and perhaps we can discover the flaw that skews our friends both intellectually and morally.

In our series on the history of Anglicanism we saw that the Baptists developed out of the radical congregationalism of non-Conformist groups that broke with historic Established Church in England during the period of the Commonwealth/English Civil War. 

A Church of England priest, John Smyth, had gone to serve an English congregation in Amsterdam as early as 1609 because he had come to believe that the privileged position under English Law of the Established Church was contrary to the scriptures.  Smyth also believed that one must first believe and then be baptized—that the practice of infant baptism was contrary to the Scriptures.  In the Netherlands Smyth had become familiar with Mennonites, a sect who came out of the Anabaptist tradition.  The Mennonites had been founded by Menno Simmons, a Dutch Catholic priest who, in the 1530’s had broken with the Catholic Church over several practices, including infant baptism, which he considered contrary to scripture.  Smyth would eventually himself become a Mennonite as did many of his followers.  Some of his followers under Thomas Helwys returned to England and established a congregation at Spitalfields in today’s East End of London.  Helwys, like Smyth, rejected the idea of an Established Church and believed that the King (that is to say, the Government) had no right over the conscience of his subjects and that all should be free to worship God as he pleased.  This led to his imprisonment in Newgate prison where he died in 1616. 

Meanwhile, Roger Williams who had apprenticed in Law under the great English jurist, Sir Edward Coke, but who had been ordained in the Church of England left England in 1631 for Boston in the great Puritan migration fleeing the High Churchmanship of Charles I and his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.  Williams had moved from a position of Puritanism within the Church of England to a more radical Congregationalist Puritanism, but one that was a bit extreme even for the Boston Puritans.  Williams insisted that the civil authorities must have no power to punish religious dissent.  His principles were: separation from the Established Church, freedom of conscience, and separation of Church and State.  The Puritans at Boston, while not anxious to be part of the Established Church of England, were not about to reject the use of civil power to enforce conformity to their own particular brand of religion, nor were they about to let each person worship as they might please.  When Williams’ opinions rendered him unacceptable to Puritan authorities in Boston, he moved to Salem and later to Plymouth where the Church employed him, but eventually the more traditional Puritans managed to have him summoned before the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to answer for his separatist views.  He was accused of spreading “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions” and before he could be apprehended he fled to Raynham Massachusetts where he was sheltered for the winter by the Native Americans, and from there in the spring he and a band of followers settled in what is now Providence, Rhode Island.  Within two years of his settling in Rhode Island, Williams became convinced of the importance of believer’s baptism and had himself rebaptized by Ezekiel Holliman before the end of 1638.  Williams and his followers constituted the first Baptist congregation in the United States and the congregation survives today as the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island.  Williams did not long a Baptist; he was troubled by the lack of an apostolic continuity and came to believe that Christians must await the Divine appointment of new apostles who would restore the Church.  The Baptist congregation which he established, however, did and does survive as I just noted. 

English Baptists tended to reject the Calvinist doctrine of double pre-destination by which some have been destined from before time for salvation and others for eternal damnation.  With his strict Puritan roots, however, Williams was a staunch Calvinist.  Baptists who believe in double pre-destination are Particular Baptists; those who hold to Free Will are General Baptists.  Perhaps it would be clearer to explain that Particular Baptists hold that Christ died for each person who has been pre-destined by that atonement for salvation.  Salvation is thus particular.  General Baptists believe that Christ died for the atonement of the sins of all people and that while all are not necessarily saved, grace is available to all.   Salvation is thus general. 

Rhode Island was established on the principle of Religious Freedom and there was even a Jewish congregation founded before the end of the seventeenth century.  While there was no overt persecution of Catholics, they were never welcomed in Rhode Island and at the time of the American Revolution there is no record of a single Catholic living in the State which is very strange given that they were found in every other State of the New Republic, even Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia—all of which had strong laws against them. 

Baptists have a very strange intellectual history.  While both Smyth in England and Williams in America were products of the Oxbridge system and competent scholars, and while the Providence Church was associated with the establishment of Brown University, the predominance of Baptists—along with Methodists and Presbyterians—in the Second Great Awakening drastically changed the character of American Baptists. 

The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival, principally on the American Frontier, in the last years of the 18^th century and the first three decades of the 19^th.  The insufficient numbers of trained clergy to meet the spiritual hungers of the rapidly expanding frontier led to a predominance of lay preaching which replaced a biblical literalism for the more intellectually sound biblical theology of classic Protestant thought.  Indeed, the revival marks the triumph of raw religious emotionalism over intellectual integrity in a way that would only appall Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and the other Reformation Fathers.  The Bible came to mean whatever the preacher wanted it to mean, regardless of the eighteen hundred years of Christian prayer, reflection, and study that had gone before.  This fell right in line with the radical individualism that had blighted Protestantism since Luther’s profound conviction that Christ had died “for me” overshadowed the classic doctrine that Christ had “died for humankind.”  This emphasis on individual belief and individual salvation continues to undermine sound ecclesiology in modern America where even we Catholics tend to exalt individual opinion over adherence to a common creed. 

Contemporary Baptists range from the theologically sophisticated like Harvey Cox, Amy Butler, the late Warren T. Carr, Robert Bernard or Dale Wood Peterson to the self-anointed mad men at the other end of the spectrum such as the late Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka.  Unfortunately, the anti-intellectual approach of Biblical fundamentalism that totally ignores the biblical scholarship of the last two centuries tends to predominate among Baptists giving a rather dunce-like cast to their reputation.  Preachers like Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and the late Gerry Falwell have not helped improve the reputation. 

Franklin Graham’s father, The Reverend Doctor Billy Graham, was no bright light of Christian academia, but much like such Catholic figures such as Mother Theresa or Dorothy Day he exercised such a strong example of an applied Christian Faith that he has had an unparalleled moral influence on American life, a stronger influence than any theologian.  Other contemporary “evangelists” have often proved to be at best entrepreneurs, and too often just plain charlatans but Billy Graham is a true American icon.  Unfortunately his son and others have done much to dismantle the Empire of Christian credibility that Billy Graham built by his decades of walking the walk as well as talking the talk.   

A common Texas expression “A Baptist Bar,” for a bar concealed behind panels in a wall when fellow churchies come to visit, has come to typify “evangelical morality” which is seen to emphasize a public righteousness that conceals private iniquity.   Frankly in this 21^st century all Christians of any and all denominations need to clean up our act where we flaunt virtues that are no more than a phony veneer that make us appear more upright than we truly are.  Whether it is the sex scandals in our (and others’) church, the inordinate salaries and lifestyles of some preachers , the fiscal fleecing of the flocks entrusted to our care, or the just general dishonesty that is an universal after-effect of original sin, we need to do some repairs on our own houses before we start throwing stones at the unchurched.