Foundations of the Anglican Church CIX

Religious Dissenters at the time

of the English Civil War

Well, I want to continue on with the threat of schism that is emerging under Francis, but first let’s go back for a posting or two on the history of the Church of England.  My readership always falls when I do straight history instead of commentary on present situations and their historical impact, but I do have a small but devoted following on this Church of England series and I do think there are lessons we can learn from that history.  Not the least lesson is just how many readers, including Anglicans and Episcopalians, have forgotten (or never known) that the Church of England was decidedly Protestant in both theology and praxis (and that means liturgical praxis) in the second half of the sixteenth century and pretty much right straight through until the early 19^th century.)  I guess I should give a spoiler alert about that. 

We left our saga of the Church of England after talking about the Seekers and the Quakers, groups that rejected both clergy and sacraments in favor of a more interior approach to religion.  (We had already treated the more traditional—by comparison—Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists.   The Quakers, as I said, rejected any trappings of traditional Christianity such as Baptism, Holy Communion (they viewed true Communion as an interior and highly personal experience, perhaps somewhat akin to the pious custom of “spiritual communion” among Catholics) as well as any structured liturgy or Creed.  While originally quite orthodox in their doctrines about Christ and about salvation, over time Quakerism has developed a breadth of opinions that range from orthodox Christian to Unitarian and even Universalist.  They are to be commended on their holding fast to the key principles of charity (brotherly/sisterly love) and pacificism which are needed values for all Christians to recover.  We Catholics could do a bit better on this, and might perhaps if it weren’t for the Krazies among us who keep insisting on baptizing their Tea Party whimsies into a sort of pseudo-Catholic orthodoxy.  This by the way is why Pope Francis drives them krazy as he just isn’t on their page.  But I digress. 

As radical as the Quakers were, there were plenty of groups off to their left.  One of these groups were the Fifth Monarchy Men.  They took their name from the Book of Daniel that spoke of the four ancient monarchies that would precede the reign of Christ.  (These were the Babylonian, Persian, Greek (Alexander the Great), and Roman Empires.)   The Fifth Monarchy Men, devoted to the Fifth Monarchy—that of Christ—took the “Number of the Beast”, 666, and believed that in 1666 Christ would return and establish an earthly kingdom.  The Fifth Monarchy Men initially cooperated with Cromwell in his overthrow of the Stuart kings, but they rejected the idea of any earthly government save of that of “King Jesus.” 

Another group which emerged at this time were the “Levelers” or, as they were often popularly known, the “Diggers.”  The Diggers were influenced by the writings of Gerard Winstanley (1609-1676) and believed that God’s plan was for the land, from which all derived their sustenance, to belong to all and not to be private property of the landowners.  This was at a time when much of the “common land”—the open pastures and fields which did not belong to any one person and to which all had access to pasture their sheep or cattle—was being increasingly appropriated and “enclosed” (fenced in by stone walls or by shrubbery) by great landowners.  The Diggers began themselves to cultivate the common land and even land left fallow by the wealthy, and the powerful owners in an attempt to establish small agrarian communities where property was held in common after the example of the Acts of the Apostles.  Like the Fifth Monarchy Men they were anarchists. 

Then there were the Ranters.  The Ranters rejected all religious authority over individuals—not only that of the Church and the clergy, but even of the Bible.  They believed that individuals should surrender themselves to the Divine Spirit within themselves.  Under the influence of this “Divine Spirit” one could not sin—there were no boundaries set on behavior other than those set by the Spirit on an individual.  They got a bit of a reputation for sexual immorality and they also rejected private property. 

The Muggletonians were a breakoff group of the Ranters led by one Lodowicke Muggleton.  Muggleton taught that there is no Divinity but Jesus Christ, the glorified human man; that the devil is the illogical use of reason; that heaven is a realm of light beyond the stars; hell is this earth with the sun and moon extinguished; angels are beings of pure reason; and that the soul dies with the body but will be raised with the body at the end time.    Muggletonians survived into the mid-twentieth century before dying out. 

There are numerous other groups, but along with the entries on the Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers and others already mentioned, this gives a good spectrum of the variety of sects and cults into which the Church of England devolved during the English Civil War.  This is always the problem with schism: keeping a movement united and from shattering into a variety of ever more extreme groups.  We have seen that in our entries with the Lefebvrists , with the sede-vacantist groups and others who reject the authority of the Second Vatican Council and how they divide and subdivide into new and more extreme groups.   

Foundations of the Anglican Church CVIII

A Quaker Meeting in the early
18th century

We have begun to see how with the suppression of bishops in 1646 the English Church began to fracture with the official government (the Republic/Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell) Church being what we would call today “Congregational,” but with a myriad of other sects of varying orthodoxies emerging among those for whom the presbyterian worship and polity of the government-sanctioned Church was still to “Romish” or at least not sufficiently reformed. 

We looked at the Baptists and the Seekers—a group who rejected not only any structured worship but creeds and even the idea of sacraments or ordinances.  Next we should look at the Quakers—a religious tradition that, unlike the Seekers, survives today (and with great credibility) but was to some extent rooted in the Seeker movement.

Quakerism is ascribed to the religious insights of George Fox (1624-1691). Fox was from Drayton-in-the-Clay Leicestershire.  His family background was strongly puritan and he himself from his youth was deeply religious—so deeply religious that some thought he should be sent on for the clergy.  His parents were known for their integrity and were themselves deeply religious; moreover they had the funds to send George on to University (the path that to the clergy) but for some reason he did not go on for higher education but was apprenticed to a dairyman/sheepfarmer.  George was given huge amounts of time in his youth to spend in the pastures watching over the animals.  This solitary and even bucolic life seems to have encouraged a natural strain of mysticism in the young man and he burned with religious interest and questions.  Through reading the scriptures in his solitude he came to identify with biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Amos, all of whom the scripture records as being keepers of animals. 

As he grew older, George began to search out clergy to carry on conversations and to learn more about the bible from them, but he found most of the clergy to be more interested in their tithes and rents than in their spiritual lives.  He also was turned off by what he perceived to be an endless contentiousness over the minutiae of the current doctrinal controversies.  In the end he decided that clergy were not only useless but a hindrance for one’s spiritual growth and, believing in the universal priesthood of all believers (a key Reformation doctrine), he judged that each person could come to religious truth himself or herself without the mediation of an ordained clergy.  He also had a natural respect for women and perceiving the interest of women in religious experience, made no distinction between the roles of women and men in religion. 

His reading the Bible gave Fox a conviction for simple living and the avoidance of any excess.  In this same vein he developed an abhorrence for tobacco (for which he also had a natural dislike) and alcoholic beverages which he had seen had led too many men down the wrong paths in life.  In 1647 Fox wrote of his religious experience and where it led him:

as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i.e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally.    

From his religious convictions Fox developed the following principles:

1.    God “dwelleth in the hearts of his obedient people” not in buildings made by man and God can be given true worship anywhere that his saints gather—meadows, orchards, private homes, meeting houses.  

2.    For those have experienced a true conversion to Christ, rituals have no real significance

3.    True communion is spiritual and not in bread and wine. 

4.    The word “church” should not be applied to a building; such buildings are “steeple houses.” 

5.    One is called to ministry by the Holy Spirit—university degrees or ecclesiastical studies are of no consequence; everyone—including women and children—who is called by the Holy Spirit is qualified to minister the Word.

6.    Because God dwells within the heart of his faithful people, one’s inner guide is at least as important as scripture.

In addition to these principles it should be noted that Fox was, at least practically, a unitarian in as that he did not distinguish between the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity: Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit were more or less manifestations of the same Oneness.   

In or about 1647 Fox began itinerant preaching and gathered many followers.  His message, while positive, was not all sweetness and light and he was a very strict moralist who made no tolerance for the weaknesses of the flesh.  He scored not only alcohol and tobacco but gaming and even such traditional recreations as dancing and the maypole. Nevertheless he was very popular and won many followers.  In particular his opposition to the clergy—and the mandatory paying of tithes to support the clergy—as well as his emphasis on individual religious experience won him many followers.  In 1652 he had a mystical experience convincing him of the eventual fruitfulness of his mission.

As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.

His popularity threatened to be his undoing.  His preaching challenged the official Church and persecution of Fox and his followers followed.  He was arrested several times and sometimes imprisoned at some length.  During a 1650 arraignment he told the Judge that he should “tremble before the Word of the Lord.”  The judge, mocking Fox and his followers, ascribed the name “Quakers” to them, a name that stuck and not to Fox’s displeasure.  Fox’s condemnation of war—and remember, England was in the midst of a civil war between Cromwell’s forces and the monarchy—and his refusal to sanction fighting or the taking of an oath of loyalty to the government (at that time Cromwell’s) led to several arrests.  He was brought before Cromwell in 1655, however, and the depth of their spiritual conversation left Cromwell very moved and put Fox in good favor with the Lord Protector, though not making a convert of him.  At a second meeting in 1656 Fox urged Cromwell to “lay down your crown at the feet of Jesus.”  Cromwell declined but continued to hold Fox in good regard. 

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 put Fox and his movement in a dangerous situation as Charles II was re-establishing the traditional Church with its bishops and suppressing all non-conformists.  But once the dust settled and the Crown was again secure, since Fox and his followers were committed to non-resistance they were more or less left in peace though several times through the following decades Fox was arrested and Quakers imprisoned for refusing to take loyalty oaths.  With the overthrow of James II and the accession of William and Mary, official tolerance was granted to non-conformist groups such as the Quakers.

It is difficult to say when exactly the format of Quaker worship—the silent meeting in expectation of the Spirit giving an utterance through a believer—emerged.  Even today there are Quaker meetings where there is hymn singing and scripture reading, but classic Quaker worship is silent assembly waiting for one or more participants to speak under the guidance of the Spirit.  There are, of course, no rituals or sacraments.  Quaker meeting houses are generally plain rooms with benches arranged so that the worshippers sit facing one another in concentric rings.  The lack of a common creed makes Quaker beliefs hard to categorize and there is a wide spectrum of belief among them.  While most Quakers would still consider themselves Christian, their Christology generally tends towards the Arian and their theological perspective is, in general, more in the Unitarian/Universalist direction than classic Christianity.  However there are meetings whose members confess the Divinity of Christ and there are, on the other end of a spectrum, those who find their spiritual inspiration in other religious traditions.  There is more or less an agreement to disagree on specific doctrines.   

Foundations of the Anglican Church CVII

Monksthorpe Baptist Chapel in

Lincolnshire England

Well, back to our overview of the history of the Church of England.  My last posting about the tension over the consecration of women bishops that led the Archbishop of York to recuse himself from consecrating the Rt. Rev. Philip North as the Bishop of Burnley out of (what I think is a misguided) respect for North’s objection to the ordination of women in favor of consecrators who have so far refused to participate in the consecration of the (to date) sole woman Bishop in the Church of England, demonstrates the sort of ecclesial breakdown that the English and other Protestant Reformations led to.  Once the unity of the Church is no longer an absolute value, differences of theological opinion will inevitably open fissures in the Body of Christ.   And the breakdown of unity in the Church is quite literally the devil’s work. 

Our word “devil” comes from the French diable from the Latin diabolus from the Greek διαβολειν comes from the Greek to divide or to scatter. The Devil is the one who divides, sets people against one another.  The Kingdom of God gathers all creation into One in Christ; the kingdom of the Evil One is set upon shattering that unity. 

We left off the saga of the Church of England with the abolition of the episcopacy and the emergence of Separatist groups that began to erode the unity of the Church in the mid-seventeenth century. With the abolition of Bishops and the adoption of a Presbyterian form of Church governance, the Congregationalist faction became dominant in the Church of England, but even this development did not satisfy more radical believers.  We saw how the Baptists emerged from the Puritan movement.  Baptists rejected any liturgical forms whatever, even the very Calvinist forms of worship suggested by the Directory for Public Worship. There had to be an explicit warrant found in the New Testament for any thing done in worship. Some did not even permit the reading of scripture since the scriptures were translations of the received texts and thus of human origin. Sacraments were replaced by “ordinances” (those things mandated  or “ordered” by Christ in the New Testament, namely baptism [“go baptize all nations”] and holy communion [“do this in memory of me”]).  Baptism was performed by full immersion and only to those able to make their own confession of faith. 

But even the Baptists didn’t satisfy the desire of many for a more radical approach to Christianity.

Among many of the adherents of the more radical sects emerging from the various Reformations that continued to divide and subdivide Christianity in Western and Central Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century there was a strain of anti-clericalism.  The Reformation ideal of the priesthood of all believers made the idea of an ordained clergy seem somewhat a frivolous excess that was an unnecessary encumbrance on the right of each believer to interpret the scriptures for him or her self.     This was certainly true in England where while the Congregationalist/Presbyterian establishment retained clergy and even the Baptists normally had recognized preachers, among the various dissenting sects the option was to allow each believer to have his (and sometimes her) own say about what was true Christian faith and practice.  Any sort of sacramental practice usually fell away in such priest-less assemblies and congregations pretty much focused on Bible Study and discussion. Without a theologically trained clergy religion most usually became an intellectual free-for-all with opinions and beliefs ranging from pure rationalism to illuminist mysticism shot through with unbridled psychosis.  Often these groups, unfamiliar with or rejecting of the historic Creeds devolved into an anti-Trinitarianism or at least a practical Arianism which demoted Christ from the Divine Nature and led to theological unitarianism (not to be confused with modern Unitarian/Universalism) that remained Christocentric but not Christotheistic.  Dissenters also often embraced the idea of an immanent return of Christ to establish his Kingdom on earth in a radical and egalitarian social upheaval.  The doctrine of Original Sin also faded from belief among the various dissenter groups along with the doctrine of pre-destination so essential to the Calvinist Anglicans of Elizabeth’s and James’ reigns.  In place of an anthropology of fallen humanity was a certain quasi-Pelagiaism that emphasized the essential natural goodness of human nature.  There also was a certain ambiguity about the afterlife with a collapse of the traditional ideas of heaven and hell.   All this was sometimes complicated by a fascination with the theories attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the Graeco-Egyptian culture of late antiquity whose writings paralleled the development both of Christianity and Gnosticism and have elements in common with each. As can be imagined, Dissenters devolved from orthodox Christianity into a variety of confusing and often mutually contradictory beliefs.  It was a theological Woodstock—electric, creative, free of rules and structure, and off the flipping wall. 

One of the groups that emerged out of this theological chaos were the Seekers.  They really weren’t a sect in as that you could be a Seeker and belong to another sect.  There were no defining creeds, no sacraments. They saw “The Church” as a voluntary association of believers, without a fixed creed, free of State coercion or supervision, and anxious to evangelize.  They expected Christ to return to earth and their spirituality was to prepare themselves for his Second Coming.  Their worship was to meet and to sit in silent expectation of God to reveal himself to the individual soul.  Quakerism, which we will talk about in our next posting on this subject, grew out of the Seekers.  

Roots of Liturgical Reform: Maria Laach and Odo Casel 1

Maria Laach Abbey

Following up on the last blog but one, I should say something about the Abbey of Maria Laach and the liturgical scholarship that was done there under Abbot Ildefons  Herwegen in the first part of the twentieth century.  Laach Abbey is an ancient foundation in the German Rhineland Palatinate going back to 1093 and was known in the Central and High Middle Ages as a center of monastic scholarship.  It had a revival in monastic observance and scholarly work just before the Protestant Reformation and it survived the Reformation only to be suppressed by Napoleon in 1802.  For several decades in the 19^th century, the Abbey buildings were occupied by the very non-monastic but scholarly Jesuits until Bismark’s Kulturkampf expelled them from Prussian territory.  It was in the Jesuit era that the name “Maria” was added to Laach Abbey.  The Benedictines returned in 1892 and the Abbey Church, a brilliant example of a Romanesque  Basilica, was restored through the efforts of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who, though a Lutheran with no Catholic sympathies, recognized the nationalistic value of such an ancient monastic foundation.   Among the daughter houses of Maria Laach is Mount Savior Monastery in New York State founded by Dom Damasus Winzen OSB, a monk of Maria Laach.

Among the most distinguished monks of Maria Laach and its liturgical studies and experimentation was Dom Odo Casel (1886-1948).  Dom Odo had entered the monastery at the age of 20 and was sent to Rome where he earned the Doctorate in theology, writing this thesis on the Eucharistic theology of Justin Martyr.  In his scholarship, Casel recaptured the concept of Mysterium.  Our English word “mystery” just doesn’t cut it.  The Mysterium speaks of an encounter with the Divine, our immanence being united to the Divine Transcendence—a lifting up of the creature into the very Life of the Creator. (The capitals are no mistake, they have significance.)   All that is very abstract, I realize—but it speaks of that experience of God that we have which defies description, where the veil between heaven and earth is parted and we find ourselves “in a Time that is beyond time, and a Place which is beyond place.”  In the experience of Contemplative Prayer one encounters this Mysterium directly and without mediation but that is a gift given but rarely except to the spiritually proficient.  To whet our appetite for such a face to face encounter with the Living God, our Catholic heritage tells us that God chooses to reveal himself to us through the mediation of created things.  Such creatures become “symbols” that mediate the Divine Encounter.  And so in the various collages of images—in oil and flame and water and bread and wine and chant and sacred words, and holy gestures and consecrated persons, the veil is pulled back and the Divine is revealed to the human. 

This still is not explaining it to my satisfaction, so let me relate a historical event and employ it as a parable.  In 987 the Prince of Kiev, Vladimir the Great, sent delegates to Rome and to Constantinople to make a choice over what sort of Christianity he and his nation were to embrace.  In Rome, the ambassadors saw the Roman Liturgy done with the bland shabbiness characteristic of that low point in Catholic history.  (See entries for July 28, June 29, July 1, August 26, 2011   February 21, June 30, 2012 for more information on this low point in Catholic morale.)  In Constantinople, however, it was a different story.  The Byzantine Empire was still strong and wealthy and the liturgy in the magnificent Church of the Hagia Sophia reflected the earthly splendor of the Imperial Court in an effort to mirror Heavenly Splendor. And it worked: the ambassadors reported “We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth—nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it.” The music, the icons, the incense, the mosaics, the jewel-studded sacred vessels and silken robes became vehicles by which the imagination could ascend to the God who is beyond our power to image. 

The problem is that in the Western Church this appreciation for the Mysterium has pretty much been lost.  Avery Dulles speaks of this in his book The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford University Press, 1987).  Dulles cites Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich and his concept of “Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle.”  Catholic substance is this idea that God reveals himself in created things—bread and wine, oil, sacred persons, etc.  The Protestant principle is the warning that while God may reveal himself in created things, these created things—bread and wine, oil, sacred persons, etc. are not God and have no claim on the Divine.  You need to have a balance between Catholic substance and Protestant Principle.  Catholic substance, without the balance of Protestant principle leads to magic, superstition, and idolatry.  But the Protestant principle without the balance of Catholic substance leads to irreverence, skepticism, and sacrilege.  The super-rationalism of the western mind has robbed most people of the ability to imagine—that is to “image”—and so such things as incense or oil or laying on of hands, or even bread and wine remain only incense or oil or laying on of hands or even bread and wine and never become the Symbols by which we can ascend from created to Creator.  In the extreme of this—in non-liturgical denominations the sacramental aspect has been allowed to all but disappear.  (Actually in Quakerism and some other Christian denominations, the sacramental aspect has disappeared.)  But even in Catholic circles neo-Scholastic theology has robbed Mysterium of its power. Intellectual assent to doctrine has been substituted for mystical encounter.  This is one of the weaknesses of Tridentine and post-Tridentine (including contemporary Vatican II) Catholicism—it has reduced us to intellects and does not nourish the deeper realities of the soul.  Thus liturgy in the western Church tends to be reduced to either “rubrical”—the exact carrying out prescribed ceremonies—or spectacular, the theatrical production.    Often when I attend the “new Mass” I find myself entertained, even stimulated—but it is like Chinese food—three hours later, I am hungry again.  (Actually I find Chinese food sufficiently filling, but I know that many others claim its reputation for being only a passing satisfaction of hunger.)  I go to the Tridentine Mass and—though I am fluent in Latin and understand every word—I find it (at best) to be no more than Swan Lake in Vestments—aesthetically pleasing but a tired conceit.  (At worst, the Tridentine “Low Mass,” it is nothing but dry toast.)  When I attend the Divine Liturgy, however, whether in an Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic Church—“we no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth.”  Why is that?  What can we learn from the difference?

Well, I have drifted a long way from Odo Casel and Maria Laach, but I think laid a foundation for some other comments I want to make over the next week or so.  But let me in the next posting return a bit to Mysterium and hopefully find our way back to the main topic.