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 Church of England CVI

Oliver Cromwell, leader 

of the Puritan faction and 

Lord Protector of England

after the abolition of the 

monarchy

There is a lot that I want to get to.  I want to follow up on the French and Anti-Semitism theme with the connections between Anti-Semitism and Catholic “Traditionalist” movements as well as Political Monarchism and Catholic Traditionalism.  Then I have a lot of material on the dissatisfaction of the Traditional wing-nuts with Pope Francis, and the whys and wherefores of their anger for the Pope, as well as how the Pope’s political agenda—Income Inequality, Climate Change, etc—are fueling the neo-traditionalist anger towards him.  I still have two more posting’s on the Pope’s Christmas message to the Curia.  And I have yet to finish my series on the Katholic Krazies.  And in the midst of all this, Pope Francis and others keep making the news. 

But let’s go back, at least for today, to my Church of England series.  I bit off more than I could chew when I picked that topic, but we are too far into it to abandon it and while it elicits fewer hits than my occasional skewering of Cardinal Burke and other primping prelates, it has a committed and loyal leadership to keep letting me know how much they appreciate it.

So we left off with the English Civil War. Parliament abolished episcopacy (government by bishops) in 1646 and the monarchy in 1649.  (James I was right: no bishop, no king.)  With the abolition of bishops, the Church of England became Presbyterian in government, but would actually best be described as what we Americans know as “Congregationalist.”  The Book of Common Prayer and its liturgical forms were discarded in favor of The Directory For Public Worship which was borrowed from the Scots Tradition established by John Knox almost a century before.  The purpose was to purify any elements of “Romish” doctrine, practice, or superstition from Reformed worship.  The “rule of thumb” was that for anything to be done in public worship, there must be an explicit warrant for it in the New Testament.  This rule, while applied strictly, was also applied somewhat uncritically as historical primitive church practice was, in fact, little known in the 17^th century and there was often a sort of sentimental projection backwards of a certain ideology/idealism onto a romanticized primitive Church.   Archbishop Laud’s restoration of altars (usually wooden tables but covered with rich hangings) in the former chancels, along with cross and candles that had re-appeared in some places, were all done away with, while plain wooden communion tables re-appeared.  Where copes or even surplices had been used, they too were suppressed and the ministers wore simply their black academic gown.  There was no pronouncing of the absolution after a confession of sinfulness, no recitation of the doxology, no use of the Nicene or Apostles Creeds, no liturgical seasons (Advent, Lent, etc.)  or feasts (including Christmas, Easter, Pentecost).  There was no Confirmation service, no provision for Holy Communion for the sick, and no giving of a ring in marriage.  The only hymns that could be sung were metric psalms, and some were opposed to even these.  In fact, some ministers or congregations refused to use even the Lord’s Prayer, rejecting any set words for prayer.  There was no burial service lest the appearance be given of prayers for the dead, but the minister could give a sermon on the occasion of a funeral admonishing the living to keep in mind their impending call to stand before the Throne of Judgment. and civic honors could be paid to the deceased according to the dead person’s station.    Baptism was never to be administered privately but only on the occasion of Sunday Worship and even marriage were ideally to be part of the Sunday Service.  Sunday Worship—indeed even daily worship where it was held—was to consist of scripture readings—an entire chapter of the Old Testament followed by an entire chapter of the New (and the books of the bible were to be read in sequence and not according to the abolished seasons and feasts)—followed by a long prayer by the pastor.  This, in turn, was followed by the sermon which lasted an hour or more and was to be an exhortation for people to repent from their sinful ways.  Finally there was to be a collection for the poor.  Holy Communion was to be administered “frequently” but this usually was interpreted to mean quarterly—every three months.  Holy Communion, when it was held, followed the sermon.  The minister would then read Saint Paul’s account of the Eucharistic Tradition that he himself had received (I Corinthians 11:23-26).  This was followed by a fairly long prayer asking, among other things, that through these gifts spiritually received the communicants might dwell in Christ and Christ might dwell in them.  The bread and wine were then distributed to those congregants who had remained after the morning sermon and had been approved by the minister for Holy Communion.  In some of the more rigidly administered churches communicants sat around the communion table set up in the front of the church; in others they received bread and wine passed to them in their pews.   The Anglican posture of kneeling for Holy Communion was done away with in favor of an insistence that communicants remain seated. 

Even in the more Protestant parts of the nation—London, Norwich, the south-east—the changes were not well taken by the majority of the people.  Indeed England was somewhat unsettled both politically and religiously under Oliver Cromwell’s being “Lord Protector.”  Conformity was enforced by military strength and where it could not be so enforced—rural areas, the north, and the west, the Prayer Book Liturgy—albeit without the Laudian accouterments—often surreptitiously survived.  The Burial Office was particularly popular as the official rites had been so stripped down that many people felt totally unconsoled by them.

Despite the radical turn to the most severe Protestantism, it was not far enough for some.  Even before the Civil War there was a faction among the English Puritans that began to hold the necessity of a faith-filled encounter with Christ that must precede baptism.  This idea that the believer must first accept Christ and commit himself to Christian discipleship before one could be baptized obviously ruled out infant baptism—a practice of the Church from very early in its history.  While there had been Anabaptist movements (Anabaptist from the Greek ἀναβαπτισμός, re-baptized or baptized over again) in Germany from the time of Thomas Müntzer (preached 1521-1525)  Anabaptist doctrine had spread widely on the continent throughout the sixteenth century, its first appearance for the English was in the English émigré community in Amsterdam where one-time Anglican Priest, John Smyth, had broken with the Church of England because he was opposed to the idea of a State Church, that is the political control of the State over a Church.  By 1609 Smyth had come to believe that one must acknowledge Christ as Lord and Savior before one could be baptized.  Smyth re-baptized himself and then his followers.  Smyth never returned to England and in fact sought to join the Mennonites, a religious community in Holland (and elsewhere in Europe) that also practiced believer’s baptism.  After Smyth’s death, however, a portion of his flock returned to England.  Other Anglicans, all of the Puritan faction, also came to hold believer’s baptism.  John Spillsbury was a shoemaker who belonged a church that followed Smyth’s teaching that the Church must be independent of the State (they were known as Separatists)  and he also held for infant baptism.  In 1638, on the eve of the English Civil War, Spillsbury set up his own church which not only practiced believer’s baptism but insisted that baptism must be by full immersion, that is the baptized person must be brought totally under the water and not simply have it poured over him or be sprinkled with it. 

Like others of the extreme Puritan wing, these Baptists (as they came to be known) rejected any of the liturgical practices of the Church of England which they saw as holdovers from the Church of England’s Catholic past.  Worship was totally without form and spontaneous.  Some even forbad the reading of the scripture during worship, claiming that since the scriptures were being read in translation they were “the work of men and not of God.”  Hymns were forbidden, though psalms—including those in metrical form—could be sung.  There were to be no organs in their meeting houses, nor candles (except, of course, for lighting), crosses or other ornaments.  The ministers wore plain street clothing or, if they had matriculated at university, their gown.  Baptism and Holy Communion were the only “ordinances” (the word “Sacrament” being too Catholic). 

With the collapse of the Episcopacy in 1646, such chaos resulted in the Church of England that the Baptist congregations were not only, for the most part, unharmed but unnoticed.   They looked like the Puritan (Congregationalist) congregations in every respect except for their mode of baptism.  Consequently they were able to grow unmolested.  They never became particularly big in England, though they did have considerable success in Wales.  Meanwhile, their ideas spread to the North American colonies, and especially Puritan Massachusetts, where they did meet with persecution from the predominant Congregationalists in the colony.  Massachusetts dissidents fled to Rhode Island where they shaped the colony in a slightly different way, arguing both for freedom of conscience and separation of Church and State.  The Baptist movement in North America would only really take off in the Second Great Awakening, a religious revival movement in the early 19^th century, but American Baptists have always been stalwarts on the separation of Church and State.  Classically Baptists have also been in favor of freedom of religion but in the current culture war environment that is eroding in some quarters.  More on the Baptists at some future time.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church C

Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham

MA, an example of Puritan worship

space.

Robert Browne (c1555-1633) had studied at Cambridge where he fell under Puritan influence.  He served as a Lecturer at Saint Mary’s Church, Islington—at the time a wealthy suburb of London and today right smack in the middle of London.  A Lecturer was a lay preacher—a man with sufficient theological education to preach but not ordained.  Lecturers were very popular among the Puritan segment of the Church of England which stressed preaching, while the Episcopal faction generally preferred to limit preaching to those in Holy Orders and so tie it closer to formal worship.  It should be pointed out that the clergy of the Church of England, even before the Reformation, were all University men, educated at either Oxford or Cambridge.  Cambridge had always been the more theologically radical and what one might today call “low Church.”   Browne returned to Cambridge after several years at Saint Mary’s Islington and was encouraged to take Holy Orders, but shortly after ordination gave up hope that the Church of England could be reformed from within.  He attempted to set up a separatist congregation at Norwich—that is an independent congregation not under the bishop but ruled by its own members—and was arrested for doing so.  Powerful family connections won him his freedom but not tolerance of his ambitions for a separate Church. He and his followers moved to Middleburg in the Netherlands where they could form an independent congregation.  Browne and others like him believed that the Churches of the New Testament were such independent congregations, each having their own pastor and each being self-governing.  Browne was reacting against two things: the authority of the State over the Church and its policies (remember, the Church of England was a State Church and thus governed by Parliament) and an established hierarchy in which bishops had authority over a number of congregations, thus usurping the authority of the congregation’s local pastor.  Browne’s understanding of primitive Church governance was a bit naively romantic, but at the same time was closer to the post-Apostolic Church of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries than the diocesan authority structures of either contemporary Catholicism of Anglicanism. 

In any event, Browne soon gave up on his separatist notions and returned to the Church of England which he served as headmaster of several schools and rector of Achurch in Northamptonshire.  (Achurch is the name of the parish.)  He died within the Anglican Communion though he had founded the separatist movement.  

Richard Clyfton was an Anglican priest of the Puritan faction appointed to the Church of All Saints, Babworth.  Despite his holding a benefice in the Church of England, he followed Browne and became a Separatist.  Among the members of his congregation which met at Scrooby Manor was William Bradford who was one of the leaders of the Pilgrim emigration to Massachusetts Bay. 

While the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth were Separatists and rejected the authority of the Church of England—both its bishops and its supervision by Parliament—the majority of settlers in Massachusetts Bay Colony were Puritans who in the 1620’s and 30’s still considered themselves members of the Church of England.  However as under James, and even more under his son, Charles I, (reigned from 1625 until his execution in 1649), the Church of England moved increasingly away from the Calvinist/Puritan ideals towards a recovery of its Catholic liturgical heritage and Arminian doctrine; consequently the co-existence of the Puritan faction and the Episcopal faction in the same Church of England became more and more strained.  In the New England colonies there were no bishops and no royal officials who could insist on worship conforming to the Book of Common Prayer.  Ministers and Congregations were free to do more or less as they wished, while back in England non-conformity was dealt with with an increasing severity.  It was only a matter of time until the tension between the two factions would set off an explosion that would shatter the Church of England.  And it would do more than that, it would bring down the monarchy. 

I think this is a particularly important period for us to look at.  Increasingly since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church, at least in the English speaking world (and too a lesser extent in France and Germany) has also seen a division between two distinct visions of Church.  This is not totally new, at least here in the United States where the recusant tradition of the old Maryland Catholics gave a markedly different Catholicism than the immigrant tradition brought over from France during the French Revolution and later from the German, Italian, and Eastern European Catholics who settled here in the 19^th century.  The different Episcopal styles of Ambrose Maréchal and John England in the early 19^th century or the conflicts between Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Corrigan in the late 19^th century witness to two distinct—and to some extent incompatible—ecclesiologies in American Catholicism.  Today we see the Church of Cardinals Burke and Archbishop Cordileone and Bishop Finn and its very different style than the Church of Cardinal O’Malley and Archbishop Cupich.   Like the Church of England in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries we can live together in the same broad communion, but how far will this last without breaking?  Certainly Burke or O’Malley or Cordileone or Finn or Cupich will never break bonds with Peter in Rome and thus with one another, but there is a rising tension among priests and peoples that might easily snap the cords, each accusing those of the other side of betraying the tradition.  As a historian I think that not only is schism a possibility but that it is all but inevitable unless we are willing to allow for a pluriformity of Catholicisms in which legitimate differences of discipline and even doctrine are respected.  A rigid uniformity, on the other hand, will be very detrimental to the future of the Church.