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 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.  

History of the Anglican Church CV

Charles I at his trial

To pick up on the English Civil War and its impact on the development of Anglicanism, after only a few years following his accession to the throne in 1625, Charles was losing popular support.  Archbishop Laud’s High Church liturgical reforms went too far for many who had accustomed themselves to Calvinist austerity in worship and resented the innovations.  (There are always those who resist and resent liturgical development, even when it is to improve the theological footing of the Liturgy.)   His wars were costly and his failure to win them a national embarrassment.  His dependence upon his favorites for council and his opposition to Parliament left the people feeling unheard and unrepresented.  Charles also had a program to drain “The Fens”—the marshy swamplands in eastern England.  The program would enrich his friends who were investing in it with hopes of converting the swamps to good rich farmland, but disrupt the lives of the locals who for centuries had made their living fishing and wildfowling.  The King and Parliament were in a political tug of war with the Commons reflecting the mood of the ordinary people, especially the merchant class of the South and South East (including London) and the King representing the views of the landed aristocracy. 

By the beginning of 1642 as Parliament became more assertive in their resistance to the King’s policies, and the King felt himself losing control, Charles appeared at the House of Commons with 400 soldiers to arrest five members of the House whom he perceived to be the leaders of the opposition to his policies.  Charles was angry about the execution of Lord Wentworth, his Lord Deputy for Ireland and fearful about the fate of his Archbishop of Canterbury, Laud, whom Parliament had imprisoned.  Wentworth had only carried out the King’s requirements to raise funds in order to avoid having to convoke Parliament to impose new taxes and Charles was in sympathy with Laud’s ceremonial approach to worship.  The King’s failure to arrest the opposition left him fearful of his safety and the safety of his family and fled London.  The rumors—quite probably true—were that that the Queen, Henrietta Marie, had persuaded Charles to arrest the Parliamentarians.  It was a disaster.  The five members of the House had been pre-warned and fled before the King arrived.  The King’s coming into the House and intimidating it with his 400 guards was seen to be a gross violation of Parliamentary right and no monarch has since been permitted to enter the House of Commons. 

After staying briefly first at Hampton Court and then Windsor, Charles sent his family to safety in France and proceeded to the North of England where he hoped to find support among the more traditional nobility and gentry.  Meanwhile the country polarized with some cities and towns declaring support for the King and others for Parliament.  This put King and Parliament at war with each other—civil war.  Painting the picture with somewhat of a broad brush, the King controlled Wales, the West, the Midlands and the North. Parliament held the allegiance of London, the South, the East and the Navy.  Charles established his capital at Oxford. 

It is beyond the point of this blog to go through the Civil War battle by battle, suffice it to say that as the war raged back and forth over the next five years, the King lost more and more and Parliament was more and more victorious.  After being besieged in Oxford, Charles fled and sought refuge with the Scots army at that time in the Midlands.  The Scots, firm in their Presbyterian belief and angry with the King for his attempts to force Anglicanism on them, betrayed Charles and sold him to the Parliamentary forces in January 1647. 

As England devolved from monarchy and episcopacy into what became political tyranny and religious chaos, the Church of England not only split along the High Church/Puritan fault line, it shattered into numerous religious sects.  With the execution of Charles in 1649, England was declared to be a “Commonwealth” with a Republican form of government.  With the abolishment of bishops in 1646 the Church officially became a Presbyterian Church.  The 39 articles—the key statement of Anglican doctrine—was replaced by the Westminster Confession; the Book of Common Prayer by the Directory for Public Worship adopted from the Church of Scotland.  I say “Presbyterian” because its ecclesial polity was Presbyterian (as different from Episcopalian—that is governed by bishops.)  As opposed to Episcopal government—government by a bishop with his officials such as Archdeacons and Deans, in the Presbyterian system local churches are governed by a body of elders (presbyters).  Churches were no longer gathered in a diocese under a bishop but governed by an assembly of presbyters known as the presbytery or classis.   I want to be careful to nuance this correctly but when I say the Church of England was Presbyterian, I am not correlating it to modern Presbyterianism, but simply to say that it adopted the Presbyterian form of organization typical of most Churches in the Reformed (as opposed to Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical [aka Lutheran]) traditions.  In fact both today’s English Presbyterians and Congregationalists would find in the time of the Commonwealth not their origins (they date back as movements within the Church of England to the late 16^th century opposition to the Prayer Book and to Bishops) but certainly their coming of age.  The Church of England during the Commonwealth (or as it is sometimes called the Interregnum)  was a Reformed Church that was home to groups that would later distinguish themselves from one another as “Presbyterian” or “Congregational.”  And indeed, in 1972 the majority of Congregational Churches in England united with the Presbyterian Church of England to form the United Reformed Church. 

This Presbyterian/Congregationalist Church of England satisfied the Puritans who had long wanted to get rid of Bishops and the Prayer Book and Christmas and other “popish” traditions. Yes, Christmas was outlawed in England from 1647 until the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660—giving rise to the popular rhyme:

Now thanks to God for Charles return

Whose absence made old Christmas mourn

For then we scarcely did it know

Whether it Christmas were or no

But as I said, the Church did not split in two, it shattered.  The Puritan faction was not sufficiently radical for tens of thousands who found expression for their faith—or their psychosis—in dozens of far more radical groups ranging from the Anabaptists to the Diggers to the Fifth Monarchists to the Sabbatarians to the Quakers to the Ranters.  We will look at some of these groups in the future postings.  Suffice it to say that what had once been one Church with a lot of factional tension now became dozens of sects ranging from the respectable to the totally out of control.  While the Church of England had up to this time (quite unofficially) encompassed a wide variety of theological opinions and forms of worship, these various groups now broke apart into a wide variety of sects that, like Humpty Dumpty, never be put back together again.  Suffice it to say for the purposes of this blog, that the traditional Church of England, a National and Episcopal Church, ceased to exist.  It would be restored in 1660 along with the monarchy, but never again would it encompass the almost universal composite of the English people.   

A Pope For Better and For Worse

Is Pope Francis helping or hurting the Catholic Church?  For some, the jury is still out on that matter while for others—both of the left and the right—they have their answer and there is nothing that will change their opinion. 

About three weeks ago there was a forum at Georgetown University at which several prominent Catholic journalists gave their opinions. They lined up, as one might expect, according to ideological lines.  When speaking of the polarization in the Church today that seems to be growing ever greater under the strain of Francis’ leadership, Gregory Erlandson, president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, a right of center publication said  “I’m a little more skeptical this early in his pontificate around his ability to heal that polarization”  R.R. Reno, the editor of First Things, a journal established by famous convert-priest, the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus to reconcile Catholic Tradition with Reganomic Philosophy was stronger in his critical view of Pope Francis saying: “Is he helping overcome divisions? He’s very comfortable with condemnation actually,” he said. “He very quickly condemns traditionalist Catholics, and that’s not always helpful in overcoming polarization.” 

Father Matt Malone, SJ, editor of the progressive weekly America, framed the question differently by pointing out the divisions in American Society and claiming that these divisions have flowed over into the Catholic Church in this country.  “One of the principle problems we have in American society right now is the collapse of our discourse.”  He went on to say that our political partisanship has “found its way into our ecclesial discourse in disturbing ways.”

Paul Baumann, the editor of Commonweal, another progressive journal, expressed his opinion that too often those who speak for the Church aren’t responding to the deeper questions being asked by contemporary Catholics.  In tones somewhat reminiscent of the theme that Cardinal Kasper keeps hitting, Baumann said: “We think that there are new situations facing Catholics, facing Americans, that old answers the church provides don’t quite make sense,” he said. “We believe it seems to me that we need to pursue these questions in an open and responsible way.”

In some ways, I suspect each of the participants had a piece of the truth.  Pope Francis is not afraid of confrontation.  He is a Jesuit and has been trained in absolute and unquestioned obedience to authority.  While he encourages dialogue, I think he is surprised by dissent when the conversation is finished.  The resistance of Cardinal Burke and several others to the direction that the recent Synod took I think caught Francis a bit off guard.  I don’t think he will remain too shocked to respond.  In fact, I think through the coming year he will make his position more and more clear in order to bring the 2015 Synod members on board with his direction.  To do this we will see more “shuffling of the deck” as those in his administration who are not working with him will find themselves in positions where their resistance is ineffective.  Of course, there is only one Sovereign Military Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem to which he can send a Cardinal-patron but Holy Mother Church has other gulags.  Dissent will be not only tolerated but encouraged at the point of discussion but not when it is time for consensus.  Anyone who was educated by the Jesuits understands that. 

As for healing the rift with traditionalist Catholics, I think Francis is somewhat indifferent on matters liturgical but he is unwilling to allow disharmony in the Church.  He clearly has no interest himself in the pre-conciliar rites.  He probably does not understand why people might choose to approach God through rites that might be intellectually sound but are practically unintelligible to the ordinary Catholic.  His experience in the Church of Latin America where there is little interest in reviving the Tridentine Liturgy and where the Liturgical renewal following the Second Vatican Council has been responsible for a new vitality in the Church makes the antiquarian approach to worship seem strange.  Nonetheless, he has done nothing to suppress the permissions for widespread use of the old forms granted by Pope Benedict in Summorum Pontificum.  On the other hand, in his conviction that the Church must be reborn as the Church of the Poor and his focus on Social Justice he is likely to make no allowance for those whose social program is not in harmony with his.  This is, for most American conservatives, far more threatening than his liturgical praxis.  Francis has been outspoken on Immigration, the Death Penalty, economic inequality and other hot-button issues and he will insist that both hierarchy and faithful be on that bus whether they pray in Latin, English, or Klingon. 

And I think his opening the Pandora’s Box of divorce and remarriage, homosexuality, living together before marriage and other matters of sexual mores brought up at the recent Synod—and his willingness to listen and to dialogue—makes it clear that he is in touch with the “new situations” facing Catholics today, especially younger ones. 

Is there division in the Church today? Absolutely.  There is division through western society and it is as strong in the Church as elsewhere.  I don’t think Pope Francis is going to spend a lot of time addressing it.  He will have a relatively short papacy and he will focus on getting done what he needs to get done without being distracted by dissent.  I think he will make it increasingly clear where he stands and one either stands with him or not with him, but he sees that standing against him is standing against the Church.  He won’t address it for the laity, but the leadership—bishops, archbishops, cardinals—will climb aboard the Francis train or find themselves left at remote stations in the ecclesial outback.