I'm no expert but this accords with my perception of these things.
I'm old enough to remember when even quite full-on charismatic Anglicans retained a degree of ceremonial in their eucharistic services. There were (are?) charismatic Anglo-Catholics of course.
At least the parish mentioned in the OP didn't have a digital 'count-down' before the start of the service and intersperse things with video 'adverts' gorgeous forthcoming events, all of which were going to be 'awesome' or 'amazing' - which is what I've seen at some places of this ilk.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everywhere has to be the same but ...
How do you know what they DIDN'T have?
There was actually a recently made very professional promotional video for the church (complete with overhead drone footage and vox pop style quotes from members of the congregation about how good the church was) shown within the service...they were going to be showing it at a village community day the next day so wanted to showcase it to the church people first.
There was also a family quiz within the service presented in the style of a TV quiz show. In fact the whole format of the service reminded me of a chat show or a magazine format TV show, with a succession of different 'presenters' taking the lead up front.
Distinct lack of Awe and Reverence or any formal ceremony or ritual. Oh yes one more thing, the weekly bulletin had a whole blank page for 'sermon notes'. Hope all this gives a better flavour of what this church was like.
Horses for courses though...my father said it was the highlight of our weekend away!
Ok. Yes. Sorry.
I made an unwarranted assumption.
Apologies.
It very much sounds like an Anglican church I visited recently. Similar TV quiz show / 'One Show' format.
A friend who attends such a church tells me he's beginning to get fed up with everything having to be accompanied by a video or animation of some kind.
I certainly understand the appeal of this approach but as @angloid has asked, is it recognisably Anglican?
In response to @Alan29's observation about Anglican churches moving closer to the 'Churches of the Reformation', I'd say that historically that was always the case. The 'via media' was meant to be a middle-way between Calvinism and Lutheranism, not Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
More 'ritualistic' elements only began to creep in during the early years of the reign of Charies I and also from the mid to late 1800s.
If anything, I'd suggest that evangelical and charismatic Anglican churches having moved closer to the churches of the radical reformation - Baptists and Independents - rather than Lutheran or Presbyterian churches.
I've come across Baptist and URC churches with a more liturgical feel than some evangelical Anglican parishes.
At that end of the spectrum, denominational allegiance is less important than whether there's a good worship band or youth work or a lively preacher or some other source of attraction.
I've known people leave independent 'non-denominational' churches to attend Anglican churches of this kind as they feel it's the more 'happening' place to be. The worship style would be almost identical in both.
At the risk of sounding patronising, I can see how it can be an 'entry-level' thing and that it can attract and retain people who might otherwise find church 'boring' or incomprehensible.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everywhere has to be the same but ...
I don't think any of us here are saying that. The question is, can a church sit so loosely to the liturgy and still claim to be Anglican? Christians, of whatever church or grouping, can freely worship in whatever manner they choose: I don't think anybody still wants to fine or execute people who won't conform.
But Anglican identity has always been centred on and to some extent defined by the liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer. Why do these people still want to be Anglican?
Liturgy/worship is one of the ways that a denomination identifies itself. Anglicans used to see themselves as a Via Media, placed equally between the Churches of the Reformation and the RCC/Orthodox churches. My perception is that they have moved more towards the Churches of the Reformation in recent decades in terms of the kind of worship described here and with things like dead horse issues.
Maybe I'm wrong.
You're not wrong. But as a sympathetic outsider you must realise that everything said about Anglicans can be contradicted by an example from other Anglicans. Leaving theology aside for a moment (anyway this is Ecclesiantics) and looking at liturgical trends, what seems to have happened in the last few decades is that liturgically-minded churches (particularly cathedrals) have become less inhibited in taking on very 'catholic' styles. Far more cathedrals regularly use incense than used to be the case, and I've witnessed a Corpus Christi procession at St Paul's cathedral in London. The full Holy Week rites are no longer seen as something for just a few 'extreme' parishes. Whereas many 'evangelical' churches seem to have ditched formal liturgy altogether, as this thread shows.
I wonder if the liturgists who were behind the effective replacement of the Prayer Book by Common Worship (a 'compendium' of liturgies and suggestions rather than a comprehensive equivalent of something like the Missal) were over-naive? As if they gave free reign to informal forms of worship because they expected them to be used in exceptional contexts or mission-focussed events, while the norm of worship would be the Parish Eucharist. Yet many evangelicals never really saw the point of liturgy and only used it because they were told to. Having been given carte blanche they constructed services which had little basis in liturgical principles.
None of what I have said should be taken as a criticism of other traditions outside the Anglican church. The ultimate non-liturgical expression is the Quaker meeting for worship, for which I have the greatest respect. But I don't understand Anglicans who don't take liturgy seriously.
I'm pretty sure that Newman thought the Via Media was between protestants and RCs. But I stand to be corrected.
Well, he also tried to interpret the 39 Articles in 'Catholic' terms.
How anyone can do that, particularly someone as clever as Newman, is beyond me. The 39 Articles are as Protestant a document as anyone could wish to see, although not Big R enough for the Reformed.
The idea that the via media was a mid-point between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism developed gradually it seems to me and wouldn't have occurred to the original Elizabethan divines.
That said, the Pope very much admired Hooker's writings and later Laud was offered a Cardinal's hat in an attempt to lure him across the Tiber.
So there was certainly 'something' in Anglicanism that struck a chord with RCs back then. I've heard senior RC clerics praise aspects of Anglican theological education and clerical training for instance and lament that standards are dropping - as they perceive it.
So I'm not dismissing what you are saying out of hand, simply observing that for much of its history most Anglicans wouldn't have understood these things the way we might now.
The Puritans were mightily exercised I think, when Laud refused to identify the Pope with the Anti-Christ. Many moderate as well as more Puritanical Anglicans would have believed that to be the case back then.
@angloid - I think many evangelicals do have a liturgy - an unwritten one. They may not recognise that they have one, but they do. There's a very observable and standardised format to most 'charismatic-lite' settings these days and you can pretty much anticipate what you are going to get in advance.
I'm not saying that to criticise it. But even the most apparently spontaneous forms of worship become standardised over time.
The worship song medley format has been standard for 40 years or so now and the TV chat-show format with a mix of interviews, short talks, videos and worship songs is now becoming standard in churches of that ilk. It will also evolve in due course. AI elements?
I don't have an issue with those developments in and of themselves, although they aren't my bag, but I do wonder whether the baby is going out with the bathwater. There's little sense of 'mystery' and the numinous and it can become 'entertainment' with a few Bible verses sprinkled in.
Equally, of course, highly liturgical services can become all about spectacle and flummery.
Tried to do what? Reconcile Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism?
Interpret the 39 Articles in a 'Catholic' way?
There's a kind of relentless and remorseless logic about Newman's journey towards Rome. That looks all very 'Western' from an 'Eastern' perspective.
I recently met a young Methodist minister who'd written his doctoral thesis on Newman.
'Watch out!' I quipped. 'His logic will take you on a slippery slope ...'
He laughed and riposted, 'But I haven't accepted his first premise.'
It's become something of an Orthodox trope to say that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are two sides of the same coin and not as incompatible as some of their adherents think. That can be used in a polemical way of course, 'Look at the Latin West, it's all so juridical and rational. They ought to abandon that mindset and acquire ours ...'
I do think there is something in it, though, insofar as the Reformers inevitably imbibed late medieval Scholasticism - for better or worse.
Cards on the table, I do think that many Anglo-Catholics are deluding themselves by thinking that the Anglican communion was/is more Catholic than it actually was/is.
Using Newman's logic they should really cross the Tiber or the Bosphorus. Some Orthodox would like to think he'd have done the latter had Orthodoxy been more prominent in Victorian Britain. That's purely speculative of course.
The question is, though: Does Rome or the Eastern Orthodox (or the Oriental Orthodox for that matter) really want or need an influx of more hardliners - as @Alan29 has already asked somewhere?
Is the 'Anglican project' doomed?
Whatever else we might say I agree with Diarmaid MacCulloch that Anglicanism represents a 'unique' response to the Reformation that is very distinct from either Lutheranism and the Reformed tradition.
I think there is a recognisable Anglican spirituality which can be found not only in the historic prayer books and the various liturgies developed over the years - and not only in the poetry of Herbert, Donne, Treharne and the hymns from both the 'high' and 'low church' Anglican traditions - but out in the pews or the bucket chairs.
It's none of my business of course, but I do think that this detectable but recognisable terroir is under threat. I'd be sad to see it go. I'm not sure what the answer is. Some kind of 'Sealed Knot' re-enactment version of The Prayer Book Society or an ecclesiastical National Trust ... ?
Liturgy has to be lived.
We can't knock churches like the one in the OP for living out the small l liturgical forms they are developing - much as it may not accord with our own tastes or proclivities.
I'm a convert to liturgy - or Liturgy - of course - so I'm bound to say that.
Yet I meet Anglicans, including a woman I know who is going through ordination training, who just don't get traditional liturgies at all. This woman is married to a retired vicar and spent her entire church life in charismatic evangelical Anglican circles. She's enjoying the theological parts of her course but finds the liturgical elements tedious in the extreme. She can't see the point of them. Even though she's now in a more liberal setting she still wants worship songs and choruses.
The same applies to a Scottish friend who has moved to a far more liberal theological position. Growing up in Scotland she says she was barely aware of seasonal features like Lent or Advent. Now she has moved on from independent charismatic evangelicalism and has some cathedral connections, she still finds she can't 'relate' to traditional Anglican liturgies - even though she can 'see the point' of them.
As a 'Born Again Liturgist' this raises a number of questions in my mind, as you can imagine.
I'd love it if people could rediscover 'the beauty of holiness' and 'get' liturgies and iconography and so on and so forth - but not everyone does. I can't make them, nor should I try, of course.
Nor do I think that people who go in for 'Game Show' style services are any 'worse' Christians than those who 'go by the book' or go in for more formal or ritualised styles.
And yet ... and yet ... I still can't help thinking that if you are going to be Anglican then you should at least have a semblance of something Anglican about your church services.
@ Gamma Gamaliel
"Interpret the 39 Articles in a 'Catholic' way?" This. He want to, he tried to but he knew he had failed.
And when Benedict (a good classical pianist BTW) went to Solemn Evensong in Westminster Abbey he recognised something that was distinctively Anglican in worship and spirituality. Unfortunately his response was to institute the Ordinariate where dissatisfied Anglicans could join the RCC while preserving much of their Liturgy and heritage. This unilateral act caused much pain on the Anglican side and huge embarrassment on the RC side which was not consulted.
There is something about the Western mindset that loves to analyse and try to understand. On the positive side - science and medicine. On the negative side - the need to pin down God and theology in general like a specimen.
There is no mention of prayers or hymns in that account. Were there none?
There were some prayers (all informal extempore style apart from just before eucharist and the Lords Prayer when words appeared on the screen). Nothing I would call a hymn but 4 or five worship songs with a band.
As ever, I am cursed with the ability to see both sides. I can understand the idea 'behind' the Ordinariate and have generally had good experiences - with some caveats - with people I've met who are part of that.
Nevertheless, the impression I pick up from other RCs is that it's become a 'church within a church' and the view that the very evident preaching and pastoral gifts that some of the Anglican clergy brought with them could have been spread more widely and for greater benefit. As things have turned out it seems like something of a ghetto.
I attended an Ordinariate compline recently which appeared to be the same as the Anglican compline service - which I very much admire - with some Marian elements bolted on.
As a 'both/and' sort of person I'd like to see the 'Western' and 'Eastern' mindsets complementing rather than contradicting each other but that's probably too much to ask for another millennium or so.
To be honest, if unhelpful, I feel nothing in common with these people, and the thought of having to assert that I did was one of the things which decided me against ordination, especially as they take over the Church of England. There is no money for anything else, so guess what will grow?
There is a point against the OP in here. The alternative to schism can be this sort of takeover, where the original organism is overwhelmed by the 'graft'. This is all the opposite of an actual graft, of course, but this one seems to have got to that point, to me at least. If there had been an actual schism, there is at least a possibility of genuine, separate flourishing.
This analysis may outrage many people, but then I'm outraged by what has happened. So there we are, really. They may do with their outrage as they choose.
@Gamma Gamaliel there are Ordinariate clergy in mainstream RCC parishes. I'm not sure if they remain in that group or are incardinated into the mainstream diocese. But they have a distinctively precise way of celebrating the Liturgy when compared to the more relaxed style of "normal" RC priests.
As a 'both/and' sort of person I'd like to see the 'Western' and 'Eastern' mindsets complementing rather than contradicting each other but that's probably too much to ask for another millennium or so.
I see glimpses of it in the Taizé Community. It’s one of the things I find very attractive about Taizé.
As a 'both/and' sort of person I'd like to see the 'Western' and 'Eastern' mindsets complementing rather than contradicting each other but that's probably too much to ask for another millennium or so.
I see glimpses of it in the Taizé Community. It’s one of the things I find very attractive about Taizé.
I think there have been moves away from theology based on medieval scholasticism since mid 20th century in RC theology. The likes of De Lubac and Rahner who fed into Vat 2 as experts were cut from a different cloth, and the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem were highly influencial in moving along biblical scholarship. Meanwhile nobody has a clue what Lonergan was on about.... so it must have been good.
But humans are curious and have a deep need to understand, and not everyone is content in a Cloud of Unknowing.
Good debate this but is it becoming more Purgatorial?
As a nerd and one-time trainspotter I understand the wish to categorise everyone and everything. But as a Catholic Christian (of the Anglican variety but that's irrelevant IMHO) I think that God's church is broad enough for everyone - as the RC convert F W Faber wrote, 'we make his love too narrow/ By false limits of our own'.
The problem for me with churches like that in the OP is that they are doing just that. They are presenting a narrow, partial approach to the worship of God which is unsatisfying and alienating for many. The one thing about the Church of England which until recently no-one thought to challenge, is that it exists to serve all people in its respective communities, not to gather individuals into exclusive sects. Not all small L* liturgical churches are exclusive in theology or in attitudes to sexuality etc, but many are, which compounds the problem.
*in view of some comments above I don't describe them as 'non-liturgical', but in the generally accepted sense I think that they are.
An evangelical friend who accompanied me to an Orthodox service considered it too 'prescriptive' and 'strait-jacketed' - although they acknowledged that it was 'very beautiful.'
Conversely, I found their evangelical Anglican service, which was very similar to that described in the OP, rather narrow and unsatisfying.
However we 'do' church someone is going to find it alienating to some extent or other.
One could argue of course that the Anglicans were never as inclusive and all-encompassing as they'd like to think they were as otherwise there wouldn't have been 'Popish recusants' fined for non-attendance or non-conformist groups forming their own congregations.
I read a book recently about Anglo-Catholicism in rural areas. It never really took off in the countryside as it did in towns and cities and in some instances most of the locals left to join the Methodists and the parish church ended up catering to retired incomers from the cities.
I'm not saying that to knock the Anglicans, simply making an observation.
If we have bells and smells that'll alienate some people. If we have PowerPoint slides and guitars that'll put others off.
'I played a pipe and you did not dance, I sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'
Or vice versa.
People recognise sincerity and authenticity though and that can be found anywhere and everywhere.
I s'pose the bottom line for me is that if you are going to be a Baptist say, then be a Baptist. Be the best possible Baptist you can be ad try to exemplify what is good and positive in that tradition.
If you are going to be an Anglican or a Roman Catholic or whatever else then the same applies. You may not look or act identically to all other Anglicans, RCs or Whatever Else's but you should reflect something of the depth and breadth of that tradition - as well as all we hold in common as Christians of whatever stripe.
Cards on the table, I do think that many Anglo-Catholics are deluding themselves by thinking that the Anglican communion was/is more Catholic than it actually was/is.
I don't think I'm deluding myself. I don't know if you're including me in that group or not. If I didn't think Anglicanism, including my own Episcopal church, had valid Apostolic Succession and the genuine Sacramental real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I'd go elsewhere.
When I first became a Christian (not raised in any religion at all, though Jewish by blood), I picked the Roman Catholic Church (on the ground that, as I understood it at the time, everything else broke away from it (I don't think Eastern Orthodoxy was on my radar, though Lewis mentioned it, or remotely in my area of northern Florida in the early 1980s)), asked so many questions the lay people could not answer about what seemed to me to be basic and vital theological issues that (God bless them!) the local church set me up with a very nice nun as a sort of tutor, who mainly helped me find the C.S. Lewis books I wanted to read (again, early 80s, northern Florida, very little available locally at all). When I went to college, there were some issues I had with the RC Church so I contacted every single denomination in the phone book and had them send me literature about their church and what it believed (OMG the world without the internet seems so long ago now). I concluded the Episcopal Church, at least in what it officially taught (i.e., not Spong, etc.), was the best fit. Except for a brief period later (still in first 4 years of college) when I experimented with a local Baptist church that my roommate went to (I was still a very new Christian, so EVERYTHING was new to me) for less than a year, I think, I've been an Episcopalian. And I don't believe that it has lost its Apostolic Succession and such. Again, if I thought it had, or had never had it, I'd go back to Rome. They have had two excellent Popes recently, Francis and Leo, but I consider the Anglican (and thus Episcopal) Church to be genuinely Catholic. Reformed Catholic, but not un-Catholic.
Again, I don't think I'm deluding myself, and I don't know how you distinguish "Anglo-Catholics" like me from whatever the bad kind you're referring to, or if you do.
Cards on the table, I do think that many Anglo-Catholics are deluding themselves by thinking that the Anglican communion was/is more Catholic than it actually was/is.
I don't think I'm deluding myself. I don't know if you're including me in that group or not. If I didn't think Anglicanism, including my own Episcopal church, had valid Apostolic Succession and the genuine Sacramental real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I'd go elsewhere.
I wouldn’t take it personally, my preferred style of worship is at the low end of the spectrum, with worship band, and appears to be described in this thread as an ‘entry level’ thing.
Cards on the table, I do think that many Anglo-Catholics are deluding themselves by thinking that the Anglican communion was/is more Catholic than it actually was/is.
I don't think I'm deluding myself. I don't know if you're including me in that group or not. If I didn't think Anglicanism, including my own Episcopal church, had valid Apostolic Succession and the genuine Sacramental real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I'd go elsewhere.
I wouldn’t take it personally, my preferred style of worship is at the low end of the spectrum, with worship band, and appears to be described in this thread as an ‘entry level’ thing.
I’m totally fine with all kinds of worship styles. (When I describe myself as Anglo-Catholic, I sometimes have to explain that I’m not remotely thinking about things like the number of candles on the altar, but about sacramental theology.) I’m thinking of the theology and my understanding of the nature of the doctrines and ecclesial matters above. Hoping @Gamma Gamaliel responds soon. (Accusations of lying, or lying to oneself, are one of my very, very biggest buttons. When I became a Christian in the first place, making sure that I was not lying to myself and “buying into something” because I thought it would be pleasant, rather than true was, and is, absolutely critical, for various reasons which would themselves be a long post.)
Don’t get me wrong, when there are at least two people who have a disagreement on something, at least one of them must be at least partly incorrect, but I think that’s a very, very, very different thing than the idea that they are deluding themselves. That would in my view be intellectual dishonesty, and a sin. Perhaps an extremely serious sin, depending.
(Unless @Gamma Gamaliel means “deluding themselves” to merely mean a slightly flowery way of saying “incorrect, in his view,” and not “willful ignorance,” which I think it only occurred to me in just the last few minutes might be what he actually meant… 😳 (oops?) If so, I’m sorry for taking it literally and defending myself against a presumed accusation that may not have been there at all! 😳😳😳 @Gamma Gamaliel is normally very nice, so it threw me a bit…)
@ChastMastr I think @Gamma Gamaliel is referring to a specifically English thing. Archbishop Michael Ramsey got on very well with the Roman Catholic Archbishops of Westminster alongside whom he served, and the same happened with their successors. This meant that ARCIC flourished and progressed rapidly. It is clear from things I have read, and what I heard in the very early 1990s, that the idea of union between the two churches was seen as credible, especially in the most fervently Anglo-Catholic circles, many of which were in London. Some took this as far as acting as if it had already happened, and were therefore horribly shocked and surprised when the ordination of women, among other factors, meant that all of this was put to one side. The death of Basil Hume was probably the last straw.
@ChastMastr I think @Gamma Gamaliel is referring to a specifically English thing. Archbishop Michael Ramsey got on very well with the Roman Catholic Archbishops of Westminster alongside whom he served, and the same happened with their successors. This meant that ARCIC flourished and progressed rapidly. It is clear from things I have read, and what I heard in the very early 1990s, that the idea of union between the two churches was seen as credible, especially in the most fervently Anglo-Catholic circles, many of which were in London. Some took this as far as acting as if it had already happened, and were therefore horribly shocked and surprised when the ordination of women, among other factors, meant that all of this was put to one side. The death of Basil Hume was probably the last straw.
Oh, I’m not thinking about any kind of reunification (in this world, anyway) at all, myself.
And @Heavenlyannie if I used the term 'entry-level' to refer to the style of worship prevalent in churches like yours then equally I meant no offence. I can be flippant at times. I certainly wouldn't regard such worship as 'invalid' or not 'true worship' in any way any more than I'd consider that I was always on track and fully engaged when worshipping in whatever context - whether at home or in church.
It'd take me a while to unpack what I was getting at, @ChastMastr but I've heard sermons by 'Flying Bishops' and others that would make you think that the Reformation hadn't taken place at all. There seems an anomaly to me that Anglo-Catholics claim continuation from the pre-Reformation RCC in Britain whilst not themselves being in communion with Rome. Particularly those who have pictures of the Pope in their churches or who breach Anglican canon law by using the Roman missal.
Yes, of course there was continuity in the sense that former RC clergy became Anglican clergy when Henry VIII split from Rome. It's not as if they all stood down to be replaced by new guys.
Neither would I speculate about the Real Presence or otherwise in the Anglican eucharist. All I would say there is that for better or worse you can have someone receiving communion believing themselves to be receiving the Body and Blood of Christ alongside someone who believes it's purely symbolic. We can't do 'forensic' tests to 'prove' which of them is right.
Neither do I believe that either of them are any less precious in the sight of God whichever view they hold.
I may be cheeky and it's not really my place to say so but I tend to think that some Anglo-Catholics really would be better off as RC or Orthodox and some low church Anglicans really would be more suitably at home in a Baptist or independent evangelical setting.
That doesn't mean that I believe that only Broad Church middle-ground Anglicans are the only 'true' Anglicans but it does seem to me to be a tipping point at the High end where the logical next step is to topple over the Tiber or the Bosphorus and a scrapey, scrapey point at the snake-belly low end where dropping out of the bottom is an inevitability.
Whatever the case, I consider Anglicans of all stripes to be my lovely brothers and sisters in Christ and I value them highly.
@ThunderBunk - yes, although you are much better at the detail than I am.
Archbishop Ramsey was also very keen on reunion with the Methodists of course. That died a death and I think it was the Anglo-Catholics who scuppered it.
I met Ramsey once. He's fondly remembered and I can see why.
I'd certainly rate him as an outstanding Archbishop. I was and remain a big Rowan Williams fan of course.
And @Heavenlyannie if I used the term 'entry-level' to refer to the style of worship prevalent in churches like yours then equally I meant no offence. I can be flippant at times. I certainly wouldn't regard such worship as 'invalid' or not 'true worship' in any way any more than I'd consider that I was always on track and fully engaged when worshipping in whatever context - whether at home or in church.
It'd take me a while to unpack what I was getting at, @ChastMastr but I've heard sermons by 'Flying Bishops' and others that would make you think that the Reformation hadn't taken place at all. There seems an anomaly to me that Anglo-Catholics claim continuation from the pre-Reformation RCC in Britain whilst not themselves being in communion with Rome. Particularly those who have pictures of the Pope in their churches or who breach Anglican canon law by using the Roman missal.
Yes, of course there was continuity in the sense that former RC clergy became Anglican clergy when Henry VIII split from Rome. It's not as if they all stood down to be replaced by new guys.
Neither would I speculate about the Real Presence or otherwise in the Anglican eucharist. All I would say there is that for better or worse you can have someone receiving communion believing themselves to be receiving the Body and Blood of Christ alongside someone who believes it's purely symbolic. We can't do 'forensic' tests to 'prove' which of them is right.
Neither do I believe that either of them are any less precious in the sight of God whichever view they hold.
I may be cheeky and it's not really my place to say so but I tend to think that some Anglo-Catholics really would be better off as RC or Orthodox and some low church Anglicans really would be more suitably at home in a Baptist or independent evangelical setting.
That doesn't mean that I believe that only Broad Church middle-ground Anglicans are the only 'true' Anglicans but it does seem to me to be a tipping point at the High end where the logical next step is to topple over the Tiber or the Bosphorus and a scrapey, scrapey point at the snake-belly low end where dropping out of the bottom is an inevitability.
Whatever the case, I consider Anglicans of all stripes to be my lovely brothers and sisters in Christ and I value them highly.
Thank you. I think I must’ve taken you to mean something different (see last few comments), and it’s not like you said I was one of those people.
Re “someone who believes it's purely symbolic”…
In the Episcopal Church, our official doctrine is “Christ's body and blood are really present in the sacrament of the eucharist and received by faith.”
Anglican eucharistic theologies universally affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though Evangelical Anglicans believe that this is a pneumatic presence, while those of an Anglo-Catholic churchmanship believe this is a corporeal presence.
I’m used to “merely symbolic” as the view held by the Southern Baptist churches I’ve known (in college, etc.), but not in official Anglican theology at all, whether Anglo-Catholic or otherwise.
@Alan29 can say more about this than I can, possibly, but as I understand it there is no-one more Anglican than a member of the Ordinariate. They can make very strange bedfellows for other strands of Roman Catholic in this fair isle.
@Alan29 can say more about this than I can, possibly, but as I understand it there is no-one more Anglican than a member of the Ordinariate. They can make very strange bedfellows for other strands of Roman Catholic in this fair isle.
Well their presence in the RCC certainly demonstrates one meaning of the adjective "catholic" as in diverse.
The Ordinariate isn't exactly thriving in the UK. It has been financially bailed out at least once by the wider hierarchy.
And @Heavenlyannie if I used the term 'entry-level' to refer to the style of worship prevalent in churches like yours then equally I meant no offence. I can be flippant at times. I certainly wouldn't regard such worship as 'invalid' or not 'true worship' in any way any more than I'd consider that I was always on track and fully engaged when worshipping in whatever context - whether at home or in church.
It'd take me a while to unpack what I was getting at, @ChastMastr but I've heard sermons by 'Flying Bishops' and others that would make you think that the Reformation hadn't taken place at all. There seems an anomaly to me that Anglo-Catholics claim continuation from the pre-Reformation RCC in Britain whilst not themselves being in communion with Rome. Particularly those who have pictures of the Pope in their churches or who breach Anglican canon law by using the Roman missal.
Yes, of course there was continuity in the sense that former RC clergy became Anglican clergy when Henry VIII split from Rome. It's not as if they all stood down to be replaced by new guys.
Neither would I speculate about the Real Presence or otherwise in the Anglican eucharist. All I would say there is that for better or worse you can have someone receiving communion believing themselves to be receiving the Body and Blood of Christ alongside someone who believes it's purely symbolic. We can't do 'forensic' tests to 'prove' which of them is right.
Neither do I believe that either of them are any less precious in the sight of God whichever view they hold.
I may be cheeky and it's not really my place to say so but I tend to think that some Anglo-Catholics really would be better off as RC or Orthodox and some low church Anglicans really would be more suitably at home in a Baptist or independent evangelical setting.
That doesn't mean that I believe that only Broad Church middle-ground Anglicans are the only 'true' Anglicans but it does seem to me to be a tipping point at the High end where the logical next step is to topple over the Tiber or the Bosphorus and a scrapey, scrapey point at the snake-belly low end where dropping out of the bottom is an inevitability.
Whatever the case, I consider Anglicans of all stripes to be my lovely brothers and sisters in Christ and I value them highly.
I'v just spent half an hour drafting a response to this and it seems to have disappeared into the ether! I'll try again. Lots of things to comment on.
1. Yes, many extreme Anglo-catholics seem to live in a sort of cloud-cuckoo land. Part of that though is to imagine that the Roman Catholic Church is a secret garden of lace and nostalgia rather than the broad and down to earth reality, hence the reluctance of many of them to 'submit' since they must sense that the real thing would be quite uncomfortable for them.
2. Extreme evangelicals are a different case. There seems to have been a massive American influence into the C of E in recent years, which has led to the abandonment of most semblance of an Anglican identity, as exemplified in the church mentioned in the OP.
3. The C of E as 'via media', as others have said above, was historically seen as a middle way between Calvin and Luther. I would say though, that today's understanding of it as between Catholic and Protestant must always have been implicit in the phrase as well. Politically it would have been very difficult for anyone during the reign of Edward VI to express any sort of sympathy with Catholic doctrine or practice, so the idea of members of the C of E admitting their affinity with the pre-reformation tradition would have been anathema. A bit like supporters of the EU daring to open their mouths in the Boris Johnson led Tory party.
But all over England were many faithful priests and devout communities of Christians who didn't stop believing what they always had, but who were forced to conform to new ways. Some of the more courageous gave up their lives for that; others, such as the rich Recusant aristocrats, managed to survive while clinging on to their traditional faith. However, the vast majority did neither, and few would have been convinced Protestants. As Eamon Duffy has shown in The Voices of Morebath, priests like Sir Christopher Trichay were not careerists like the Vicar of Bray, but nevertheless tried to serve their people faithfully throughout all the various changes of regime and policy. Sir Christopher would have obeyed the law and used the Book of Common Prayer rite while no doubt in his heart believing that he was continuing to offer the sacrifice of the Mass as he had for years.
That tradition clearly 'went underground' but continued to remain part of the C of E's identity. The revival of Catholic understandings in the 19th century was not a radical discontinuity with Anglican tradition but a rediscovery and reinvigoration. As Reformation-era taboos became irrelevant, and as attitudes in both churches evolved (especially with the RCC since Vatican 2), hardline black-and-white dogma makes little sense any more.
4. The Church of England is inclusive and tolerant of many views. Officially however it draws limits: as to the Eucharist, the extremes ruled out are a belief in Transubstantiation as it was understood in the 16th century, and a memorialist view which does not recognise the real, albeit spiritual, presence of the Lord in the sacrament. There may well be those who receive communion while believing something outside of those limits, but the Church doesn't insist on a theological exam beforehand.
I'd probably meet you somewhere half-way on that @angloid insofar that I think Duffy provides a valuable corrective to an uber-Protestant understanding of the Reformation in these islands but also that he 'over-eggs the pudding' to some extent.
The idea that there remained a secretive, underground incipient 'Catholicism' within the CofE just waiting for someone like Laud and the later Oxford Movement to reignite it reminds me of the equal and opposite tendency within some independent evangelical groups to imagine that there were all manner of secret underground proto-Protestants during the middle ages just waiting for Hus and Wycliffe to light the blue touch-paper.
I'm not saying that 'Catholic' elements were entirely eradicated. Heck, we Orthodox tend to see RCs and Protestants as two sides of the same coin to some extent.
And yes, until very recently I'd have seen even evangelical Anglicans as closer to a more pneumatic understanding of the eucharist than independent evangelicals. These days even many Baptists seem to have a less 'memorialist' view of the eucharist than many evangelical Anglicans.
I don't know whether this is down to US influence or whether it's simply copy-cat behaviour of churches here or in the US that appear to get bums on seats.
The former vicar of our local evangelical Anglican parish is no longer in Anglican ministry but in an independent evangelical charismatic church elsewhere. I remember him and his wife visiting mega-churches when on holiday in the US and coming back raving about how wonderful they thought they were.
And @Heavenlyannie if I used the term 'entry-level' to refer to the style of worship prevalent in churches like yours then equally I meant no offence. I can be flippant at times. I certainly wouldn't regard such worship as 'invalid' or not 'true worship' in any way any more than I'd consider that I was always on track and fully engaged when worshipping in whatever context - whether at home or in church.
It'd take me a while to unpack what I was getting at, @ChastMastr but I've heard sermons by 'Flying Bishops' and others that would make you think that the Reformation hadn't taken place at all. There seems an anomaly to me that Anglo-Catholics claim continuation from the pre-Reformation RCC in Britain whilst not themselves being in communion with Rome. Particularly those who have pictures of the Pope in their churches or who breach Anglican canon law by using the Roman missal.
Yes, of course there was continuity in the sense that former RC clergy became Anglican clergy when Henry VIII split from Rome. It's not as if they all stood down to be replaced by new guys.
Neither would I speculate about the Real Presence or otherwise in the Anglican eucharist. All I would say there is that for better or worse you can have someone receiving communion believing themselves to be receiving the Body and Blood of Christ alongside someone who believes it's purely symbolic. We can't do 'forensic' tests to 'prove' which of them is right.
Neither do I believe that either of them are any less precious in the sight of God whichever view they hold.
I may be cheeky and it's not really my place to say so but I tend to think that some Anglo-Catholics really would be better off as RC or Orthodox and some low church Anglicans really would be more suitably at home in a Baptist or independent evangelical setting.
That doesn't mean that I believe that only Broad Church middle-ground Anglicans are the only 'true' Anglicans but it does seem to me to be a tipping point at the High end where the logical next step is to topple over the Tiber or the Bosphorus and a scrapey, scrapey point at the snake-belly low end where dropping out of the bottom is an inevitability.
Whatever the case, I consider Anglicans of all stripes to be my lovely brothers and sisters in Christ and I value them highly.
Thank you. I think I must’ve taken you to mean something different (see last few comments), and it’s not like you said I was one of those people.
Re “someone who believes it's purely symbolic”…
In the Episcopal Church, our official doctrine is “Christ's body and blood are really present in the sacrament of the eucharist and received by faith.”
Anglican eucharistic theologies universally affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though Evangelical Anglicans believe that this is a pneumatic presence, while those of an Anglo-Catholic churchmanship believe this is a corporeal presence.
I’m used to “merely symbolic” as the view held by the Southern Baptist churches I’ve known (in college, etc.), but not in official Anglican theology at all, whether Anglo-Catholic or otherwise.
It may be official doctrine but that doesn't say anything about whether or not someone in the pews actually believes it. Lots of people go to church for reasons other than doctrinal agreement. But also, memorialism is really not uncommon amongst Evangelical Anglicans nowadays ime, at least in England and doubtless Sydney too.
Bishop Ryle on the Eucharist (1878): "Why was the Lord's Supper ordained? It was ordained for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we thereby receive. The bread which in the Lord's Supper is broken, given, and eaten, is meant to remind us of Christ's body given on the cross for our sins. The wine which is poured out and received, is meant to remind us of Christ's blood shed on the cross for our sins. He who eats that bread and drinks that wine is reminded, in the most striking and forcible manner — of the benefits Christ has obtained for his soul, and of the death of Christ as the hinge and turning point on which all those benefits depend ...
The "continual remembrance of Christ's death" was the one grand object for which the Lord's Supper was ordained. He who goes further than this is adding to God's Word, and does so to the great peril of his soul.
Now, is it reasonable to suppose that our Lord would appoint an ordinance for so simple a purpose as "remembering His death?" It most certainly is! ...
To bring back the doctrine of the "real presence" ... is to pour contempt on our Martyrs, and to upset the first principles of the Protestant Reformation. No, rather, it is to ignore the plain teaching of God's Word, and do dishonour to the priestly office of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Bible teaches expressly that the Lord's Supper was ordained to be "a remembrance of Christ's body and blood," and not a sacrificial offering".
Surely this makes him an Anglican memorialist, 150 years ago?
I'd probably meet you somewhere half-way on that @angloid insofar that I think Duffy provides a valuable corrective to an uber-Protestant understanding of the Reformation in these islands but also that he 'over-eggs the pudding' to some extent.
The idea that there remained a secretive, underground incipient 'Catholicism' within the CofE just waiting for someone like Laud and the later Oxford Movement to reignite it reminds me of the equal and opposite tendency within some independent evangelical groups to imagine that there were all manner of secret underground proto-Protestants during the middle ages just waiting for Hus and Wycliffe to light the blue touch-paper.
When I said that the Catholic tradition 'went underground' I don't mean quasi-literally like that, is if there were a group of covert Papists just awaiting the right moment to strike. Not at all. Within a few generations 'original Catholics' like the vicar of Morebath would be no more. General Protestant teaching and official propaganda would ensure that few members of the C of E in those days would see themselves as Catholics.
I think what I was getting at, was more that the old teaching and practices lingered on in a sort of fossilised form. But perhaps more than that: the structure of the BCP and its offices was basically monastic (indeed it could be argued that Cranmer wished to make every parish a monastic community). The ancient buildings (except for most monastic foundations) remained in use and must have influenced people's imagination. The liturgical year, however stripped down and in parts neglected, would continue to be observed. All part of folk memory so that when people like Laud, or later the Tractarians, drew attention to our true Anglican heritage it began to make sense.
Of course there can be a lot of tendentious fantasy and wanting-to-believe about a lot of this. But there must be some reason why the C of E today – apart from a vocal and growing minority – looks a lot closer to the church of Henry VIII than that of Edward VI. (Far from identical of course, thank God!)
I'd probably meet you somewhere half-way on that @angloid insofar that I think Duffy provides a valuable corrective to an uber-Protestant understanding of the Reformation in these islands but also that he 'over-eggs the pudding' to some extent.
The idea that there remained a secretive, underground incipient 'Catholicism' within the CofE just waiting for someone like Laud and the later Oxford Movement to reignite it reminds me of the equal and opposite tendency within some independent evangelical groups to imagine that there were all manner of secret underground proto-Protestants during the middle ages just waiting for Hus and Wycliffe to light the blue touch-paper.
I think what I was getting at, was more that the old teaching and practices lingered on in a sort of fossilised form. But perhaps more than that: the structure of the BCP and its offices was basically monastic (indeed it could be argued that Cranmer wished to make every parish a monastic community). The ancient buildings (except for most monastic foundations) remained in use and must have influenced people's imagination. The liturgical year, however stripped down and in parts neglected, would continue to be observed. All part of folk memory so that when people like Laud, or later the Tractarians, drew attention to our true Anglican heritage it began to make sense.
I think that continuing to worship in buildings that had been stripped bare in the Reformation would have re-enforced peoples feelings that things had changed, that something had been removed from them that meant something to their forebears. Even now, people get upset when a church is remodelled or even closed that their parents got married in, or that Aunt Aggie bequeathed something to in her will. These things have mighty strong emotional associations. Those who really wanted to turn their back on all the disruption became underground Catholics often at great cost to life and limb. By the time time of Laud etc I can imagine people in the pew using the current teenage term for exasperation "Whatever!"
Well Ryle was a noted evangelical in his day and opponent of ritualism, so his view might be expected. Ive no idea how typical it was.
I quoted him in response to Gamaliel's comment "I'd have seen even evangelical Anglicans as closer to a more pneumatic understanding of the eucharist than independent evangelicals. These days even many Baptists seem to have a less 'memorialist' view of the eucharist than many evangelical Anglicans". This seemed to suggest that a memorialist view is new among Anglicans, when it isn't. But, as you say, I don't know how many others took Ryle's line.
I don’t think Gracious Rebel was suggesting there was anything wrong with a page for sermon notes.
I'm confused as to why it was mentioned, then.
I was just trying to paint a fuller picture of what this church was like, in response to Gamma Gamaliel imagining erroneous extra details that I had not mentioned. I was not passing judgement on the sermon notes thing at all, just thought it was unusual, and symbolic of the type of church this was.
A Baptist church I attended many years ago had, on its weekly bulletin, the sermon's "headings" with spaces underneath for writing notes. It was a source of some amusement that the minister often had to skimp on or omit the final sections! He was interesting as he was Scottish and combined the best of both charismatic and reformed traditions - which I found very rich.
Well Ryle was a noted evangelical in his day and opponent of ritualism, so his view might be expected. Ive no idea how typical it was.
As a regular worshipper and occasional priestly celebrant at the church where James Bell Cox was vicar during the regime of Bishop Ryle, I have to say that Ryle is not one of our heroes! Fr Bell Cox was imprisoned for liturgical improprieties such as lighting candles, facing east at the altar, and other things which are either commonplace or outmoded these days. To be fair, Bp Ryle did not initiate the prosecution and apparently disagreed with it, but he was a virulent opponent of sacramentalism and anything which appeared to threaten the Protestant character of the C of E as he saw it.
The attitude of today's evangelicals, even the extreme ones, seems to be more 'live and let live.' Times change.
Sure, that's how I understood the reference to the blank space for sermon notes, @Gracious Rebel. Unfortunately, I'd started to 'fill the gaps' with imaginative notes of my own. My apologies.
@Angloid - yes, I can see that but when you say 'true Anglican heritage' in that context aren't you really saying Catholic heritage because those things you mention were all inherited from the RCs, even if in a somewhat attenuated form?
I am not suggesting that Anglicanism doesn't have a distinctive heritage of its own. Far from it. But what you are citing are Catholic features applied to a break-away state-church setting.
@Baptist Trainfan - I may not have expressed myself clearly enough. I wouldn't suggest that 'memorialism' is a relatively new thing in the Anglican communion. It goes back a fair way. What I might do though, if this makes sense, is to draw a distinction between 'memorialism' and 'mere memorialism.'
By and large, I'd suggest that the lower end of the Anglican spectrum tended towards 'memorialism+' if we might put it that way - rather than the 'real absence' as it were.
The very low evangelical end could and did tend towards memorialism - hence Ryle's rant.
Back in my Baptist days I was accused by members of the house-group of being very 'Catholic' in my views on communion, but was backed up by a former Anglican. Quite a number of people in that church had grown up RC and so reacted when I expressed a more 'realised' or 'pneumatic' view of the Lord's Supper.
I was heading higher up the candle even then, although I'd certainly not disparage the way Baptists approach communion. They took it seriously.
The problem I have with some - not all - evangelical Anglicans is that they can take an almost studiously slap-dash approach to it.
"An almost studiously slap-dash approach" seems to be a contradiction in terms - but I know what you mean. Our church (Ecumenical/Baptist) takes a formal-but-not-stiff-and-starchy approach.
@Angloid - yes, I can see that but when you say 'true Anglican heritage' in that context aren't you really saying Catholic heritage because those things you mention were all inherited from the RCs, even if in a somewhat attenuated form?
I am not suggesting that Anglicanism doesn't have a distinctive heritage of its own. Far from it. But what you are citing are Catholic features applied to a break-away state-church setting.
I think you've hit the nub of the matter there. If what we call the Anglican tradition started from scratch in the 16th century, yes you have a point. But if course it didn't. Any more than the Baptist, Reformed or any other tradition. 90% at least, probably a lot more, of all those traditions are held in common with all Christians from Ethiopian Orthodox to Quakers. The things that divide us do so because they are matters of sincerely held belief, but they are still much less important than the fundamentals of our faith.
Anglicans in particular think of our Church as one continuous tradition from the Apostles. Maybe 'anglo-catholics' lay more emphasis on that, but it is basic to Anglican self-understanding. Is the tradition of Cuthbert and Bede, of the great saints of the Middle Ages – English and other – something foreign that we have borrowed, or does it belong as much to us as to Roman Catholics or anyone else?
I'd have thought that the "northern" Christians such as Cuthbert would prefer to trace their ancestry back to the Celtic, rather than the Roman, tradition. But of course we've had hundreds of years of synthesis since then!
Well Ryle was a noted evangelical in his day and opponent of ritualism, so his view might be expected. Ive no idea how typical it was.
As a regular worshipper and occasional priestly celebrant at the church where James Bell Cox was vicar during the regime of Bishop Ryle, I have to say that Ryle is not one of our heroes! Fr Bell Cox was imprisoned for liturgical improprieties such as lighting candles, facing east at the altar, and other things which are either commonplace or outmoded these days. To be fair, Bp Ryle did not initiate the prosecution and apparently disagreed with it, but he was a virulent opponent of sacramentalism and anything which appeared to threaten the Protestant character of the C of E as he saw it.
The attitude of today's evangelicals, even the extreme ones, seems to be more 'live and let live.' Times change.
I wonder if the RCC was the strong presence it became in Liverpool when Ryle was Bishop there. It's not unknown for Anglicans to go low in Catholic/Irish areas or high in chapel areas.
The "continual remembrance of Christ's death" was the one grand object for which the Lord's Supper was ordained. He who goes further than this is adding to God's Word, and does so to the great peril of his soul. (Snip)
To bring back the doctrine of the "real presence" ... is to pour contempt on our Martyrs, and to upset the first principles of the Protestant Reformation. No, rather, it is to ignore the plain teaching of God's Word, and do dishonour to the priestly office of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Bible teaches expressly that the Lord's Supper was ordained to be "a remembrance of Christ's body and blood," and not a sacrificial offering".
Odd. Did this gentleman not realize that the Reformation started with the Lutherans, who most assuredly believe in the Real Presence? He talks as if the only two options are memorialism alone and full scale out-and-out "sacrifice-of-the-Mass" types.
I don’t think Gracious Rebel was suggesting there was anything wrong with a page for sermon notes.
I'm confused as to why it was mentioned, then.
I was just trying to paint a fuller picture of what this church was like, in response to Gamma Gamaliel imagining erroneous extra details that I had not mentioned. I was not passing judgement on the sermon notes thing at all, just thought it was unusual, and symbolic of the type of church this was.
Just as I thought.
I've never been to a church which offered something on which to write notes about the sermon, and I wonder how many people (in the case of the service mentioned) availed themselves of the facility...
Comments
Ok. Yes. Sorry.
I made an unwarranted assumption.
Apologies.
It very much sounds like an Anglican church I visited recently. Similar TV quiz show / 'One Show' format.
A friend who attends such a church tells me he's beginning to get fed up with everything having to be accompanied by a video or animation of some kind.
I certainly understand the appeal of this approach but as @angloid has asked, is it recognisably Anglican?
In response to @Alan29's observation about Anglican churches moving closer to the 'Churches of the Reformation', I'd say that historically that was always the case. The 'via media' was meant to be a middle-way between Calvinism and Lutheranism, not Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
More 'ritualistic' elements only began to creep in during the early years of the reign of Charies I and also from the mid to late 1800s.
If anything, I'd suggest that evangelical and charismatic Anglican churches having moved closer to the churches of the radical reformation - Baptists and Independents - rather than Lutheran or Presbyterian churches.
I've come across Baptist and URC churches with a more liturgical feel than some evangelical Anglican parishes.
At that end of the spectrum, denominational allegiance is less important than whether there's a good worship band or youth work or a lively preacher or some other source of attraction.
I've known people leave independent 'non-denominational' churches to attend Anglican churches of this kind as they feel it's the more 'happening' place to be. The worship style would be almost identical in both.
At the risk of sounding patronising, I can see how it can be an 'entry-level' thing and that it can attract and retain people who might otherwise find church 'boring' or incomprehensible.
You're not wrong. But as a sympathetic outsider you must realise that everything said about Anglicans can be contradicted by an example from other Anglicans. Leaving theology aside for a moment (anyway this is Ecclesiantics) and looking at liturgical trends, what seems to have happened in the last few decades is that liturgically-minded churches (particularly cathedrals) have become less inhibited in taking on very 'catholic' styles. Far more cathedrals regularly use incense than used to be the case, and I've witnessed a Corpus Christi procession at St Paul's cathedral in London. The full Holy Week rites are no longer seen as something for just a few 'extreme' parishes. Whereas many 'evangelical' churches seem to have ditched formal liturgy altogether, as this thread shows.
I wonder if the liturgists who were behind the effective replacement of the Prayer Book by Common Worship (a 'compendium' of liturgies and suggestions rather than a comprehensive equivalent of something like the Missal) were over-naive? As if they gave free reign to informal forms of worship because they expected them to be used in exceptional contexts or mission-focussed events, while the norm of worship would be the Parish Eucharist. Yet many evangelicals never really saw the point of liturgy and only used it because they were told to. Having been given carte blanche they constructed services which had little basis in liturgical principles.
None of what I have said should be taken as a criticism of other traditions outside the Anglican church. The ultimate non-liturgical expression is the Quaker meeting for worship, for which I have the greatest respect. But I don't understand Anglicans who don't take liturgy seriously.
Well, he also tried to interpret the 39 Articles in 'Catholic' terms.
How anyone can do that, particularly someone as clever as Newman, is beyond me. The 39 Articles are as Protestant a document as anyone could wish to see, although not Big R enough for the Reformed.
The idea that the via media was a mid-point between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism developed gradually it seems to me and wouldn't have occurred to the original Elizabethan divines.
That said, the Pope very much admired Hooker's writings and later Laud was offered a Cardinal's hat in an attempt to lure him across the Tiber.
So there was certainly 'something' in Anglicanism that struck a chord with RCs back then. I've heard senior RC clerics praise aspects of Anglican theological education and clerical training for instance and lament that standards are dropping - as they perceive it.
So I'm not dismissing what you are saying out of hand, simply observing that for much of its history most Anglicans wouldn't have understood these things the way we might now.
The Puritans were mightily exercised I think, when Laud refused to identify the Pope with the Anti-Christ. Many moderate as well as more Puritanical Anglicans would have believed that to be the case back then.
@angloid - I think many evangelicals do have a liturgy - an unwritten one. They may not recognise that they have one, but they do. There's a very observable and standardised format to most 'charismatic-lite' settings these days and you can pretty much anticipate what you are going to get in advance.
I'm not saying that to criticise it. But even the most apparently spontaneous forms of worship become standardised over time.
The worship song medley format has been standard for 40 years or so now and the TV chat-show format with a mix of interviews, short talks, videos and worship songs is now becoming standard in churches of that ilk. It will also evolve in due course. AI elements?
I don't have an issue with those developments in and of themselves, although they aren't my bag, but I do wonder whether the baby is going out with the bathwater. There's little sense of 'mystery' and the numinous and it can become 'entertainment' with a few Bible verses sprinkled in.
Equally, of course, highly liturgical services can become all about spectacle and flummery.
Interpret the 39 Articles in a 'Catholic' way?
There's a kind of relentless and remorseless logic about Newman's journey towards Rome. That looks all very 'Western' from an 'Eastern' perspective.
I recently met a young Methodist minister who'd written his doctoral thesis on Newman.
'Watch out!' I quipped. 'His logic will take you on a slippery slope ...'
He laughed and riposted, 'But I haven't accepted his first premise.'
It's become something of an Orthodox trope to say that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are two sides of the same coin and not as incompatible as some of their adherents think. That can be used in a polemical way of course, 'Look at the Latin West, it's all so juridical and rational. They ought to abandon that mindset and acquire ours ...'
I do think there is something in it, though, insofar as the Reformers inevitably imbibed late medieval Scholasticism - for better or worse.
Cards on the table, I do think that many Anglo-Catholics are deluding themselves by thinking that the Anglican communion was/is more Catholic than it actually was/is.
Using Newman's logic they should really cross the Tiber or the Bosphorus. Some Orthodox would like to think he'd have done the latter had Orthodoxy been more prominent in Victorian Britain. That's purely speculative of course.
The question is, though: Does Rome or the Eastern Orthodox (or the Oriental Orthodox for that matter) really want or need an influx of more hardliners - as @Alan29 has already asked somewhere?
Is the 'Anglican project' doomed?
Whatever else we might say I agree with Diarmaid MacCulloch that Anglicanism represents a 'unique' response to the Reformation that is very distinct from either Lutheranism and the Reformed tradition.
I think there is a recognisable Anglican spirituality which can be found not only in the historic prayer books and the various liturgies developed over the years - and not only in the poetry of Herbert, Donne, Treharne and the hymns from both the 'high' and 'low church' Anglican traditions - but out in the pews or the bucket chairs.
It's none of my business of course, but I do think that this detectable but recognisable terroir is under threat. I'd be sad to see it go. I'm not sure what the answer is. Some kind of 'Sealed Knot' re-enactment version of The Prayer Book Society or an ecclesiastical National Trust ... ?
Liturgy has to be lived.
We can't knock churches like the one in the OP for living out the small l liturgical forms they are developing - much as it may not accord with our own tastes or proclivities.
I'm a convert to liturgy - or Liturgy - of course - so I'm bound to say that.
Yet I meet Anglicans, including a woman I know who is going through ordination training, who just don't get traditional liturgies at all. This woman is married to a retired vicar and spent her entire church life in charismatic evangelical Anglican circles. She's enjoying the theological parts of her course but finds the liturgical elements tedious in the extreme. She can't see the point of them. Even though she's now in a more liberal setting she still wants worship songs and choruses.
The same applies to a Scottish friend who has moved to a far more liberal theological position. Growing up in Scotland she says she was barely aware of seasonal features like Lent or Advent. Now she has moved on from independent charismatic evangelicalism and has some cathedral connections, she still finds she can't 'relate' to traditional Anglican liturgies - even though she can 'see the point' of them.
As a 'Born Again Liturgist' this raises a number of questions in my mind, as you can imagine.
I'd love it if people could rediscover 'the beauty of holiness' and 'get' liturgies and iconography and so on and so forth - but not everyone does. I can't make them, nor should I try, of course.
Nor do I think that people who go in for 'Game Show' style services are any 'worse' Christians than those who 'go by the book' or go in for more formal or ritualised styles.
And yet ... and yet ... I still can't help thinking that if you are going to be Anglican then you should at least have a semblance of something Anglican about your church services.
Or is that an unreasonable expectation?
One wouldn't go into Harrods franchise and find it looking like a generic supermarket.
"Interpret the 39 Articles in a 'Catholic' way?" This. He want to, he tried to but he knew he had failed.
And when Benedict (a good classical pianist BTW) went to Solemn Evensong in Westminster Abbey he recognised something that was distinctively Anglican in worship and spirituality. Unfortunately his response was to institute the Ordinariate where dissatisfied Anglicans could join the RCC while preserving much of their Liturgy and heritage. This unilateral act caused much pain on the Anglican side and huge embarrassment on the RC side which was not consulted.
There is something about the Western mindset that loves to analyse and try to understand. On the positive side - science and medicine. On the negative side - the need to pin down God and theology in general like a specimen.
There were some prayers (all informal extempore style apart from just before eucharist and the Lords Prayer when words appeared on the screen). Nothing I would call a hymn but 4 or five worship songs with a band.
Nevertheless, the impression I pick up from other RCs is that it's become a 'church within a church' and the view that the very evident preaching and pastoral gifts that some of the Anglican clergy brought with them could have been spread more widely and for greater benefit. As things have turned out it seems like something of a ghetto.
I attended an Ordinariate compline recently which appeared to be the same as the Anglican compline service - which I very much admire - with some Marian elements bolted on.
As a 'both/and' sort of person I'd like to see the 'Western' and 'Eastern' mindsets complementing rather than contradicting each other but that's probably too much to ask for another millennium or so.
There is a point against the OP in here. The alternative to schism can be this sort of takeover, where the original organism is overwhelmed by the 'graft'. This is all the opposite of an actual graft, of course, but this one seems to have got to that point, to me at least. If there had been an actual schism, there is at least a possibility of genuine, separate flourishing.
This analysis may outrage many people, but then I'm outraged by what has happened. So there we are, really. They may do with their outrage as they choose.
I think there have been moves away from theology based on medieval scholasticism since mid 20th century in RC theology. The likes of De Lubac and Rahner who fed into Vat 2 as experts were cut from a different cloth, and the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem were highly influencial in moving along biblical scholarship. Meanwhile nobody has a clue what Lonergan was on about.... so it must have been good.
But humans are curious and have a deep need to understand, and not everyone is content in a Cloud of Unknowing.
As a nerd and one-time trainspotter I understand the wish to categorise everyone and everything. But as a Catholic Christian (of the Anglican variety but that's irrelevant IMHO) I think that God's church is broad enough for everyone - as the RC convert F W Faber wrote, 'we make his love too narrow/ By false limits of our own'.
The problem for me with churches like that in the OP is that they are doing just that. They are presenting a narrow, partial approach to the worship of God which is unsatisfying and alienating for many. The one thing about the Church of England which until recently no-one thought to challenge, is that it exists to serve all people in its respective communities, not to gather individuals into exclusive sects. Not all small L* liturgical churches are exclusive in theology or in attitudes to sexuality etc, but many are, which compounds the problem.
*in view of some comments above I don't describe them as 'non-liturgical', but in the generally accepted sense I think that they are.
An evangelical friend who accompanied me to an Orthodox service considered it too 'prescriptive' and 'strait-jacketed' - although they acknowledged that it was 'very beautiful.'
Conversely, I found their evangelical Anglican service, which was very similar to that described in the OP, rather narrow and unsatisfying.
However we 'do' church someone is going to find it alienating to some extent or other.
One could argue of course that the Anglicans were never as inclusive and all-encompassing as they'd like to think they were as otherwise there wouldn't have been 'Popish recusants' fined for non-attendance or non-conformist groups forming their own congregations.
I read a book recently about Anglo-Catholicism in rural areas. It never really took off in the countryside as it did in towns and cities and in some instances most of the locals left to join the Methodists and the parish church ended up catering to retired incomers from the cities.
I'm not saying that to knock the Anglicans, simply making an observation.
If we have bells and smells that'll alienate some people. If we have PowerPoint slides and guitars that'll put others off.
'I played a pipe and you did not dance, I sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'
Or vice versa.
People recognise sincerity and authenticity though and that can be found anywhere and everywhere.
I s'pose the bottom line for me is that if you are going to be a Baptist say, then be a Baptist. Be the best possible Baptist you can be ad try to exemplify what is good and positive in that tradition.
If you are going to be an Anglican or a Roman Catholic or whatever else then the same applies. You may not look or act identically to all other Anglicans, RCs or Whatever Else's but you should reflect something of the depth and breadth of that tradition - as well as all we hold in common as Christians of whatever stripe.
I don't think I'm deluding myself.
When I first became a Christian (not raised in any religion at all, though Jewish by blood), I picked the Roman Catholic Church (on the ground that, as I understood it at the time, everything else broke away from it (I don't think Eastern Orthodoxy was on my radar, though Lewis mentioned it, or remotely in my area of northern Florida in the early 1980s)), asked so many questions the lay people could not answer about what seemed to me to be basic and vital theological issues that (God bless them!) the local church set me up with a very nice nun as a sort of tutor, who mainly helped me find the C.S. Lewis books I wanted to read (again, early 80s, northern Florida, very little available locally at all). When I went to college, there were some issues I had with the RC Church so I contacted every single denomination in the phone book and had them send me literature about their church and what it believed (OMG the world without the internet seems so long ago now). I concluded the Episcopal Church, at least in what it officially taught (i.e., not Spong, etc.), was the best fit. Except for a brief period later (still in first 4 years of college) when I experimented with a local Baptist church that my roommate went to (I was still a very new Christian, so EVERYTHING was new to me) for less than a year, I think, I've been an Episcopalian. And I don't believe that it has lost its Apostolic Succession and such. Again, if I thought it had, or had never had it, I'd go back to Rome. They have had two excellent Popes recently, Francis and Leo, but I consider the Anglican (and thus Episcopal) Church to be genuinely Catholic. Reformed Catholic, but not un-Catholic.
Again, I don't think I'm deluding myself, and I don't know how you distinguish "Anglo-Catholics" like me from whatever the bad kind you're referring to, or if you do.
I’m totally fine with all kinds of worship styles. (When I describe myself as Anglo-Catholic, I sometimes have to explain that I’m not remotely thinking about things like the number of candles on the altar, but about sacramental theology.) I’m thinking of the theology and my understanding of the nature of the doctrines and ecclesial matters above. Hoping @Gamma Gamaliel responds soon.
Oh, I’m not thinking about any kind of reunification (in this world, anyway) at all, myself.
And @Heavenlyannie if I used the term 'entry-level' to refer to the style of worship prevalent in churches like yours then equally I meant no offence. I can be flippant at times. I certainly wouldn't regard such worship as 'invalid' or not 'true worship' in any way any more than I'd consider that I was always on track and fully engaged when worshipping in whatever context - whether at home or in church.
It'd take me a while to unpack what I was getting at, @ChastMastr but I've heard sermons by 'Flying Bishops' and others that would make you think that the Reformation hadn't taken place at all. There seems an anomaly to me that Anglo-Catholics claim continuation from the pre-Reformation RCC in Britain whilst not themselves being in communion with Rome. Particularly those who have pictures of the Pope in their churches or who breach Anglican canon law by using the Roman missal.
Yes, of course there was continuity in the sense that former RC clergy became Anglican clergy when Henry VIII split from Rome. It's not as if they all stood down to be replaced by new guys.
Neither would I speculate about the Real Presence or otherwise in the Anglican eucharist. All I would say there is that for better or worse you can have someone receiving communion believing themselves to be receiving the Body and Blood of Christ alongside someone who believes it's purely symbolic. We can't do 'forensic' tests to 'prove' which of them is right.
Neither do I believe that either of them are any less precious in the sight of God whichever view they hold.
I may be cheeky and it's not really my place to say so but I tend to think that some Anglo-Catholics really would be better off as RC or Orthodox and some low church Anglicans really would be more suitably at home in a Baptist or independent evangelical setting.
That doesn't mean that I believe that only Broad Church middle-ground Anglicans are the only 'true' Anglicans but it does seem to me to be a tipping point at the High end where the logical next step is to topple over the Tiber or the Bosphorus and a scrapey, scrapey point at the snake-belly low end where dropping out of the bottom is an inevitability.
Whatever the case, I consider Anglicans of all stripes to be my lovely brothers and sisters in Christ and I value them highly.
Archbishop Ramsey was also very keen on reunion with the Methodists of course. That died a death and I think it was the Anglo-Catholics who scuppered it.
I met Ramsey once. He's fondly remembered and I can see why.
I'd certainly rate him as an outstanding Archbishop. I was and remain a big Rowan Williams fan of course.
Thank you. I think I must’ve taken you to mean something different (see last few comments), and it’s not like you said I was one of those people.
Re “someone who believes it's purely symbolic”…
In the Episcopal Church, our official doctrine is “Christ's body and blood are really present in the sacrament of the eucharist and received by faith.”
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/eucharist/
Wikipedia (which I know is not perfect) says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist_in_Anglicanism
I’m used to “merely symbolic” as the view held by the Southern Baptist churches I’ve known (in college, etc.), but not in official Anglican theology at all, whether Anglo-Catholic or otherwise.
Well their presence in the RCC certainly demonstrates one meaning of the adjective "catholic" as in diverse.
The Ordinariate isn't exactly thriving in the UK. It has been financially bailed out at least once by the wider hierarchy.
I'v just spent half an hour drafting a response to this and it seems to have disappeared into the ether! I'll try again. Lots of things to comment on.
1. Yes, many extreme Anglo-catholics seem to live in a sort of cloud-cuckoo land. Part of that though is to imagine that the Roman Catholic Church is a secret garden of lace and nostalgia rather than the broad and down to earth reality, hence the reluctance of many of them to 'submit' since they must sense that the real thing would be quite uncomfortable for them.
2. Extreme evangelicals are a different case. There seems to have been a massive American influence into the C of E in recent years, which has led to the abandonment of most semblance of an Anglican identity, as exemplified in the church mentioned in the OP.
3. The C of E as 'via media', as others have said above, was historically seen as a middle way between Calvin and Luther. I would say though, that today's understanding of it as between Catholic and Protestant must always have been implicit in the phrase as well. Politically it would have been very difficult for anyone during the reign of Edward VI to express any sort of sympathy with Catholic doctrine or practice, so the idea of members of the C of E admitting their affinity with the pre-reformation tradition would have been anathema. A bit like supporters of the EU daring to open their mouths in the Boris Johnson led Tory party.
But all over England were many faithful priests and devout communities of Christians who didn't stop believing what they always had, but who were forced to conform to new ways. Some of the more courageous gave up their lives for that; others, such as the rich Recusant aristocrats, managed to survive while clinging on to their traditional faith. However, the vast majority did neither, and few would have been convinced Protestants. As Eamon Duffy has shown in The Voices of Morebath, priests like Sir Christopher Trichay were not careerists like the Vicar of Bray, but nevertheless tried to serve their people faithfully throughout all the various changes of regime and policy. Sir Christopher would have obeyed the law and used the Book of Common Prayer rite while no doubt in his heart believing that he was continuing to offer the sacrifice of the Mass as he had for years.
That tradition clearly 'went underground' but continued to remain part of the C of E's identity. The revival of Catholic understandings in the 19th century was not a radical discontinuity with Anglican tradition but a rediscovery and reinvigoration. As Reformation-era taboos became irrelevant, and as attitudes in both churches evolved (especially with the RCC since Vatican 2), hardline black-and-white dogma makes little sense any more.
4. The Church of England is inclusive and tolerant of many views. Officially however it draws limits: as to the Eucharist, the extremes ruled out are a belief in Transubstantiation as it was understood in the 16th century, and a memorialist view which does not recognise the real, albeit spiritual, presence of the Lord in the sacrament. There may well be those who receive communion while believing something outside of those limits, but the Church doesn't insist on a theological exam beforehand.
The idea that there remained a secretive, underground incipient 'Catholicism' within the CofE just waiting for someone like Laud and the later Oxford Movement to reignite it reminds me of the equal and opposite tendency within some independent evangelical groups to imagine that there were all manner of secret underground proto-Protestants during the middle ages just waiting for Hus and Wycliffe to light the blue touch-paper.
I'm not saying that 'Catholic' elements were entirely eradicated. Heck, we Orthodox tend to see RCs and Protestants as two sides of the same coin to some extent.
And yes, until very recently I'd have seen even evangelical Anglicans as closer to a more pneumatic understanding of the eucharist than independent evangelicals. These days even many Baptists seem to have a less 'memorialist' view of the eucharist than many evangelical Anglicans.
I don't know whether this is down to US influence or whether it's simply copy-cat behaviour of churches here or in the US that appear to get bums on seats.
The former vicar of our local evangelical Anglican parish is no longer in Anglican ministry but in an independent evangelical charismatic church elsewhere. I remember him and his wife visiting mega-churches when on holiday in the US and coming back raving about how wonderful they thought they were.
So yes, maybe it is US influence.
It may be official doctrine but that doesn't say anything about whether or not someone in the pews actually believes it. Lots of people go to church for reasons other than doctrinal agreement. But also, memorialism is really not uncommon amongst Evangelical Anglicans nowadays ime, at least in England and doubtless Sydney too.
I'm confused as to why it was mentioned, then.
The "continual remembrance of Christ's death" was the one grand object for which the Lord's Supper was ordained. He who goes further than this is adding to God's Word, and does so to the great peril of his soul.
Now, is it reasonable to suppose that our Lord would appoint an ordinance for so simple a purpose as "remembering His death?" It most certainly is! ...
To bring back the doctrine of the "real presence" ... is to pour contempt on our Martyrs, and to upset the first principles of the Protestant Reformation. No, rather, it is to ignore the plain teaching of God's Word, and do dishonour to the priestly office of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Bible teaches expressly that the Lord's Supper was ordained to be "a remembrance of Christ's body and blood," and not a sacrificial offering".
Surely this makes him an Anglican memorialist, 150 years ago?
When I said that the Catholic tradition 'went underground' I don't mean quasi-literally like that, is if there were a group of covert Papists just awaiting the right moment to strike. Not at all. Within a few generations 'original Catholics' like the vicar of Morebath would be no more. General Protestant teaching and official propaganda would ensure that few members of the C of E in those days would see themselves as Catholics.
I think what I was getting at, was more that the old teaching and practices lingered on in a sort of fossilised form. But perhaps more than that: the structure of the BCP and its offices was basically monastic (indeed it could be argued that Cranmer wished to make every parish a monastic community). The ancient buildings (except for most monastic foundations) remained in use and must have influenced people's imagination. The liturgical year, however stripped down and in parts neglected, would continue to be observed. All part of folk memory so that when people like Laud, or later the Tractarians, drew attention to our true Anglican heritage it began to make sense.
Of course there can be a lot of tendentious fantasy and wanting-to-believe about a lot of this. But there must be some reason why the C of E today – apart from a vocal and growing minority – looks a lot closer to the church of Henry VIII than that of Edward VI. (Far from identical of course, thank God!)
I think that continuing to worship in buildings that had been stripped bare in the Reformation would have re-enforced peoples feelings that things had changed, that something had been removed from them that meant something to their forebears. Even now, people get upset when a church is remodelled or even closed that their parents got married in, or that Aunt Aggie bequeathed something to in her will. These things have mighty strong emotional associations. Those who really wanted to turn their back on all the disruption became underground Catholics often at great cost to life and limb. By the time time of Laud etc I can imagine people in the pew using the current teenage term for exasperation "Whatever!"
I guess it was mentioned simply as being a potentially useful addition to the bulletin, and something not necessarily found in other churches.
I quoted him in response to Gamaliel's comment "I'd have seen even evangelical Anglicans as closer to a more pneumatic understanding of the eucharist than independent evangelicals. These days even many Baptists seem to have a less 'memorialist' view of the eucharist than many evangelical Anglicans". This seemed to suggest that a memorialist view is new among Anglicans, when it isn't. But, as you say, I don't know how many others took Ryle's line.
I was just trying to paint a fuller picture of what this church was like, in response to Gamma Gamaliel imagining erroneous extra details that I had not mentioned. I was not passing judgement on the sermon notes thing at all, just thought it was unusual, and symbolic of the type of church this was.
As a regular worshipper and occasional priestly celebrant at the church where James Bell Cox was vicar during the regime of Bishop Ryle, I have to say that Ryle is not one of our heroes! Fr Bell Cox was imprisoned for liturgical improprieties such as lighting candles, facing east at the altar, and other things which are either commonplace or outmoded these days. To be fair, Bp Ryle did not initiate the prosecution and apparently disagreed with it, but he was a virulent opponent of sacramentalism and anything which appeared to threaten the Protestant character of the C of E as he saw it.
The attitude of today's evangelicals, even the extreme ones, seems to be more 'live and let live.' Times change.
@Angloid - yes, I can see that but when you say 'true Anglican heritage' in that context aren't you really saying Catholic heritage because those things you mention were all inherited from the RCs, even if in a somewhat attenuated form?
I am not suggesting that Anglicanism doesn't have a distinctive heritage of its own. Far from it. But what you are citing are Catholic features applied to a break-away state-church setting.
@Baptist Trainfan - I may not have expressed myself clearly enough. I wouldn't suggest that 'memorialism' is a relatively new thing in the Anglican communion. It goes back a fair way. What I might do though, if this makes sense, is to draw a distinction between 'memorialism' and 'mere memorialism.'
By and large, I'd suggest that the lower end of the Anglican spectrum tended towards 'memorialism+' if we might put it that way - rather than the 'real absence' as it were.
The very low evangelical end could and did tend towards memorialism - hence Ryle's rant.
Back in my Baptist days I was accused by members of the house-group of being very 'Catholic' in my views on communion, but was backed up by a former Anglican. Quite a number of people in that church had grown up RC and so reacted when I expressed a more 'realised' or 'pneumatic' view of the Lord's Supper.
I was heading higher up the candle even then, although I'd certainly not disparage the way Baptists approach communion. They took it seriously.
The problem I have with some - not all - evangelical Anglicans is that they can take an almost studiously slap-dash approach to it.
I think you've hit the nub of the matter there. If what we call the Anglican tradition started from scratch in the 16th century, yes you have a point. But if course it didn't. Any more than the Baptist, Reformed or any other tradition. 90% at least, probably a lot more, of all those traditions are held in common with all Christians from Ethiopian Orthodox to Quakers. The things that divide us do so because they are matters of sincerely held belief, but they are still much less important than the fundamentals of our faith.
Anglicans in particular think of our Church as one continuous tradition from the Apostles. Maybe 'anglo-catholics' lay more emphasis on that, but it is basic to Anglican self-understanding. Is the tradition of Cuthbert and Bede, of the great saints of the Middle Ages – English and other – something foreign that we have borrowed, or does it belong as much to us as to Roman Catholics or anyone else?
I wonder if the RCC was the strong presence it became in Liverpool when Ryle was Bishop there. It's not unknown for Anglicans to go low in Catholic/Irish areas or high in chapel areas.
Odd. Did this gentleman not realize that the Reformation started with the Lutherans, who most assuredly believe in the Real Presence? He talks as if the only two options are memorialism alone and full scale out-and-out "sacrifice-of-the-Mass" types.
Just as I thought.
I've never been to a church which offered something on which to write notes about the sermon, and I wonder how many people (in the case of the service mentioned) availed themselves of the facility...