THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH: ANSWERS FROM THE CLERGY
()UR readers may remember that in an article pub. lished- in our issue of July 4th we announced out intention of putting certain questions to "a represen- tative number of clergy of the Church of England.'! The questions were :—
1. Do you desire the principles of the Reformation as expounded in the Book of Common Prayer to be maintained ? 2. Do you desire the Church of England to be a national and comprehensive Church ? • 3. Do you consider the Establishment the best means of securing No. 2 7
These questions were sent to 1,000 clergymen. We do not pretend, of course, that 1,000 is numerically representative of the clergy, but we tried to make our canvass as far as possible representative by addressing clergy in every county and by taking names at random without any knowledge of.the opinions of those addressed.
We have received 512 answers so far. It is a fact that the percentage of replies to a circular inquiry of this kind is nearly always disappointing to those who are not familiar with such things. We had no right, of course, to expect any of the clergy to whom we wrote to reply ; we simply relied upon their indulgence and kindness, and we can fairly say that we are gratified by the result. To have received just over fifty per cent. of replies to our questionnaire is a high percentage ; and we have to add that many of our correspondents took the trouble to write to us at great length, giving considered and in several cases most interesting and valuable reasons for their answers. Altogether our questionnaire was not regarded (except by a few) as an impertinent " stunt " ; it was taken as having been sincerely and seriously intended and was treated in the same spirit.
Now for the figures. The number who simply an- swered " Yes " to all three questions (or who said " Yes " with such a very slight reservation that it was obviously a case of infinitely more "Yes" " than " No ") was 875. The number of those who were obviously opposed to the whole spirit in which our questionnaire was written was seventy-one. We must add that several of these whom we have classed as opponents said " Yes " to one or even two of our questions but embroidered upon their affir- mation in a manner so damaging to our point of view that we could have no hesitation in classing them as opponents. Now we come to what was to us frankly a surprise. Sixty-seven of our correspondents said "Yes " simply or with hardly any modification at all to the first two of our questions, but gave a distinct " No " to the third question about the Establishment. The number of those who are not in any sense insurgent against the principles of the Reformation and who are very ready to exercise a wide toleration about dogma and practice but who distinctly do not believe in Establishment is larger than we had supposed. We. may say here that in several cases where such a slight reservation was revealed.' in answering " Yes " to our three questions that we had no hesitation in classing our correspondents as among the 375 the reservation most frequently referred to the. Establishment. The typical answer in this group was that on the whole the writer believed in the Establishment" but that he did so more for the sake of the State than for the sake cif the' Church: One- cOriespolident in referring ' to question three wrote, " At the moment I hardly know' where I stand. There was a time when I was wholly, in favour of Disestablishment, but Figgis'a Churches in the Modern State, read first when it first came out and re-, read many times since, caused a reaction in my mind." Another result of the questionnaire which we had not foreseen, but which we admit we might have expected, was that we received a considerable number of letters from laymen who said that no canvass would be of much use unless the laity were allowed to take part in it. A few of the clergy made the same point in their answers. It is a point of view with which we entirely sympathize. It not only reveals a healthy sense of ownership in a Church which belongs to the laity as much as to the clergy, but indicates a danger which must never be forgotten by those who would like to overhaul the Church of England without adequately consulting laymen.
A common complaint was that our questions were really incapable of being answered with a simple " Yes " or "No." We were well aware of that objection, which is a very real one. But it seemed to us that such a questionnaire must be conducted with brevity or not at all. We took the precaution of sending with the questions • the original article to which they had been appended in order that our correspondents might be able to judge accurately enough for the purpose of the sense and spirit in which we intended them. Of course we knew that those who disagreed with us in all essential matters were not likely to be satisfied. One hostile correspondent informed us that the canvass was bound to be "per- fectly useless" as "only broad and low Churchmen" would trouble to answer it. He was wrong in a way, as the longest and most earnest answers we received were from those who profoundly disagreed with us. But, of course, he is still entitled to believe that all those who did not answer at all are opposed to us. We may suggest our own belief, however, that it is only in accordance with human nature that a man who is provoked by strong disagreement generally does take the trouble to reply. We might quote instances to this effect. For example, one correspondent writes :—" I think the attitude of the Spectator deplorable and its action an unwarrantable assumption, not to say an insult to the Church Assembly and Convocations in whose hands the Protestant Settlement' and Christianity itself is more likely to be understood than in the hands of the signatories to 'A Call to Action.'. The Puritans have always been the enemies to peace and comprehensiveness. Now they act through the Spectator." Another wrote :—" The matter you refer to is being dealt with by the heads of the Church and the duly elected representatives of the Church. It would be far better if the Spectator attended to its own concerns and did not interfere with matters which are being conscientiously tackled by those who have the knowledge necessary to do so." These two replies will no doubt be a strong incentive to our friends, the anxious laymen, who feel that they cannot afford to let the clergy settle matters for them in an authoritarian or sacerdotal spirit.
A favourite subject with our correspondents was naturally the real meaning of the Reformation. One correspondent writes :— "Nor do I understand your sneer at the Church for being inter- national.' Did not Christ die for all nations Have we no share in Jerome, Augustine, Benedict ? And how can you appeal, as the Reformers appealed, to the Primitive Church, while you mock at the very idea of there being a Catholic Church? How do you derive from the Prayer Book which you almost apotheosize the idea that the English Church is the creation and creature of the English people? It can only be done by largely ignoring what the Prayer Book says. Which is in fact what you do. You say that comprehensiveness was the object and is the glory of that Book. Richard Baxter and his friends excluded from the Church at the Savoy Conference thought differently, and said so rather plainly. They differed unmistakably and even vehemently from the Bishops about many things, but they would have differed even more from you. They would especially have found the most ' remarkable ' feature of the Call to Action' to be the juxta- position in its list of sigratt'eries of the names of men claiming to be defenders of the Christian religion with those of others who go further in denying and attacking Christian beliefs than any of the Quakers. Anabaptists. and other heretics whom they themselves persecuted as infidels whenever they got the chance.". .
We can only say that we certainly believe in Catholicity as it was understood and defined by the Reformers. Another writes on this subject :— "I was ordained in the belief that the principles of the Refor- mation as expounded in the Prayer Book were patient of definitely' 'Catholic interpretation and both permitted and ordered Catholic teaching and worship. If I had taken any other view I should not have been ordained. The Church of England is no doubt, in a sense, a compromise and her historic character suffers accord- ingly, but I should dispute the right of any body of men, either pious, legal or learned, to attempt to alter the inalienable, divine character which has belonged to the Church from the beginning. I do not say for one moment that there were not at the time of the Reformation many abuses existing which cried out for redress and were rightly purged, but both the Puritan and the Protestant .interpretation of the principles of the Reformation seem to me to hold the view, either that there is no such thing as a Church in the ordinary sense of the word, or that if there is, it is well within the competence and power of men and parliaments to state the essentials of its character, to restate its doctrines and to control its spiritual authority. I regard such pretensions as in entire contradiction of the whole history of the Church from primitive times at any rate to the sixteenth century. Whatever the follies and the claims of kings and emperors up to that time, and however bitter the conflict between the secular and ecclesiastical powers may now and then have become, there was no dispute as to the essential character of the Church. It was the Body of Christ, divinely-founded and divinely-endowed, living and energizing by its own spiritual force and life. Such, in spite of compromise and anomaly, I believe the Church of England to be still, a living part of the Church as founded by Christ. In so far as the prin- ciples of the Reformation uphold that view I wish them to be maintained."
Perhaps our answer to the argument that we regard the Church of England as having been invented at the Reformation, instead of having merely purified itself of abuses without losing sight of its origins, is contained in the words of one of our correspondents who supposes himself to be in disagreement with us :— "You speak of the Church of England as a separate entity, implying that she was founded in that period of Church History known as the Reformation. The Roman brief is 'Where was your Church before the Council of Trent?' .My answer, which ou would deprive me of, is, 'Where was my garden before I weeded it.' or, my face before I washed it?' The Reformation was a necessity (but an exceedingly disagreeable one) as a protest against the claims of the Papacy to infallibility and jurisdiction over Christ. endom by divine right. That claim is unhistorical and untrue.
Lastly we come to the evidently heartfelt arguments of those who see that their position in the Church would be hopelessly unsafe if they were at the mercy of whatever wave of clerical feeling happened to be fashionable at the moment. They agree very strongly with our praise of the impartial judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. A correspondent, for instance (in flat contradiction of the view expressed in one letter that the work of the Judicial Committee is "a pious blasphemy "), writes :—
" The Establishment of the Church is the only way by which Churchmen of various schools can be kept together. This forcible keeping together of the various kinds of Churchtnanship is rather like the happy family in the Fairs whore the dog, cat, rabbit and pigeon all live together under the careful and vigilant eye of the keeper. For Modernists like myself there would be no place in any Disestablished Church. Either the Verbal Inspirationists or the Traditiotaists would get the upper hand. Either of them would turn and rend us.'
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