SIR,—T am delighted to hear from Monica Furlong of the
vast and surprising new enthusiasm sweeping through the Established Church; but I rather wonder on what she bases her report.
How many bishops, for example, enforce thc.use if the 'Prayer Book of 1662"/ The reign of Charles !I was notable for many things, but not, 1 fancy, he production of new liturgies.
Have nine out of ten churches really made the Eucharist the central service of their Sunday since the war? A sweeping statement, surely. Possibly about half-true in the London area, but certainly wildly wide of the mark in the country as a whole. In many country parishes it is as much as the churchwardens can do to arrange one communion a month, taken by a visiting priest; and that is often attended only by themselves, the verger and the organist.
Monica Furlong tiilks of the schizophrenic nature of so much of the new Anglican thought. She is more right than she seems to realise. In one sentence she talks of communion received at a table in the nave, and offertory processions : the one a Low Church, the other a High Church performance. That is the great trouble with Anglicanism, and also the great point of it: it is neutral enough to offend few except extremists. 'Away with matins, and bring in the candles!' say many people, and ['with them. But what about the Puritan wing, to whom the waxiest taper reeks of sulphur?
There is indeed an exciting wave of experiment in some churches; but it is not specifically Anglican experiment, of the centre. If the Prayer Book of 1562 is abandoned, not one new liturgy may be required, but two. Many Anglicans would prefer to compromise with the existing splendid ritual of Romc or the fervent, if dull, church-going habits of the Free Churches The function of our Church as a potential bridge between the Catholic and Reformed creeds might thus he damaged irreparably. No wonder some of our bishops are cautious.—Yours faithfully,
W. N. J. HOWARD
157 Ramsgate Road, Broadstairs
[Monica Furlong writes : 'Bishop Stephen Neill's question to Dr. Lunt was in fact put not at the last Lambeth Conference but at the previous one, and my source for the episode is a letter from Dr. Neill in the Church of England Newspaper of December 11. I regret the mistake, but fortunately it does not diminish either the force of the question or of my argument, which was that the Church of England in this century is rediscovering its roots.
`Mr. Robinson and Mr. Howard know as well as I do that it would be impossible to get exact statistics about how many parish churches put the Eucharist first in their lives. My impression is that it is a very high number indeed. Theirs is that it is not. I don't know how we can settle it.
'I should be most interested to discover what Prayer Book Mr. Howard is using. The rest of us are using the one authorised in 1662. For a man with such a groggy knowledge of Restoration history, he is excessively dogmatic about what High and Low functions will and will not endure. I have myself received communion from a table in the nave and taken part in an offertbry procession in the same service, and the service as a whole was accepted quite naturally by a congregation of over a thousand people. What some of us find so attractive about the liturgical movement is precisely the fact that it cuts behind the ludicrous party squabbles which have bedevilled' the Church of England for years and offers some hope of reconciliation not only between High and Low but between the Anglican Church and others.'—Editor, Spectator.] *
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