BY PATRICK RODGER T HE Church of England, like an angel,
has wings. In the middle of these it also has a body; and this is the part with which it thinks. This statement may seem too bold, it may give away too much to the English love of compromise even at the cost of a mediocrity far from golden. Are not 'good, solid, central churchmen,' as they like to term themselves, often merely 'solid' in the naval sense of the word? The late King Edward VII is said to have declared that the function of an Archbishop was 'to keep the parties in the Church from quarrelling, and to prevent the clergy from wearing mous- taches.' It does not seem a very prophetic role.
Nevertheless, I am against churchmanship : not that thing in its honourable and original meaning of 'adherence to the Church,' but in its popular sense of 'ecclesiastical complexion.' I believe that this, both in its virulent and its merely gossipy form, constitutes a grave handicap to the progress of Christian faith and life among us. Churchmanship of this kind is for the most part trivial, parochial in worst sense of the word, and an unfailing source of uncharitable refreshment. And the trouble is that many Anglicans rather plume themselves on being preoccupied with questions of churchmanship and may even suppose that this is to be our distinctive contribution (under the blessed name of 'comprehensiveness') to the Coming Great Church for which many work and pray throughout the world. Certainly the witness of a Church which is at once Catholic and Reformed, and refuses to behave as if these two were irreconcilable opposites, is of the utmost value in the movement for unity; but this understanding of Anglicanism as a dynamic, or dialectical, idea is far removed indeed from our present puerile notions about 'party traditions' and their over- weening importance in diocese, parish or college.
Such luxuries the nineteenth century could perhaps afford, though even this we may doubt when we look at their legacy; but one would need to be very absorbed in ecclesiastical routine to suppose them appropriate to our own day. 'Are you High or Low?' is still one of the first questions an Anglican parson may expect to be asked by the man in the street. It should afford him small satisfaction.
'But surely.' it may be said, 'such gradations of practice and belief within the spectrum of the National Church are entirely natural (a term of praise to Christians'?) and healthy. Taste and temperament enter very largely into these things; and there is something in the national character which seems to favour such a party system. The English Church resembles the English Parliament to which it is still so closely tied. In both there is a tension which preserves stability, and Crown and Mitre brood benevolently over both, holding the ring.' The argument seems plausible—who is not anxious to save the C of E from uni- formity, and to preserve that freedom in secondary matters which spices church life with variety'? The trouble, in Church as in State, is that this is precisely what our party traditions do not do. Freedom, in other words, should belong to persons and not to pressure groups, and a man should be expected to hold his own convictions, not those which are supposed to charac- terise the theological college he attended, or those which enable others to label him 'definite Catholic,' liberal Evangelical' or any such thing. The niceties of churchmanship to be discovered in the advertisement columns of our Church newspapers may well cause bewilderment to the general reader; they strike dismay into the heart of one churchman at least. The writer happens to believe strongly in the value of sacra- mental confession, and would wish to see it more unambigu- ously set forth in the Prayer Book. This in some circles would earn him the name of 'Anglo-Catholic' (a contradiction in terms which he abominates), and going along with this, a presumed liking for Reservation (of which, except for the purpose of communicating the sick, he disapproves), cottas, Latin cassocks, birettas, shallow dog-collars, and Gothic lettering wherever possible. What a farrago of nonsense this is! And what an amount of valuable time is wasted in trying to conform to these canons of party correctness, or else in trying to discover 'just what they do' in churches which we are visit- ing ! Why is it not possible for a Christian to make up his mind about each thing on its merits (and with some regard for theology), to discard the shibboleths and keep the items of real spiritual value? It is time that we reserved the name of `Catholicism' for a catholic temper: one, for example, which exalts the Sacraments without blowing upon the preaching of the Word, or which loves the great Medimvals without con- demning the Reformers unread.
The analogy of political parties, to which we have referred, is one that has done grave disservice to the Church. For in the realm of law which is the State, government proceeds by alternate friction and compromise, and he is a wise Christian who understands as much (so Dr. A. R. Vidler instructs us in his recent book Christian Belief and This World). But in the Church, we are in the realm not of law but of grace, a realm in which the Holy Spirit Himself is supreme, creating mysterious affinities between would-be opponents, pointing to undreamt- of solutions, 'above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.' In this realm all merely human categories should be seen for the poor inadequate things that they are.
To those who live in places of ecclesiastical sweetness and light, the charges in this article may seem somewhat out of date. One would like to believe that it was indeed so, and that the widening of our horizons, and the growth of international contact in Church affairs, made nonsense of sectarianism within the Church of England. But as long as individual churches and theological colleges continue to protect their `traditions' by gathering the like-minded unto themselves, so long must we fear that churchmanship will continue to be understood simply as 'what we do at St. Jude's.'
We could wish that every church and every college might seek to be a microcosm of the whole Church, and speaking the truth in love, welcome within its borders everything that the Church herself welcomes. There is so much in the contem- porary situation with which both clergy and laity have to grapple, it seems a pity to expend such passion on that which ministers no grace to the hearers.
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