A familiar defence of Anglicanism holds that flowers of principle bloomed in the mucky soil of compromise. Yes, this idea runs, the Church of England that evolved from Henry VIII’s marital strife was indeed a theological hotchpotch; but there is nevertheless much to be said for a tolerant strand of Christianity forming a middle way between Roman Catholic and hardline Protestant alternatives.
The perceived breadth of Anglicanism has long remained its selling point. Like the proverbial Australian farm, it is (or was) a Church with few fences but many wells. Elasticity over matters of secondary importance used to apply at a structural level. The old system involving autonomy for the Anglican Communion’s provinces across the world reflected deep cultural differences and a belief that relations should depend on trust and friendship, not on institutional arrangements and enforceable rules.
Then came battles calling for a more rigorous approach to discernment. Unity was stretched to breaking point during the 1980s and 1990s over women bishops. Since then, the acceptance of clergy in same-sex relationships has proved unendurably divisive for many. ‘What had once been like a gentlemanly game of tennis that needed no umpire [became] more like a scrappy game of football calling out for the restraint of a referee,’ one prominent cleric wrote.
As Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, Rowan Williams tried to embed greater cohesion via a so-called Covenant. But the move failed, owing to a deep clash of outlook between American liberals and African conservatives in particular. As Sarah Mullally takes up what pass for reins of power at Lambeth Palace, a high proportion of her global flock do not even acknowledge her as a figurehead, let alone a leader to be followed.
Good Faith does not neglect international perspectives. But the main thrust of this hard-hitting, opinionated tract is signalled by its subtitle. Canon Angela Tilby, one of Britain’s most respected religious affairs commentators, fears that the C of E itself is now falling apart.
High on her list of bugbears stands Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB), the west London parish which has exported its brand of shiny evangelicalism around the country through takeovers of declining congregations. Though hailed by its supporters as a success story, the HTB approach involves for Tilby a sweeping away of traditional piety and an assault – via the fusing of congregations – on the parish system. For up to a millennium this system has located the Anglican presence in what she calls ‘visible landscapes’, offering a historic anchor and source of spiritual care to all who seek it. She judges that the setup has been further undermined by other schemes ‘attempting to abandon the parish model and replace it with larger units, with the clergy deployed over larger areas’. Less attention is paid to a widely rehearsed counter-argument: that tough times render the status quo unviable and may require unpalatable change.
Tilby sees Justin Welby’s thumbprint on the reforms she deplores, given that they were partly enabled by a power grab from the centre. Her conclusion is that the former archbishop probably did more than any other single figure to hasten what she describes as the C of E’s ‘implosion’.
There is more of a link than one might assume between the failure to recognise sexual abuse of individuals [a trigger for Welby’s downfall] and the attempt to forcibly reorder the Church in the name of mission and growth. I am not suggesting that the two are morally equivalent; sexual abuse is a crime as well as a sin, and its concealment is a scandal, while the bullying of parishes and clergy reveals a less culpable lack of pastoral care and moral discernment. But in both cases there is a disregard for proper boundaries, an imposition of desire and will on the vulnerable, and a failure to ‘discern the body’, both of victims and of the Church.
This forms a very bracing statement of the case for the prosecution. Though a powerful advocate, Tilby might have been better advised to air other views on two deeply vexed topics that are in any case better discussed apart.
Much of her narrative rings true, how-ever. Good Faith offers a vivid sketch of Christianity’s evolution in England from ancient times, and of a benign faith-based legacy often downplayed by secularists. Take an example such as Magna Carta. Eight centuries after it was promulgated ‘for the honour of God… and the reform of the realm’, laws deriving from principles set out in this document secure freedom of belief across a vast belt of the world. Christians, along with others hailing the religious dimension, remind us that the two billion people who live in common-law polities are the document’s heirs, and that almost every contemporary constitution draws inspiration from it. Time and again, scriptural tenets have provided an ecosystem for the flourishing of goods, ranging from representative government to scientific progress. Spool forward to the recent past and we can trace the huge contributions, transposed into fresh keys, of Anglican thinkers and artists – Archbishop William Temple, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Sayers, Rose Macaulay, W.H. Auden and C.S. Lewis among many others.
The problem, as Tilby emphasises, is that the C of E of her youth in the 1950s and 1960s was a class act compared with today’s hollowed-out body. Attendance has fallen at exponential rates, intellectual formation (including among bishops) is often thin, and in her eyes too many clergy are trapped in the headlights of identity politics. In brief, there is no shortage of bad or weak faith side by side with better varieties.
For this reason even those who share Tilby’s outlook may finish her book with heavy hearts. It reads less as a spirited apologia for Anglicanism today than a melancholy chronicle of decline. England ought to need its Church. But is the leaky vessel proclaiming itself an ark of salvation still seaworthy?
Comments