Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Simplicity rather than outward trappings

M.H. Turner, an Anglican layman, asks "Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?" It's a lengthy and very interesting argument that modern Anglicanism has strayed from its clearly Protestant origins.
 Whether the Church of England is one of the churches of the Protestant Reformation is not an open question. Its formularies, including the Thirty-Nine Articles, leave no doubt on this subject. Many of the articles align with the Protestant positions on Scripture alone as the supreme authority (Articles VI, VIII, XX, and XXI), salvation by grace alone (Articles IX-XIV), and justification by faith alone (Article XI). The great archbishop of Canterbury who drafted the Book of Common Prayer was a Reformation martyr. The most widely read book of divinity in the Elizabethan and Jacobean church was Calvin’s Institutes. The church sent a high-profile delegation to the Synod of Dordt, which signed the canons on behalf of the English Church—which is consistent with how that church saw itself as part of the international network of Reformed churches. ....

...Cranmer, Latimer, Jewel, Bancroft, Andrewes, Hooker, Herbert, Laud, Whitefield, Wesley, Wilberforce, Martyn—none would have had the slightest doubt that their church was a Protestant church. Even to this day, the preamble to the constitutions and canons of The Episcopal Church attests that it is The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The contrary view, that Anglicanism is historically a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism, has been so often debunked it only lives on in potted histories for Anglican rookies. ....

...[O]ne of the hallmarks of the historic Anglican approach to ceremony was simplicity. .... However well intended they might be, the multiplication of ceremonies would become a “yoke and burden,” and would distract people from the pure teaching of the Gospel, for “Christ’s Gospel is not a ceremonial law.” ....

.... The traditional Anglican practice strips away much of the outward trappings, fixing the attention on the Word of God, prayer, and music (the one place where ornate elaboration in the service was most characteristically Anglican). ....

...[B]efore the twentieth century Anglicanism was a religion of the word. It appealed constantly and pervasively to the ear. The reading and preaching of Scripture, the reading of the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer, and the reading, chanting, and singing of psalms and hymns—these were the regular staples of devout religion. Sights and smells were not. Ceremonies were thought to be as much a matter of danger and distraction as they were a matter of benefit....

In ceremonies as in theology (for can they really be separated?), the Church of England was a via media, not between Catholicism and Protestantism, but between Lutheranism, which retained images and vastly more of the medieval ceremonies; and the Reformed churches on the Continent and in Scotland, which tended toward greater austerity, often eliminating even the modest residue of ceremonies retained in the Church of England. Far from being distinguished by its retention of pre-Reformation ceremonies, the Church of England was distinguished by the reverence and modesty of its ceremonial. ....

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