Anglicans who've lost their memory

From The Telegraph (UK), via TitusOneNine:

By Christopher Howse
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 22/11/2008


Like an unwatched pan of milk, readers of the Church Times have seethed up and boiled over in response to an analysis of the Church of England by the ever-controversial historian Jonathan Clark.

Professor Clark, once the enfant terrible of Peterhouse and All Souls, now wields his scalpel from remote Kansas, but it cuts as sharply. The Church of England, he argues, is "losing command of its history", thus losing its identity (as if a man had lost his memory, one might say).

In the 20th century, he notes, "Anglicanism was powered by German theology rather than by Anglican historiography". One result is a loss of authority, which "is ultimately historically grounded". That's why, he says, "feminism and gay rights should today occupy so much of the attention of Anglicans".

The latter phenomenon has been noted by readers of this paper, who constantly write asking why the Anglican Communion keeps on worrying at the question of homosexuality, like a dog gnawing at a wound.

If Dr Clark is right, there is a strong irony that at the moment when the Church of England is losing its historical sense of identity, it should be led by an Archbishop of Canterbury with a profound knowledge of history. Indeed, as Rupert Shortt observes, in his fascinating new biography, Rowan's Rule (Hodder and Stoughton, £20), Rowan Williams long ago chafed at the insularity of books like The Myth of God Incarnate, which quoted only English-speaking liberal Protestant sources, ignoring the universal Church extended in history.

Now that the C of E has cut its moorings, Dr Clark sees three elements reinforcing a radical discontinuity. One is the predominance of Roman Catholics among able church historians - Eamon Duffy, Ian Ker, Jack Scarisbrick, John Bossy, Jonathan Riley-Smith - "to whom the Church of England has found no adequate reply".

Secondly, the Church of England is "neglecting the teaching of its history, unconcerned at the fate of its ancient libraries, actively resistant to promoting scholarly clergy". This was noted by Edward Norman in his powerful short study Secularisation. As for neglect of libraries, some see a symptomatic scandal in the books sold from the Bishop Philpotts library in Truro.

Thirdly, historically aware Anglicans "often depict the Church of England as essentially a radical Protestant denomination with a revolutionary foundation in the early 16th century". Thus, as Professor Clark does not say here, they take up the Marxist torch from past historians such as Christopher Hill.

The sum result, Dr Clark says, is that "having marginalised its Catholic party over women's ordination in 1992, the Church may be witnessing a showdown between its Evangelical and liberal ones. If so, the signs are that the liberals will predominate."

In response Dr J-N Morris, the Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, wrote to say that Dr Clark is "too pessimistic" about the consequences of the Church of England neglecting its history. This is so partly because "the basic institutional form of Anglicanism expressed abiding features of the historic continuities of the Christian Church". I suppose he means things like the existence of bishops, priests and deacons; the structure of churches; and the form of the liturgy.

Dr Andrew Burnham, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, was far less sanguine. While seeing that Anglicans can take "treasures both new and old" from the new service book, Common Worship, he worries whether Anglicanism can look back to its roots by way of "curbing of the excesses of modernity and the resultant discontinuity".

"Catholics in the Church of England," he says, "have suggested repeatedly that it is either getting too late, or indeed much too late, for that to happen". Meanwhile, he fears "classical Anglicanism, looking back to Aidan and Augustine, could be said to be withering on the vine".