The Beatles Are Not The Only Thing You Need To Know About Liverpool

J. C. Ryle was not a Liverpudlian by birth, but he spent the last twenty years of his life as the Bishop of the newly created Diocese of Liverpool. This diocese consisted of the busy port city of Liverpool and the nearby towns of Warrington, Wigan, and Southport. In case you think it was a wholly urban diocese, there were rural areas around Ormskirk and Crosby, but for the most part, Ryle's problems were those of the city and the slum.

Ryle was born 10th May 1816 in Macclesfield, Cheshire, then a smallish town. J. C. Ryle had gained a first at Oxford and had also been a cricket blue. He passed up the opportunity for an acadmeic career, and instead studied law and business in his father's office. Also while he was at Oxford he found his faith, having been converted in 1838 at the age of 21 when he found the words of Ephesians 2 striking home into his heart. He had been going through a period of what I suppose we would today call "Student Angst" and his new found faith gave him a purpose and direction he had lacked before. A second crisis was provoked by the failure of his father's bank in 1841, and the 25 year old Ryle took Holy Orders, not as an escape from financial failure, but as the result of a sense of vocation that had been nagging away at him for some time. He was ordained by the Right Rev. C. R. Sumner, the evangelical Bishop of Winchester.

Ryle served his curacy in the diocese of Winchester and showed himself to be an energetic and competant curate. His talent was rewarded, rather strangely, not with a busy London parish church or proprietary chapel, but with an obscure parish in Suffolk. It was here that Ryle's children were born, and here that he employed his ample spare time as a writer and controversialist. He had the popular touch, and his name became known to those who were not naturally much interested in Church affairs. As a result of this he received two appointments in the course of 1880. The first was as Dean of Salisbury, but that was replaced by the offer of the new diocese of Liverpool by out-going Disraeli government. Disraeli saw Ryle as a safe Evangelical choice, but the plan also appealled on the grounds that it thwarted incoming Gladstone's desire to appoint a High Churchman to Liverpool.

For Ryle, this piece of party political infighting was not an auspicious start, but he was so obviously fitted for the task that no-one held it against him. As a rural dean and one of the leaders of the Evangelical Party he had already demonstrated his administrative ability, and he turned all his gifts as a teacher, preacher, pastor and administrator to the work of a bishop. Ryle was not a bricks and mortar man, and his first decision was to defer the building of a cathedral until there was adequate church provision for the 400,000 souls in his diocese. He secured mission rooms and divided parishes into more manageable districts, appointing a clergyman and a scripture reader to each to build up a new congregation. He also ensured that the clergy received a living wage and make provision for clergy retirement - he was one of the first bishops to do this. His ability to get things done is reflected in the numbers. When he was appointed bishop there were 170 parishes; this was increased to 204. At the start of his episcopate there were 120 assistant clergy, by 1900, there were 240. He also encouraged the use of Scripture Readers and other lay workers to build up the diocese's network of spiritual support for the laity, and as a result Liverpool became one of the best run and most forward looking of English dioceses.

Ryle was able to work alike with Evangelicals, Central Churchmen, and High Churchmen. His displeasure was confined to the small Anglo-Papalist faction within the diocese of Liverpool, who he occasional embargoed, and more often ignored. Unlike some other bishops whose Episcopates were mired by controversy because of their opposition to Ritualism, Ryle, whilst expressing his displeasure, did not allow it to overshadow more important and worthwhile tasks. Unlike many bishops who feel that they have to face both ways to be effective, Ryle remained loyal to his Evangelical beliefs, but managed to be the bishop of the whole diocese.

He finally retired in January 1900, and died a few months later. He was spoken of as "a man of granite with the heart of a little child" which neatly describes both the essential simplicity of his faith, and the ruggedness and determination he showed in fulfilling his ministry.

Am I alone in thinking that the Church needs more Ryle-like people to counter this era of spiritual "anythingarianism" in which we live? As the line goes in a country song "if you don't stand for something; you'll fall for anything." That, unfortunately, has been all too true of western Anglicanism for the last forty years.

More Thoughts on Central Churchmanship

The key idea for Central Churchmen is the idea of being loyal to the Anglican expression of Christianity in theology, worship and discipline. So I am going to look at each of these areas in turn. In my next Blogpost, if nothing intervenes, I am going to put together a bit of a reading list that might begin to give you a fair idea of what it means to be "Central." As is usual for me the approach is going to be historical, but with the idea of outlining the basic principles involved.



Theology for Central Churchmen is very much a continuation of the old High Church,or as some folks called it, orthodox, tradition. We begin first and foremost with the idea that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to Salvation and it corrolary - that orthodox Creedal Christianity can be proved from the Bible. Therefore it is not neccessary to waste much time here discussing the Being and nature of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, Atonement, etc., as Central Churchmen are all in full accord with the traditional teaching on these matters. When it comes to what makes Anglicans different, Central Churchmen basically follow the line of development that begins with Jewel, the wanders its way through Hooker to the Caroline Divines, and then on to eighteenth and nineteenth century High Churchmen like Daniel Waterland, William Van Mildert, Harold Browne, Christopher Wordsworth, etc.. Central Churchmen tend to be mildly Arminian in outlook, believe that baptism confers regeneration, and believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. They also hold with a mild form of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession.



English Arminianism is a little different to that of the Dutch. Theologians such as Lancelot Andrewes objected not to the idea of Predestination as such, but to the doctrine of double Predestination promoted by some Calvinists - for example, Perkins. They argued that this, to borrow Archbishop Laud's phrase, "made God the most unjust of tyrants" and they saw double predestination as inconsistent with a loving and merciful God. They also regarded Predestination as preached by some of the Puritans as being anti-sacramental, and the Caroline Divines seem to have held with the idea that Christians exist in a state where we are both saved and being saved. This notion also explains the strong sacramentalism of the Caroline High Churchmen, and of their modern successor of the Central stripe.



Baptismal regeneration as a doctrine can be grossly misunderstood, but in the "saved and being saved" context of the old orthodox Anglican theology it makes perfect sense. Central Churchmen hold that in the absence of any positive will to the contrary on the part of the minister or of the person being baptised, Baptism confers regeneration; the child or person receiving baptism is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, and is made a child of Christ. If they continue in the profession and practice of the Christian Faith they will be saved. It is the duty of parents and godparents (and by extension of the whole Church) to ensure that the child or person baptized is brought up in the Faith. The one thing we have to be quite clear about though, is that Baptismal Regeneration is not some "hocus-pocus" that works independently of the faith of the Church and the faith of the individual, but part of the economy of salvation left to us by Christ Himself.



The Real Presence is something that Central Churchmen believe, but tend not to define. Some Central Churchmen would hold to a position similar to the "high receptionism" of Calvin. Others hold to Virtualism that teaches that whilst there is an objective change in the status of the bread and wine, their natural substances remain, but they become in virtue, power and effect, the Body and Blood of Christ. This protects the notion that Christ is really present, but avoids the murky waters of mediaeval philosophy and the concept that the Eucharistic bread and wine, undergoing some sort of change of substance. Central Churchman also tend to fight shy of too strong a conception of the Eucharist as a sacrifice. It has, however, sacrificial aspects. The first is that it is a commemoration (amnesis) of the one perfect sacrifice once offered, and the second, it is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for Christ's saving work. The offering of ourselves in Christ's service is also part of this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Apostolic succession is a doctrine that has been much over emphasized by some in the Anglican Church. A fact that makes many Central Churchmen a little uncomfortable. That said, there is no denying that Anglican Orders derive from a continuous sequence of ordinations stretching right back to Apostolic times. In some circles there has been far too much made of this physical continuity of hands on heads, and not enough made of the "other" Apostolic Succession - that of doctrine. Most "middle Anglican" wroters on the subject refer to both aspects. They admit that the concept of Apostolic Succession was first and foremost one relating to the need for the Church to continue in "the Apostles' doctrine and teaching" and the ordination was both a commissioning by the church to administer the sacraments and preach the Word, but also an attestation to a man's orthodoxy. Thus in the early church Apostolic Succession was a matter of both ordination and maintenance of the faith once delivered. It was only in the High Middle Ages that a certain hardening of the theological arteries took place and Apostolic Succession became more of a matter of hands on head than rightness of doctrine.

In all of the categories above Central Churchmen reflect the old moderate High Church tradition, so I suppose the next issue that has to be addressed is what differentiates Central Churchmen and Prayer Book Catholics. I think the difference really lies in the attitude of Central Churchmen to the cult of the saints. Central Churchmen certainly revere the saints, but they do not venerate their relics nor invoke them in prayer. Both practices are a bridge too far in the direction of Rome for Central Churchmen. Prayer Book Catholics, on the other hand, find it hard to disapprove of either practice, but point out that neither is to be found in the public liturgy of the Church as laid down in the Prayer Book, and are therefore a matter of individual piety. Prayer Book Catholics and Central Churchmen tend to work together easily because they have a common loyalty to the Anglican tradition. There can be significantly more discomfort when Anglo-Papalists and Central Churchmen come into contact with one another, simply because the former are always looking over their shoulder at Rome - either modern Rome, or that of Pius X. However, so deep was the Central Churchmen's commitment to "the benign and comfortable air of liberty and toleration" that in the twentieth century Anglo-Papalists only got themselves into the doghouse with Central Churchmanship bishops for doing something completely outrageous such as dropping the BCP in favour of the Latin Breviary, Missal, and Ritual. I personally suspect that this tolerance was a calculated policy in that it denied the Anglo-Papalists the glamour of "mild martyrdom" and slowed the growth of practices not to be found in the BCP.

That attitude to the Anglo-Papalists brings to mind another element in the Central Churchmanship ethos - that of continuity. Central Churchmen were generally committed to the BCP and to allowing worship styles to evolve gradually. Whilst the more committed Anglo-Catholics frequently alienated people by changing the usual Matins and Sermon into a non-communicating High Mass, Central Churchmen stuck with the accustomed format adding Communion services in the early morning, and after Matins, then eventually having a Communion service mid-morning oncea month leaving Matins undisturbed the other three Sundays. For much of the twentieth century the usual Central Churchman parish had three services on a Sunday - an early celebration of Holy Communion, Matins and Sermon mid-morning, and Evensong in the early evening. Generally speaking Central Churchmanship parishes adopted the less controversial ideas of the Tractarians in reviving the full use of the BCP. They often had daily Morning and Evening Prayer, and a midweek Communion. The observance of Saints' Days was a bit hit and miss, but a parish would probably see a celebration of the Eucharist if the parson thought he would have a congregation.

Central Churchmanship as a whole seems to have been only moderately enthusiastic about Prayer Book revision. The proposed English BCP of 1928 garnered wide support from Central Churchmen, but neither the Broad Church Randall Davidson of Canterbury, nor the Prayer Book Catholic Cosmo Lang of York really wanted the 1928 BCP. When their successors, the Central Churchmanship Archbishop Fisher and the High Church Archbishop Garbett put forward A Shorter Prayer Book in 1948, the Communion service was very largely that of 1662, with material from the 1928 being confined to the ante-communion, Morning and Evening Prayer, and the occasional offices. It was only in the 1960s under the influence of the Parish Communion Movement that Central Churchmen moved towards Communion as the main Sunday service and the adoption of a new Eucharistic liturgy. As a rule, Central Churchmen initially alternated BCP Matins with Parish Communion according to the alternative liturgy, before settling on the latter as the usual Sunday service. The early service and Evensong remained BCP until well into the 1980s in most places.

When it came to vestments and ceremonial, Central Churchmen were not innovators. Seasonal altar frontals and two candles usually appeared on the altar late in the 19th century, as did the surplice choir; the stole gradually replaced the tippet at Communion services, baptisms and marriages; whilst bowing to the altar entering and leaving church, and after receiving Communion became widely accepted among lay people, with the clergy bowing perhaps a little more frequently in the course of the liturgy. Fasting Communion and receiving at te early celebration were the norm from about 1890 through to the 1950s, but it was not as rigidly enforced as in Anglo-Catholic circles. Central Churchmen parishes generally chanted Matins and Evensong on Sundays, and settled on the mildly High Church Hymns Ancient and Modern as their favoured hymnal. The Communion service generally remained said, though there was a tendancy to use Merbeck's setting when it occurred as the main service on Sundays, and on Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday. In short, the Anglican ethos of the mid-twentieth century as reflected in litierature was very much the creation of the Central Churchman.

In a Central Churchmanship parish, church life in its widest sense was important. Most Central Churchmen would have felt they were letting the side down if they did not promote various societies within their parishes. The old favourites, in addition to Sunday Schools, were the Mother's Union for women, the Church of England Men's Society for men, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel - for mission work. Many Central Churchmen were also keen on Scouting with troops of both Scouts and Guides being attached to many town parishes. Large parishes often had attached to them a roster of local groups - knitting circles, youth groups, etc. - which although not specifically Church related used the parish plant as their meeting point. This provided an interface between the wider community and the parish church that kept the Church at the centre of village and small town life. It has probably been the case that disappearence or complete secularization of many of these groups that has done most to marginalize Christianity in England.

As I have said before, Central Churchmen stood for historic Christianity in its Anglican guise. They relied on the Bible, the Early Fathers, and the Caroline Divines, along with a hearty dollop of commonsense in doctrinal matters. Worship was according to the BCP, which they generally regarded as the best liturgy in Christendom, but one not incapable of improvement. Ceremonial was deliberately moderate, with the traditional Laudian idea of the beauty of holiness being given moderate rein. The overall ethos was one of orthodoxy, duty and devotion tempered by an abhorance of fanaticism, the usual British reserve, and a fear of appearing Pharasaical.

Broad and Central

I often describe myself as "a Central Churchman," a term readily intelligable in the UK, but a bit out of the way for Americans, whose nearest equivelent is Broad Church. This, however, carries some connotations of Liberalism to my English ear, perhaps because in using the term "Broad" Americans are actually covering what the British would consider to be two distinct parties - the Liberals and the Central Churchmen.

In England, Broad Church, is now an out of date useage. It was applied in the mid-nineteenth century to English liberals, such as the Very Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and F. D. Maurice, who were both middle of the road in ceremonial, and liberal Protestants in theology. However, their liberal protestantism was nowhere near as "liberal" as that of mid-nineteenth century Germany, as it remained creedal, and rooted in traditional theological categories. However, it was not dismissive of either Biblical Scholarship, nor of Darwinianism and Social Reform in the Victorian Liberal's sense of those words. Broad Churchmanship as a distinct party was around from the 1850s through to the 1920s when it morphed into a more definite liberalism under the influence of R.C. modernism. They liked to think of themselves as the thinking man's party within the Church of England, but in fact, their influence was mainly among the clergy and educated laymen. Broad Churchmanship flourished to some extent due to the patronage of Queen Victoria, who tended to be a Bible-based, but distinctly liberal in her religious views due the liberal Lutheran influences of her governess and her husband. As a result, quite a few senior Victorian ecclesiastics came from the innocuous liberal tradition of Broad Churchmanship including A.P. Stanley, Valerian Wellesley, A.C. Tait, and Randall Davidson.

Central Churchmanship seems to have been more or less a self-renaming on the part of the younger generation of Old High Churchmen c. 1875 as the term "High Church" was increasingly applied to the Anglo-Catholics. When casting around for a representative name for the Central Churchmanship position in the late nineteenth century I am inclined to think of E. Harold Browne, Bishop of Ely, then of Winchester from 1873-1891. Browne would have considered himself a High Churchman, but his commentary on the Thirty-nine Articles was much favoured in Central Churchmen until the 1920s. What characterized Central Churchmanship was a fairly conservative view of Scripture, an adherence to the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles, the teachings of the Early Fathers; in short, what has come to be called in the last 30 years "classical Anglicanism." This placed them midway between the Evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics theologically, and this tended to come out in their ceremonial too. Central Churchmanship was inclined to dignity and restraint in worship, and making innovations only when the broad spectrum of opinion was behind them. When thinking of Central Churchmanship, one name, that of the Most Rev. Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury 1945-61 almost automatically springs to mind. His emphasis on continuity, on making the Church of England work, and his avoidance of theological extremes was typically "Central." He also represents the fact that for much of the twentieth century Central Churchmanship was the dominant party in the Church of England because it was the default position for a broad segment of the Church.

Unfortunately, as the 1950s and 60s progressed, it was increasingly clear that the new liberalism was making some significant gains among the ranks of what had once been the Central Churchmen. There was a feeling abroad that the old theology of "Classical Anglicanism" was no longer equipped to deal with the challenges of the twentieth century. As a result, the teaching staffs of what had once been mainly Central Churchmanship theological colleges - for example, King's College London, Wells, Lincoln, and Salisbury - tended to embrace a more liberal theological position. This filtered through into a liberal drift on the part of the Church of England. That said, the vast majority of parishes would still describe themselves as Central Churchmanship, but their theology now has an element of liberalism to it that would have been absent fifty years ago.

So how do I cope with the American tendancy to lump everything middle-of-the-road under the "Broad" banner. Well, I cop out and describe them as Conservative Broad (the English "Central") and Liberal Broad (the English "Broad" or Liberal) and that seems to get the point across! However, there is another point that I need to get across, and that is the need for someone in the Continuum to stand unequivocably for the Central Churchmanship tradition. At the moment, the Anglican world is dividing into three noisy armed camps - one Revisionist, one Angl-Catholic, and the other Evangelical which neglect the essental balance and moderation of the Anglican tradition. I am not sure we can do much about the Revisionists as they seem to be passing out of Christianity altogether into some sort of new age mish-mash, but there is a need for the old Central Churchmanship with its belief in a reformed catholicism that encompasses both High Churchmen and Evangelicals to act as the glue to hold Anglicanism together. In order for Anglicanism to survive as a witness to the totality of the Gospel and the real fullness of the undistorted Anglican tradition there remains a need for that least fashionable of beasts - the Central Churchman.

There are Evangelicals and Evangelicals

One of the things that mildly amuses and distresses me is the way in which the term Evangelical has been hijacked in the America; first by the Revivalists, and then by the modern Charismatic Movement. At the risk of "teaching Granny to suck eggs" I think I ought to point out that Evangelical simply means "of the Gospel" - i.e. a person or church that holds fast to the chief teachings of the New Testament and of the Gospels in particular. I would hope that all churches would be "small-e" evangelical, unfortunately some get diverted off into preaching Socialism via an inadequate version of the social gospel, others overlay the evangelical message with all sorts of denominational and sectarian distinctives.



So what do I mean by Evangelical? Well there is both an historical and a theological reference here.



The historical reference is to two groups of people. The first group are the sixteenth century Reformers - Luther, Bucer, Calvin, Cranmer, etc.. The second group, at least within my Anglican context, are what the Right Rev. J. C. Ryle (1816-1901) described as the "Christian Leaders of the Last Century." This group included George Whitefield, Augustus Toplady, William Grinshaw, John Beveridge, Daniel Rowlands, Henry Venn the elder, all of whom were both Evangelical and Anglican; though the intransigence of the Hannoverian episcopate sometimes forced them to stray outside the parish churches in order to preach the Gospel! Between them they began a great movement within the Church of England that soon spread to other denominations and traditions. So what was their message?



First and foremost, they preached that man was very far gone from his original righteousness, that we are in need of the Saviour, and that that Saviour is Jesus Christ. In order to be saved, you needed to repent, have faith in Jesus Christ, and follow Him. Theologically, they held to the five "solas" of the Reformation - Christ alone, Scripture alone, Grace alone, Faith alone, to God alone be the Glory - and the majority held to a moderately reformed (mildly Calvinist) understanding of Christianity; though one or two, such as William Fletcher, were mild Arminians. They all held, unlike the Finneyite Revivalists, that conversion was the work of God, and could not be stimulated by purely human means. Therefore they preached with conviction the Good News, and let the Grace of God do its work.



Although they shared their basic tenants with the Wesleys, with the exception of Whitefield, the Anglican Evangelicals were rooted within the parochial ministry, though most would occasionally go on preaching tours to collect their neighbours straying sheep, as Beveridge might have looked at the matter. As a result, their ministry was conducted within the context of the Anglican liturgy - the Book of Common Prayer. Without exception they spoke highly of its structure and content. My own belief is that that they thought so highly of the BCP because it gave liturgical form to reformation theology, and provided a balanced diet of prayer, praise and sacrament to feed the soul.

Unfortunately for both Evangelicals and Anglicans, the connection between Evangelicalism and Prayer Book liturgy has been lost, and with it the tendancy for the BCP to be a unifying force between Evangelicals and Protestant High Churchmen. Without the Evangelical impulse the tendancy of High Church Anglicanism is to either look towards Rome, which is a hostile and unscriptural system, or to become the "frozen chosen." For Evangelicals, the loss is one of objectivity. The Prayer Book, with its retention of the traditional Christian year, forces a conscientious preacher to preach the whole counsel of God, not just the bits he likes. It demands order and balance, which is one of the characteristic virtues of traditional Anglicanism.

Priorities

One of the less exciting things about being a bishop is that one has to deal with ecclesastical politics. Now I freely confess that there was a time in my life when Church politics had their appeal, but when I saw what they could do in terms of destroyed ministries and shattered churches I decided that the best policy was to watch, but not get involved. I have far more important things to do.

St Paul wrote, "Woe to me, if I preach not the Gospel!" and he wrote that because he felt impelled to use the whole of his wit and energy to proclaim the saving good news of Jesus Christ. St Paul had walked away from fame and renown to become a preacher of the sect of the Nazarenes, a proclaimer of the Way, as Christianity was then called. Why? Because he knew it to be the truth. That should give us a clue as to what we should be about. Our priority is to preach the Gospel.

So far as I am concerned that preaching of the Gospel has to include some fairly unfashionable statements.

Firstly, that human beings are very far gone from their original righteousness.

Secondly, that we are called by God to repent of our sins and accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour.

Thirdly, that Christ has died that "all those who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Fourthly, that God's grace, not our works, make us "right" before Him and bring us to eternal life.

Fifthly, that those truly called will persevere in the Faith.

I have never been able to determine for myself whether I believe those propositions in a Calvinist or an Arminian sense, but I am very aware of the fact that I have been called and baptized, and am therefore participating in the process that will, by God's grace, bring me to eternal salvation. In that journey I am sustained by God's Word, the Sacraments, and Prayer, and give evidence of my faith by good works. I am also called, as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, to proclaim that good news - as is every other bishop, priest or deacon of the Church.

From my anle, one of the problems with the Church today is that we are not clear enough about sin being the problem and Christ being the answer. We waffle. Why? I do not know. Perhaps that we are afraid of offending people? Well, if we are, then God is offended at us. St Paul was not afraid of offending people with the truth, so let us say with him,

"Woe to me, if I preach not the Gospel."

Continuing Passivity

One of the things that greatly concerns me is the general passivity of the Continuing Anglican Churches. There are times when I am tempted to refer to the whole movement as the Anglican Recusant Movement because they display the same sort of "if people want the true Faith; they will come to us" mentality as English Roman Catholics did in the eighteenth century. They perhaps had some cause, as the Hannoverian Jackboot was apt to come down on religious minorities such as English Roman Catholics and Scottish Episcopalians, but so far as the USA was concerned that threat was removed by the Treaty of Paris.



The great and common enemy of all orthodox Christians are secularism and indifferentism. Secularism starts with the marginalization of religion on the basis that man is now "grown-up" but ends up by persecuting religion. Indifferentism teaches that all religions are basically the same, and none is any more or less true than another. The former is the credo of the self-appointed American intellectual elite, but they have been pretty successful in spreading the second error to the mainline Protestant Churches and to "Spirit of Vatican II" Roman Catholics. It has certainly undermined the desire and the ability of mainline Christian denominations to evangelize.



Continuing Anglicans have a slightly different problem. We are not much geared towards Evangelism, which seems to be a by-product of the "anti-Evangelical" stance taken by many Broad and High Church Episcopalians. There was an old quip in the West that the Baptist and Methodist missionaries arrived by mule train; the Presbyterian missionary by stagecoach; and the Episcopalian missionary by Pullman Car. Unfortunately, we still have a bit of that Pullman Car Evangelism attitude today; doubly so when you consider that the churches that survive the next fifty years will be those that Evangelize an increasingly secular culture.

However, Evangelism does not have to be a noisy in-your-face venture. A good, Bible-based preaching ministry, a preparedness to welcome strangers, and a willingness to reach out to the wider community are three factors that tend to lead to growth. There is a high interest in Christianity in American society as a whole, and there will always be those who are interested enough to seek out teachers. Being a teaching church that takes people's intellects seriously has always been one of the strengths of Anglicanism, but we need to translate that into something that has a positive Evangelical thrust. Unfortunately, as a life-long Anglican, I am not sure how one does that. Until I figure it out I will teach, and encourage my congregation to be as welcoming as possible, and trust that being a Church that stands unequivocably for the Gospel of Christ will encourage visitors to become members.

Law and Gospel

The two words "Canon Law" often get you one of those glazed looks, even at clergy gatherings where most folks should know better. However, it is a "true saying and full worthy of all acceptation" that no human institution of any size can survive without some sort of Law for its governance. In the case of Canon Law, this administrative function is coupled to the higher function of preserving the Sacraments and Ministry from profanation and irreverence.

Canon Law was something that evolved slowly over the centuries. Ecumenical Councils and Provincial Synods, and at times Diocesan Synods, legislated for the Church with the result that a vast body of Law, broadly similar in many of its principles, but varying in detail grew up over the centuries. From c.1200 Rome's role as an appeal court for the western Church helped to give Canon Law a more uniform basis, but it 1917 before a unified Codex of Canon Law was published.

In England, Wales and Ireland, quite a lot of Canon Law was absorbed into Common Law, and is only now being rooted out in the name of Secularism. The result of this Common/Canon Law over lap was that at the Reformation the basic purview of Canon Law was the clergy and the sacraments, church buildings and how they were used and furnished; those elements of Canon Law which dealt with marriage and property were part of Common Law. Also, things like the due form for appointing a bishop were part of Statute Law, so much was the Church bound up with the Establishment.

The inertia of the Establishment meant that a lot of the tensions that could lead to schism were absorbed in the late mediaeval tangle of rights and privileges that protected clergy from bishops, bishops from the clergy, and the clergy from the laity. The Church of England did suffer schisms, but they were departures of people who basically did not share its theology and ethos - the Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Baptists to name three. The Non-Jurors, loyal High Churchmen though they were, departed over what was essentially a political principle. The Methodists were lost through a mixture of inertia and misunderstanding, coupled with the desire of the Methodist preachers to govern their own house. On the whole, the Church of England and the Church of Ireland rubbed along quite happily as part of the Establishment in a compaitively homogenous cultural and spiritual environment.

In Scotland and America things developed differently. The Scottish Episcopal Church developed a fairly comprehensive Canon Law to govern its internal affairs. This was couple to a great respect for the function of the College of Bishops as the final court of appeal. The Scottish love of Logic did the rest, and apart from the "English Episcopalians" of the mid-1840s, the SEC stayed together fairly well and was even able to absorb the old "Qualified Congregations" into its busom.

The American Church's Constitution and Canons provided an excellent framework, but an inadequate one. It required some very careful handling from Bishop White (PA 1787-1836) to stop disputes between bishops escalating into open schism. Eventually, the House of Bishops was large enough for most trivial disputes to get lost in the mix. The major disputes between Evangelical and Catholic tendancies took place against the background of mutual loyalty to the Protestant Episcopal Church. The PECUSA only suffered two significant departures, that of Bishop Cummins and a few dozen his Evangelical clergy friends in 1873, and of the Anglican Church of North America (Episcopal) following the St Louis Congress in 1977.

Both the REC and the 1977 ACNA(E) suffered in their early days from both lack of experienced leadership, and some pretty strong personalities in the top slots. There were times in the early days when the Chicago Synod and the Philadelphia Synods of the REC were at each other's throats (the REC in England actually split), and the history of the Continuum has been fraught with dispute and schism. Much of this was due to three factors:

1. No clear method of resolving disputes within the College of Bishops
2. A failure to appreciate the need for a clear Canon Law to resolve disputes and provide guidance on how the church should be governed, coupled with a preparedness to set aside Canon Law in the name of political expediency.
3. The dominance of Churchmanship over loyalty to the denomination.

It was these factors that lead to the break-up of the original College of Bishops. However, human beings tend to learn from their errors, (except for Socialists) so in order to see what the future of the Continuum might hold, we have to ask the question who has learned from the mistakes of the early days?

Without a shadow of a doubt both the Anglican Catholic Church and the Anglican Province of Christ the King have both learned the lesson. Both jurisdictions go to great lengths to obey the provisions of their Canon Law Codes. Of course occasional mistakes are made, but these usually do not usually compromise the integrity of the Church.

The only serious split that the ACC has experienced since it internationalised its Canon Law took place because a group of bishops put their own interests above the Law of the Church. Although this may seem like a failure, the rule of law within the ACC still allowed the damage to be limited, and in the UK, many of the parishes that were syphoned off by the departing bishop have returned to the fold. It is also becoming evident that the ACC's stability is becoming attractive to an increasing number of Continuing Anglican not just in the USA, but in the UK, Africa, and Australia.

APCK has displayed a similar tendancy towards stability encouraged and enforced by the rule of Law. However, the more uniform Churchmanship - a product of Archbishop Morse's thirty years as bishop and of its reliance on its own seminary - have tended to set boundaries to internal disputes. As a result there have been very few major departures from APCK; the two that have occured have been over issues on which their Canons do not speak clearly - the ordination of divorced and remarriage men, and Ecumenicism.

Of course, even though Law can help prevent disputes and provide for the administration of the Church, it should never blind us to the need for the Church to be committed - first and foremost - to preaching the Gospel. A shared vision of the Catholic Faith and a broad and tolerant understanding of the orthodox Anglican tradition is the surest way of preventing schism. The two working together will eventually produce a strong and unified Church which will be able to successfully combat the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil and show forth the glory of the Gospel.