CHAPTER VI ANGLICANISM: ITS CATHOLIC AND Protestantism has not always avoided the temptation to be extreme and onesided. In the Church of England, elements from many religious traditions T have been blended. HE English Reformation is a striking illustration of the interplay of political, social, and religious forces which characterized the rise of Protestantism. Furthermore it peculiarly illustrates how the development of Christianity is conditioned by the history and temperament of men and women. We certainly should not think of the English Reformation merely as an outcome of the desire of Henry VIII to marry Anne Boleyn. That, to be sure, had its influence on the course of events, but the Reformation movement included England in any event. The conditions of the time make this plain. Yet deep in these conditions from which the Reformation movement came we must recognize the political situation of Henry VIII, as well as his own characteristics. The same was true of other Protestant countries. In each one of them the personal equation of a ruler was in evidence. Recall the dependence of Luther upon the German princes. Perhaps the most significant fact in the case of the English Reformation is that it, more than that of any other country, conserved a combination of elements of the new learning, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. The reason for this combination lay in the nation and Parliament. For hundreds of years the English people had been developing a political institution without a parallel on the Continent. Imperfect as was the power of the parliamentary government under the Tudors, it had within it the germs of democracy. The English people were at the beginning of a period of political evolution which was to make it possible for the religion of the people to differ from that of the monarch. The English Church to a remarkable degree is the product of the religious experience of the English people as a whole. In this fact lies the explanation of the successive strata of theological and ecclesiastical deposits which go to make up its structure. Holding fast to the heart of historic Christianity, it did not focus upon any single doctrine, like that of justification by faith, or the sovereignty of God. Indeed the English movement was not strictly speaking theological, but was rather an effort to adjust the existing religious heritage to the political and social needs of the time. The break with the pope did not at the first mean the abandonment of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, although it did open the way for the influence of Lutheranism. The radical Calvinism of Edward VI did not result in Puritanism any more than did the Roman Catholic revolt under Mary check the development of Calvinism. The synthesis of these three elements under Elizabeth was not so much theological as ecclesiastical. The Englishman wanted an English Church, and was ready to let that Church carry along within it theological and ritual differences sufficient to meet the varying needs of different classes of those opposed to Rome's supremacy. Thus it came about that two streams of influence are clearly discernible. The Thirty-nine Articles and the liturgy and ritualism of the Prayer Book represent two tendencies which were never forced into a theological union, and no exercise of the police power of the State could persuade recalcitrant Calvinists to accept the Prayer Book. So far as England itself is concerned the history of Anglicanism has reflected the political temper of the nation. When the ruler was absolutist the Church was absolutist, but as constitutional government and democracy has developed, the Church has grown tolerant and has extended many of its own rights, except as they are involved in the actual structure of the State, to the non-Anglican citizens and churches. Its preservation of different theological influences accounts for the catholicity of the English Church. Its claim to that quality is something more than the argument based on the ancient British Church or its loyalty to the ecumenical councils, although both of these claims are worthy of serious consideration. The fact that no single theological party was able permanently to control the Church accounts for the fact that it has embraced within itself such contrasting divisions as the High, Broad, and Low. In fact it is probable that in no other religious body at the present time is there more tolerance of divergent views. The tendency towards traditional Catholicism exists side by side with radical social theories to such an extent that it is impossible to declare that the Church is committed to capitalism as a system. Similarly in the case of modernism. There are outstanding illustrations of clergymen who question the literal interpretation of certain articles in the creeds, and who yet are whole-heartedly loyal to the Church as a divine institution. Perhaps the most certain expression of what might be called unavoidable essentials of Anglican belief is to be found in the proposals of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1920 relative to the union of Evangelical churches. These make plain that the Nicene Creed with its doctrine of the metaphysical deity of Christ and the orders of the clergy are not to be waived by good churchmen. Any theory of church union, it is urged, must recognize these as indispensable. Yet the second of these two elements separates the English Catholic from his Non-conformist brethren, despite the broad sympathy and openmindedness of the leaders in the movement for Christian union. The inclusiveness of the orthodoxy of the English Church in no small degree accounts for the fact that many of the later denominations claim it as a parent. No large denominations have sprung from the theologically unified Lutheran movement. Presbyterianism has divided and sub-divided into various sorts of Presbyterians; but from the membership of the English Church-often, it is true, despite its hardest efforts—has sprung a line of religious bodies like the Congregationalists, Baptists, and Methodists, not to mention smaller groups. Such a wealth of variation is due not only to ecclesiastical forces, but as truly to the political and economic forces which have been so characteristic of the development of the English people. The Church of England by virtue of its inheritance of Catholicism is closer to the Eastern Orthodox and Roman churches than is any other communion. Its historic contact with Calvinism gives it points of approach to the less Catholic orthodoxies of Protestantism. It is therefore in a peculiarly fortunate position to lead in the development of that movement towards Christian unity which so appeals to many of its leaders. But whether or not its overtures so generously conceived shall ever result in a unified Church, it is in itself a most interesting example of the sort of unity which it seeks for others. In the field of scholarship the English Church has had an illustrious history. For centuries the scholarly life of England was all but monopolized by its universities which were closed to Non-conformists. But this exclusiveness, now abandoned, did not serve to draw English theological scholarship into the paths of mere partisanship. The results of its scholarship have been used by Christians of all communions, and especially in Biblical fields the English Church has furnished some of the great scholars of the Protestant Church. Similarly in the influence of its liturgy. It was doubtless inevitable that in the early struggles between dissenters and the State Church there should have developed a dislike of the forms of worship which Anglicanism had preserved from the church life of the past. But in recent days this tendency has been steadily replaced by an appreciation of the beauty of the English service and a cautious enrichment of the worship of many Protestant groups. So it has come to pass that the Church has been in the truest sense of the word a conservative force tending consistently to encourage radical Protestants, who feared ritualism and orders, to appropriate as their own those elements of historic Christianity which might never have been theirs had it not been for the reflection in the English Church of the forms of worship |