15 JULY 1960, Page 9

Th

I

e Churches

Anglican Anonymous

By MONICA FURLONG

HAVE always held that after love itqA1 religion is the funniest of human, activities. and the eve Its of the last fc%% weeks seem determined to pro ve me right One of the inns! coniic scenes I can remember occurred at the iunch to launch An qican World during the Archbishop of Can- terbury's speech when a photographer suddenly Went berserk (what with the heat and the 'cham- pagne and all those clergymen) and had to be hustled out by the Café Royal staff still shouting something about the value of good reproductions. In spite of this enjoyable mishap Anglican World breasted the waters of journalism, and turned out to be a fat, Queen-sized glossy, full of excellent Photographs, though as yet lacking the kind of writer to send religion sizzling off the page.

'where,' 1 kept asking everybody tartly, 'is the Morley coming fromr but nobody seemed to know.

More, if dirtier, fun is raised by the publication of the Preface to Crockford, a notorious practi- cal joke which Fleet Street usually seizes upon With deadly solemnity. There is, of course, noth- ing in the least official about the views given in

it;ince they are merely those of one individual, ..,

d person of distinction in the Church of England; who remains anonymous since, say the Publishers, 'this enables him to express his views On Church matters with complete frankness.' (Somt of us, I can't resist mentioning, have the moral fibre to do this without remaining anony- °Ions.) But the anonymity gives a lot of pleasure in church circles, and a favourite summer sport of ecclesiastics is counting up the clues.

'I reckon he's an Oxford man, connected with Durham, disappointed of preferment under ' Temple- and a friend of Exeter's.'

Ah, no,,but don't you see, the Durham part's meant as a blind. He's only said that to cover

Meanwhile one notices that the author of the Preface has a fine Gibbonian turn of phrase, a throwaway wit, and a certain amount of com- mon sense. The most appealing section concerns Correct wear for canons 't.vho, poor dears, arc dreadfully lacking in selective plumage. 'For several centuries the only visible mark of a canon has been the rosette worn on the front of the hat. In church there has been nothing to indicate canonical status.' However, most chapters have 00 v got to work adapting cassocks. mediaeval hoods, scarves or tippets for the purpose, 'all of them.' says old Anglican Anonymous. 'displaying .1 varying degrees of ugliness.' It might well, he colitinues spitefully, 'become the ambition of some of the clergy to collect insignia untilliovir scarves arc as full of badges as the sleeves of a BOY Scout's shirt.'

fhe main purpose of the Preface seems to be to Present a kind of family portrait of the Church of England, rather on the lines of those Victorian Photographs in which Papa looked furious, Mother tearful, and the children in various stages of hysterical giggles. Papa might indeed be furi- ous in this case since a long and mercilessly thorough section of the Preface is devoted to his tracks.'

discussing the successor to the present Arch- bishop of Canterbury. As my lunch companion at the Cafe Royal remarked, this is in exceedingly bad taste, though once he had mentioned it I found 1 could not resist speculating either. Who is to follow the Fish into the primatial See? After a brisk swim among the rocks and whirlpools of the office, and a horrified glance at the shal- lows of the present episcopate, AA concludes that 'the Prime Minister might well break with precedent and look abroad,' a prospect which opens up at least one magnificent possibility.

The suffragan system is denounced, as is the wastage of scholar bishops. Southwark is rapped, but intelligently, and Exeter is praised justly. as an independently-minded man who does his stint in the House of Lords. Bishop Stephen Bayne. the new Executive Officer of the Anglican Com- munion, is welcomed, but with a thoroughly English coldness.

'It is to be hoped that he will not attempt to introduce into Anglican affairs those aspects of American organisation which have been so much criticised in the affairs of the World Council of Churches.' Personally, I should have thought a little American organisation might do wonders, especially for the Lambeth Conference which, if AA is to be believed, is a glory-hole of hilarious confusion.

'Some bishops found that they had been under a misapprehension as to ,which resolutions they were voting for.' This was bad' enough, but those who were not busy voting for the wrong resolu- tions were, it appears, on the threshold of religious hysteria. ,

'The pressure of time, combined with the excitement of being part of a great international gathering, created a feeling which was only too readily interpreted as the leading of the Holy Spirit.' One can imagine.

Pope John is patted warmly on the head and urged to keep trying. Anglicans are told, quite properly, that much of the hostility they still encounter among English Roman Catholics is

merely due to their past intolerance coming home to roost. 'It is necessary to bear in mind that Roman Catholics have memories of persecution and exclusion from public, life. And so on, through Presbyterians and Methodists, Convoca- tion and the laity, bureaucracy and CACTM and, inevitably, money. On the House of Laity AA is unforgettably patrician 'It may be granted . . that they do not number among their members many representatives of the so-called "working, class," but we are confident that on the whole they do fairly adequately represent the different points of view which prevail among the laity of the Church.' Precisely.

Surprisingly, AA spreads himself (under the heading 'A deplorable incident') over that curious little squabble at Christ Church, at which the Regius Professorship of Hebrew was sensibly separated from the canonry to which it has been annexed for the past 300 years. The idea was, Hebrew these days being very few people's cup of tea. that the chair should be available to Jewish as well as to Christian scholars, Here poor old AA shakes his palsied forefinger in a perfect frenzy of worry. The reform was, it appears, 'made the occasion for an exhibition of anti- clericalism which shocked and disgusted many of its supporters.' As he continues to tremble and rage one wonders what Cloud Cuckoo Close can possibly have sheltered him from the hard fact that Christianity is no longer in a seller's market. 'The Oxford debates have merely brought into the open the fact, known to a good many people but not often publicly manifested, that in most universities now there is a strong body of• opinion which is actively hostile to Christianity.'

Then a rebuke. 'It is regrettable that so many of the abler, young pastors in the universities stay for such a short time and seem to regard the problems of the industrial cities as more urgent.' Dig that, Mr. Phipps, dig that.

So there we are, us, ourselves, the Church of England, caught for a moment of time in this funny little publication from the OUP, and already able, alas, to see how absurd our hats and pathetic our poses will appear in another decade. Fortunately, out of sight where the photographer has not caught them, is a fire of love, a concern for truth, and a passion for worship which are the only excuse for the whole elaborate charade.