A Free Churchman on Prayer Book Revision
[We are glad to have the opportunity of printing the opinion of a Free Church Minister on Prayer Book Revision.—En. Spectator.] IT should not be necessary to justify the interest—not to say the stake—that the Free Churches have in the revision of the Prayer Book. It is not merely. a matter of outside opinion, gratuitous, and as some might hold even intrusive. For the Church of England is " by law established." The last appeal in this matter is to Parlia- ment ; and unless, and until, the Church of England decides to pay the price, long since paid by the Free Churches, of complete spiritual autonomy, it cannot evade the judgment passed upon its proposals by any section of the community who are Parliamentary electors.
Parliament in the last resort is the nation ; and through Parliament in a very short time the nation will be called upon to sanction or reject the new proposals. As Free Churchmen, we have therefore a constitutional right to an opinion thereupon. And it is not too much to say that a strongly antagonized or alienated Free Church senti- ment upon the matter of the alternative Prayer Book might quite conceivably have a far more potent influence upon the destiny of the proposals soon to be submitted to Parliament than possibly many ardent Churchmen have realized.
Moreover, it is not merely on these constitutional, but by no means negligible, grounds that Nonconformist opinion on this matter is of weight and importance. This is rather an accident of the situation ; for, as their name implies, most Free Churchmen are opposed to the State establishment of religion, and it is not by their will but merely in the nature of things for which they are not responsible that their verdict on Prayer Book revision cannot be evaded or ignored.
Now, save for a few benevolent freaks, the Free Churches of this country are Protestant to the core. Yet of late years a deepened realization of the corporate values of the Christian Church has been borne in upon them. Their position as members of the one and universal Church of Christ has become with increasing force a matter of serious conviction and concern to them. The sterile negativism of a detached Protestantism has ceased more and more either to define or to attract them. They have come to see that there exists, and that allowance must be made for, what in the narrower sense of the great word may be called the " catholic " temperament. For them_ it is not Order or Conformity, but spiritual experience that determines the validity of the Christian claim. They would live and let live.
The old slogans of a narrow, bitter and isolated Protes- tantism can no longer arouse them. Nevertheless, the great principles of the Reformation are part of their con- stitution, part of their living spiritual experience, part of their mental outfit. It is only in its aspect as "Reformed" that the vision of the Catholic Church makes any appeal to them whatever. If the battle of the Reforination had to be refought, the Free Churches of this country would be solidly behind the Protestant leaders of the fight, whoever they might be.
It is possible to envisage a reorientation of the religious situation in England, in which the unbroken alignment. of the Free Churches might be almost a matter of life and death to the Church of England itself.
In sum, then, the Revision of. the Prayer Book is not merely an academie consideration for us, but one in which we have very vital spiritual interests indeed. e' . As a whol we have no inclination or temptation to wash our hinds of the question and say : " It is their business, not ours: let them settle it how they will." The business of a National Church is the business of the nation : and its interests are the interests of every sincere and responsible Christian man and woman in the land.
How, then, do the new proposals strike Free Church- men ? I think I can answer : AS very much less menac- ing and challenging to any vital issue than many of us had anticipated. Speaking as an interested outsider, I give it as my opinion that it will be very difficult, even with the most vehement banging of theological tom-toms, to stir up any serious revolt against these proposals.
With the exception of the modifications in the Communion Service, the changes to me seem to be wholly for the better. Where there is change it is almost entirely in the direction of conformity with the modern mind and viewpoint and of the larger variety and elasticity characteristic of the better type of Free Church service. This is conspicuously true of the removal or modification of the crudities and archaisms of the Marriage Service. Indeed, any Free Church minister could use the alternative Marriage Service of the Prayer Book without qualm or hesitation. The optional use, too, of the Athanasian Creed is a great step in advance. And though the revised Order of Baptism still includes implications that the convinced Free Churchman could never accept, there is no Free Churchman who will not gladly agree that such changes as there are, are--with perhaps a. single exception— more primitively and simply Christian. And what Non- conformist could fail to acclaim the immense enrichment of the new Order by the inclusion of really beautiful prayers for special occasions, the absence of which in the old always seemed to him to be one of the outstanding, and at times almost paralysing, defects of the traditional " Order of Common Prayer " ?
The so-called " Prayers for the Dead " turn out to be hardly more than a solemn and most suitable and indis- pensable form of Commemoration in terms (at least as far as two of the prayers are concerned) which hardly deviate from those with which many Free Churchmen arc familiar, and which have been incorporated with the present writer's form of Communion Service for years. The War cleared away many fears and many mists in this respect. The multitudinous death of those terrible years either destroyed the reality of heaven or made it a new reality. For those who could go on believing in God at all, heaven from being a pleasant idea became a newly dominating fact. Heaven to many became more real and near than New Zealand. The Community of Saints became the great Bridge over the 'swift-rushing waters of death. "Debout les worts," from its birth in a trench at Verdun, became the instinctive cry of the tormented world-heart. The religion that could not and cannot respond to it is itself dead. No abuse of this deep- founded sentiment can be worse than its neglect. Glad and solemn Commemoration of the " dead " will summon no Nonconformist legions to battle.
AS to the changes in the Communion Service, it is a little difficult for a Free Churchman to come to a con- clusion. Free Church opinion itself varies very widely as to the interpretation of the Sacrament. With our regnant belief in the Real Presence of Christ promised to the two or three who meet in His Name, and certified by unshakable experience, we have always found it difficult to understand the battle for forms and formulas. But though all seem to agree that the changes here are in the direction of a more "Catholic " expression, yet on the other hand the drastic Rubric with regard to " reserva- tion," if courageously carried out by the Bishops, Would seem to promise a very definite restriction of many present extreme practices. Under the old regime which lacked definition, many priests appeared to regard them- selves as entitled to interpret rubrics as they pleased : whereas if the new rubric be enforced not only will the future worship of the Church of England be more uniform, but it will be more . truly " reformed " than .much of it has been for a very long. time. And so, paradoxically,. the supposed swing in. the " Catholic " direction may even result on the whole in a more general approximation to" reformed " practice.
As a Free Churchman, I hail the revision of the Prayer Book, and hope that if it is finally accepted by Con- vocation it will be sanctioned, by Parliament.
HAROLD E. BRIERLEY.
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