AND ANOTHER THING
A tale of sermons, stones and dead cats
PAUL JOHNSON
The Church of England's current bout of odium theologicum is in danger of slip- ping over into something good Anglicans, high, broad or low, have always wisely avoided: sheer bad manners. The Archdea- con of York's tirade last Sunday was more a political manifesto than a sermon, and open to the accusation that it was an abuse of the pulpit. Most of us go to church pre- cisely to escape the wrangles and power- values of the world, and to fix our attention on a higher plane. Equally, the response of the Archbishop of York, who compared his chubby Archdeacon to the Fat Boy in the Pickwick Papers, a reminder that among left-liberals it is now Politically Correct to accuse people of being overweight, was childish.
Both sides forget that, from its very inception, Anglicanism has been based on compromise, illogicalities, unresolved con- tradictions and a mutual willingness not to push issues too far. Its first Supreme Gov- ernor, Elizabeth I, understood this spirit very well. She greatly disliked political ser- mons of any kind, and would interrupt them (`To your text, Mr Dean!'). She had a lifelong distaste for clerical marriage, too. On the other hand, she was fond of Dr Parker, the first Archbishop of Canterbury to practise it. He had been chaplain to her tragic mother, and often crossed the river in state to dine at his Lambeth lodgings. Elizabeth's godson, Sir John Harington, tells us that once, 'at her parting from thence, the Archbishop and his wife being together, [the Queen] gave him very special thanks, with gracious and honourable terms, and then looking on his Wife, and you (saith she) Madam, I may not call you, and Mrs I am ashamed to call you, so I know not what to call you, but yet I do thank you'. In short, Elizabeth made her point, but did not press it, a true Anglican approach.
Interestingly enough, and again in the true Anglican mode, the position of the archbishop's wife had not been entirely set- tled 250 years later. Dr Howley, who held the see of Canterbury 1828-48, was the last old-style grandee-primate. He wore solid gold shoe buckles, drove everywhere in a coach-and-four, and when he dined out, no one left the room until he rose to go. He rigidly enforced the rule that no woman was allowed to enter the official parts of Lambeth Palace, even to dust the furniture, and every evening, after dinner, he made his stately way across the courtyard to a building known as 'Mrs Howley's Lodging', preceded by liveried gentlemen-at-arms carrying flambeaux.
But if compromise, tolerance and self- restraint are the true marks of Anglicanism, the Archdeacon's move is nonetheless understandable. By bringing politics into the pulpit, he merely followed the example of the Bishop of Durham, who rarely does anything else, and of Drs Habgood and Runcie, who regularly used church docu- ments to make ideological points, and of such controversialists as Bishop 'Jim' Thompson, recently promoted to Bath and Wells, who denounced Thatcherism as 'the Gospel According to Dallas'. (He has plainly never been there: more splendid Christian seminaries, universities and simi- lar establishments are to be found in and near Dallas than anywhere else in the world: it is the closest thing America has to a religious capital.) So the Archdeacon was serving back the liberals in their own coin, the ruthless exploitation of the media, by which they have advanced themselves and their friends for the past generation.
His exasperation is understandable too. The liberals have committed one of the deadly sins, gluttony. They have been too greedy for place and power, thus upsetting the delicate balance between the tenden- cies which alone can keep the Church of England together. They are, like the Left throughout the world, adept at packing committees, getting motions through, appointing reliable followers to key bureau- cratic posts, as well as getting their people into the grander jobs. They have been espe- cially greedy at grabbing an undue share of access to the media. Many of their leaders have come up through what is laughingly termed 'religious broadcasting'. It is a par- ticular grievance of the traditionalists that liberals spend a huge amount of their time — and of the church's financial resources — creating and sitting on bodies which compile quasi-political reports and pass motions or, like the notorious World Coun- cil of Churches, engage in global mischief- making. They are synodialists rather than pastoralists. It is a common complaint among hard-working parish clergy, that the parishes are milked of funds to keep these endless busybody activities going, and that those who specialise in them are far more likely to climb the ecclesiastical ladder than simple priests, however great their pastoral exertions. And, because the liberals grab the plums and control the committees, they are getting more of their policies adopted.
The Archdeacon's sermon, then, was a cry of pain. But I do not think his predic- tions of a formal separation between the factions in the Church of England will come true. Some traditionalist clergy will slide to Rome, as they have been doing since Newman's day. But there will be no dramatic split and certainly no division of the spoils. Anglicanism continues to have importance by virtue of two things: its property and its privileges. Without its cathedrals and houses, its estates and income, without its constitutional and legal status at almost every level of our official life, it would rapidly shrink into an insignifi- cant sect, unable to offer careers for talent or to attract the high proportion of its fol- lowers who like its trappings as the Church By Law Established. There is no way in which it can divide its properties or, as two schismatic halves, retain its privileges, with- out the positive enactment of parliament. And that would never be forthcoming. If the church splits, it will lose everything. All sensible Anglicans know this. So it is time to stop bickering and start making amends. The traditionalists must recover their good temper. The liberals must be less greedy, self-righteous and arrogant. All should exercise a sense of humour, so prized and practised by some of their greatest luminar- ies, such as Dr Johnson and the Revd Syd- ney Smith. Perhaps Archbishops should start making jokes again. Here again, Dr Howley set an admirable example. During a Reform Bill riot in 1831, his coach was pelted by the mob in the streets of Canter- bury, and his chaplain, riding with him, complained he had been hit in the face by a dead cat. The Archbishop replied urbanely: `You should thank Almighty God it was not a live one.'
Previous page
