Uniform with this volume:

The Study of Liturgy SPCK, revised edition 1992

The Study of Spirituality SPCK, 1986

The Anglican Tradition Fortress Press, 1991

Documents of the English Reformation Fortress Press, 1995

The Study of Anglicanism

Edited byStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight

Revised Edition

SPCK / FORTRESS PRESS

Anglicanism in Practice

15 J. E. Rattenbury, The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley (Epworth, London, 1948), p. 249.

16 Hymns Ancient and Modem, New Standard Edition (Norwich 1983), No. 240.17 Hymns Ancient and Modem, New Standard, No. 2.18 (Quoted in Stephen Prickett, Romanticism and Religion, The Tradition of Coleridge

and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church (CUP 1976), p. 109.19 Louis Bouyer, Newman (Burns and Oats, London, 1951), p. 223.20 P. E. More and F. L. Cross (eds), Anglicanism (Milwaukee 1935, reprinted

London 1962), p. 410.21 More and Cross, Anglicanism, p. 771.22 Edward Reynolds, The Whole Works (1826), Vol. vi. pp. 61-2.23 Reynolds, The Whole Works, p. 73.

2 Anglican MoralityPAUL ELMEN

To ask what kind of moral theory and what kind of moral acts are distinctly Anglican is to invite a dubious answer. There is a cluster of possible replies, each heavily dependent on the type of chutchmanship of the respondent, on his theological presuppositions, and also on the prejudices buried in the period in which he speaks. There is no uniform Anglican morality in theory, much less in practice. But it is also true that moralismuhas-beeP-a traditional pieoc^upation of Anglicans, and in each century Anglicans have made a contribution towards understariding the unending ambiguities of translating the love of God into some sort of appropriate specific decision or concrete action. Some of those contributions bear recounting, if only, as Hooker said in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, ‘that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream’.

I

A few commoa.threads may be detected. The goal viaTneSizris the effort to establish an identity which is both Catholic and F£fefmed, yet in a special sense neither. In moral theology this called for a rniddle ground between ^uthority^andjfety. Paul Elmer More said, in the anthology Anglicanism, that the effort might be seen as political, resisting the claims of both Rome and Geneva; or it may have been, as John Donne admitted, a convenient way of avoiding difficulties. But a more adequate account would be the one More settled for, that the aim of via media was ‘to introduce into religion, and to base upon “the light of reason", That love of balance, restraint, moderation, measure, which from sources bevondjamt reckoning appear to br]nnate^__the_lEn2ish-temperLi_The hallmark of Anglican

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morality has been the aurea mediocritas, the Golden Mean, the measure of nothing too much.

Another major theme, present in Anglican moral treatises from the beginning, is the insistence on the priority of praxis over theoria. According to Paul Elmer More, ‘If we are looking for a single term tb^'dfenote the ultimate law of Anglicanism, I do not see that we can do better than adopt a title which offers itself as peculiarly descriptive [...]; 1 refer to the title “pragmatism".’^

The preference for pragmatic application rather than speculative insight is not of course an Anglican innovation. It appears with varying emphases in all the world’s religions. Monotheism did not appear under the world scene as a metaphysical theory, but was from the beginning a way of life. It was the central idea that animated the prophets and the later Talmudic sages. John reported that Jesus knew well that divine knowledge was possible only after the test of action: ‘If any man will do his will he shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself’ (John 7.17). British temperament was especially hospitable to such biblical ideals, and some empiricists went so far as to claim that all knowledge came from experience. The motto scientists chose for the Royal Society was Nullius mVerba (cf. Horace, Epistles 1.1.14).

Pragmatic priority became a characteristic of British cultural history, and Anglican morality may be understood as its expression in religious form (see pp. 191-3). In the fourteenth century, William Langland’s Piers Ploumtan pointed to the power of goodness resident in every human being, enabling liim to do what he needed to do iri order to be saved; in Lan^and’s view eveti ploughing-a-field-had spiritual significance. The theological unity of ther^dal-monarchial world characteristic of the Middle Ages was never completely dissipated in England by the advent of bourgeois democracy and the industrial age. Churchmen thought that making a motarprotest against the injustice of secular society was not irrelevant to Chri^n theology, but instead w^^erived directly from it. Reinhold Niebuhr concluded this:

From Gerald Win^tanley, the leader of the Diggers in the seventeenth century, through Keir Hardie, Robert Smillie, Arthur Henderson, George Lansbury, Stafford Cripps, and Acland in the past decades, British Christianity, whether sectarian or state church, has generated prophets ot religio-social criticism.

Niebuhr offered a plausible guess: ‘It may be that the unbroken character of the Christian ethos in Britain is also the cause of the unbroken socio political history since 1688.’'* What Niebuhr describes is the distinctive Church-world relationship of what Ernst Troelsch called the church~type, in comparison with the sect-type. In the former the organizational structure

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of the Church is formally related to the political power of the society, and so is ‘established’, and seeming to be, in the eyes of Free-Church people, 'worldly'.

Theology which expressed itself not as concept but as deed was a favour ite seventeenth-century Anglican theme. Illustrations can be chosen almost at random. The comment of John Smith, one of the Cambridge Platonists, may serve as typical. Christ, he said, did not spell out canons, articles of belief, and codes of conduct. The reason is that he was ‘not so careful to stock and enrich the World with Opinions and Notions, as with true Piety, and a Godlike patterns of purity, as the best way to thrive in all spiritual understandings. His main scope was to promote an Holy Life.’^ George Herbert’s ‘The Eluir’ is perhaps the besfJcnwn poetical example of the Caroline translation of theory into .praxis:

Teach me, my God and King,In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing.To do it as for thee [...]

A servant with this clause Makes drudgerie divine;

Who sweeps a rootHTJis for thy laws, Makes that and th’ actiott fine.

Jeremy Taylor’s The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living (1650 may be con sidered the paradigmatic Anglican theological statement for the Christian morality of the period. It may be that the period of the interregnum, which turned the Church of England into a conclave and made formal priestly guidance impossible was the immediate occasion of Taylor’s book. There was widespread Anglican scorn for Puritan theology, which could express itself as regicide. But this very occaasionalism is one of the aspects of the con tinuing Anglican reference of theological reflection to life structures. Holy Living carried on the tradition prominent since the English Reformation, and stressed by Colet, Erasmus and More; that morality should be in the foreground of the Church’s attention, while dogma was k^tTn the shade.

The insistence that practice determine the soundness of doctrine carried with it certain risks. For example, Jeremy Taylor was hostile to the doctrine of original sin, not because it was theologically unsound, but because it could be used tojustify evil living. Such Pelagianism may have cost him a bishopric in England. The Caroline ethicists wgre hosttle~to the Roman Catholic doctrine of deathbed repentance, in our time illustrated in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. The Carolines would have said that Sebastian’s reliance on a last-minute forgiveness leaned too heavily on

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the example of rhejhief on the-cross. It wiped out the sinner’s need for a reformed life, and so represented imperfect contrition. Taylor was sure that immorality was proof of heresy: ‘Because faith is not only a precept of doctrine but of manners and holy life, whatsoever is either opposite to an article of Creed, or teaches ill life, that’s heresy.’^

Critics have not been wanting, even among Anglicans, who claim that this preference for morality over doctrine had disastrous consequences, leading, as BellarminVc^imed. to "pipping at the name of Christ.’ The charge has been that the teaching of such radical immanence led to the Deism of the eighteenth century, and to the secularism of the twentieth. But the benefits of this dominant morality were also visible. Casuistry became most important, and the necessity of a good life, especially of sound social conduct, had the effect of vivifying the gospel. When dogma had a diminished role, tolerance became more common. In any case, Anglicanism developed its distinctive moral style, a kind of sober ecstasy, a way in which rational men and women could lead a ‘godly, right eous, and sober life’ (Book of Common Prayer). The recognition of the Incarnation, the point where the Word became enfleshed, required a union between asceticism and morality, turning the model from a juristic to a pastoral form, and serving to enliven both sermons arrd the spreadof lay vocations.

Of course the recommendation that Chrisrians should live their faith rather than simply to profess ,it_ called immediately for a supplementary guide. Missing from this formula was elucidation on what constituted a Christian life, and some form of criteria for evaluating whether or not that goal was achieved. What after all was the distinctive character of a holy deed? After Plato, how could any particularity adequately reflect the holy will of God? From such questions the Middle Ages developed the science of moral theology, deductive, rational, Aristotelian-Thomistic. As H. R. McAdoo has pointed out in his primary account. The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (1949), Caroline moral theory was both derivative and innovative in regard to Roman Catholic antecedents. Thomas Aquinas suited exactly an essential Anglican need, that of recognizing the presence of divine grace without at the same time denying the efficacy of created nature and natural laws. In Aquinas’ wide embrace the order of creation bedded happily with the order of redemption. The formaf cause was rhan, a rational anitoat'firiainglumseiri'paf^ of the cosmic order which had been laid down by God, and expected to take his appropriate place in the march toward fulfillment and perfection. The literary world reflected the basic anthropology. The Shakespearean plays turn on the assumption of a cosmic order which could be denied, but only at the cost of chaos and

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death. If one challenged that intimate connection, as Ulysses said in The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida,

Strength should be lord of imbecility,And the rude son should strike his father dead.’

The mysterious stay against chaos called Order was not thought to be a human contrivance, but a^f^e^IanTT^^ite minor differences, detected by any close study in the moral theory of Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Robert Sanderson and Joseph Hall, it was a major theme of the seventeenth century.’ The question of one’s exact status in the Order remained unan swered. In the absence of any announced hierarchy, and without a devel oped casuistry supported by authoritative ecclesiastical rewards and punishments, the way in which synderisis fcosmic order) related to ^eidesis (application to concrete cases) remained uncertain, and Anglicans"*v!^ forced to rely on the conscience as the instrument of moral decisions. Three important Anglican works dealt with the problem: Sanderson’s De Obligatione Conscientiae and Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium (both published in 1660); and Kenneth Kirk’s Conscience and Its Problems (1927).

The Caroline period was not only productive in casuistry and in metaethicaLreflection, but also in a fruitful penetration of political struc- tureiTBythe clergy. Richard Bancroft, an early Bishop of London, licensed books, watched ports for seditious literature, and led a mission which negotiated a treaty with the Dutch. William Juxon, a later Bishop of London, had the care of the nation’s treasury as part of his charge. William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury, but he was also Chancellor of the University of Oxford and a member of the Privy Council, High Commission and Star Chamber. The line which separated sacred from secular activity was indistinct.

The eighteenth century was very concerned with the role that reason should play in determining Christian theology and life-style. AnglicanTsince Richard Hooker had challenged a naiveiiibliolatry, and had insisted tliat divine truth was accessible to man not only by revelation, but, as Aquinas had said, by the very nature of law. This law could be grasped by natural reason. Bishop JqsephJButlef-(J:692-1752) played a leading role in demon strating that moral obligation is an essential feature of the rational universe. But he was not a Deist, and had no confidence in the use of reason which was unrelated to divine law. In sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel in Salisbury between 1718 and 1726, and in a crucial essay, ‘On the Nature of Virtue’ appended to his Analogy of Helicon (1736), he argued that rules of nature and supernature, body and spirit, self-love and benevolence, were not opposed polarities but were supplementary to each other. Something primal and self-evident in human nature, which was created by God, provided the

Anglicanism in Practice

grounds on which the morality of an action must be judged. ‘Man’, he said ‘hath the rule of right within; what is wanting is only that he honestly attend to it.’*

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made notable strides in the direction of a reasonable faith, but some people judged Anglicanism to be ton earthbound. a victim of its own formal theory. It could not match s^tarians in the areas of doctrinal conviction, emotional warmth and per sonal salvation. The Church, some thought, needed to recapture its ancient authority, and if the world were again to be shaken by what William Wilberforce called ‘vital Christianity’, it would surely not be by appeals to common sense. Two forms ^the revisionary mood in the nineteenth century were the Evangelical Revival and the Oxford Mcrvement.

IIThe sustained supernaturalism of Evangelicalism, its concern for inward feeling and personal holiness and its goal of individual salvadon in the next life, seemed to promise few resources for healing the social illnesses of the new century, or even recognizing that they existed. There was suf fering in the cities following the Industrial Revolution, and neither casuistry nor conversion promised social reform. Fortunately, the Anglican concern for life structures, surviving from an earlier methodology, remained strong, even in sectarian circles. The Christian Observer,-' the Evangelical trade journal, and the Cambridge Evangelicals were very clear that conversion indeed meant love, but love informed with knowledge, and kno^dge., translated into deed. The theology led to a renewed social concern, exactly as iThadToHeToTKe fourteenth-century Deiofio modema, the Brothers of the Common Life. "Very like too, the Jewish Hasidim, founded as a reaction to the excessive rationalism of the Torah, and emerging in the eighteenth century as a transfiguration of common activities. Thsmas_§cott s Comrnent- ary on the Bible (1792), which served as a primary reference text for the Clapham'Sect, is proof enough that early Evangelicalism did not neglect social duties. From these foes of the Enlightenment emerged in brilliant succession the begjnnings of public education and the attacks on the slave trade. Regardless or'tKeiT'concern for a personal^^e^ic oF~holihessrather than for communal obligations of love, it was*tKe*EvangHicals"wh^^onned prisons, supported factory laws and started Hrarities aimed at cushioning blows sufferedlbf tKe~victims* of the new urban slums.

ThFOxIofd-MSvemefirhacrits own seriousness, but it was in the begin ning more concerned with the authority of the Church and the recovery of ritual. The;re was at first little understanding that the function of liturgy is to send people into the world to practice love. Keble praised Hooker’s ‘practical

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good sense’ when he observed that ‘the poor should be good at fasting. Since their perpetual fasts are necessary, [they] may with better content-

» ment endure the hunger, which virtue causes others to choose.’’ But the second-generation Tiactarians were a different breed, interested in ritual, but only because it reinforced charity. Father A. H. Mackonochi^of St Albans, Holborn, went t^ether with an East Londoner, Charles Lowder, to Keble’s funeral in 1866. R. W. Church, the historian, wrote to another first-generation Tractarian, John Copeland, that the younger crowd seerhed like good fellows, but looked at him darkly.

Running parallel with the Tractarians’ plea for the authority of the church, new voices challenged Establishment shibboleths and began asking embarrassing questions about the relationship of the Church to property and wealth. Actually closer to Cardinal Manning than to the early Tractarians, the Christian Socialists-wete a new breed of pragmatists. J. M. Ludlow had experienced personally the cruel suffering of the poor in the early"nmeteenth century, and he was sure that society needed to be remade rather than rehabilitated. His companion. F. D. Maiirme. was rather less radical than Ludlow, but he too chose the same unstable elements from the Anglican past, and called for social reform based on Christian princi ples. He founded Producers’ Co-o^ratives and thTWorking Men’s College.

According to M. B/ReckiffTTK? aurice’s capacity to be what he was and to lead as he did arose from no special interest or knowledge of social ques tions, but from a profound grasp of the answers which God in Christ had already given.’'® Other stalwarts, such as Charles Kingsley and E. Vansittart Neale, followed Maurice’s lead, defining each in his own way a renewed Q]liSji.QiEOKhi£bj;SMl^ Various kinds of churchman-ship were engaged in this renewal. The Anglo-Catholic Charles Gore thought it obvious that social justice was not an adventitious addition to the gospel, but was its eSenHaTeTement. In his report to the Church Congress in 1896, he saiolhat the principal of the Incarnation was dejnied unless the Christian spirit could be allowed to concern itself with everything that interests and touches human life. He thought that Catholi cism should be dSneH'asTKeTelTgtousTa'm for brotherhood.

The way had been cleared for the Conference on Politics, Economy, and Citizenship (COPEC) which met in BifmmgKmirTnT^^^It had been spl«TOted"By a vigorous ecumenical group called the Collegium, and its chairman was William Temple, the Archbishop of York. Rfteen hundred delegates, many from foreign countries, met to give formal attention to the claim of Jesus Christ that he was the Way, the Truth and the Life. COPEC asserted the social relevance of the gospel, and brought cultural, economic and political problems under Christian scrutiny. It had lasting influence.

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though perhaps its more important contribution was to the new ecumenical

movement.Two decades later, at the beginning of World War II, the time seemed

ripe for the recovery of the COPEC vision. According to William Temple, ‘Fw of the younger generation have heard of C.O.P.E.C.; fewer still know what was said there. They do not know of the great tradition of Christian social teaching associated with the names of Ludlow, Maurice, Kingsley, ^stcott, Gore, Scott Holland.’'' The intention at Malvern was also to pay morelirtention tolfie theological reference of ethical decisions, the divine intentions as visible in the natural order. ‘Our concern,’saiJTemple, ‘was to find a Christian remedy for specific evils rather than to examine the whole order of existing society in the light of the intrinsically right relation of the various functions of society—financial, productive, distrihiitive, cultural, spiritual—to one another.’'^ All were to be addressed with one pur pose—they way in which God’s kingdom might best be served.

The difficulty at Malvern did not arise out of the contention that political questions are primarily theological, but rather with the question of which political formula would best serve the coming kingdom. All agreed on the goal of a more just order in society, but the fundamental means of establish ing such an order was questionable. At Malvern there were conservatives such as Tv S. Eliot, ardent socialists such as Sidney D^, editor of the Church T^mesT^anT common "ownership advocates such as Sir Richard Acland. The latter invented a new word: ‘The private ownability of the major resources of our country is indeed the stumbling block which is making it harder for us to advance towards the Kingdom of God on earth.’' ^

Temple vras able to get all the delegates to approve the Malvern Mmifesto which came out of the conference, though there were some abstentions, and some, like T. S. Eliot and Alec Vidler, repudiated it later. Temple used what he called his ‘parlour trick’, which was really the use of‘middle axioms’ first used by J. H. Oldham in 1937. Oldham had defined them as compromises ‘between purely general statements of the ethical demands of the gospel and the decisions that have to be made in concrete situations [...] They are not binding for all time, but are provisional definitions Temple changedAcland’s private ownership ‘is indeed the stumbling block’ to ‘may be such a stumbling block’. He had found the uneasy middle ground between the concrete decision which would offend some well-meaning Christians, and Thomas Aquinas’ primary natural law: that good must be sought for and evil avoided. After Malvern the Church could still retreat into its normal enclave, wasting its energy on such topics as the wording of the Prayer Book, or the sex of its priesthood; but after Malvern, it could not do so gracefully. It could forget the deep Anglican tradition of a firm biblical faith which

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expressed itself in historical concern. And Temple’s conclusion after Mal vern seems more than ever decisive:

The Church must announce Christian principals and point out where the existing social order at any time is in conflict with them. It must then pass on to Christian citizens, acting in their civic capacity, the task of reshaping the existing order in closer conformity to the principles. * ^

Ip the United States, Clnristian Socialism had no such chari.smatir leader ^as William Temple, and it confronted a more resolute opposition. But here also"WrTwere brave priests willing to pay the price for challenging" an entrenched capitalism. In the late nineteenth century, at New York City’s Grace Church, I5.enp;^Cgdmap, J|p.tter set out to serve as many as possible of his parishioners’ needs, whether they be physical, social, intellectual or, tnore familiarly, spiritual. There were others: George C. Hodges at Calvarv Church, Pittsburgh (later Dean of Episcopal The^ogic3~ScKobl), Philo W. Sprague, William D. P_Bliss, Frederic Dan Huntington, Henry S. Nash,

several others whose names ate recorded in the Book of Life. Reinhold Niebuhr said that his interest in the relevance of theology fo industriatTnJustiorwas given its early impetus by the teaching and ex ample of the Bishop of Michigan, Charles D. Williams. Nevertheless the main^irnpet^of the Social Gospel movement in America came ftomln^

The social movement in the Church has of course been subject to criticism by persons profiting from established privilege, but also from some who used mote sophisticated epistemological grounds. D. N. Munby called attention to the socialists lack of detailed consideration for concrete reality, which he called ‘unrepentant PlaiotiiSm’. Perhaps the religious mind has always been tempted to supply a priori resolutions to complex socio economic questions. ‘Th^^hristian prophetic witness has failed.’ according to Munby, ‘because it has been misinformed, coelute, and too ready to assume that theological correctitude was a sufficient substitute for theo retical knowledge.’' The clue may be the Church’s penchant for do-good- ism, a reliance on a supposed omnipotence of mihd not challenged by actual conditions of everyday life. When someone said to Charles Kingsley that there were no such things asjvater babies, he replied, ‘How do you know that.' Have you been there to see? And if^u have been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none.’' ^

PMiPg the 1960s a new development in Anglican moral thought caught the attention of the Western world: riKiaFion educs^-Some of its inirial ^Q^atC5...m£-Aoglicans. It was a nwteTniz^ version of the Camlinpir>§istence on holy living, though it claimed more ancient roots, a recovery

ujf biblicr* ~ .ujfjbiblical patterns. Like the recommendation of love, the new morality was

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niethodological rather than substantive, and thus incorporated by design a vagueness of outline which proved costly. Taking a cue from philosophicalvagueness Ol UUUUIC waiL,n JJIUVCU aExistentialistsTthe situationists claimed that the tradition of Christian mor ality through most of Christian history had been gcaszekjiis.torted by an unwarranted legalism. Eagh situation was said to be unique, and th.e agent had for reference only one^unchangeaHeJ^ th^law of love.

ThrougfTcritics and also supporters ortTie new method sometimes spoke of themselves as innovative and even radical, the movement relied heavily on such traditional Anglican themes as holy living and _the.vki media. ‘The . ^ thing to note’, said Joseph Fletcher, ‘is tKat situation ethics is in the middle, 7^ between moral law and ethical extemporism. ' Though the point~was missed by some outraged conservatives, the new method was intended to turn away from both authoritative legalism on the one hand, and antino- mian freedom on the other, so preserving the tried wisdom of ‘nothing too

lucnl.----In England the new ethicsts were led by a bishop, John A. T. Robinson, a

New Testament scholar who seemed most at home indreSitTimTeBirTof« « «.. I IT /-s I __________1_.the contemporary world. His popular Horrest to Godil963) was determined•ncemporary worm, rus pupmai 1 luncji. w not to conceal from God the truth about modernity. Ironically this implied

an abandonment of a ‘supernaturalist’ way of thinking. In the new Reforma- 1 for which the Bishop played the Anglican Luther, doctrine was not to

1 I I • I •»_ ______ 1 .-1iMf Ixd*- mf-ltAt* IM^iHtion ____ . _ , 4 *4 * I —— —---------------- -----

play the role which it pla^d in the sixteenth century, but was rather to yieldLLIV it* » V^WV*.44 J) 4.>V4V

^ ^_____ The reason given is that timesTraw chan-ged, and most ‘doctrinal questions today, in contrast with the previous Reformation, present themselves in the first instance as moral questions^ Behind the drive for social relevance was the concern for the intelligibility of the gospel to the modern world.

Another strong British voice supporting the new Reformation in the 1960s came from if^plas Rhvmes^lBiker' Robinson, he was an eager im- manentist. For him, prayer, which might seem at first to involve speaking to a God who is ‘out there’, turns out to be nothing of the sort. Prayer is really ‘the inChristness which lights up all our actions in daily living from within’. Rhymes plays the Anglican Brother Lawrence, conversing with God, not on his knees, but absorbed in Idtchen wo^amidst the~c(atter3i^iM!^s.'

~say~to me. ^^ut this, is OQL prayer, this is Christian living,”n you bay lo uic» u l u l utiia, w ■w4»44wv«»*.4I shall reply, “There is no difference.” What makes it prayer is that it“is Christian living ronscioirsly thought out and consciously motivated for Christ’s sake.’^*'

In the United States a professor at Episcopal Divinity School, Joseph Fletcher, was the early prophet of situation ethics. He thought of himself as in truth traditionah^anSTwarsu^ri^ at the hostility which greeted the riew method. Was it not obviously biblical? St Paul had replaced the

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precepts of Torah with the living principle of agape—agc^e being good will at work in partnership with reason’.^’ TTiere was of course no capitulation to traditional dogma. ‘I believe’, he wrote, ‘that the only sin of which we can meaningfully speak is personal sin, not original sin.’ And again, ‘I see no viability in any objective theory of the atonement.’Similar views about the Church’s ‘excess baggage’ of inapplicable doctrine were expressed in the turbulent 1960s by other situationalists such as Norman Pittenger and James Pike.

Situation or contextual ethics did not have ajongjife of prominence in AnSSalMiorjr^urthere can be little question that it“has TeltTasting marks. Mainline Anglicanism responded gladly to the reminder that one does not accept something as true simply because some authority has declared it to be so. Ideals must be tested in the crucible of living. Valuable insights were offered on the New Testament theme of Christian freedom under the tutelage only of love. But there were also some elements which would give pause even to Anglicans who were not always tutiorists. There was in the method a tendency towards autonomy, a messagelftttle needed in an undisciplined modern world. And there seemed also something smug about paying only polite attention to the moral guidelines of the past, and no^attentidir*arTlPto""3e^to|E^^r^ctors, nor to the effect of future consequences as a cost for such rascal freedom. If one were to identify flaw, ir”ptob^Ivr"w^l3^B^ an error precisely opposite to that which spelled the doom of Christian Socialism. The socialists were armed with an admirable ideal, but they took little cognizance of the texture of the concrete world in which their fragile ideal would be invited to live. The Existentialists seemed exquisitely aware of life structures, but were cavalier about the doctrinal principles which they proposed to enflesh in society.

Ill

In the coming century, moral clarity and firmness could play a more decisive role in the puzzling business of attempting Christian living in a secular age. But if they do so, they will seek out and cherish their classical strength, and seek out and try to eliminate the strain of weakness which has crippled the enterprise in the past. Its strength has certainly been its tradition of con fronting the historical present rather than enunciating dogmatic formulas from the past. Its weakness has probably been its failure to establish the historical Christian code which limits the freedom of initiating a decision regarding the historic present. Both strength and weakness point to the need of turning from Christian Ethics, with its utilitarian stress on ideal possibilities, and embracing instead Nigral Theology, which stresses the

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corrcrete (kcision of the present moment, but also tries to bring into corre lation Christian principle and specific problem. Our hope seerAs to liejn just such a traditional contemporaneity.

It might be said that casuistry has fallen into disrepute, though not with the fervour of local’s ^rictures aga^st jesuitryTirHas been calle4 overly suj)tle, disingenuous, or e\^ intellectually dishonest, threatening the role of divine, grace. The standaH'cHHasmorCathoUc moral theology is that it has caused a disastrous separation of ascetics and spirituality. But it has kept alive the need of relating th^ria to praxis, and has proved hospitable to the present fashion of practical theology. Casuistry must be recognized as a dangerous and yet promising instrument for achieving Christian living, not only serving^aFguidefor the privateconscience but also for establishing larger social strategies. <

In any case. Moral Theology has been the classical Anglican posture regarding Christian condu^ The Caroline moralists, led by Joseph Hall, Jeremy Taylor and Herbert Sanderson, specialized in case studies, perhaps reacting to the legal prohibition against clerical direction. But the British mind has always had a biasjpward empiricism, as the American mind has le;aned toward pragmatism; The-fortnal plea for Anglican casuistry begins witlTlames Skinnerr"S^^t>srs of Mind and AsceticaLThenlnfri (1870). F. D. Maurice revived the old title of his course at Cambridge, ^Casuistry and Moral Theology’. It was the subtitle of his book on The ConcienceTLecUites on Casuistry (third edition, 1883). Maurice was especially interested in a concrete application for Christian piety, but he was vague about the Chris tian principles which were being applied. The leading Oxford Anglican casuist was the Bishop of Oxford, Kenneth E. Kirk. He called one of his irfiportant books, Gmscience and its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry 11927). The normally judiciousHBishopTwiS”so eager a casuist tnathe found himself arguing that, under certain circumstances, a wife who had been unfaithful to her husband^ would be justified in saying nodhing .about it (p. 210). It might be that her short-tempered husband, hearing of her infidelity, could murder her lover, and it might also be that the Bishop of Oxford had forgotten what Holy Scripture says about adul tery.

What is called for is a new, more defensible casuistry. Th^ Christian rule, the syndetesis, demands the ablest professional study, identifying authorities calls for a highly sophisticated orchestration: Holy Scripture, tradition, canon and secular law, natural law, the magisterium of the Church. Identify ing the rule calls for fastidious reflection and study. This is not of course simply a mental exercise. Conscientia, the application of tbe rule, callsi^ a competentltudyr^fthe situatiori in whichme rules are to be applied, the weighrortHe~suppofrand opposition, and techniques of^anging social

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power structure. It is at this point that lay specialists can be of invaluable aid to the professionally religious, who presumably would be more adept at identifying the relevant rule.

An example of a refined casuistry might demonstrate its superiority as a moral method to the guidance of a^sln^e virtue, such as love. An estab lished biblical rule couloETtaCenTrom the Decalogue: ‘Thou shalt not kill' (Exod. 20.13). Kill is a verb with a wide reference, ranging from beheading a chicken to murdering an enemy. Understanding what the rule means re quires study of its original intent as well as its reception by a reader today. It would help if a paradigmatic example could be agreed on. A drive-by shooting into a schoolyard filled with children would seem to have the elements intended to be prohibited by Holy Scripture. The so-called 'hard cases' might be brought under judgement by measuring each Case with the standard^fthe^ladigmatic example. Similarity with the model example would merit its rejecHon by ”tHe”Christian conscience. Such a scmtiny wauld.lhiDW_Ught .on such ‘hard cases' as abortion, capital punish- mgnt. euthanasia, war, or suicide.

It has often been observed that we are living in a new, secular society, in which the ultimate question no longer is how God’s will may be satisfied. Though not dead, God has become obscure, allowing Rilke to cry, ‘O du verlovener Gon! du unendliche Spur! (O thou lost God! Thou infinite trace!)’ We need to renew the search which Anglicans began two centuries ago, the search for the truth of ultimate being which includes the fullness of experi ence and the well-being of the whole created universe. The area of concern should include international .^crises such as war, as well as domestic crises such as poverty. There should be alreFdeBate between churchgoing con servatives and the group which Har^^ Cox called 'the New Breed*.^^ There should be room for the old breed, which confronted our various crisis with a social service motif, and the new breed, which would give prior place to political motifs seeking structural change.

Of course the Church which refuses to be passive, but busies itself by actually being the instrument by which the Word of God penetrates' and transforms existence, runs a risk of losing itself in the world and becoming simply an agency of so<^l reform.^'* But the alternate risk is more frighten- ingraTIKmcFTwEich is comfortable with its role as a cultic enclave, self- righteous and anachronistic, an archaic, dogmatic company, rightly ignored by the world. The remedy for such oblivion is surely that commonplxe transcendence which was seen by Anglicans from the beginning, and is now widely recognized. We must learn anew to take seriously and then to act upon the claims of our Lord over the total existence of his creatures astride our whirling planet.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Elmen, P. (ed.), The Anglican Moral Choice. Morehouse-Barlow, Wilton CT, 1983. Browning, D., The Moral Content of Pastoral Care. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1976. Kirk, K., Conscience and its Pmblems. An Introduction to Casuistry. Longmans, Green

and Co., London, 1927.McAdoo, F. R., The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology. Longmans, Green and Co..

London, 1949.O’Donovan, O. M. T, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical

Ethics. Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 1986.Reckitt, M. B., Maurice to Temple. A C^tury of the Social Movement in the Church of

Engbnd. Faber and Faber, London, 1947.Sedgwick, T. F, Sacramental Ethics: Paschal Identity and the Christian Life. Fortress

Press, Philadelphia, 1987.Temple, W, Christianity and Social Order. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1942.

NOTES

1 The Works of ...Mr Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble (OUP 1845), Vol. i, p. 125.2 Paul Elmer More and Frank Leslie Cross (eds), Anglicanism (SPCK, London,

1962 [1935D, p. xxii.3 More arid Cross, Anglicanism, p. xxxii.4 O. B. Robertson (ed.). Love and Justice Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1977), p. 84.5 ‘The True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge’, Select Discourses

(London 1660), p. 9.6 The Liberty of Prophesying in The Whole Works of the Rt Rev. Jeremy Taylor, ed.

Charles P. Eden (London 1853), Vol. v, p. 409.7 W. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 114-15.8 Joseph Butler, Sermons (Robert Carter &. Bros., New York, 1858), p. 48.9 Hooker, Works, V, ii, Ixxii.

10 Reckitt, Maurice Temple, ,p. 19.11 William Temple, Malvern, 1941 (Longmans, Green &Co., London, 1941), p. 224.12 Temple, Malvern, p. 220.13 Temple, Malvern, p. 161.14 W. A. Visser t’Hooft and J. H. Oldham, The Church and Its Function in Society

(Willett, Clarke, Chicago, 1937), pp. 193ff.15 William Temple, Christianity and Social Order (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1942),

p. 35.16 D. L. Munby, ‘The Importance of Technical Competence’ in D. M. Paton (ed.).

Essays in Anglican Self-Criticism (SCM, London, 1958), p. 49.17 Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies, ed. J. H. Stickney (Boston 1916), p. 63.18 Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics. The New Morality (Westmitwter Press,

Philadelphia, 1966), p. 26. I have been helped in my discussion of the New Morality by Edwin G. Wappler, ‘Four Anglican Situationists and their Tradition’, unpublished Ph D dissertation, puke University, 1972.

19 J. A. T. Robinson, The New Reformation (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1965), p. 38.

20 Douglas Rhymes, Prefer in the Secular City (Lutterworth Press 1967), pp. 48-9.21 Fletcher, Situation Ethics, p. 69.22 Joseph Fletcher and Thomas Wassmer, Hello Lovers! An Introduction to Situation

Ethics (Corpus Books, Washington, 1970), pp. 108, 125.

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23 Harvey G. Cox, 'The “New Breed” in American Churches: Sources of Social Action in American Religion’ in W. G. McLoughlin and R. N. Bellah (eds), Religion in America (Beacon Press, Boston, 1968), pp. 368-83.

24 See Langdon Gilkey, How the Church Con Minister to the World Without Losing Itself (Harper & Row, New York, 1964).

3 Anglican Pastoral TraditionO. C. EDWARDS JR

INTRODU(jriONIn pastoral tradition, as in most matters, the way to discover what is dis tinctively Anglican is to study the Book of Common Prayer. In the present case the most relevant document in the Ordinal (see pp. 155-62). Thus the Exhortation for the ordering of Priests (1662) we read;

We exhort you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you have in remembrance, into how high a Dignity and to how weighty an Officer and Charge you are called: that is to say, to be Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord; to teach, and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s sheep *at are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.

This duty is further specified in the next paragraph:

See that ye never cease your labour, your care, and diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness of life.

The means for performing this ministry are ‘doctrine and exhortation taken out of the holy Scriptures’ and ‘a life agreeable to the same’. The ordination formula itself describes ‘the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God’ as being that of ‘a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments’. Not all of the pastoral duties of parochial clergy are mentioned in the rite for ordaining priests, however. Some are in the form for making deacons. The duties of the diaconate, though, are not lost when the deacon becomes a priest because the priest continues to be a deacon. Thus it takes two rites to list all of the pastoral duties of parochial

clergy.

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It appertainth to the Office of a Deacon, in the Church where he shall be appointed to serve, to assist the Priest in Divine Service, especially when he ministereth the holy Communion, and to help him in the distribution thereof; and to read holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church; and to instruct the youth in the Catechism; in the absence of the Priest to baptize infants; and to preach, if he be admitted thereto by the Bishop. And furthermore, it is his Office, where provision is s6 made, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the Parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell, unto the Curate, that by his exhortation they must be relieved by the alms of the parishioners, or others.

There are many ways in which the duties of clergy listed in the ordinals can be specified in more detail. In another context I have tried to enumerate the duties of contemporary clergy of the American Episcopal Church. They included: officiating at liturgy, preaching, evangelization and missionary activity, catechesis and Christian education, parochial administration, spirit ual direction, Christian social action, moral guidance, the incorporation of new members into the parochial community, theological explanation, leadership in stewardship, spiritual renewal in the parish, enablement of the ministry of the laity, ministry to the sick and bereaved and to families in crisis, pastoral counselling, denominational duties, ecumenical involve ments, and community activities. ’ A more compact list, however has been drawn up by Anthony Russell in The Clerical Profession: leader of public worship (Sunday worship), leader of public worship (surplice duties), preacher, celebrant of the sacraments, pastor, catechist, clerk, officer of law and order, almoner, teacher, officer of health and politician.^ While Russell is mote concerned with the sociological description of the duties of a profession than with a theological listing of the responsibilities of clergy, his categories offer a convenient way to analyse the activities that have made up the Anglican tradition of pastoral care.

VARIABLES WITHIN THE TRADITION

Before an analysis of the Anglican pastoral tradition can be undertaken, there are certain variables that need to be noted. The first of these is to recognize that the ministry of clergy in the Church of England has always been that of the representatives of an established Church. This has not always been true of the work of clerics in other national branches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In the Episcopal Church in the USA, for instance, parish clergy function in many ways as chaplains to the people who have voluntarily associated themselves with the local community which

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