Death , Liberalism and ‘Resting in Peace’

I couldn’t help noticing, following the announcement of the death of the Very Reverend Colin Slee, the former Dean of Southwark Cathedral, that a number of people greeted this news with the comment, “May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”

Even the Southwark Cathedral website had the same line, following the initial notice of the Dean’s death.

Some, at least, of these individuals would be of the same Liberal persuasion held, without any embarrassment to call it such, by Colin Slee himself. But I can’t help finding this somewhat curious.

I don’t think it is wrong to describe the sentiment it expresses as a prayer for the dead. Not wishing to misunderstand or misrepresent what it means, I did a quick trawl around the internet (as one does), where I found the Wikipedia website giving the following explanation:

“Rest in peace” (Latin: Requiescat in pace) is a short epitaph or idiomatic expression wishing eternal rest and peace to someone who has died. ... The phrase or acronym [RIP] is ... derived from the burial service of the Roman Catholic church, in which the following prayer was said at the commencement and conclusion:

“Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam requiescant in pace.”

In English, it is rendered as

“May his soul and the souls of all the departed faithful by God’s mercy rest in peace.”

Fair enough. And I also found the phrase in full on a website referring to how the Guild of All Souls was founded on 15 March 1873,

to provide furniture for Burial according to the use of the Catholic Church so as to set forth the two great doctrines of the Communion of Saints and the Resurrection of the Body; and Intercessory prayer for the Dying and for the repose of the souls of the deceased members and all the faithful departed.

The founders of the Guild were members of the Church of England, but clearly the doctrines they sought to reinstate were not those current in that Church at that time.

Now, of course, one cannot raise such issues without touching on the difficulties currently facing the Church of England in general and the Anglo-Catholic movement within it in particular. Nevertheless, it is surely beyond dispute that at the Reformation the Church of England officially repudiated precisely the understanding of death and the hereafter that the phrase “May he rest in peace” presumes.

Here is the Homily on Prayer (with the spelling tidied up):

Now to entreat of that question, whether we ought to pray for them that are departed out of this world, or no. Wherein, if we will cleave only unto the word of GOD, then must we needs grant, that we have no commandment so to do. For the Scripture doth acknowledge but two places after this life. The one proper to the elect and blessed of GOD; the other to the reprobate and damned souls ...

And if this might seem to leave a loophole (on the ground that there is perhaps no commandment of Scripture not to pray for the dead), the Homily continues, after giving some biblical examples to the contrary,

... neither let us dream any more, that the souls of the dead are any thing at all holpen by our prayers: But as the Scripture teacheth us, let us think that the soul of man passing out of the body, goeth straight ways either to heaven, or else to hell, whereof the one needeth no prayer, and the other is without redemption.

The point, however, is not simply that the dead cannot be helped by our prayers, but that, as regards those who have died in Christ, they need no help from from our prayers. Opposition to prayers for the dead stems not from a mean-spirited desire to withhold possible aid from those who need it, but from a sure and certain confidence in the gospel. As the homily puts it, in typically vigorous terms:

He that cannot be saved by faith in Christ’s blood, how shall he look to be delivered by man’s intercessions? Hath GOD more respect to man on earth, then he hath to Christ in heaven? If any man sin (saith Saint John) we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2.1).

Amen, I say, to that! But this is where I find the Liberal predilection for “May he rest in peace” so odd.

Historically, it is (to say the least) in tension with the formal Anglican position, expressed not only in the Homilies but in the Thirty-nine Articles (specifically, Article XXII, ‘Of Purgatory’).

Yet this style of prayer often accompanies a very ‘high’ view of ministry and sacrament which makes the Protestant Evangelical Anglican heritage seem positively ‘rationalist’ in its application of Christian doctrine to present living.

At the same time, moreover, it seems to lean ‘Romeward’ in its understanding of faith and doctrine at a time when Rome is hardly the doctrinal and moral ‘flavour of the month’ amongst liberals with a small ‘l’.

Most curiously though, it seems to presume that the dead in Christ still need our help — which would suggest, therefore, some uncertainty either in their standing with God, or (indeed) with God’s attitude towards them.

Perhaps I am wrong in assuming that Liberals (with a capital ‘L’) reject the notion that God does not welcome one and all after their decease. Do they, after all, believe that there is “no peace unto the wicked”? Or is there some other factor of which I am unaware to take into consideration?

However, as an Evangelical (and indeed, an Evangelical of precisely the stripe Colin Slee himself disliked so much), I would rather pray concerning the dead with the words we find in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer Order for Holy Communion:

And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom ...

Of course, regarding the individual there may be room for circumspection. The 1662 Order for the Burial of the Dead certainly leaves some leeway when it prays,

We meekly beseech thee, O Father, to raise us from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness; that, when we shall depart this life, we may rest in him, as our hope is this our brother doth ...

On the one hand, ‘hope’ here is undoubtedly meant as the ‘sure and certain hope’ of the resurrection expressed at the committal. On the other hand, there have equally undoubtedly been ‘brothers’ about whom these words were said where the audience would have reason to see this as a generous presumption, to say the least.

Nevertheless, the one thing these words leave no room for is doubt that the dead in Christ actually do rest in him — no ‘ifs, buts or maybes’.

May he rest in peace? He either does not, or he does. Let us be bold enough, whether for Dean Slee or anyone else, to trust the gospel!

John Richardson
27 November 2010

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Ordinands must know the formularies!

For much of last week, I was working hard on a talk which I delivered to the Prayer Book Society on Saturday morning. I have not previously been a member of that body, and (to be honest) would not have previously considered joining. However, I was invited to speak to them on the strength of some remarks I made in a talk at Oak Hill College in 2009, and agreed to elaborate on what I said then.

As a precis of the content of my address, I sent them the following, which pretty much sums it up:

            Have we an anchor? Reasserting the doctrinal rôle of the Book of Common Prayer

The Declaration of Assent requires all Anglican clergy at their ordination and their admission to a new post to recognize that the “historic formularies”, which include the Book of Common Prayer, have a special place in witnessing to the Christian faith.

Today, however, we have rather lost touch with the Prayer Book, and even where it is used, there is often little awareness of its doctrinal foundations and signficance. The result is that whilst lip-service is paid to the Declaration of Assent, many people do not realize the liturgy of the Prayer Book is designed to express and teach a particular point of view, and sometimes to contradict other points of view. Indeed, one suspects that many clergy today are quite ignorant of the Prayer Book, and therefore of its doctrinal heritage.

Beginning with the Declaration of Assent, my talk will reassess the position of the Prayer Book in shaping the Anglican church, and ask whether and how we can reassert its doctrinal rôle.

One of the contentious points in this, it is often argued, is what commitment of belief is required by the Declaration of Assent. Are we declaring thereby that we believe what the formularies teach (the question goes), or are we simply affirming the teaching of the formularies as a witness to the historic (but not necessarily contemporary) faith of the Church of England?

Browsing through the PBS bookstall at the weekend, however, my attention was drawn to Canon C 7, of whose contents I must admit to be culpably unaware, but which seems to have considerable bearing on the issue. It reads as follows:

C 7 Of examination for holy orders

No bishop shall admit any person into holy orders, except such person on careful and diligent examination, wherein the bishop shall have called to his assistance the archdeacons and other ministers appointed for this purpose, be found to possess a sufficient knowledge of Holy Scripture and of the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church of England as set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal: and to fulfil the requirements as to learning and other qualities which, subject to any directions given by the General Synod, the bishop deems necessary for the office of deacon.

This would seem to settle one question and to raise another. As to the status of the formularies, Canon C7 states clearly that there is “doctrine” specific to the Church of England which is “set forth in” the formularies, and it further requires that candidates should have “sufficient knowledge” of this doctrine to suit them for holy orders.

Now it would clearly be a nonsense for a Church to require candidates to have knowledge of doctrines belonging to that Church, only for them to be free to reject those doctrines.

It is surely hard, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that Anglican clergy under the authority of the Canons are required both to know and to hold the doctrines set forth in the formularies — the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal.

But this brings me to the second question, which is quite simply, “Do they?”

And for an answer we must look in particular to what the colleges and courses teach in this regard (and, of course, to whether the examing bodies who review those colleges and courses are concerned about what they teach).

One would expect, at very least, that candidates would be taught about, and assessed in their knowledge of, the formularies. In my address to the PBS, I argued that it would also represent ‘good practice’ for the colleges and courses to make regular and frequent use of the Prayer Book, especially given that many candidates would have little experience of this resource.

I would be very interested, therefore, to hear of the experiences people have had in this regard. In my day, we were superbly taught by Colin Buchanan, whose infectious enthusiasm for English liturgy was absorbed by many of his students. But then I was also of that generation which grew up on the Prayer Book (albeit the 1928 version). With most people now exposed almost exclusively to Common Worship, DIY liturgies or something closer to Rome, at very least it should be recognized that the colleges and courses have a job to do in this regard.

John Richardson
20 September 2010

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Back - from the PBS conference

After the best (or worst!) part of nine days without a phone or internet connection, we have now rejoined civilization.

What a lot has been going on, and what a lot I would quite like to have blogged about. But maybe it was good to give us all a rest.

Ironically, in the light of the Pope’s ongoing visit to these shores, I was away from Friday night to Saturday at the annual conference of the Prayer Book Society. (Ironic, because although the religious establishment of this country has been enthusiastically warm towards the Pope, the Book of Common Prayer was of course written to embody and impart doctrines precisely opposed to those held then and now by Rome.)

Until yesterday, I was not a member of the Prayer Book Society, but I’ve now been signed up as an honorary member. It was very useful, however, being forced to think more carefully about the entire Prayer Book ‘project’ for the purposes of producing a coherent talk.

One of the things I realized as a consequence was how the most significant element of Morning and Evening Prayer is — oddly enough — not prayer. This is what we read in the Preface, ‘Concerning the Service of the Church’:

There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: As, among other things, it may plainly appear by the Common Prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service. The first original and ground whereof if a man would search out by the ancient Fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness. For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once every year; intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God’s word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true Religion.

The liturgy is indeed there ‘for a great advancement of godliness’. But how is this achieved? By ‘the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) being read over by the clergy and heard by the people every year — actually the Old Testament once, the New Testament twice and the Psalter every month.

The prayers surrounding the Bible readings are a ‘delivery system’, designed to put us in the right frame of mind (as the introduction to each service puts it),

... when we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul.

Of course, the agenda is more than just Bible reading — otherwise we would just have the Bible read. But the reading of the Bible is the sine qua non of the daily offices, the necessary condition without which Morning and Evening Prayer would fail to achieve what they were designed to achieve.

And so, likewise, when we read in the Ordinal, that the priest is to

... continually pray to God the Father, by the mediation of our only Saviour Jesus Christ, for the heavenly assistance of the Holy Ghost; that, by daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures, ye may wax riper and stronger in your ministry ...

we realize that, taken in conjunction with the rest of the Prayer Book, the way he will do this is through the daily exercise of Morning and Evening Prayer, wherein he will indeed read through the Scriptures, in large chunks, sequentially, with little ommitted except, as I recall, parts of the book of Revelation.

Incidentally, isn’t there something significant in the fact that although the Declaration of Assent ties us to the Book of Common Prayer as a witness to the truth of the faith we inherit, the Church of England website didn’t contain the full text of the BCP until it was recently added — thanks to the Prayer Book Society?

John Richardson
19 September 2010

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A very Anglican prayer for election day

Adapted from the BCP Communion service:

We beseech thee, Almighty God, to save and defend all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors; and specially thy Servant ELIZABETH our Queen; that under her we may be godly and quietly governed: And grant unto her whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under her, that they may truly and impartially administer justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue. Amen

And while you're about it, say one for Lord Justice Laws.

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Which of our bishops are guarding the gates?

Back in the mid-1980s, I was at St Helen’s Bishopsgate for the Evangelical Ministry Assembly at which the Revd Phillip Jensen gave a rollicking series of talks on ‘A Ministry that Changes the Church’.

Certainly these talks changed me, for they restored my lost confidence in parish ministry. However, there was one thing in what he said which has, I think, been very unhelpful for the church in this country, and that was his memorable use of the phrase, “Bishops are deacons and priests are bishops.”

It is not the second part of this phrase that bothers me. There is a widespread acknowledgement, going back to Archbishop Cranmer and beyond, that the ‘presbuteroi’ (for which read ‘priests’) of the New Testament church can be identified with the ‘episkopoi’ of the same (for which read ‘bishops’). And in a world where priests are being expected to become ‘managers’ of groups of parishes, their office is (or ought to be) becoming more consciously ‘episcopal’.

No, the problem lies in the first statement: “Bishops are deacons”, which Phillip argued on the basis that they spend most of their time on ‘admin’, like a deacon, and almost none on preaching, teaching and evangelism, which is the ‘front line’ work of the church (as, I would suggest, the Apostles understood things in Acts 6).

Understandably, the line played very well to a Conservative Evangelical audience. It was what we wanted to hear, and it was true to our experience. Nevertheless, I believe it has left a dangerous legacy, not least because it is so memorable. Thus I continue to hear the same view asserted in the same circles, yet I look around the world —indeed, I look at Sydney itself —and I see remarkable things happening where there is effective episcopal leadership.

Virtually all of these examples come from overseas, I am sorry to say. But there is one area even in England where the work of a bishop is unique and powerful in its effects, and that is in being the gatekeeper for the church’s ministry. It is the bishops who, in the Church of England, are those who, as Article XXIII carefully puts it, “have public authority given unto them in the congregation to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.”

It is therefore the bishops’ responsibility to make sure that these ministers are suitable for the job. At their ordination as priests, the bishop is to ask the archdeacon, presenting the candidates, whether they have been examined as to the soundness of their learning and the godliness of their manner of life —and the archdeacon is to answer in the affirmative!

The question that must be asked, however, is whether this is happening — or to put it another way, whether the necessary questions are being asked.

This is very important when we consider the way ahead for the Church of England at this present time. Since October, it is certain that it will lose some of its most ardent traditionalist Anglo-Catholics. Meanwhile, the ‘evangelicals’ are so divided amongst themselves that the word has ceased to have much use. (I have heard just recently that one evangelical patronage society is now requiring candidates to affirm explicitly that they will teach the traditional view of human sexuality, having been caught out on more than one occasion by appointees who subsequently did not.)

Meanwhile, it is also certain that at some stage in the near future the church will have women bishops, and although this is supported by some within even the traditionalist evangelical camp, it is strongly advocated by the liberals, from whose ranks many of the women bishops will undoubtedly be drawn.

In the face of this, I have been advocating that traditionalists should orientate not around a redefined evangelicalism or a renewed catholicism, but around a reasserted Anglicanism, which takes full advantage of the ‘privileging’ in the Canons and in law of the doctrines of Scripture expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. (This is not, incidentally, to ignore the teachings of the ancient Fathers and the Councils of the Church, to which reference is also made in Canon A5. But those sources are complex and require a considerable breadth of reading, as well as discernment as to what is, indeed, a teaching agreeable to the scriptures, whereas the Articles, Prayer Book and Ordinal are succinct and readily available, not least in many of our parish churches. It is, moreover, the Articles, Prayer Book and Ordinal which give the Church of England its uniqueness, through those things which, as the Prayer Book itself says, apply “to our own people only”.)

This strategy, however, admits of a certain risk. It would involved, for example, acknowledging that as per the spirit of Article XXXVI, those women who are ordained as deacons and priests or consecrated as bishops are to be deemed “rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated or ordered.”

The ‘trade off’ is that all the Church’s deacons, priests and bishops abide by the spirit and letter of Canon A5. And if their knowledge of the fathers and the councils is not all it might be, they at least be committed to the positions on the teachings of Scripture expressed in the Articles, Prayer Book and Ordinal.

For that to happen, however, questions must be asked, and satisfactory answers must be given according to this standard. And this is where the bishops come in —or ought to, for I am left wondering just who is taking on this responsibility.

Personally, I have never, ever, been examined as to what I believe by any bishop. Nor is it clear to me what standards, if any, our bishops apply via their supervision of theological education, other than a broad-brush belief in ‘God and Jesus’. Certainly when one looks at the teaching programmes of the various colleges and courses, both for clergy and for laity, the one thing that becomes clear is that nothing is clear when it comes to what the Church of England expects people to believe.

If the bishops are acting as the gatekeepers, it seems that the gate is very wide and the path very broad that leads to Anglican orders.

When I look at the Church of England today, I am reminded of the classic line by Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski: “Smokey, this is not ’Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.” The trouble is, the rules are being freely ignored on all sides. The catholics, and to some extent the evangelicals, ignore the liturgical rules; the evangelicals want to, and in some cases do, ignore the boundary rules; the liberals ignore the doctrinal rules. And the inevitable result is that what finally matters is power, and the power to enforce the rules upheld by those in power.

Thus we have a situation where many who are liberal in their convictions nevertheless want bishops to be thoroughly ‘catholic’ in their orders, appealing to the church Fathers regarding the nature and function of episcopacy, but entirely ignoring the Fathers when it comes to what bishops should believe, or require of their clergy that they should believe.

If there is to be some regaining of Anglican coherence, there needs to be some quid pro quo on those things which Anglicanism says defines Anglicanism. This does not need to be a rigid ‘work to rule’ approach. Indeed, those with any memory of this particular concept know that it was used precisely to stop any work being done. There needs to be a recognition of the difference between ‘core’ concepts and ‘peripheral’ matters —something which cannot be left to the lawyers. The problem is that, in terms of present discipline, it is the peripherals (namely ‘administrative’ rules) which are often treated as ‘core’ what should be at the core (namely faith and morals) which is treated as peripheral.

Addressing this is the challenge which I would argue faces the Church of England generally, and the ‘traditionalists’ within it particularly, since we are the ones who have lost most, and who have most further to lose, under the present arrangements.

Meanwhile, I would be interested to hear from contributors of their experiences of episcopal ‘gatekeeping’, where they themselves have been required to give an account of their beliefs to their bishop, and to show that they are abiding in doctrinal orthodoxy within the boundaries established by the Anglican formularies. Feel free to name names that should be on the episcopal wall of fame!

John Richardson
17 November 2009

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