The Limits of Unity in the Church of England

Unity for unity’s sake is doomed to fail.

The announcement last week at GAFCON IV that most of the world’s Anglicans are no longer in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England has me thinking about unity and its limits.  (Those not interested in church matters, bear with me.  These unity posts eventually will apply to a LOT going on in fractured Western society today.)  “Unity” is oft a clarion call for keeping people of dramatically differing viewpoints together for the sake of, well, unity. On the other hand, unity, rightly and wrongly, can be used to expel people.  But to be effective unity has to be based around something more substantial than unity itself while at the same time allowing for some differences.

Now I could really get into the abstract weeds with this topic as you can tell.  So I think it best if I used the Church of England and later the United States to illustrate the limits of unity.

The Church in England goes back well before Henry VIII to the early centuries of the church, and don’t you forget it.  But I will start with him.  For all his faults, he was passionate about the unity of the Church of England.  He dissolved into tears during his last address as he pled for unity.  Still, abolishing the monasteries and being ecumenical in burning both Catholics and Protestants are questionable ways of seeking unity.  And my Roman Catholic friends disagree with him removing England from obedience to the Pope, of course.  But he still strove for unity even if he was rather mercurial and sometimes ruthless in going about it.  To some extent, he was successful even if he sowed the seeds for later troubles.

His young son, Edward VI, was a pious lad passionate about the Gospel. Those who ruled in his name took things in such a reformed direction, at least partly with his approval, that it discouraged and often enraged many of a traditional mindset.  But he died at 15, so we shall never know how his approach to unity would have fared in the long run. 

His sister Bloody Mary took the church back into Roman obedience and burned hundreds who disagreed.  Her untimely (or timely depending on your point of view) death also prevents us from knowing the long term results if her policies had prevailed.  I suspect we would not now have a Church of England separate from the Church of Rome.

This brings me to the happier results of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  This wise woman saw that the going back and forth between very reformed and very catholic was damaging the unity of both church and country.  So she navigated the Church of England to a moderate policy of conformity in an effort to keep her people on board as much as possible.  In short, stick to the Book of Common Prayer, stick to the basics of the Faith and be loyal to the crown, and you’re good.  She was famously not interested in looking through “windows into men’s souls.”  If your convictions leaned reformed or leaned catholic, fine.  Just be conformed to the Book of Common Prayer and to the crown.

(Loyalty to the crown is the requirement that later got Roman Catholics into hotter water after Pope Pius V foolishly issued the 1570 bull Regnans in Excelsis that required Catholics to be disloyal to Elizabeth. That pope put English Catholics into a difficult situation indeed.  That Catholic Mary Queen of Scots was caught plotting against Elizabeth did not improve tolerance.  To understand Elizabeth’s measures against Roman Catholics, one must remember not just religion but her reign was at stake.)

Elizabeth’s policies were remarkably successful. The comparison between peace in England to wars and even massacres, particularly the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres of 1572, on the Continent is stark. And the vast majority of the English remained loyal to her and to the Church of England.  Her policies of conformity on the basics and flexibility and tolerance on most of the rest remains a good example to church and country.  (Granted what was flexible and tolerant back then may not seem so today.)

This unity completely broke down going into the 1640’s and the British Civil Wars due to Charles I and Archbishop Laud being less flexible and tolerant.  In church affairs, they insisted on a high churchmanship that included a more “popish” worship.  Puritans who openly disagreed could get jail and involuntary ear reduction among other measures.  Charles and Laud have much to commend them, but they were so certain of the rightness of their opinions, they lost their heads. Pun intended. The Puritans deserve much blame as well.  And, once they gained power, they were even less flexible, even outlawing Christmas.

The Restoration of church and crown in 1660 and then the Glorious Revolution of 1688 restored a degree of unity and peace but at the expense of losing over 2000 reform-minded clergy in the Great Ejection of 1662 on another dark St. Bartholomew’s Day and losing the more catholic Non-Jurors, those who would not cast aside their oath of loyalty to James II after William and Mary gained the throne in 1688.  These losses deprived the Church of England of many of its most faithful and zealous clergy, both of a reformed and of a catholic mindset.

In my humble but correct opinion, 17th century disunity was the beginning of the decline of the Church of England even if it took centuries for the fruit of that decline to become ripe and rotten. It never did fully recover from losing so many of its most principled clergy.  I think that century a sad example of how disunity can harm faithfulness and, sooner or later, orthodoxy.  A healthy church must have conformity, especially on the basics, but it must also have zeal. Yes, even Anglicans must have zeal even if it must be reserved and in good taste. 17th century inflexibility with the limits of unity and conformity drove out much of the church’s zeal. The resulting 18th century Church of England being a sleepy place may be a stereotype, but it is one with some truth.  In later centuries, sleepiness became the least of its sins.

Well, I thought I would at least get through a short summary of issues of unity in the Church of England, but this is not a short post already.  I will take up the topic again later and get to the unhappy 20th and 21st centuries.  And I hope eventually to make application to the United States as well.

Also, I freely admit that my broad brush interpretations here have omitted much and are wide open to reasonable dispute, which I welcome in the comments.