laudable Practice

Peter Lake's On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics During the Personal Rule of Charles I (2023) has been sitting on my desk for some months. I began reading it on 2nd January and am now one-third of the way through the book. As I had realized from reviews I had previously read, I am in fundamental disagreement with his understanding of Laudianism. Over the next few weeks, there will be a series of posts as I make my way through the book, explaining my disagreements. Let me begin, however, by stating some agreements. Lake states, "Laudianism was one of a number of ways of being protestant, just one of the modes of reformation available in and to the English post-reformation church" (p.19f). As Laud himself declared in his conference with Fisher, "And the Church of England is Protestant too". Those contemporary critics who accused Laudianism of rejecting the Reformation, and those historians who repeat this claim, entirely miss a fundamental aspect of Laudia...

The Sign of the Cross is the most universally "Catholic coded" thing in the world. The comment appeared on X in the midst of a debate on Christmas Day about the ecclesiastical identity of the McCallister family in 'Home Alone'. (Yes, you read that correctly.) This particular comment was regarding Kevin crossing himself while saying Grace before a meal. This matter, of course, is not entirely straightforward. Kevin, as some contributors pointed out, crosses himself in the Orthodox fashion. A previous comment achieved 'community note' status when, after describing Kevin walking into a church on Christmas Eve as "one of my earliest encounters with Catholicism in film", it was pointed out that the church in question was actually Episcopalian - albeit with some clearly Roman Catholic statues added. To return to Kevin crossing himself, various contributors to the debate also pointed out that many Lutherans and Anglicans/Episcopalians also made the sign of ...

In our last reading , prior to Advent, from the 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), we considered how Lindsay's critique of the rejection of festival days by the opponents of the Articles of Perth stood well within the mainstream of the Continental Reformed tradition. We resume the readings from Lindsay's work as he refutes those who, rejecting the Articles of Perth, appear to make the provisions of the 1560 Book of Discipline (rejecting festival days, requiring communicants to sit for reception etc.) a necessary order: Yee are not able to produce any warrant for the vniforme iudgement of the Church, nor Canon of Assembly, nor act of Parliament, nor confession of faith, nor publike protestation, which either condemnes the points concluded at Perth, as vnlawfull to bee vsed in the worship of God; or establisheth the contrary as things necessary, that ca...

Resuming weekly readings from Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner (1551), we turn to Gardiner challenging Cranmer's account of our true feeding on Christ. This account, insists Gardiner, falls far short of catholic teaching: But the catholic teaching, by the Scriptures, goeth further, confessing Christ to feed such as be regenerate in him, not only by his body and blood, but also with his body and blood delivered in this sacrament by him indeed to us, which the faithful, by his institution and commandment, receive with their faith and with their mouth also, and with those special dainties be fed specially at Christ's table. Before proceeding to Cranmer's response, we might note how Gardiner uses the phrase "at Christ's table", suggesting that the use of 'table' with reference to the altar was not necessarily an inherently Reformed usage. In terms of Cranmer's response, he again declares that he does not disagree with Gardiner's statement that Ch...

We left Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull before Advent , considering how Bull's chief concern in Defensio Fidei Nicaenae  (1685) was to refute Socinian and some advanced Remonstrant critiques of Nicaea. Having pointed to Bull's defence of Nicaea's understanding of the Son's pre-existence, divine substantiality, and eternity, we now turn to another but much more controversial "pillar" of Nicene teaching for Bull - the Son's subordination to the Father. Nelson quotes a lengthy extract from Bull, contending that the pre-Nicene and Nicene Fathers were agreed on the Son's subordination: For they all with one consent have taught, that the divine Nature and Perfections do agree to the Father and Son, not Collaterally or Co-ordinately, but Subordinately: that is, That the Son hath indeed the same divine Nature in common with the Father, but hath it communicated from the Father, so as the Father alone hath that divine Nature from himself, or from no o...

Yesterday, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, most Anglicans - in common with other western liturgical traditions - will have been celebrating the Baptism of our Lord. What, however, of the absence of this observance from the various iterations of the classical Book of Common Prayer? (A significant exception to this is the Canadian BCP 1962 .) Is it not the case that this absence is a significant failure to acknowledge the place of the Lord's Baptism in the mystery of our salvation? Such questions are to be answered by pointing out how the classical Prayer Book tradition does commemorate the Lord's Baptism but does so in a different manner to the contemporary observance on the First Sunday after the Epiphany. The focus for the classical Prayer Book tradition's commemoration of the Baptism of our Lord is the Sacrament of Holy Baptism itself. The opening prayer of the Prayer Book Baptismal rite declares: by the Baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ, in the river Jo...

Today is the eve of the commemoration of the martyrdom of Archbishop Laud. Tomorrow, particular corners of Anglican social media will indulge in a long-standing Whiggish pursuit - condemning the martyred Archbishop. There are, of course, reasons to critique Laud. Indeed, post-1662 High Church opinion was often cautious about aspects of Laud's primacy, not least because of the shadow cast by the Personal Rule . Laud's character has also proven to be as unlikeable to historians as to his critics in the 1630s. That said, we are long overdue a favourable  interpretation of Laud, described by the Cambridge Platonist George Rust, in his sermon at Jeremy Taylor's funeral, as "the wise Prelate".  This post seeks to consider what I am describing as Archbishop Laud's legacy: a vision of popular Anglicanism, a national church embedded in culture through the liturgical rites and rhythms of the parish, an alternative account of the Christian life to that offered by the se...

Over the Christmas season, I was interested in references, on The Lutheran Neoplatonist , the substack of a priest in the Church of Norway, to seasonal Norwegian customs. The first was in a homily for what the Book of Common Prayer terms The Sunday after Christmas Day, or what contemporary Anglican liturgies tend to describe as The First Sunday of Christmas. The Lutheran Neoplatonist , however, pointed to the Norwegian term : what we call “Romjulssøndag” ... in the Church of Norway. Romjul (lit. “space Christmas”) refers to the days of Christmas between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  Something of this is probably reflected in the experience of many Anglican churches in these Islands and North America on The Sunday after Christmas Day. A smaller congregation after the large congregations for carol services and Christmas Day; perhaps simple congregational carols and less choral music; and the main liturgy of the day rather more modest than Midnight Mass. We might, then, regard Th...

Reflecting on the suggestion made in the post on Epiphany Eve, that Anglican piety particularly rejoices in the Epiphany as the feast of grace fulfilling, not destroying, nature, of nature ordered towards grace, I turn to Jeremy Taylor's meditation on the Magi in The Great Exemplar : As it was an unsearchable wisdom, so it was an unmeasurable grace of Providence and dispensation which God did exhibit to those wise men, to them, as to all men, disposing the ministeries of his grace sweetly, and by proportion to the capacities of the person suscipient. For God called the Gentiles by such means as their customs and learning had made prompt and easy. For these magi were great philosophers and astronomers; and therefore God sent a miraculous star to invite and lead them to anew and more glorious light, the lights of grace and glory. And God so blessed them in following the star, to which their innocent curiosity and national customs were apt to lead them, that their custom was changed t...