Anglicanism: Catholic Evangelical or Evangelical Catholic?

Essays Ecumenical and Polemical

John A

• Publisher: ATF Press Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781925612714
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In this collection of essays John Moses combines the critical eye of a professional historian with the passion of a dismayed churchman in his analysis of the current malaise of the Anglican Church of Australia. His analysis is indebted to his study of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, as he calls for a recovery of tolerance and a renewed commitment to intellectual engagement with our faith if Anglicanism is to have a future in this highly secular nation. The Very Revd Dr Gregory C. Jenks, Dean of Grafton This book addresses the internal conflict within the Anglican Communion concerning the nature of the Church, its origins, structures and purpose. Through a series of essays it focuses on the question of the relationship between the Church, "the eschatological community of salvation" (Hans Küng) and the Scriptures, namely the variety of ancient records which the said community assembled over the first three centuries of its existence and used as the source for its liturgy and moral and social teaching. In particular the present book takes issue with those elements within the Anglican Communion who assume that the various books of the Bible taken as a whole represent the inerrant word of God. It is argued that people who make this assumption live in a parallel universe from where they demand that there is only one way to understand Scripture, namely their way and that failure/refusal to submit to this demand results in exclusion from the community of salvation. Instead it is maintained here that being a Christian means "being there for others" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). The emphasis of Christianity should be the unconditional inclusive acceptance of "all sorts and conditions of men" [and women] and to exhort them to establish, justice and peace within society and among the nations and to work for the preservation and care of the earth which is God's Creation.

Chapter 1

The Chaos of Anglicanism: Towards unravelling the Paradox: A Polemic*

** ‘It takes excessive certainty to convince others and override their doubts.’

One often hears the question, ‘Where is s/he coming from?’ especially in response to a piece of polemical or controversial writing. Behind that query is undoubtedly some curiosity or concern about the author’s provenance. One needs to think both vertically and laterally here. For example, when one reads Irish history which is notorious for its sectarian violence one is bound to encounter openly biased accounts written with a pronounced religious/ideological slant either way, Protestant or Roman Catholic. All history is slanted; some examples more so than others. Clinical objectivity remains an elusive ideal. One must concede that every author is the product of his/her family environment and subsequent spiritual/intellectual formation. These influences are inescapable. In that case, it should be useful to know where this author is coming from. ‘Formation’ is a complex process in which the influence of family, teachers and life experiences are efficacious.

First of all, I wish to acknowledge my mentors at the University of Queensland. These were all men who were accustomed to students coming from working class or ethnic backgrounds who did not have a very sophisticated comprehension of the world or even much of an awareness of the local political environment.

This was especially true of students from the bush and additionally, in my case of non-Anglo-Saxon parentage; one was on a very steep learning curve when one arrived from the ‘deepest north’ of Queensland to the neo-classical architectural grandeur of the then expanding St Lucia campus in Brisbane. It is still expanding. The autobiographical content of what follows is meant to make clear the fundamental importance of early formation and education for anyone’s comprehension of Creation. At the University of Queensland, as at any university, the human understanding of lecturers is crucial to a student’s intellectual-spiritual formation. In the History Department of the University of Queensland at that time the main instructors were Alan Morrison, Bob Neale, Roger Joyce, Charles Grimshaw, Nicholas Tarling, Rufus Davis and finally its Head, Professor Gordon Greenwood. They were all decent, tolerant mostly convivial men representing a variety of cultural/religious/political backgrounds who did their best to encourage their earnest and often struggling disciples. As one of their students I never ever imagined that one day I would be joining some of them as a colleague as I did in 1966 after my return from five years study in Germany. In addition, I profited immensely from the dialogue on the subjects of intellectual history and religion especially among the more recently recruited colleagues, especially Paul Crook, a former fellow undergraduate, Joe Siracusa who was recruited from the USA and John Moorhead, an English-trained medievalist from Grafton. Then the encounter with and enduring friendship of Professor Michael Lattke of the Department of Studies in Religion was/is always stimulating. By virtue of his towering biblical scholarship Professor Lattke has been an inspiration to many, both colleagues and students alike.

In the Department of English the Professor was a Scotsman named Andrew Kilpatrick Thompson, a gifted communicator of poetry who opened up a new world of spiritual creativity to his students. His colleagues Cecil Hadgraft, Eunice Hangar and Val Vallis through their lively and erudite lectures on literature remain firmly among my most enjoyable recollections of my student days. Then Professor Keith Leopold, at that time Head of the Department of German and his colleagues, Gunther Bonnin, Anthony Powell and Malcolm McGuiness transmitted an abiding appreciation of the German language, literature and music as well as German history. All the above experiences formed the essential launching pad for a post-graduate training at German universities. The equipment I had unconsciously assembled enabled me to apply successfully for a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for further studies in Germany. For a ‘wog-bred bastard from the bush’ (once so called) I had been propelled into what was an hitherto unimaginable cultural odyssey.

In the still only partially re-built city of Munich 1961–62 I was introduced to the Byzantine world of Prusso-German history by Professor Franz Schnabel (1887–1966) a liberal-minded Roman Catholic scholar of immense erudition and humanity. He had been in the resistance against the Nazi regime and subsequently, because of his established profile as a pedagogue with strong pro-Western political values, he had been installed as Head (Ordinarius) of the Seminar of Modern History at the University by the American occupation government in 1947. The two years spent attending his lectures and seminars impacted powerfully on my formation as a historian.

At that time it seemed to me that Schnabel would make a wise and helpful supervisor. I had not taken into account that the much-revered professor was then in his advanced years and when I approached him on the possibility of going on to a doctorate he wisely advised me to seek out a younger professor with whom to do further studies leading to a doctorate because, as he stressed, if he should pass on before I was finished, I would be left high and dry. This triggered the move to the University of Erlangen where I found a much younger but no less inspiring and enthusiastic Doktorvater (supervisor), in Professor Waldemar Besson (1929–1971). Under his direction I researched the German social democratic labour movement, especially the trade union wing because I was interested in the ‘other’, meaning working class, Germany. Then with Professor Karl-Heinz Ruffmann (1922–1996) I was introduced to the Machiavellism of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Maria Theresia of Austria and Catherine the Great of Russia by focussing on the history of the partitions of Poland. That was pedagogically a most valuable experience for an Antipodean because it opened up the hitherto undisclosed word of 18^th century absolutist Europe. But as well, and most importantly I was able to follow up on the sweep of 19^th and 20^th century German history under the tutelage of Professor Walther-Peter Fuchs (1904–1997), a renowned Reformation historian.

Fuchs explored the ‘peculiar’ world of Luther and Calvin and so communicated to his students the fifteenth and sixteenth century foundations of Prusso-German political thought and values. He then did a remarkable thing, namely to trace the development of the authoritarian tradition in post-Bismarckian politics as interpreted by a series of ‘political’ historians starting with Leopold von Ranke, who held a chair in Berlin from 1825 to 1871 and who exerted such an incalculable influence on the history profession world-wide. Fuchs then focussed on a series of leading German historians right up to the last ‘political’ professor, namely Gerhard Ritter (1888–1967), an ardent Prusso-German nationalist. So the careers of all the leading 19^th and twentieth century German professors of history were dissected and evaluated. They were all very ‘political professors’ who had exerted a deleterious influence on the mind of their students whom they educated to venerate the Prussian militaristic-authoritarian tradition which turned out to be the matrix out of which Hitler’s National Socialism was later born.

What was crucial about this course was to learn how much these scholars with their particular nationalist-ideological stand point influenced the political culture of the nation. They were, in short, Germany’s political-ideological pedagogues. Their impact as Volksbildhauer (meaning, “sculptors of the nation” as Professor Fuchs designated all history teachers), has been graphically demonstrated by the course of German history since Otto von Bismarck became Reich Chancellor of the united Prusso-German Empire in 1871. Those professors tried to mould their students in their own image and it is fair to say than the vast majority were very malleable. Professor Fuchs had been informing the younger Germans, that is the that immediate, post-Nazi generation how the nation had been so disastrously misled by its nineteenth-century academics. Especially when one considered the career of von Ranke’s successor in Berlin, Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) who had been appointed by Bismarck to replace von Ranke does one come to realise what a political-pedagogic influence that ‘national’ historians can exert.

Treitschke was a notorious militarist, fiercely hostile to the liberal West, especially Britain, and he was in addition fanatically anti-Semitic. It was he who coined the unforgettable phrase taken up by the Nazis, namely ‘The Jews are out misfortune’. All this was indeed riveting information which disclosed history as a discipline of immeasurable political potency. Did Australian historians do the same, that is, function as political- ideological pedagogues? That, indeed, becomes abundantly clear when one investigates the ideas of a Manning Clark or a Geoffrey Blainey, for example. My training in Germany thus served to heighten my alertness to the ideological biases in our Australian professors although I certainly had been made aware of the Left versus Right stand–off by my teacher Roger Joyce. He had reportedly devised the very first undergraduate course in Australian history in the country in 1956.

Sensitivity to different ideological influences also becomes particularly helpful when one has to consider the various schools of theology. And here one has again to reflect on one’s own religious formation. In my case this came, as explained in the introduction, from the Anglican clergy who were responsible for the education of children in the Diocese of North Queensland. They were a remarkable group of young men, almost exclusively ‘Oxbridge’ educated priests, who were then members of the Brotherhood of St Barnabas. Their background as ‘gentlemen and scholars’ was evident to all the reasonably perceptive local parishioners and so our young English clergy were respected both for their culture and earnestness with which they proclaimed the Word and dispensed the sacraments to the good people of far North Queensland. These parishioners, however, for the most part, one would have to confess, had only a very limited knowledge of the Bible or the Book of Common Prayer, and so needed all the encouragement they could get.

The Bishop of the Diocese at that time was the reputedly eccentric but totally dedicated chief pastor, John Oliver Feetham (1874–1947). He had come from an English clerical family and had received his education at Marlborough School and Trinity College, Cambridge. An outstanding member of a cohort of young English and Welshmen and occasionally even some Anglican Irishmen, Feetham was driven by a burning desire to propagate the Gospel and English Christianity wherever called in the then British Empire. John Oliver, as he was known, had come to Australia in 1907 to serve in the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd based in Dubbo. Then, in 1913 he had been elected by Synod in Townsville to become the fourth Bishop of the Diocese of North Queensland where he served for thirty-four years. Education of the young was a very high priority for John Oliver and he founded several schools including All Souls’ School for boys in Charters Towers in 1920. With regard to girls’ education, John Oliver had also encouraged the Sisters of the Sacred Advent to start schools in Townsville, Charters Towers and Herberton thereby consolidating the liberal Anglo-Catholic character of his diocese.

One learned from this tradition, as it was projected by the Oxbridge clergy, to comprehend the basic importance of understanding Christianity as the means of transforming rough bush boys into gentlemen in the sense explained in 1852 by John Henry Newman in his famous book, Apologia pro sua vita. (See Appendix II) Newman’s own formation had been as an Anglican which he always acknowledged even after he had transferred his allegiance to the Church of Rome. Essentially, an educated boy or girl had to learn to live by the ethics of the New Testament which contained the yardsticks of decency for all human beings. And one learned these things through attendance at Mass (and Evening Prayer). This is the Church’s ancient liturgy in which one got first to hear the Gospel read and expounded—the ministry of the word—and, secondly, the Eucharist celebrated and the Holy Sacrament dispensed. In short, one was indeed ushered into the afore-mentioned numinous, that is, the realm of spiritual values, the appropriation of which made one more truly human. So, what one encountered in the school chapel, and still does, was the revived catholic ritual of the Oxford Movement together with the intelligent preaching of the Word.

In short, the education system and values that had evolved in English public schools especially since the days of Thomas Arnold of Rugby (1795–1842) had been adapted and translated into the Australian bush environment by adventurous and educated young men from England, Ireland and Wales. This was an instance of cultural transfer which paralleled that practised by the Irish Roman Catholic priests and nuns who had also come to Australia with a deep sense of mission to spread the Faith as they comprehended it. This, it must be stressed, was very different from the Anglo-Catholic sense of mission and needs to be noted carefully because never at any stage was the Anglo-Catholic agenda intended to prepare Anglican people to ‘pope’, or for ‘swimming the Tiber’ or ‘going to Rome’, which the act of submission to the Papacy by Anglicans was once metaphorically termed. Some Anglican clergy did undeniably ‘go to Rome’, but it tends to be forgotten that numbers of Roman clergy have in fact come to find a more congenial home in Anglicanism and have made their ‘pilgrimage to Canterbury’.

The old claim of the Roman Church to be the only team in possession of the true Faith was and is contested by all other churches, especially by the Anglican. The reason for this is because Rome had always in the past singled out the Church of England for condemnation such as it did in 1896 by declaring Anglican Orders ‘absolutely null and utterly void’ in the Bull Apostolicae Curae. This declaration amounted to a ‘de-churching’ of the Anglican Communion; it was a non-church or an anti-church and Roman polemicists mainly of Irish origin in Australia had always rebuffed any ecumenical outreach by Anglicans. In a word, Rome refused to engage with any non-Roman Catholic Christians at all, always insisting on the old formula, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, meaning ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’. The then stance of the Roman Church had, in addition, been distinguished by the demand that her members suspend their private judgment in questions of faith and morals. (Is this still the case?) The individual did not have the right to think for herself, but, as in totalitarian states, had to conform to the will of the central authority regardless of how capricious that may have seemed. And let it be noted here that it is a characteristic of all forms of fundamentalism to claim to have absolute certainty in all things. Logically, however, the craving for absolute certainty in any sphere can never be satisfied by anyone for the simple reason that perceptions of reality are always changing with the daily accretion of new knowledge which forces us to revise our comprehension of the world. However, as will be seen, this old-fashioned attitude on the part of the official Roman Catholic Church has moderated over time although there are still die-hard conservatives among the hierarchy and laity who hanker for the pre-Vatican II days.

That said, it is well known that in the past the concept of ‘certainty’ has been disposed of by such scholars, as the famous Charles Darwin (1809–1882) whose findings regarding evolution have irrevocably changed perceptions of the world and this had to have an impact on the way people comprehended and practised their Christianity. Since Charles Darwin’s time all Churches have had to re-adjust their world view and re-think what it meant to be a follower of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. Fundamentalists, however, for inexplicable reasons, resist the idea of revising their comprehension of the Bible. They continue to regard it in its entirety as the “inerrant” Word of God that must be unconditionally obeyed. The problems that this raises seem not to concern those who adhere to this position. The present essays are in part an attempt to explain what is permanent (transcendent) about the Bible and what is passing (evanescent). In short, one must be at pains to distinguish between what the ancient writers understood about the physical universe on the one hand and what they said about the relationship of humanity to the Creator on the other.¹ Fundamentalists of either Evangelical, Anglo- or Roman Catholic provenance will no doubt find this confronting, but, it is hoped, also sufficiently challenging to cause a re-adjustment of previous dogmatically held positions.

A number of studies exist that try to deal with the issue of Anglican identity. Even in Australia, they range from those authors who advocate the cause of the conservative Evangelical Sydney Diocese to the very ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Chaos of Anglicanism: Towards unravelling the Paradox
• Chapter 2: Reconciling the Evangelical and Catholic Paradigms within Anglicanism
• Chapter 3: How We got the Bible and the Confusing Consequences of How it is Explained
• Chapter 4: Isolating the Problem
• Chapter 5: The Case for a Renewed Anglicanism
• Chapter 6: Anglican Integrity and Christian Unity Re-Visited
• Chapter 7: Peter Bennie at All Saints Wickham Terrace, Brisbane and as Editor of the Australian Church Quarterly 1952–1963—an Anglo-Catholic Biography
• Epilogue: Striving Together in the Faith of the Gospel
• Appendix I: Authority in the Church: An Anglican Perspective by the Most Reverend Dr Keith Rayner
• Appendix II: John Henry Newman’s Definition of a Gentleman
• Appendix III: The Characteristics of Evangelicalism in Australia as identified By Dr Stuart Piggin and Robert D Lindner
• Bibliography
• Index