OLD HIGH CHURCH ANGLICANISM FOR A TIME OF PANDEMIC
Courtesy of author. Accessed from guideposts.org.
I recently took Chris Corbin's quiz, "What type of Anglican are you," and discovered that I am an "Old High Church/Laudian." This Anglican identity has helped me in these challenging times of the coronavirus pandemic when Episcopalians are unable to attend Sunday services.
Almost one hundred years after Thomas Cranmer drafted the first book of Common Prayer in 1549, William Laud wielded "immense influence in deciding what the theological identity of the Church of England would be" (1) as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633-1641. His authority in the church was second only to the king's.
Negotiating the sacred in church spaces meant navigating between Roman Catholic and Protestant liturgical preferences. Thus, "Eucharist or communion...was the center of...controversy regarding Laudian reforms." (2) Roman Catholics expected to approach the altar and receive the transubstantiated Body and Blood of Christ. Anglicans generally rejected transubstantiation but recognized through faith, the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. In addition, Laud's reforms permitted altars "in a north/south position along the eastern wall of the chancel...railed to separate the clergy from the laity." (3) This was controversial among the more radical reformers who believed "the purpose of the Reformation was to make Christianity accessible to the public." (4)
"Old High Church" Anglicanism as a Protestant tradition merely reformed Roman Catholicism and improved it by way of a Eucharistic liturgy that was "high and dry" compared to the more radical reformers' ideal. In addition, Anglicans retained "the medieval monastic tradition of daily prayer...the restoration of a vision of daily prayer as the work of the whole church, not just the clergy or monastic elite." (5) It became the "soul" of the prayer book (6) as Anglicans prayed the Daily Office in church on Sundays and at home.
But a newer definition of "high church" eclipsed the old one upon the eruption of the Oxford Movement's Catholic Revival in Anglicanism. Critics of the Church of England, the Tractarians, began arguing in 1833 that the state church--headed by the monarch and under the authority of Parliament---had become too worldly. They believed instead that "the Church of England answered to a higher authority, namely Christ, who founded the church and the apostles, as well as their successors, the bishops, who governed it." (7) Its adherents were "calling for a return to the doctrinal traditions and practices of the ancient church." (8)
As this Catholic Revival spread throughout the Anglican Communion it became known as the "smells and bells" piety of Anglo-Catholicism: "the main service on Sundays was solemn mass, with incense, three sacred ministers dressed in medieval vestments, and squadrons of acolytes." (9) This was worship grounded in the ancient practices of Roman Catholicism: gothic architecture, ornate vestments, and veneration of the Eucharist and of the saints. (10) All told, Anglo-Catholicism differed wildly from older Laudian practices in its insistence on the primacy of the Eucharist vis-à-vis the Daily Office, its preference for grandiose liturgy over simpler forms, and its enthusiastic embrace of liturgical “extras” like incense.
Not all Anglicans went as high as Anglo-Catholicism in their liturgical practices. Moreover, there were pockets of Old High Church Anglicanism that persisted. Episcopalians who grew up using the 1928 prayer book recall when the Daily Office comprised the primary service of Morning Prayer on Sundays. The cassock, surplice, and tippet were the typical vestments worn by ministers. Holy Communion took place once per month or even less frequently, similar to the Congregationalists and Presbyterians that descended from the Calvinists of Laud's day. (11) By contrast, the liturgical reforms of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer established the Holy Eucharist as the primary service every Sunday. Priests in the current day tend to wear the cassock-alb, cincture, and stole as vestments, with or without a chasuble.
But the weekly Eucharist that nourished generations of Episcopalians has been disrupted by the current flu pandemic. Once the pandemic took root during Lent, Episcopal bishops urged the priests in their dioceses to cancel in-person services because numbers of outbreaks had been traced to church gatherings. Like most Episcopalians, I entered a brave new world in which I was unable to attend services.
I read what I could find on the diocesan websites as the bishops and dioceses developed liturgical guides for parishes to follow. Clergy posted these on parish websites and on their social media. Not only were we learning about social distancing, but churches began using technology to broadcast their services. I began watching the Sunday celebrations of the Eucharist at Washington National Cathedral.
Matthew S.C. Olver discusses in a series of articles what worship during the pandemic has been like. (12) Episcopalians began talking about "spiritual communion." Many churches who rarely celebrated the Daily Office began doing so. For some, it became the primary service.
It was as though they have become Old High Church Anglicans.
Olver argues, however, that these means of coping are inadequate:
Most of us find it terribly difficult to worship God on our own. The Daily Office can easily be prayed on its own. But without the Eucharist, the Church is not fully the Church. Without the Eucharist, the Christian will begin to wither as we begin to worship other gods: the thrill of the news cycle; the goddess Netflix; the shallow picture of the human being that we see on YouTube. (13)
I disagree with this assessment, because I believe we can develop the spiritual discipline required to keep our minds focused on God's presence in our lives and upon our need for God's grace in these challenging times. We need prayer, and the Daily Office in our Book of Common Prayer is available to us. We have the lectionary readings for every day of the liturgical year.
Old High Church Anglicanism became the means of reinforcing my faith once in-person worship became impossible. The Daily Office from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer --largely unchanged from the 1928 prayer book's Daily Office--became the mainstay of my worship at home as I noted the important messages to be found in the Psalms, the Old and New Testaments, and the Gospel. An essay I saw explained that the 1928 Prayer Book, written on the heels of the flu pandemic of 1918, included a collect applicable to our present reality, "In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality." (14) David W. Peters, an Episcopal priest, used them in an online service of Evening Prayer with the Litany.
I began praying daily both the Litany with the collect from the 1928 book. I drew upon an Anglo-Catholic prayer practice and took out the Anglican rosary I bought some years ago but which I hardly used. The time seemed right, that I should take every opportunity to strengthen my prayer life. I bought Jenny Lynn Estes' Anglican Rosary guidebook on how to pray it and sent copies to a few friends, along with some rosaries I bought. I drew upon my old beading and jewelry-making skills to make even more of them.
Reading God's word every day and reflecting upon it reminds me that the challenges we face aren't new. God's people thrived under all kinds of difficult circumstances. As I read from the 1928 Prayer Book, I am praying for our nation in the midst of our suffering and the failures in how we have coped with the pandemic. When I pray the Anglican rosary, "Blessed be God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," I am praying for God to have mercy upon us.
The Catechism in the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer urges Anglicans to frame a "rule of life" in determining their Christian witness. Regular attendance at public worship has been limited. What we are left with is "the practice of private prayer, Bible-reading and self-discipline." (15) We need not mourn what we have lost. We can focus upon what we have retained and become Old High Church Anglicans praying the Daily Office until we are able once again to experience the fullness of our Anglican liturgies.
Fierstadt, Ashley, "Reforming the Sacred": Standardization of Church Space in Laudian England (1633-1641)" (2016). Student Theses, Papers and Projects (History), https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/his/58, 3.
Id., 10.
Id., 16.
id., 19.
Jeffrey Lee, Opening the Prayer Book, 114.
Id.
James E. Griffis, The Anglican Vision, 43.
Id., 42.
Lee, 79.
See ie., Robert Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, 148-149, 153-156.
See ie., Greg Goebel, Why Every Church Should Have Weekly Sunday Communion Like the Anglicans Do, https://anglicancompass.com/why-every-church-should-have-weekly-sunday-communion-like-the-anglicans-do/, September 15, 2018.
Matthew C.S. Olver, Worship in a Time of Pandemic (Part 1), https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2020/03/24/worship-in-a-time-of-pandemic-part-1; Matthew C.S. Olver, Worship in a Time of Pandemic, (Part 2), https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2020/03/24/worship-in-a-time-of-pandemic-part-2/
Matthew C.S. Olver, The Loss of Ritual in Coronatide, https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2020/09/01/the-loss-of-ritual-in-coronatide/
Bishop John Bauerschmidt, The Coronavirus and the Book of Common Prayer, https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2020/03/17/the-coronavirus-and-the-book-of-common-prayer/
Anglican Church of Canada, Book of Common Prayer (1962), 555.
