Schisms Old and New

Schism is worse than heresy. Such has been the received wisdom from the Church Fathers onwards, yet schism has been a part of the Church’s modus operandi since well before the Reformation. At its heart is a debate over what constitutes adiaphora (things indifferent) in the life of the Church. What follows is a reflection on one of those moments in a peculiarly Anglican context – in the British Isles in the early 21st Century. For these purposes, it matters not what position you take on the appropriateness of ecclesial separation. Whether you view it as unjustified, understandable but unnecessary, or defensible, it constitutes a likely reality. Such a phenomenon is not new; rather, it is part and parcel of the Anglican experience.

 

On June 30, 2017, the Anglican Church in North America – an ecclesial body that the Anglican Communion Secretary General recently stressed was not a province of the Anglican Communion though in ecumenical relationship with many of its component provinces – consecrated the Reverend Canon Andy Lines as Missionary Bishop for Europe. A graduate of the University of Durham who had worked for the South American Missionary Society (SAMS), Lines is associated with the Anglican Mission in England (AMIE), an English outgrowth of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON). The consecration of a bishop who has affirmed his willingness to oversee Anglican communities who reject oversight from bishops of the Church of England is a significant departure from the convention of a single Anglican jurisdiction in a particular geographic region. Parallel Anglican jurisdictions already exist in the United States, Canada and Brazil; it now seems inevitable that the Church of England will soon be obliged to confront the reality. If you want some sense of what the initial phase might be like, I recommend my colleague Chris Brittain’s A Plague on Both Their Houses, a study of Anglican realignment in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (of which I was a member from 2004-2012).


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Thinking historically, I would like to suggest to you that there are two possible models from the past (and two representative figures) that might help inform our present difficulty.  Some would compare today’s disruptions with the Nonjuring Schism of the 1690s, during which a number of English bishops (and the Scottish Episcopal Church) stayed loyal to the Stuart cause after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and refused to swear allegiance to King William III and Queen Mary. Numbered among their ranks was Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells. Though critical of some of the policies of James II and distrusted by some of his fellow nonjurors for his moderation in the cause, Ken refused all attempts to reinstate him, living out his life on a modest pension and dying some twenty years later in 1710. The Nonjurors remained for ever a small minority in England, however, returning to the fold in 1789 after the death of the last Stuart pretender. Many in today’s Church of England probably see Bishop Lines and the movement that he embodies in these terms.

If a reminder be needed of Ken’s contribution to Anglican liturgical devotion, perhaps this familiar hymn, penned in 1674, will do him justice (note his familiar rendition of the Doxology in the final verse): 

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise,
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

Thy precious time misspent, redeem,
Each present day thy last esteem,
Improve thy talent with due care;
For the great day thyself prepare.

By influence of the Light divine
Let thy own light to others shine.
Reflect all Heaven’s propitious ways
In ardent love, and cheerful praise.

In conversation be sincere;
Keep conscience as the noontide clear;
Think how all seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

Wake, and lift up thyself, my heart,
And with the angels bear thy part,
Who all night long unwearied sing
High praise to the eternal King.

All praise to Thee, who safe has kept
And hast refreshed me while I slept
Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake
I may of endless light partake.

Heav’n is, dear Lord, where’er Thou art,
O never then from me depart;
For to my soul ’tis hell to be
But for one moment void of Thee.

Lord, I my vows to Thee renew;
Disperse my sins as morning dew.
Guard my first springs of thought and will,
And with Thyself my spirit fill.

Direct, control, suggest, this day,
All I design, or do, or say,
That all my powers, with all their might,
In Thy sole glory may unite.

I would not wake nor rise again

And Heaven itself I would disdain,

Wert Thou not there to be enjoyed,

And I in hymns to be employed. 

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

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If the fate of the Nonjurors represents one possible outcome, I suspect Bishop Lines and his constituency would prefer to invoke the example of John Wesley, who, though the acknowledged father of Methodism, lived and died a member of the Church of England. In contrast with Nonjuring Anglicanism, the spread of the ‘Methodist Connection’ attested to the growing inability of the eighteenth century Church of England to meet the spiritual needs of many ordinary believers. The subsequent parting of the ways – first in the United States and then in Great Britain – was followed by an explosive pattern of growth that brought Methodism to the forefront of English-speaking Protestant denominations. While it never replaced the Church of England, it proved far from a missiological failure.

We Anglicans would do well to ponder the implications of the following hymn of Wesley, dating from 1747, when the work of organizing the Methodist societies had just begun. The forswearing of earthly “honors, wealth and pleasures mean” goes hand in hand with the image of a Church unimpeded by the maintenance of structures and the staffing of organizations. “I lodge awhile in tents below,” writes Wesley, “or gladly wander to and fro, till I my Canaan gain.” A sobering thought. 
 

How happy is the pilgrim’s lot!

How free from every anxious thought,

From worldly hope and fear!

Confined to neither court nor cell,

His soul disdains on earth to dwell,

He only sojourns here.

This happiness in part is mine,

Already saved from self design,

From every creature love;

Blest with the scorn of finite good,

My soul is lightened of its load,

And seeks the things above.

The things eternal I pursue,

A happiness beyond the view

Of those that basely pant

For things by nature felt and seen;

Their honors, wealth, and pleasures mean

I neither have nor want.

I have no sharer of my heart,

To rob my Savior of a part,

And desecrate the whole;

Only betrothed to Christ am I,

And wait His coming from the sky,

To wed my happy soul.

I have no babes to hold me here;

But children more securely dear

For mine I humbly claim,

Better than daughters or than sons,

Temples divine of living stones,

Inscribed with Jesus’ Name.

No foot of land do I possess,

No cottage in this wilderness,

A poor wayfaring man,

I lodge awhile in tents below;

Or gladly wander to and fro,

Till I my Canaan gain.

Nothing on earth I call my own;

A stranger, to the world unknown,

I all their goods despise;

I trample on their whole delight,

And seek a country out of sight,

A country in the skies.

There is my house and portion fair,

My treasure and my heart are there.

And my abiding home;

For me my elder brethren stay,

And angels beckon me away,

And Jesus bids me come.

“I come,” Thy servant, Lord, replies,

“I come to meet Thee in the skies,

And claim my heavenly rest”;

Now let the pilgrim’s journey end,

Now, O my Savior, Brother, Friend.

Receive me to Thy breast!