THE CHURCH SINCE 1890 The beginning of the last decade of the 19th century was marked by two factors which indicate the lines of subsequent development within the Church of England. These were the Lincoln Judgment and the publication of Lux Mundi. The one aided the progress of that ritualistic and doctrinal movement known as Anglo-Catholicism. The other was even more funda mentally important. It revealed the progress of Biblical criticism among men who secured the acceptance of the principles of that science in circles in which they had hitherto been identified with disloyalty to Christ, and so gave great impetus to the growth of Modernism, even within the Anglo-Catholic movement itself. Anglo-Catholicism has encountered the strongest opposition of a kind which has often been fanatical rather than thoughtful, and which has therefore assisted the movement it sought to destroy. In 1890 a certain Mr. Kensit founded the Protestant Truth So ciety, pledged to such opposition. It engaged in such measures as the raiding of ritualistic churches and the disgraceful inter ruption of divine worship in them, and attempted to secure the election to Parliament of men pledged to oppose ritualism. Archbishop Benson laboured for peace, but the feud was inten sified by the Papal condemnation of Anglican Orders in Septem ber 1896. Certain French clergy had suggested that these Orders might be recognized as valid; and Leo XIII., most liberal of Popes, appointed a Commission to examine the matter. This Commission was understood to be favourable, but a committee of Cardinals reported adversely and the subsequent Bull Apos tolicae Curae declared that "ordinations performed by the An glican rite have been and are utterly invalid and altogether null." This set-back to Anglo-Catholic aspiration, so far from satisfying the Protestant opposition, provoked a renewed outburst of anti Roman controversy, in which Sir William Harcourt, the champion of the earlier Public Worship Regulation Acts took a leading part. There can be no doubt that there was the most lamentable and flagrant disorder within the Church, though it was then as nothing to what it has since become. Various questions concern ing it were argued at the Lambeth Hearings in 1899. The Arch bishops condemned the ceremonial use of incense and of lights in procession, and, in general, diocesan Bishops have accepted this decision as the law in the matter. In the following year the Reservation of the Sacrament was condemned. .Individual Bishops have attempted to secure obedience to this prohibition, but no concerted action has been taken, and it has never been success fully enforced. Bishop Creighton held conferences at Fulham in an attempt to bring the opposing leaders together; Temple, anxious for the weightier matters of the law, allowed wide diver gencies in externals. None the less the agitation became so acute that in 1904 a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Disci pline was appointed, which in 1906 produced a Report filling five bulky Blue Books. It revealed departures from the use of the Church of England such as the interpolation into the Communion Office of prayers from the Roman Mass, the practice of Reserva tion, of the Mass of the Pre-sanctified, of Corpus Christi proces sions, of the invocation of the Virgin Mary and of Saints, and the observance of such Roman festivals as those of the Assump tion and of the Sacred Heart. These practices were bluntly de clared to be "clearly inconsistent with and subversive of the teaching of the Church of England." They suggested doctrines repudiated by the Church of England and "should promptly be made to cease." There was also some illegality at the other end of the ceremonial scale, e.g., Evangelicals neglected to say the prescribed daily services, but the Commissioners, while noting such breaches, ruled that few of them had any doctrinal sig nificance. At the same time it was stated with equal frankness that "the law of Public Worship in the Church of England is too narrow," the ecclesiastical courts were recognized as effete and their reconstruction was recommended, together with an increase of the Bishops' power in dealing with obstinate law-breakers, against whom it was suggested that the final measure should be not imprisonment but deprivation. It was further urged that Letters of Business should be issued to the Convocations to pre pare a new Ornaments Rubric and "to make such modifications in the law relating to Divine Worship as may tend to secure greater elasticity." The Letters were duly issued. Convocation attempted compromises acceptable to neither party, and began a 20 years consideration of Prayer Book revision.
The Report of the Royal Commission, violent Protestant oppo sition, fatherly episcopal counsel coupled with inaction, have all been in vain. Anglo-Catholicism has grown and has done much to transform the outward appearance of the Church of England and the teaching given inside it. It gained no little impetus from the fact that it stressed that idea of historical continuity which characterized the time of its origin, it has been fortunate in the zeal of its devotees, and the undoubted attraction it possesses for a certain type of mentality. Its three Anglo-Catholic Con gresses held in the Albert Hall have been thronged with devout men and women, and the same is true of many provincial con gresses. These meetings elicit a religious emotional fervour which has not been witnessed in England since the days of Wesley. The work done by Anglo-Catholics among the poor is beyond praise and covers a multitude of intellectual sins. Like everything else in the Church of England it is a loose collection of elements by no means altogether agreed or consistent. It is eclectic, choosing from among the doctrines of Western Catholicism instead of from among those of Protestantism. From the days of Lux Mundi it has contained a Liberal and a traditionalist wing, and the diver gence between them is growing. The former accepts Biblical criticism, sometimes in an extreme form, and also, though per haps to a less degree, historical criticism. The more traditional section can scarcely be said to do so, except verbally. The great influence of The Church Times, to which the whole movement owes an immense debt (not all of one kind), steadily prevents any effective control of Anglo-Catholicism by its liberal scholars; these continue the best tradition of the Oxford Movement which has tried to stand on the side of learning and for the full use of art and knowledge in the service of faith. They largely adopt Newman's theory of Development. Lux Mundi revealed this feature in contrast to the attitude of earlier Tractarians. The Editor, in his essay on The Holy Spirit and Inspiration, recog nized the fact of limitation in the human knowledge of Jesus; his "Kenotic" theory, rendered necessary by his historical and critical investigations, was a rather desperate attempt to retain the Chalcedonian Christology. The same principles which ani mated Lux Mundi, appeared again in a volume by some Oxford tutors called Contentio V eritatis (1902). The work has gone on and is exemplified to-day in all the best of the younger scholars of the liberal wing of Anglo-Catholicism. The more traditional Anglo-Catholicism is not without learned men, but they are few and old. The ideals of the more liberal school were clearly stated by Dr. Rawlinson in a paper entitled Catholicism with Freedom which he read at an Anglo-Catholic Congress in Birmingham. A protest followed from the unprogressive orthodox, similar to that caused by Lux Mundi a generation earlier. The traditions of that book have recently found admirable expression in the work Essays Catholic and Critical, in which the essential corner-stone of Roman and traditional Catholicism—oracular external author ity—is repudiated in the clearest terms. The book gives an account, and offers some defence of, a form of Christianity which values historical continuity, Catholic custom and, above all, sacra mental religion, combined with a full acceptance of modern criticism and learning.
It is very unfortunate, however, that this is not the type of Anglo-Catholicism taught in most churches of the movement. There is a large and influential propaganda which is definitely Roman in spirit and outlook, in its teaching about revelation, about ecclesiastical authority as a ground of belief, about the bind ing character of tradition; definitely Roman in its forms and modes of worship. It is denied that the Church of England, apart from Rome, has any authority for her members in matters of faith. The hope is cherished, through many disappointments, that some day infallibility will compromise with its own claim; there is a pathetic longing for recognition by Rome. This is a fundamental departure from the attitude characteristic of the Oxford Move ment. Among this traditionalist school, Biblical criticism is some what regretfully accepted in regard to the Old Testament ; it is not denied that it must be applied to the New, but it is allowed to have no doctrinal consequences. It is openly confessed that Anglo Catholicism wishes to do for England what the Counter-Reforma tion has done for Belgium, for Northern France, and for Southern Germany, and that to try this system means to try it as a whole. Further it is claimed that there is no important difference between the Anglican Eucharist and the Roman Mass. Thus, in June, 1924, some 3,00o Anglican clergymen, including Bishop Gore, presented a "Declaration of Faith" to the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. It stated that "the signatories affirm that they hold it to be the. genuine doctrine of the Anglican Church that they have received Apostolic Orders through their Bishops with the purpose that we should offer the unbloody Sacrifice of the Eucharist for both the living and the departed. We hold that by consecration the bread and wine are changed and become the true Body and Blood of Christ, and we hold that Christ, thus present, is to be adored." This, as a leading Jesuit affirms, states the pre-Reformation belief, and the belief of Rome to-day, but to call it the historic witness of the Anglican Communion during the past 375 years, or to say that it is the official Anglican faith to-day is to state what simply is not a fact. Indeed, there are many Churches in England to-day in which the whole Roman system is inculcated, except the doc trine of Papal Infallibility, and an attitude of deferential respect even to this claim is much more common than any opposition to it. It is said that Catholic doctrine is static ; the most there can be is variation and development of interpretation; that the order of the Christian Church was decided once for all in the years im mediately following the Ascension ; that the Creeds, the Sacra ments and the Episcopal Ministry derive their authority directly from the Apostles, and that any modification of them would in volve the abandonment of what is essential to Christianity.
The other development of thought which, with more or less con sistency, has steadily grown in the English Church since the last decade of the 19th Century, is the phenomenon known as Mod ernism (q.v.). While it is absurd to suggest that an insistence on the practical nature of the gospel, and the preaching thereof, is characteristic of any one school of thought, it is nevertheless true that, at least in earlier days, the emphasis of Modernism has been concerned with the intellectual element in religion. It is, among other things, a protest against a stereotyped intellectual ism. The content of Modernism is not easy to distinguish inas much as it represents a fundamental attitude of mind rather than a system of thought. In brief, it demands that a fair hearing be given to every new suggestion, and is anxious to make use of what ever in the knowledge, practice or aspiration of the modern world can be used by the Church in its task of reconciling man to God. It recognises that Biblical criticism which has made its way in the Church of England through the efforts of such men as the late Drs. Driver and Sanday, and Bishop Gore, involves a totally dif ferent attitude towards the Bible from that formerly common to all schools of Anglican theology. It is a movement inside the Church, and aims at a reconstruction of theology. It demands that the claims of scientific history have to be applied, and the results accepted, in the study of traditional theology, and it in volves a fundamentally different attitude to Dogma, the relations of Faith to History, and Authority, from that which is character istic of the Roman or narrower Anglican type of Catholicism. It has little organisation. At the close of the 19th century "The Churchmen's Union for the Advancement of Liberal Religious Thought" was founded, and has steadily increased in membership though it does not include a tenth of those who sympathise with its ideals. As early as 1905 there appeared an important "Declaration on Biblical Criticism," asking that the clergy should receive "authoritative encouragement" to face the critical problems of the New Testament with entire candour. It further declared that grave responsibility and peril was involved in building "the faith of souls primarily upon details of New Testament narrative, the his torical validity of which must ultimately be determined in the court of trained research." This Declaration was signed by some 1,362 of the home clergy and about 36o of those working in Colonial and foreign lands. Today, though there is much difference and controversy about the implications of Biblical criticism, the fact of it is so widely accepted that there is no University or College of any note in this country where the old view of the Bible is de fended. Only among a very few of the older Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals does it still survive. A book of essays called Liberal Evangelicalism (1920) shows to what extent the basis of this latter and honourable school of English Churchmanship has been modernized.
But Modernism, like Anglo-Catholicism, has not made its way without the hindrance, and occasional assistance, of hostile oppo sition. In 1911 .the Rev. J. M. Thompson published a book called Miracles in the New Testament. His explicit denial that the "wonder" type of miracle ever happened produced a storm. He was compelled to abandon the exercise of his office in Magdalen College, Oxford: to-day the same position can be freely adopted without the least danger of any action being taken. The next year saw the publication of essays by some Oxford theologians under the title Foundations. The contribution of the Editor, Canon B. H. Streeter, who is among the foremost of English New Testa ment scholars, aroused hostile comment ; in particular, his sug gestion that the Resurrection appearances were of the nature of visions gave much offence. Today a similar view is maintained in Essays Catholic and Critical, by a very advanced Anglo Catholic, and no outcry has been raised. It is probably the case that the change is more due to decline of interest in such contro versies than to the spread of more modern views. A further noisy protest against Modernism was made in 1914, by Bishop Weston of Zanzibar, an extreme Anglo-Catholic. His protest was occa sioned partly by the Hulsean Lectures on The Eschatology of Jesus, and led to a debate in the Upper House of Convocation. Their Lordships passed the inevitable resolution, the form of which tended in opposite directions. It was affirmed that "the denial of any of the historical facts stated in the Creeds, goes beyond the limits of legitimate interpretation, and gravely imperils that sincerity of profession which is plainly incumbent on the ministers of the Word and Sacraments," yet, in view of what they called "new problems" raised by "historical criticism," the Bishops demanded "considerateness in dealing with that which is tentative and provisional in the thought and work of earnest and reverent students" : to-day, few Bishops would refuse to ordain an other wise suitable candidate who stated his inability to affirm belief in such a miracle as the Virgin Birth. A further transient contro versy was aroused by the appointment of Dr. Henson to the see of Hereford : an attempt was made to induce the Archbishop to refuse consecration on the ground of heresy of the Bishop-elect. He was duly consecrated in Feb. 1918, and to-day, as Bishop of Durham, is on the side of a moderate Anglo-Catholicism and is a foremost champion of the spiritual independence of the Church. Two years later the Lambeth Conference assembled, but no guid ance was forthcoming on the situation created by Modernist ad vance. In 1921, at a Conference at Girton College, Cambridge, organised by The Churchmen's Union, the inadequacy of the tra ditional forms of Christological doctrine was affirmed in the most definite terms. Full account was taken of the bearings of Biblical criticism and modern knowledge, and an attempt was made to re state belief in Christ in modern terminology. A bitter controversy followed, the readers of the Conference papers being freely ac cused of denying the divinity of Christ. The English Church Union, the largest Anglo-Catholic organization, took up the matter and petitioned Convocation to declare the opinions expressed at Girton contrary to the teaching of the Bible and the Church. The Churchmen's Union presented a counter-petition which was signed by many distinguished theologians outside the Society. The Can terbury Convocation acknowledged "the gain which arises from free enquiry at once fearless and reverent into the meaning and expression of the faith" and deprecated "the more blunt denuncia tion of contributions made by earnest men in their endeavour to bring new light to bear upon these difficult and anxious problems." The need for caution received emphasis. The Convocation of York pronounced even more favourably in a Modernist direction. Today scholars within the Church of England enjoy a full freedom in study and in the publication of its results; only a party of Anglo-Catholics, and these not the scholars to whom Anglo Catholicism must look for its future defence, would wish to expel Modernists from the Church.