MY editorial predecessors
never minced their words when dealing with controversial issues in
the columns of the Church Times. They believed in
denouncing the pillars of both Church and State, as occasion
offered. Here are half a dozen particular topics on which they
really let themselves go.
The Public
Worship Regulation Act
THE purpose of this
notorious Act, which was approved by Parliament in 1874, was to
suppress the growth of Ritualism in the Church of England - or, as
the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, put it to the House of
Commons, "the mass in masquerade". The Act did not so much change
the law regarding Anglican worship as strengthen the machinery for
its enforcement.
The original Bill was
drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Tait, but was
significantly amended in a more Protestant and Erastian (the theory
of state primacy over the Church) direction during its passage
through the Commons.
Needless to say, the
Church Times - which had been launched in 1863 to support
the Ritualists - was against the Act from the beginning.
In an early editorial
comment (24 April 1874), it stigmatised a speech by Tait in the
House of Lords as "bordering on the disgraceful". He must have
known, the paper suggested, that there had ceased to be "any public
ground for legislation on the subject of Ritual at all". And, just
in case the Archbishop was still in ignorance of the subject, the
paper went on to spell it out for him:
The
most rev. prelate knows perfectly well that the only section of the
Anglican clergy who care one straw about Church rules are those
whom he holds up to execration, and requests legislative permission
to injure and oppress. He knows perfectly well that what he chooses
to call violations of the law are believed to be its punctual
fulfilment.
Under the terms of the
Act, a new court was set up under a divorce-court judge, Lord
Penzance, who soon became one of the Church Times's
favourite whipping-boys. The paper frequently called his judgments
into question, as a succession of Ritualistic priests came up
before him, and, in some cases, were sentenced to terms of
imprisonment.
One such priest was
Arthur Tooth, Vicar of St James's, Hatcham, in the diocese of
Rochester, who, as a result of his jailing, became an instant hero
and martyr to most of his parishioners. The Bishop of Rochester,
Thomas Claughton, sent another priest to take over the conduct of
services at the church during Tooth's enforced absence - to the
chagrin of the Church Times.
"The Bishop of
Rochester", it thundered (16 February 1877), "has at last found a
clerk unscrupulous enough to thrust himself into the cure of St
James's, Hatcham, and gain possession of the church by means
analogous to those employed by burglars. . . We are extremely sorry
to hear that there is a tendency on the part of a few to accept the
Irreverend the Intruder."
In a leading article in
the same issue, the paper suggested that the Bishop had little
reason to be proud of his work. "Throughout the whole of these
miserable proceedings he has exhibited neither episcopal dignity,
nor fatherly generosity, nor even the ordinary good feeling to be
expected from a Christian gentleman." So much for poor
Claughton.
Tooth was eventually
released on a legal technicality; but any belief that his
mishandled case would make the Act a dead letter was premature.
Even though 17 out of 23 attempted prosecutions under the Act were
to be vetoed by the diocesan bishops concerned, the remaining
half-dozen proceeded to court - and four more priests were to
suffer imprisonment.
The most notorious of
these cases was that of Sidney Faithorn Green, Vicar of St John's,
Miles Platting, in the diocese of Manchester, who languished in
Lancaster jail for a year and seven months. His long imprisonment
undoubtedly helped to swing public opinion against using the law to
put down Ritualism. And, by keeping the issue constantly in the
headlines, the Church Times undoubtedly played a part in
the ultimate victory of the Ritualists.
It is also worth
remembering that, today, perhaps as many as three out of every four
of the parochial clergy in the Church of England indulge in
ceremonial church practices that might have had their predecessors
hauled before the courts.
Welsh
disestablishment
THIS was an issue that
excited fierce passions in church circles towards the close of the
19th century. The then four Welsh dioceses of Bangor, Llandaff, St
Asaph, and St Davids still formed part of the Church of England's
province of Canterbury, and their bishops were almost invariably
Englishmen.
This increasingly
offended Welsh nationalist sentiment, and led to the estrangement
of the majority of Welsh people from Anglicanism. The tithe war of
1888-89 sparked off a campaign to have the four Welsh dioceses both
disestablished and disendowed.
For once, the Church
Times found itself on the side of the English bishops. When
the first Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill looked likely to get
through Parliament, the bishops pledged themselves to resist its
passing into law. The Church Times cheered heartily from
the touchline. "A deliberate attempt is made in this Bill", it
declared (4 May 1894), "to treat the Church as a mere creature of
the State, to be mutilated and transformed at the caprice of any
Government that happens to be in power."
That particular Bill fell
by the wayside, but a later effort succeeded. Stigmatised by the
Church Times (21 February 1913) as "unutterably mean and
unjust, the outcome of sectarian malice", it nevertheless survived
its passage through Parliament, and the deed was done. The paper
again beat its breast (22 May 1914):
We
are disposed to think that in the long run it will be well to set
up a Welsh Province with an Archbishop of St Davids; but to allow
that the four sees can be cut off from Canterbury by Act of
Parliament would be intolerable. The whole Church of England must
come to the rescue of the despoiled churches. The spoilers may be
left to their spoils and to the consequences.
In the event, the
outbreak of the First World War delayed the coming into force of
the Welsh Church Act; and disestablishment did not finally take
effect until 1920.
Herbert Hensley
Henson
ONE of the thorniest
issues to occur during the nine-year editorship of Ernest Hermitage
Day (1915-24) was the row over David Lloyd George's nomination of
Herbert Hensley Henson to the bishopric of Hereford in 1917.
Henson, who had been Dean
of Durham since 1912, was a scholar and a fine preacher. But his
allegedly liberal interpretation of the Creeds, particularly in
regard to the Virgin birth and the resurrection, was such as to
make him anathema to many in the Church - and not only to
Anglo-Catholics.
No doubt the Church
Times's wrath would have been just the same, whatever the see
to which Henson had been nominated, but there was a certain
piquancy in the fact that Day happened to live just outside the
city of Hereford, and so was physically, as well as emotionally, at
the heart of the controversy.
At the time, even though
a world war was raging, the affair excited fierce passions in the
Church at large. A number of bishops announced that they could take
no part in Henson's consecration. Charles Gore, of Oxford, who was
spearheading the campaign against Henson, threatened to resign his
see if it went ahead; and even the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Randall Davidson, considered resigning.
The Church
Times's feelings were voiced in two leading articles in
successive issues. The first (14 December 1917) was headed "Unhappy
Hereford", and declared that the diocese's cup of bitterness was
full to the brim:
Churchmen everywhere are entitled to ask what there is in Dr
Henson's record which might seem to justify his nomination to a
see. His most fervent advocates would be at a loss to supply an
answer. . . Churchmen everywhere, and not only in the diocese of
Hereford, are entitled, and perhaps bound, to register their
protest against the appointment. It is one which everywhere will
meet with opposition, nor from one section of Churchmen only.
The next week, the paper
returned to the attack in a leader headed "The Hereford Scandal".
Never, within living memory, it declared, had the feelings of
Churchmen been more stirred by a nomination to a see than by Lloyd
George's nomination of Henson to the see of Hereford.
The letters which lie
heaped upon our table are witness to the fact that all over the
country Churchmen deeply resent the indignity which has been put
upon the Church. . . There is no reason why protest should fail of
its effect. The case is unique, since never before has a nomination
been so resented not only within the diocese immediately affected
but far beyond it.
The protest may have been
"unique", but it was unavailing. Only four of the 19 prebendaries
who turned up for the fateful meeting of the Cathedral Chapter on 4
January 1918 heeded the Church Times's exhortation, and
declined to vote for Henson's election. And Gore's threat to resign
was neatly defused by a letter from Henson, written at the
Archbishop's suggestion, giving Davidson a formal assurance of his
belief in the virgin birth and the resurrection.
Birth
control
THIS was one issue on
which the Church Times was to change its mind over the
passage of time. It was a subject that (as the paper saw it
originally) was always rearing its ugly head. Bewailing the
steadily declining birth-rate in Britain, the Church Times
declared (10 November 1899):
The
avoidance of a numerous family is becoming quite an accepted
standard of social economics among all classes. This, if allowed to
spread, means national ruin. . . When the Bishops have finished
pothering about incense and lights, perhaps they will turn their
attention to this weightier matter.
Seventeen months later,
the paper was even more uneasy on the issue. It complained (19
April 1901) about a "conspiracy of silence" on the falling
birth-rate. "What we want is a general warning that the deliberate
suppression of families of children is a sin akin to national
suicide . . . and that the pursuit of selfish ideals and love of
pleasure are the contributing factors of this national infamy."
And, in the following decade, all the editorial stops were pulled
out (23 August 1912) in the face of the Registrar-General's latest
return:
The
only inference to be drawn from these figures is that men and
women, in startlingly increasing numbers, are deliberately shirking
parental responsibility. . . The restriction of the family is
openly and unblushingly advocated. Women publicly avow their
reluctance to undertake the duties of motherhood. It is time that
we deny ourselves certain luxuries, now considered necessities, for
the sake of our offspring that might be.
If all this seems to be
laying it on a bit, it should be remembered that it was not until
1930 that Anglicans were accorded a grudging permission, by the
Lambeth Conference of that year, to use artificial forms of
contraception - and that they were given the full green light only
by the Lambeth Conference of 1958.
It was, in fact, merely
by 193 votes to 67 (with a fair number of abstentions) that Lambeth
1930 had signalled an amber light: that circumstances might arise
in which it was justifiable for Christians, not on grounds of
"selfishness or luxury", but for serious moral reasons, to
"practise methods of what is commonly known as birth-prevention".
This, in the view of the Church Times (17 October 1930),
marked a grave departure from the position adopted by previous
Lambeth pronouncements:
To
admit the necessity of any occasion for such practices is
unquestionably an enormous concession to the spirit and perhaps the
practice of the modern world which is by no means guided in its
conduct by Christian principles. It certainly involves a startling
departure from the traditional teaching of Catholic moralists. As
such it will occasion most profound concern to all those who in
this matter agree with the minority of the Bishops. There is no
getting away from the blunt fact that a practice hitherto regarded
as sinful by the Catholic Church has now been declared by 193
Catholic Bishops not to be, in certain circumstances, sinful at
all.
The controversy rumbled
on all through the autumn of 1930, the Church Times
stirring the cauldron from time to time with a provocative comment
of its own. But a paper can change its mind; and it did so, in no
uncertain terms, in its approval (29 August 1958) of the Lambeth
Conference's wholehearted endorsement of "family planning by use of
contraceptives":
The
Church Times, while fully aware of the legitimate conflict
of conscience on this matter, applauds the courage of the bishops
in thus declaring that this is something which is rightly left to
individual conscience, and that the conscientious and unselfish use
of scientific methods of birth-control is entirely right in
Christian marriage. There is certainly nothing good or Christian
about the only practical alternative in huge areas of the world,
namely the continued procreation of millions of unwanted children
for no better fate than certain starvation.
Honest to
God
IN 1963, a book was
published that was to hit the headlines in a big way, and excite
the ire of the anti-radical editor of the Church Times,
Roger Roberts. The book was Honest to God, the notorious
paperback by the Bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson, which was to
sell more than a million copies. Its thesis was that the old images
of God were no longer adequate, and that Christians should think of
him as "the ground of our being". As for morality, "compassion for
persons overrides all law." The book provoked a storm of
controversy.
The Church Times
rose to the occasion, although Roberts's original intention had
been to soft-pedal its reaction to the book. Indeed, he decided to
abandon the paper's normal custom at that time of anonymous
reviews, and, instead, commissioned a signed notice by J. W. C.
Wand, the former Bishop of London and a scholar of distinction.
In a letter to Wand, he
underlined the object of this break with tradition. "Robinson and
his friends seem to have convinced themselves that the Church
Times has a personal vendetta against him. If, therefore, we
had published an anonymous review in the normal way, it might have
been dismissed as just another instance of this imaginary
vendetta."
Wand's review of
Honest to God, which appeared in the issue of 22 March
1963, was constructively critical but mild in tone. It summarised
the book's argument at some length, and went on to observe that the
man in the pew might say that - in spite of the dangers of
formalism - a few plain rules and a few liturgical prayers helped
to keep him on the upward path, when mind and body were alike too
weary for independent effort. "Nevertheless, the Bishop's protest
is valuable because it will help us to recognise that we have not
yet penetrated to the ultimate meaning of God. . . One hopes that
the Bishop will not find it necessary to continue girding at
religion."
Roberts's original
intention to soft-pedal the book soon went by the board. Widespread
publicity in the secular press, and on the BBC, persuaded him (in
spite of the business of the alleged vendetta) to deal with the
subject editorially in the same issue as Wand's review - although
he concentrated not so much on the book itself as on the position
of the author:
There
is nothing surprising about the publicity which the book has
received. It is not every day that a bishop goes on public record
as apparently denying almost every fundamental doctrine of the
Church in which he holds office. . . Of his complete sincerity
there is no question. What is in question is his position as a
bishop of the Church of England solemnly sworn to "banish and drive
away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word";
the man cannot dissociate himself from his office so long as he
continues to hold it.
Five days after his
comment appeared in print, Roberts was writing to commission a
signed review of another book that had just arrived on his desk.
This was the provocatively entitled Objections to Christian
Belief, the text of lectures given by four radical Cambridge
theologians. Roberts departed from normal convention on this
occasion by instructing his reviewer, T. E. Utley (a leader-writer
on the Daily Telegraph), on what line he should take.
There was to be no risk of this review's erring on the side of
leniency. Nor did it.
Crockford
preface
A ROW erupted in the late
autumn of 1987 (under my own editorship) over the preface to a new
edition of Crockford's Clerical Directory, which was
followed by the suicide of its anonymous author.
For long published by the
Oxford University Press, the directory now appeared under the joint
aegis of the Church Commissioners and the Central Board of Finance.
The new publishers had taken over from the OUP the practice of
appending to each new edition a preface, in which an anonymous
author (often described as "a churchman of distinction") took a
far-ranging look at what had been happening in Anglican circles
since the appearance of the previous edition.
The preface to the
1987-88 edition, however, distinguished itself by severely
criticising not only much in the general Anglican scene which
displeased the author, but also the then Archbishop of Canterbury,
Robert Runcie, personally.
The result was
inevitable. The media went to town, and a hot debate ensued on the
identity of the anonymous author. He was eventually revealed as the
Revd Dr Gareth Bennett, Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a
distinguished historian. But the revelation came only after the
news of Bennett's suicide (he had cracked under the strain of
trying to preserve his anonymity - a tragic denouement to what had
up until then been merely an intriguing mystery). The Church
Times dealt editorially with the episode in three successive
issues (4, 11, and 18 December 1987).
The initial leader was a
straightforward critique of the offending preface, in which the
then still anonymous author was taken to task for "greatly
exaggerating the lack of religious principle and liturgical
cohesion in present-day Anglicanism". The leader mentioned the
personal criticisms of Archbishop Runcie - but only in the context
of the preface-writer's general strictures on the "liberal
establishment", which was said to dominate both the Church of
England, and the Episcopal Church in the United States.
The Church
Times's original second leader on the affair was written
before the news of Bennett's suicide had been announced. It argued
that, on the basis of stylistic analysis (sentence-length,
punctuation, and so on), Bennett, and none other, must be the
author of the preface. The leader had, of course, to be scrapped at
the last moment, after the news of Bennett's suicide, and replaced
by a revised version.
This, among other things,
called for the abolition of unsigned Crockford prefaces in
future, and for a full explanation of the whole sorry business from
the highest level at Church House, Westminster, and the Church
Commissioners.
The final Church
Times leader on the Bennett affair castigated the "inadequate"
response to the tragedy by the church authorities. "The Policy
Sub-Committee does not seem to have grasped how wide and deep in
the Church of England is the conviction that the printing of this
unedited essay in an official publication of the Church was a
serious error - and would have been so had the consequences been
less terrible."
That, indeed, to my mind,
was the nub of the matter. What had been perfectly acceptable in
the directory's OUP days had ceased to be so when it was now
officially published by the Church.
The first and third
leaders were the work of my principal leader-writer, David L.
Edwards; both versions of the second leader were written by my
successor as editor, John Whale. But all three leaders could be
considered mild in tone, compared with the denunciatory editorials
of yesteryear, and maybe a consequence of more conciliatory
journalistic times.
Dr Bernard Palmer is the author of Gadfly for
God: A history of the "Church Times" (Hodder & Stoughton,
1991). His new memoir, Pilgrim's Progress: A self-portrait,
is reviewed in the Books
section.