IN CASE of any doubt, it can now be assumed that the C of E really is in a state of schism. After the commissioning service at All Souls’, Langham Place, on 12 July (Comment, 19 July), a second service took place last week at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, attended by representatives of the Alliance network, which includes New Wine and Holy Trinity, Brompton.
The Rector of St Helen’s, the Revd William Taylor, explained on YouTube that seven men from four dioceses “were commissioned as public leaders and for public ministry in training posts in C of E churches”. They would, he said, teach scripture and “preside at informal church family meals at which bread is broken and the death of the Lord Jesus is remembered”. This suggests a form of lay presidency which could well constitute a breach of canon law.
He also said that many more such commissionings, “and in due course ordination services”, are expected, in response to the “tragic failure” of most members of the House of Bishops “to uphold faithful biblical doctrine”. These commissioning services strangely echo what sometimes happened during Elizabeth I’s reign when local networks of Puritans set aside men they regarded as “sound”, prayed with them, and then sent them off to the Bishop to be formally ordained.
The claim to represent the true voice of the C of E in countering doctrinal infidelity is nothing new. It is the voice of the angry Puritanism that has been channelled down from the Reformation, when it was mostly directed at those who were not thought sufficiently anti-Catholic. It is also the contempt of those who habitually mocked liturgy, bishops, and vestments during the reign of Elizabeth I. It is the rage of the Roundheads in the Civil War, and the bitter disappointment of those ejected from their livings with the return of the Prayer Book in 1662.
No one should doubt that Puritanism has also brought riches into the Church, both spiritually and morally, largely through what became the Evangelical movement. Like many others, I am grateful to Evangelicalism. It made a huge impact on me in my teenage years, teaching me to love the Bible and to pray with an intensity that often eludes me now.
But there is a dark side to the Puritan heritage. Today’s Puritans find it as hard as their ancestors to live with the creative ambiguity that, many would claim, is the lifeblood of the Church of England and defended by canon law. True Puritans are programmed for suspicion. Anger and threats to jump ship constitute a subversive ecclesiology. What I found hardest to give up when I drifted away from Evangelicalism was the certainty of being right. But, of course, being right is a major part of the attraction, even when right is wrong.
Read more on this story in Letters