A SIMPLE drawing in a recent edition of The Spectator caught my attention. It depicts a tiny congregation huddled together in equally sparse pews. The roof and parts of the walls of the church are missing, and the stonework of the entrance door is crumbling. The faithful shelter under umbrellas, as rain falls from a grey sky; surrounding them is a landscape of winter trees bearing barren branches. Two indistinct figures stand outside the tottering façade. They appear to be a parent and young person peering in, but somewhat uncertain about entering. In the foreground, a black crow perches impassively on a fence.
At first glance, the picture appears to be a warning or lament, perhaps even a farewell: an acknowledgement of the corrosion of time and trust, a parting of the ways, and a national Church shorn of credibility and integrity through a crisis of leadership spanning decades.
Looked at more closely, however, the drawing invites more than an epitaph. It draws the eye to the two or three barely visible worshippers who have assembled in a once holy place, where, in T. S. Eliot’s memorable phrase, “prayer has been valid.” They have turned up as their forebears did, and, perhaps, prayed much, even on the rainiest of days when the harvest of souls was meagre. They constitute the laity that maintain the Church in truth when its leaders dissemble or fail. Such was the conviction of no less a prelate than St John Henry Newman.
IN 1859, Newman penned his last article as editor of The Rambler, a post that he had held for a short time, and only after much persuasion and prayer. In this post, his aim was to encourage serious thinking on the part of the then torpid Roman Catholic hierarchy in England with regard to modern science and scholarship, and, even more controversially, the proper and dignified function of the laity in the Church.
His measured thoughts fared badly. Summoned to a private meeting with his bishop, Newman was asked dismissively: “Who are the laity?” In a memorable reply, he retorted “that the Church would look foolish without them”.
His final editorial contribution underpinned this claim by means of an extended essay that caused much controversy at the time, and was not reprinted or published in England until 1961. In “Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine”, Newman argued that, if the world was to know something of the truths of “Christ, the Great Teacher”, it should look not only to its bishops, but also to the beliefs and practices of the ordinary and unremarked faithful, who were equally custodians and stewards of the “deposit of faith”.
From his immersive studies of the early centuries of the Church, marked by internal theological hatreds and violent disagreements, he had come to disquieting conclusions. When bishops had contradicted one another on fundamental matters of doctrine, and the weakness, prevarications, and misguidance of a divided hierarchy threatened to eclipse the light of Christ, it was the body of the laity that clung to the narrow way. What they firmly believed sustained and illuminated their living, suffering, and dying
The essay was never intended as a rebuke to the church leaders of his day. Newman believed that the truth of Christ was mediated in various ways, including the utterances of the episcopate. But he also placed considerable emphasis on the consensus fidelium: the consent and attested witness of the faithful. Like the first apostles, they, too, had received and were guided by the Holy Spirit.
What the Church was, therefore, in its very essence, its nature, form, and possible futures, was shaped, in part, by the devotion and spiritual integrity that started from below, within the body of believers. The laity were to be listened to and consulted not simply because they, too, had their story, but, rather, because their collective experience reflected their graced instinct of the faith (sensus fidei). Together with priests and bishops, they shared a common mission and a call to holiness.
NEWMAN’s prescience remains timely and even more urgent as the national Church begins the search for a new Archbishop of Canterbury. It should acknowledge, celebrate, and draw on “the spiritual gold reserves” (interestingly, a term first coined by the late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks) of faithful congregations and prayerful souls, however small.
We may choose to call them little platoons, quietly alert and active in countless parishes or communities of character, shaped by an inner voice insisting on the truth above everything. They are the Church, its treasures from below, indifferent in the best sense to the warring motions of the General Synod or the larger institutional preoccupation with numerical decline.
If we are to think and pray wisely concerning the future mission of Christianity to a disenchanted nation, we shall hardly see the road ahead if we fail to pay attention where it matters: in the first instance, as Newman insists, to be encouraged by those who have gone before us as the people of God, and then to value those who continue to make Christ known in their localities through unfaltering prayer, fidelity, and service.
Canon Rod Garner is an Anglican priest, writer, and theologian.