The “Anti- Syndrome” is one of the ongoing pathologies of the Continuing Anglican Movement. There is quite a bit of positive advertising out there on church websites, but when you actually get to St. Francis-in-the-Fens, what one finds is that this is often a cover for the same old anti-TEC, anti-liberal, anti-gay rhetoric that has been the Continuum’s catnip since the mid 1970s. That is not to say that any of these positions is wrong, but expressing them too nakedly and too loudly is a turn-off for a lot of people, because that congregation is working from a negative position. Early Christian preaching started by preaching the big positives—forgiveness sins and the Resurrection—and in our lost and dying world that is still what makes the Christian Faith, and the Church that preaches it, attractive to those who need hope and purpose.
Anglicanism, as a tradition, has a lot going for it in North American society. Despite the best efforts of the progressives, the bottom layer of the United States’ culture is English, whether it be the Anglican South or Puritan New England. What it has gained from other cultures—German, Dutch, Italian, and so on—is superimposed on the bottom layer, and is what makes the United States a unique and exciting place. It also means that whatever positive cultural virtues we country has are Protestant virtues—thrift, a sense of duty, modesty—even though the modern progressives are trying to eliminate those, too, because they tend to produce free men, not serfs.
Anyway, given the cultural background of America, Anglicanism should not be that difficult to sell to a certain segment of the population, but unfortunately a large part of the Continuum thinks that growth can come only through leeching off the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic culture. This is a mistake in two ways. First, historically Anglicanism is a product of the 16th-century Reformation initiated by Luther and Zwingli. Second, and more importantly, unless one is seriously into LARPing, the culture you are trying to feed off has been a specialized interest since the mid 1960s, when traditional Catholicism disappeared under a tidal wave of felt banners, polyester vestments, and the Spirit of Vatican II.
Another problem we need to address is the American “free market” approach to religion. The difficulty here is not so much the free market, but the instinctive unspoken redefinition of religion as a product to be consumed. Some folks have always been sermon-tasters, hence the popularity of the friars in the Middle Ages. That is not, however, what I am criticizing. No, what weakens Christianity is the tendency to reduce the function of religion to being purely a private save-my-miserable-soul exercise whose influence stops at the church and the closet door. Part of the attraction of Mormonism, Islam, and other cults is that they offer a lifestyle, not just a soul-saving experience; and as Western society becomes increasingly decadent, this sort of alternative lifestyle becomes increasingly attractive to those who see the decline.
The Church has all too readily accepted a tightly circumscribed position in society defined by the (sub)urbanized, industrialized consumer culture around it. Now that that culture is failing, we need to wake up to the realities and once more provide the sort of societal support that the Church provided in times past, a societal support that largely fell away in the mid 20th century as Middle America and the mainline churches discovered a community of interest. These perceived common goals made it easy for the churches to cede to the state a great deal of their former interest in education, healthcare, and the alleviation of poverty. This cession backfired spectacularly on the churches in the 1960s and ’70s as a process of aggressive secularization of the state took hold, and the secular ideological discourse took a sharp left turn.
When a society becomes sick, it is a sinking ship, and people need lifeboats; the Church has been one such lifeboat in the past. Even through all the barbarian invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries, classical culture was preserved by the Church, and one suspects that something similar is going to happen as we go through what one might call the Digital Dark Age. As the consumer society falls apart, the Church would be well advised to embrace instead a producer culture focused on producing Christians who were well catechized, were well educated, pursued trades, produced, and were minimally indebted. Cultivating this character would reduce Christians’ dependence on international banks, global corporations, and big government, bodies that are all hostile to Faith, Family, Farm, and Fatherland because Christianity, family ties, food production, and patriotism make for a content, grounded, healthy population, largely independent of national and international control structures such as banks and multinational corporations. One of the most sinister contemporary shifts in the landholding patterns in the West is that farmland is passing out of the hands of farming families into the hands of international corporations that will not scruple to manipulate the food supply to boost their profits. A similar pattern can be seen in the food processing industry, and this shift poses a threat to national security.
But I digress.
At the Reformation, the English Church set about converting a nation, and whilst not as large as France or Spain, it was still a considerable kingdom with a population of 1,800,000 souls served by about 11,000 parish churches. To complicate matters, most of the clergy were left over from the mediaeval church, and so this reformation had to be executed through the printed word – homilies, the Prayer Book, the Catechism. Obtaining the results was not left to individuals who may or may not be supportive, but written into the system, and that is something that could serve us well again today. This takes care of the faith aspect of building a parallel society. Family, Farm, and Fatherland were not addressed in the 1500s because automatic priorities. Children were an expected and welcome part of married life because there was no economic incentive not to have kids, and they played, learnt, and worked at home. Agriculture was the basic employment of 75-80% of the population, and even urban populations cultivated gardens to provide food for the table wherever there was space. The Tudor Englishman had a love of country that was expressive of the increasing nationalism of the age. Thus, the primary thrust of the English Reformation was religion, via the Prayerbook, Homilies, and Catechism accompanied by a renewal of learning through the founding of parochial schools with the other aspects being provided by the societal norms of the time. Sadly, the English Reformation was only partly implemented as the money that should have been channelled into education was channelled into fighting the French, but nonetheless, a serious engagement with education is part of the Anglican DNA, and it is something that we need to fall back on in these times of uncertainty.
To get back to my original point about “The Anti Syndrome.” The future of Anglicanism lies not in LARPing the 1950s or the 1550s High or Low Churchmanship, but in engaging honestly with the Scriptures and the Formularies and then envisioning the sort of Church-and-society they are intended to create. Unless the status quo is absolutely dreadful, tweaking the liturgy or the ceremonial makes only minimal difference to the life of the church, and annoys the laity, but if we could be a bit more deliberate about maintaining our Anglican identity, educating the laity, and encouraging people to avoid the debt trap, engaging only selectively with the corporatist consumer society we would be doing them a huge favour because we would be standing for something positive – Faith and Family.
To achieve this, parishes need to be spaces that welcome families, facilitate home or independent education, and foster a healthy patriotism alongside worship and catechesis. The specifics of how this will be done will vary from parish to parish. For example, some may be able to provide space for homeschoolers to meet and share resources. At the other end of the spectrum, some parishes may be large enough to sustain classical schools. From the point of view of families seeking to live according to the Anglican Way moving close to a church with a viable ministry and commitment to faith, family, economic independence, and proper patriotism should be a priority. I am not suggesting that we “go Amish” but that we be very thoughtful about the lives we want to lead, and the environment we want to live in, and not let secular society force us to live in a manner that is hostile to Faith and Family.
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