Review of Current Religious Thought: April 12, 1963

Sydney Smith, canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral, did not like Methodists. A few months before he died in 1845 he said: “I feel so weak both in body and mind that I verily believe, if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength or energy enough to slide it into a Dissenter.” Precisely 100 years later, I was present when another Church of England clergyman (the only chaplain in the area) refused Communion to two young RAF men on active service in North Africa—because both were “Dissenters.” The Church of England still discourages its members from taking Communion in a Methodist chapel, allows Methodists to communicate in parish churches only in exceptional circumstances, and insists on reordaining Methodist ministers who enter its ranks.

All that will be changed and a 224-year-old division healed if the two churches implement the proposals made in a report published jointly by the Church Information Office and the Epworth Press (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, March 15). Acceptance of the proposals in principle will commit both churches ultimately to full organic union. Until 1965 the question stands open: “if any man can shew just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.” The four distinguished Methodists who entered the minority report have already spoken, pointed up the tensions, and supplied a basis for discussion. I mention only three of the points they have raised.

1. Scripture and Tradition. It is ecumenically fashionable at present to talk about a revival of biblical theology in the church of Rome, and about an increasing realization by Protestants that the Bible can be understood only in the context of the Church’s life, i.e., within Tradition. Because these two streams have come together, we have the basis for true ecumenical dialogue. This is plausible if you say it quickly without defining terms, and a similar criticism is made of the current report which, says the Methodist minority, does not sufficiently acknowledge Scripture’s preeminent place over Tradition. We children of the Reformation tend too facilely to reject Tradition and all its works.

The souls of now two thousand years

Have laid up here their thoughts and fears

And all the earnings of their pain—

Ah, yet consider it again!

But the Anglicans and Methodist majority do not stop at showing the value of Tradition—they are at great pains to defend it, and one must ask why this is necessary. As Principal Rainy put it: “The Church of Christ has no liberty to become the slave even of its own history.” This report is a perilous guide in that it tries to subordinate both Scripture and Tradition to “the living Word of God.”

2. Episcopacy. Anglicans are asking Methodists to assent to a version of the “historic episcopate” which has no New Testament warrant and is acceptable only to the Anglican three per cent of Christendom. Some seventy years ago Bishop J. C. Ryle of Liverpool said: “We never will admit that the acts and doings and deliverances of any Bishops, however numerous … are to be received as infallible.”

3. Ordination. In the Service of Reconciliation proposed by the report, there is episcopal laying on of hands, and a form of words employed remarkably similar to that used in the ordination of Anglican clergy. The Methodist minority sees reordination in this rite, a view confirmed by the Church Times: “We shall be surprised if the rite here proposed is not found to contain all the essentials of Catholic order.” Thereafter the declaration of the absolution and remission of sins is to be regarded as “part of the priestly and ministerial office.” The report denies that this is a rejection of a Methodist’s previous ministry, and points out that Methodists later in the service lay hands on Anglicans. Lady Playfair, in the London Daily Telegraph, wrote succinctly: “Anglicans, by laying on of hands, believe themselves to be conferring an indelible sacramental mark by their part of the ceremony, while (presumably) the laying on of hands by the Methodists can do no harm if it can do no good. Only a very devious-minded Christian will be able to find edification in such a scene.”

Apart from the astonishing omission from the report of any systematic discussion of the nature of the Church, the other major problem highlighted is the “established” nature of the Church of England. Bishops are appointed by the State (twenty-four of them are members of the House of Lords), which has also the oversight of matters of doctrine and worship. Many Anglicans down the centuries have warmly approved this arrangement, and the Victorian Dean Stanley asserted explicitly that “the religious expression of the community should be controlled and guided by the State.” The less traditional Sydney Smith was, indeed, regarded as living up to his reputation when he said: “If experience has taught us anything, it is the absurdity of controlling men’s notions of eternity by acts of Parliament.” Contemporary evangelicals, who might have been expected to agree with this, are apprehensive lest the powerful High Church party use the Methodists as a bargaining point to obtain freedom from parliamentary control in order to raise the ceiling of the Church.

Church merger reports are peculiarly vulnerable things. In one sense they are not constructed to withstand close scrutiny, calling as they do for compromise. Whenever striking and imaginative variations are played around a familiar theme, the strident cry of heresy is heard in the land, and dark allusions are made about building new boats to founder on old rocks. But this present report is the work of twenty-eight men over six years, and it would be mean and dishonest to condemn it unread, as many did with the Anglican-Presbyterian report in 1958. On the other hand, an exciting document like this might prove to be heady wine and a subtle temptation to rash, unthinking activity. Like moving on when the cloud is still.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.