The theme of this address, in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the First Book of Common Prayer, may be stated in the words of the late Miss Evelyn Underhill:

Anglican worship is a special development of the traditional Christian cultus; and not merely a variant of Continental Protestantism. … It forms, with the Bible or Lectionary, the authorized Missal and Breviary of the English branch of the Catholic Church. Its use is obligatory, and its contents declare in unmistakable terms the adherence of that Church to the great Catholic tradition of Christendom and the general conformity of its worship to the primitive ritual type.

The Iconoclastic controversy was undoubtedly one of the major conflicts in the history of the Christian Church. It was not just a Byzantine conflict; the West was also involved in the dispute. It is true, however, that the West never followed the East in the theological argument, nor did it suffer all the implications and consequences of the Byzantine theology of the Icons. In the history of the Christian East it was, on the contrary, a turning point. All levels of life were affected by the conflict, all strata of society were involved in the struggle. The fight was violent, bitter, and desperate. The cost of victory was enormous, and tensions in the Church were not solved by it. The Church in Byzantium has never recovered again her inner unity, which had been distorted or lost in the Iconoclastic strife.

The rise of the liberal spirit in seventeenth-century England is generally equated with the development of Locke's philosophy and the rationalism of English churchmen such as Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Sharpe. In tracing the emergence of this movement historians of thought have given adequate attention to such factors as the Cambridge Platonists, the earlier Latitudinarians, the impact of Newtonian science, and the general social, political, and economic conditions of the day. One factor has been overlooked. There were certain emphases or characteristics in the mystical element of Puritanism which also appeared later in the rise of the liberal spirit on the English scene. The usual treatment of this phase of the Puritan movement is to grant its fruitfulness in the economic and political spheres, but to consider it a peculiar aberration which is insignificant for subsequent developments in religious thought except for its issue in Quakerism.

In the last few decades, and especially since the excellent translations by Parsons and Gerth appeared, considerable discussion of Max Weber has taken place. Since only a few of his publications have been made accessible, the result has been an incomplete and oftentimes incorrect concept of the man. He is sometimes regarded as emphasizing almost exclusively the importance of the spiritual factor with regard to changes in the socio-economic sphere. More frequently he is regarded as one who deals with religous phenomena only in a rationalistic way. Both concepts of the man are equally wrong. Thus, it is my purpose to outline his basic religious, philosophical, and ethical convictions as well as the possible interrelationship between such ideas and his investigations.

The story of the Kingdom movement of the 1890's is one of the most important chapters in the history of American social Christianity. In the middle years of the 1890's the Christian social movement really began to exert significant influence upon the American Protestant churches and to modify the character of certain denominations. The Kingdom movement played an important role in the events of these crucial years.

At the close of 1644 the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly found themselves in a difficult position. The preachers had declared that, if they all did the will of the Lord in the church, He would surely bless the efforts of their army in the war against the King. But the church was still unreformed and the King undefeated. They could have peace at the risk of allowing Charles to regain control of the church. They could go on with the war at the cost of permitting religious differences among their own partisans to continue and spread. In other words, nothing could be settled so long as Charles kept the field and the fear of defeat hung over English and Scots, Parliament and Assembly, Presbyterians, Independents, and sectaries alike. The predicament was made to Cromwell's hand. The campaign of 1644, having ended in frustration, he returned to his place in the House of Commons and initiated the maneuvers which led to the reorganization of the army with Fairfax in command but in the event with Cromwell still as its driving force. The result was the victory the Assembly divines had looked for as the sign of God's favor upon their efforts to reform the church but victory on terms which made reform of the church as they conceived it more difficult than ever. For Cromwell's accomplishment in war and politics was due to his gift for drawing upon those very energies of the spirit in himself and others which had been evoked in the people by Puritan preaching but which the ministerial caste was now striving to keep within bounds. He had succeeded in organizing victory not by curbing and containing the Puritan spirit but by giving it free play among the men under his command and by granting scope to its most characteristic modes of expression and organization. Hence the preaching of the Word in the parliamentary army as reconstituted in the New Model had not a little to do with the army's military success.

In that fantastic decade from 1650 to 1660, English saints of every persuasion strove frantically to make the rule of the Lord on earth a political reality. Imbued with a lively apocalyptic hope and enjoying the driving enthusiasm of nascent religions, the left-wing Puritan sects sought to build in England a holy commonwealth that would prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. With the failure of the Barebone Parliament, their most promising opportunity passed by unrealized, but throughout the remainder of the Interregnum, Independents, Baptists, Fifth-Monarchy Men, and various mystical sects continued without abatement their endeavors to transform England into Zion.

Slavery in the British Empire was always centered in the British West Indies. To a greater degree than in the Southern Thirteen Colonies, economic life in the West Indies depended upon Negro slavery, and the population of the islands soon became predominantly Negro. With the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after 1775, slavery within the British Empire became almost entirely confined to the Caribbean colonies. Until the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, British eyes were focused upon the West Indies whenever slavery was mentioned.

This bibliographical review of works on Ulrich Zwingli is partial evidence of a quarter-century of considerable scholarly activity directed toward the history of the continental Reformed churches. At first glance, the memorial volumes commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Zurich Reformation (1519–1919) and of the Reformer's death at Kappel (1531–1931) would seem to account for the inordinate number of Zwingli studies since 1918; but an equal volume of scholarship devoted, without such promptings, to Martin Bucer, or the Weber Thesis, or the Reformation in the Netherlands confirms the trend toward intrested historical inquiry, stimulated perhaps by the return to the mainstream of Reformation thought.

Arnold Toynbee has described our western civilization in the twentieth century as a rationalistic and secular culture. In the sense that an awareness of the importance of science is the starting point of the thinking of our day the generalization seems true. We prize the realism of the objective, analytical approach of science. In a turbulent and swiftly moving age we have substituted relativism for older values once confidently assumed to have universal validity. We have seen scepticism, born of twentieth-century events, erode an old and dynamic belief in progress. We observe Protestantism, its old orthodoxy shaken, striving to make the Christian tradition meaningful and significant for a materialistic generation. We watch the protagonists of democracy striving to hold fast to essential human values and to protect basic freedoms in an age of fear and power.

The causes of the American Revolution were many and varied; not least among these was the legal position of the Church of England as established by law in Maryland as well as in some of the other colonies. Under this system men were taxed for the support of the Church and the ministry but were denied any part in the appointment of ministers or relief from priests who failed to fulfill their office to the satisfaction of the taxed. At least some of the cases of supposed neglect of duty may be considered from the standpoint of the legal aspects of the case entirely apart from the character of the individuals involved.

Christianity boldly asserted that the eternal Logos had been manifested in the personal history of Jesus called Christ. Once this claim began to receive wide acceptance, the older ways of philosophizing characteristic of the classical ages were shaken. On the one hand, Christians affirmed positively that God had drawn nigh, disclosing himself in history to those who believed. On the other hand, they held that, apart from reliance upon this divine disclosure, the efforts of scientific reason to apprehend God were pitifully inadequate and perverse.