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Above, Beside, Within: The Anglican Theology of Austin Farrer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Robert MacSwain
Robert MacSwain
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Abstract

Austin Farrer is highly praised but curiously under-read. Despite being recognized as ‘possibly the greatest Anglican mind of the 20th century,’ his influence in discussions of Anglican identity and theology is almost non-existent. As an attempt to remedy this deficit, this paper provides a sketch of Farrer's life and work, and then presents him as a specifically Anglican theologian through considering a sermon, a meditation on the Apostles' Creed, and a set of lectures to Oxford undergraduates. But presenting Farrer as ‘a specifically Anglican theologian’ is problematic if we cannot agree on the nature of Anglican theology. Therefore, the paper concludes by referencing a debate between Stephen Sykes and Paul Avis on this question, and asks if Farrer can function as a paradigm for contemporary Anglican theologians.

Keywords

Austin FarrerAnglican theologyAnglican identitysermonsApostles' CreedapologeticsStephen SykesPaul Avis
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , June 2006 , pp. 33 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) and The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2006

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References

1. ‘Debate on The Gift of Authority: Archbishop of Canterbury's Remarks’, 13 02 2004 (http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/040213a.html)Google Scholar

2. Harries, Richard, introduction to The One Genius: Readings Through the Year with Austin Farrer (London: SPCK, 1987), p. ix.Google Scholar

3. Cited by Eric Springsted in his introduction to Springsted, Eric O. (ed.), Spirituality and Theology: Essays in Honor of Diogenes Allen (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p. 3.Google Scholar

4. Hebblethwaite, Brian, ‘The Anglican Tradition’, in Quinn, Philip and Taliaferro, Charles (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 171–78 (175).Google Scholar

5. McGrade, A.S., ‘Reason’, in Sykes, Stephen, Booty, John and Knight, Jonathan (eds.), The Study of Anglicanism (London: SPCK; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, rev. edn, 1998), pp. 115–28Google Scholar (124). In this volume, Farrer is also mentioned in John Booty's chapter on ‘Standard Divines’ as a potential inheritor of that title (pp. 176–87 [184]), and in A.M. Allchin's chapter on ‘Anglican Spirituality’ as an example — along with Hooker, Andrewes, Taylor, Traherne, Law, Coleridge, Newman, and C.S. Lewis — of the Anglican tradition of great theological prose-writers (pp. 351–64 [353]).

6. Turner, F.M., ‘Religion’, in Harrison, Brian (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford. VIII. The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 293–316 (309).Google Scholar

7. Howatch, Susan, ‘Introduction’ to Austin Farrer, Saving Belief: A Discussion of Essentials (London: Mowbray; Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1994), p. xiGoogle Scholar. This book was originally published in 1964 by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK. Howatch included it in her ‘Library of Anglican Spirituality’ series, which is an encouraging sign that Farrer has not been (and will not be) entirely forgotten. Unfortunately, this new edition is marred by the loss of an entire page of the original: p. 21 of the original is missing, and instead of that material p. 11 of the new edition is duplicated as p. 12.

8. See the very useful ‘Bibliography of Writings about Austin Farrer with Other Research Aids’, in Hein, David and Henderson, Edward Hugh (eds.), Captured by the Crucified: The Practical Theology of Austin Farrer (New York: T & T Clark International, 2004), pp. 197–208.Google Scholar

9. Specifically, two international centenary conferences were held in 2004: the first was ‘The Human Person in God's World’ at Oriel College, Oxford, in September; the second was ‘Captured by the Crucified — The Legacy of Austin Farrer: A Conference and Spiritual Life Workshop Celebrating the Centenary Year of His Birth’ at the St James Center for Spiritual Formation, St James Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in November. The second conference was associated with and preceded by the book of the same title, mentioned in n. 8; the papers of the Oxford conference and further papers from the Baton Rouge conference are currently being prepared for publication.

10. Rowan Williams points out that not only Farrer but his whole generation was forgotten by John A. T. Robinson and others in the 1950s and 60s. He writes, ‘Looking back, it is plain that the postwar period was not nearly such a wilderness from the point of view of robust doctrinal exposition and exploration as [Honest to God ] might suggest. Gregory Dix, Austin Farrer, and Eric Mascall had all produced work that represented an amazingly creative reworking of classical themes…. But if the immediate postwar period witnessed such an explosion of first-class Anglican doctrinal reflection, still fresh and suggestive more than fifty years later, it rather looks as though the 1950s had forgotten why any of this mattered.’ See ‘Honest to God and the 1960s’ in Williams, Rowan, Anglican Identities (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003), pp. 103–20Google Scholar, especially pp. 109–11.

11. In addition to Williams's positive comments about Farrer cited in nn. 1 and 10, it is interesting to observe that his name has appeared several times in Anglican Theological Review's occasional ‘Essential Reading’ feature. Describing ‘ten books from among the most helpful and influential I have read,’ Arthur A. Vogel first lists Farrer's The Glass of Vision and concludes with Farrer, 's The Freedom of the Will (ATR 81.4 [1999], pp. 767–68)Google Scholar. Mark McIntosh discusses twelve authors: St Gregory of Nyssa, St John of the Cross, John Donne, John Henry Newman, Austin Farrer, Etienne Gilson, Herbert McCabe, Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Simone Weil, Rowan Williams and James Alison (ATR 83.1 [2001], pp. 189–90)Google Scholar. Like Vogel, Richard A. Norris Jr also begins his list with Farrer, whom he describes as ‘surely the finest Anglican theologian of his generation’. After discussing several of Farrer's works, Norris comments: ‘In a time when everyone is busy talking about the heart or soul or spirit of Anglicanism, it is odd that the great fashioners and interpreters of that tradition—not just Farrer, but Hooker, Pearson (author of On the Creed [1640], probably the most widely employed introduction to Christian doctrine in the history of Anglicanism), Maurice, Gore, Westcott, Scott-Holland, DuBose, Temple, and others of that ilk, should be almost uniformly out of print and unavailable, as far as I know, even for downloading’ (xsATR 82.3 [2000], pp. 631–34 [631]).Google Scholar

12. For the general information in this section, see in particular the one biography of Farrer, , Curtis, Philip's A Hawk among Sparrows: A Biography of Austin Farrer (London: SPCK, 1985)Google Scholar, and ‘Farrer, Austin Marsden (1904–1968),’Google Scholar by Crombie, I.M (rev.) in Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, Brian (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. XIX. Fane-Flatman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 121–23Google Scholar. Other important sources are Susan Howatch's introduction to her edition of Saving Belief (cited in n. 7); Loades, Ann, ‘Farrer, Austin Marsden’, in McGrath, Alister E. (ed.), The SPCK Handbook of Anglican Theologians (London: SPCK, 1998), pp. 120–23Google Scholar; Slocum, Robert B., ‘Light in a Burning-Glass: The Theological Witness of Austin Farrer’, ATR 85.2 (2003), pp. 365–73Google Scholar; and the editors' introduction to Hein and Henderson, Captured by the Crucified.

13. In A Hawk among Sparrows, Curtis observes that Farrer had not been baptized in the Baptist church (p. 20) but was eventually confirmed in the Church of England in the Latin Chapel of Christ Church (pp. 23–24). From this, J. Barry Vaughn draws the natural conclusion that Farrer was both baptized and confirmed in the cathedral (‘Resurrection and Grace: The Sermons of Austin Farrer’, Preaching 9.5 [1994], pp. 61–63 [61])Google Scholar. In fact, Curtis never mentions when or where Farrer was baptized. But, according to Farrer's ordination certificate in the West Yorkshire Archive Service, he was baptized on 14 May 1924 in St Peter-le-Bailey. While his confirmation date is not provided, given the different location it probably occurred later that month rather than on the same day. I am grateful to Mr Geoff Brown of the West Yorkshire Archive Service for tracking down Farrer's ordination papers in the Diocese of Wakefield archives.

14. For monographs on Farrer which explore some of these themes, see Hefling, Charles C. Jr, Jacob's Ladder: Theology and Spirituality in the Thought of Austin Farrer (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1979)Google Scholar; Eaton, Jeffrey C., The Logic of Theism: An Analysis of the Thought of Austin Farrer (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980)Google Scholar; and Conti, Charles, Metaphysical Personalism: An Analysis of Austin Farrer's Theistic Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to Hein and Henderson's Captured by the Crucified, two important essay collections are Eaton, Jeffrey C. and Loades, Ann (eds.), For God and Clarity: New Essays in Honor of Austin Farrer (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1983)Google Scholar; and Hebblethwaite, Brian and Henderson, Edward (eds.), Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990).Google Scholar

15. Houlden, Leslie (ed.), ‘Introduction’ to Austin Farrer: The Essential Sermons, (London: SPCK; Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1991), p. ix.Google Scholar

16. Baker, John Austin, ‘Introduction’ to Austin Farrer, The End of Man (London: SPCK, 1973), p. ixGoogle Scholar. For further considerations of Farrer's preaching, see Vaughn, , ‘Resurrection and Grace’Google Scholar; Slocum, Robert B., ‘Farrer in the Pulpit: A Systematic Introduction to His Sermons’, ATR 86.3 (2004), pp. 493–503Google Scholar; and Edwards, O.C. and Hein, David, ‘Farrer's Preaching: “Some Taste of the Things We Describe”’Google Scholar, in Hein, and Henderson, , Captured by the Crucified, pp. 173–95.Google Scholar

17. Houlden: Farrer ‘invites comparison with J.H. Newman or, more remotely, George Herbert,’ in Houlden, , Austin Farrer: The Essential Sermons, p. ixGoogle Scholar. Taliaferro: ‘I do not think it exaggerated to compare his sermons in terms of literary merit and religious illumination to the mature sermons of Cardinal John Henry Newman’, from his review of Hebblethwaite and Henderson (eds.), Divine Action, in Faith and Philosophy 10.1 (1993), pp. 119–23 (120).Google Scholar

18. Harries, , ‘“We Know on Our Knees…”: Intellectual, Imaginative and Spiritual Unity in the Theology of Austin Farrer’, in Hebblethwaite and Henderson (eds.), Divine Action, pp. 21–33 (30).Google Scholar

19. Harries, , ‘“We Know on Our Knees…”, p. 33Google Scholar. See also Allchin, A.M.'s comments in ‘Anglican Spirituality’, pp. 353–54.Google Scholar

20. Mitchell, Basil, ‘War and Friendship’, in Clark, Kelly James (ed.), Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 23–44 (38–39).Google Scholar

21. Mitchell, , ‘War and Friendship’, p. 39.Google Scholar

22. Both from Howatch, , ‘Introduction’ to Saving Belief, p. viii.Google Scholar

23. Loades, , ‘Farrer, Austin Marsden’, p. 122.Google Scholar

24. Houlden, , Austin Farrer: The Essential Sermons, p. ix.Google Scholar

25. Vaughn, , ‘Resurrection and Grace: The Sermons of Austin Farrer’, p. 62.Google Scholar

26. Platten, Stephen, ‘Diaphanous Thought: Spirituality and Theology in the Work of Austin Farrer’, ATR 69.1 (1987), pp. 30–50 (46).Google Scholar

27. Howatch, , ‘Introduction’ to Saving Belief, p. viii.Google Scholar

28. Loades, , ‘Farrer, Austin Marsden’, p. 122.Google Scholar

29. Eaton, Jeffrey C. and Loades, Ann, ‘Austin Marsden Farrer (1904–1968)’ in Eaton and Loades (eds.), For God and Clarity, pp. xi–xiii (xiii).Google Scholar

30. Loades, Ann, ‘Austin Farrer on Love Almighty,’ in Eaton and Loades (eds.), For God and Clarity, pp. 93–109 (93).Google Scholar

31. Farrer, Austin, ‘On Being an Anglican’, in The End of Man (London: SPCK, 1973), pp. 48–52 (49)Google Scholar. Farrer regularly uses non-inclusive language, and I will not modify quotations from his texts.

32. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, p. 49.Google Scholar

33. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, p. 50.Google Scholar

34. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, p. 50.Google Scholar

35. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

36. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, p. 50.Google Scholar

37. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

38. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, p. 52.Google Scholar

39. In a recent essay, Jeremy Morris describes this sermon as ‘harsh and polemical’, and maintains that ‘Farrer's position [in] “On Being an Anglican”, for all its force of language and argument, was already outmoded in tone, almost before the ink was dry’ — and since its ink was dry in 1960 it is certainly unsuitable for today. I cannot engage with Morris's position here, but I think he over-emphasizes the negative anti-Roman element in the sermon and does not acknowledge Farrer's critique of all ecclesial pretensions, whether Roman, Orthodox, or Anglican. Clearly, however, Farrer's words do not fit well in the current ecumenical climate, no matter how cool it may be. See Morris, Jeremy, ‘“An Infallible Fact-Factory Going Full Blast”: Austin Farrer, Marian Doctrine, and the Travails of Anglo-Catholicism’, in Swanson, R.N. (ed.), The Church and Mary: Papers Read at the 2001 Summer Meeting and the 2002 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2004), pp. 358–67 (358, 367).Google Scholar

40. See the entry on ‘Church Union’ in Cross, F.L. and Livingstone, E.A. (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1997), p. 352Google Scholar, from which this quotation was taken. The entry goes on to say that the Church Union was ‘formed in 1934 under the presidency of the second Lord Halifax by the amalgamation of the English Church Union and the Anglo-Catholic Congress’. The first version of Lord I Believe was published in 1955 by The Church Union Church Literature Association, as Number 10 in their series of ‘Beacon Books’.

41. Farrer, Austin, Lord I Believe: Suggestions for Turning the Creed into Prayer (2nd edn, rev. and enlarged; London: SPCK, 1958), p. 5Google Scholar. This edition of Lord I Believe was reprinted by Cowley Publications in 1989. The contents and pagination of the Cowley version are identical to the SPCK version, except that the brief Foreword on p. 5 — from which this quote is taken — has been omitted from the Cowley reprint.

42. See Sedgwick, Timothy F., The Christian Moral Life: Practices of Piety (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 148Google Scholar for a current Anglican use and description of the common phrase ‘circle of faith’.

43. Hefling, Charles C., ‘Farrer, Austin Marsden’, in Wakefield, Gordon S. (ed.), A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 1983), pp. 146–47Google Scholar (146). For further considerations along these lines, see Hefling, , Jacob's LadderGoogle Scholar; Platten, , ‘Diaphanous Thought’Google Scholar; and Allen, Diogenes, ‘Farrer's Spirituality’, in Hein and Henderson (eds.), Captured by the Crucified, pp. 47–65.Google Scholar

44. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 9.Google Scholar

45. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 10.Google Scholar

46. Mitchell, Leonel L., Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1985), p. 1.Google Scholar

47. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 10.Google Scholar

48. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 11.Google Scholar

49. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 11.Google Scholar

50. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 12.Google Scholar

51. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 14.Google Scholar

52. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 14.Google Scholar

53. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 14.Google Scholar

54. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 17.Google Scholar

55. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 19.Google Scholar

56. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 20.Google Scholar

57. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 20.Google Scholar

58. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

59. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

60. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 23.Google Scholar

61. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 23.Google Scholar

62. As mentioned in n. 7, Saving Belief: A Discussion of Essentials was first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1964. An American edition published by Morehouse Barlow followed in 1965. Despite the missing page of the 1994 Mowbray/Morehouse edition, I will cite references from it, as it will be more accessible to most readers.

63. Farrer, , Saving BeliefGoogle Scholar, from the Preface (no page number in the Mowbray/Morehouse edition; p. 5 in original).

64. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 4.Google Scholar

65. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 11.Google Scholar

66. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 11.Google Scholar

67. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 11.Google Scholar

68. Farrer, , Saving Belief, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

69. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 8.Google Scholar

70. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 9.Google Scholar

71. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 5.Google Scholar

72. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 11.Google Scholar

73. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 11.Google Scholar

74. Farrer, , Saving Belief, pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

75. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 47.Google Scholar

76. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 49.Google Scholar

77. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 51Google Scholar. This ‘grand rule of theology’ bears some resemblance to Anselm's axiom that God is ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived.’ Farrer is usually classed as a type of Thomist, but his similarities to Anselm bear further consideration.

78. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 49.Google Scholar

79. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 50 and p. 49Google Scholar, respectively; emphasis added to the quote from p. 49.

80. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 51Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

81. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 51.Google Scholar

82. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 51.Google Scholar

83. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 52.Google Scholar

84. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 49.Google Scholar

85. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 110.Google Scholar

86. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 111.Google Scholar

87. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 111.Google Scholar

88. Farrer, , Saving Belief, p. 113Google Scholar. For two somewhat different interpretations of Farrer's Christology, which also naturally pay some attention to his view of the Trinity, see ‘The Doctrine of the Incarnation in the Thought of Austin Farrer’, in Hebblethwaite, Brian, The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 112–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilson, M.P., ‘Austin Farrer and the Paradox of Christology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 35.2 (1982), pp. 145–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89. Farrer, , ‘On Being an Anglican’, p. 49.Google Scholar

90. Farrer, , Lord I Believe, p. 23.Google Scholar

91. In this paper I have focused on the Trinitarian aspects of Farrer's soteriology, but there is a strong christological element as well. For further christological considerations with some attention to atonement, see the essays by Hebblethwaite and Wilson cited in n. 87.

92. Farrer, , Saving BeliefGoogle Scholar, Preface (no page number in the Mowbray/Morehouse edition; p. 6 in original).

93. Houlden, , Austin Farrer: The Essential Sermons, p. ix.Google Scholar

94. Eaton, Jeffrey C., ‘Divine Action and Human Liberation’, in Hebblethwaite and Henderson (eds.), Divine Action, pp. 211–29 (214).Google Scholar

95. Eaton, , ‘Divine Action and Human Liberation’, p. 229Google Scholar. For Heyward and Huff, see their essay, ‘Foundations for Anglican Ecclesiology’, in Heyward, Carter and Phillips, Sue (eds.), No Easy Peace: Liberating Anglicanism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), pp. 3–21.Google Scholar

96. Avis, , ‘What is “Anglicanism”?’, in Sykes, Stephen, Booty, John, and Knight, Jonathan (eds.), The Study of Anglicanism (London: SPCK; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, rev. edn, 1998), pp. 459–76 (464).Google Scholar

97. London: Mowbray, 1978.Google Scholar

98. Avis, , ‘What is “Anglicanism”?’, p. 475.Google Scholar

99. Or, at least, a characteristically Anglican theological method. In comments on an earlier draft of this paper, Stephen Sykes wrote that, in relation to my contrast between his view and Avis', Pauls, ‘One should carefully distinguish between what is characteristic and what is distinctive about Anglicanism,’Google Scholar and then references his article, ‘The Anglican Character,’ in Bunting, Ian (ed.), Celebrating the Anglican Way (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996), pp. 21–32Google Scholar. Sykes's written comments continued, ‘What I emphatically rebut is that there is nothing distinctive. But what is characteristic of Anglicanism can easily be shared with other churches.’ This parallels a statement from his cited article, in which he says, ‘No Anglican should want or need to claim absolute distinctiveness for the various features of the Anglican way’ (p. 23). This distinction between what is characteristic and what is distinctive may provide more breathing room in discussions of Anglican identity. But, pace Avis, surely a ‘distinctive method’ would result in distinctive ‘material ingredients’ in any case? Rather than being opposed categories, the one should lead naturally to the other. So it is because Anglican theology proceeds according to a distinctive (or characteristic) method that it results in its distinctive (or characteristic) ingredients. For it would be extremely odd if a distinctive (or characteristic) methodology did not lead to a distinctive (or characteristic) set of material convictions. The notorious difficulty which remains, however, is pinning down what, exactly, are the material convictions of Anglicanism. For what Avis identifies as the classic set of such convictions — including, e.g., the basic Protestantism of the Church of England — may well have been denied by a Prayer-Book Catholic like Farrer. One could thus argue that Farrer does not fit under the ‘material ingredients’ category after all. See Avis, , ‘What is “Anglicanism”?’, pp. 464–65.Google Scholar

100. Sedgwick, , The Christian Moral Life, p. 38.Google Scholar

101. I was first introduced to the person and work of Austin Farrer by Diogenes Allen in his Farrer seminar at Princeton Theological Seminary in the Spring of 1994. This particular essay began life in Timothy Sedgwick's seminar on Anglican thought at Virginia Theological Seminary in the Autumn of 1999. I am grateful to Diogenes Allen, Paul Avis, David Brown, George Carey, Joseph Cassidy, Stanley Hauerwas, Edward Henderson, Ann Loades, David Marshall, Paul Murray, Timothy Sedgwick, Stephen Sykes and an anonymous reader for Journal of Anglican Studies for comments, criticism, and/or encouragement on this paper.