David Hilliard has given the Anglican Church in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand a unique, valuable and fascinating memoir of Anglo-Catholicism in this part of the world. He is even-handed, honest and careful with facts and opinions, providing an excellent bird’s eye view of the stories and of the many characters. Here are the issues and the outcomes of this ancient and modern renewal movement as it arrived and developed. The research and referencing are impeccable.
David calls his book ‘A Short History’, which means that anyone who wants to gain a clear and professional overview of Anglo-Catholicism down under is treated to a reliable and definitive guide, without being bogged down in minutiae and rhetoric. For those of us who have been influenced by this rich and transforming tradition, there is much that will bring new insights, evoke deep memory and bring again a certain inspiration from this presentation. This is a story that might otherwise have been inaccessible to memory on this scale.
A very poignant example of this kind of personal echo comes from the early life of Archbishop Sir Paul Reeves when he felt drawn to become an acolyte at the Anglo-Catholic Church of Saint Thomas Newtown in Wellington in the late 1940s. This church spawned the highly respected and ongoing Wellington City Mission, while also becoming a beautiful and boutique example of Open Catholic veneration and sacramental beauty. Here is a description taken from Paul’s family accounts:
‘Paul felt something move him to go, and gradually became part of that faith community. He recalled being asked to carry a candle as a server in the sanctuary and remained on that roster. The church was anglo-catholic in style and Paul began to internalise the faith through the sacraments he was participating in and, also through the caring example of the vicar. One day Paul passed the window of the vicar’s study, to see the Rev’d Nigel Williams kneeling in personal prayer. This made a lasting impression on the young boy, glimpsing something deep, personal and mysterious’.
This is an example of a simple and memorable experience of Anglo-Catholicism where it is capable of stirring deep intuitive movements of the spirit, where transcendence and immanence combine to transform people at their core. Something like this lies implicitly rather than explicitly within many of David’s accounts. Paul was of Māori heritage, and it is interesting to note that a new indigenous Anglo-Catholic influence is emerging in a noticeable number of the new generation of Māori clergy today.
David carefully describes the assertive rise, the effectiveness, the eccentricities and the decline of this unique movement in some places, but he also notices how its influence goes on in certain ways. The Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the Oxford Movement, for example, continues to reassert itself whenever deep regular prayer and the reverent celebration of the eucharist combine with a highly committed community-facing mission, moved by an outward compassion, stirred by the divine love. This was the case as David notes, with the Anglican Society of St Francis Friary of the Divine Compassion in Kirikiriroa Hamilton from 2002 to 2016. Each day the brothers kept the prayer offices and eucharist while supporting a large Christian social service village. The memory of the brothers’ ministry of hospitality, solidarity and prayer continues to be revered in the village to this day. They being dead, yet speak.
Anglican religious life and Anglo-Catholic parishes are described in all their variety and influence in the much larger, more assertive and widespread Australian scene. It was moving to read the valuable story of the Kelham-derived Society of the Sacred Mission and their still highly relevant priorities for the world of today, even though their fortunes have changed. The vision that motivated them is surely crucial for an open catholic missiology now. I can clearly recall being buoyed up by the joy, the camaraderie and the down-to-earth sanctity of a group Society of the Sacred Mission (SSM) trained clergy at one of their regular reunions in Perth. There was a tangible charism of loving energy in the room. Anglican Australian religious and their associated people of different forms have made and continue to make a unique contribution to some dioceses that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
This book has made me realize again that Anglo-Catholicism continues to influence the church of today in spite of so many outward, cultural and generational changes. This influence of course is sometimes invisible, so that the Anglo-Catholic gene pool morphs and lives on in ways we can’t always see. Those we can see include some resilient and distinct examples. David’s book helps us in a special way to recognize the deeper taproots; their shape, their colour and their location.
Any confluence of profound encounter with word and sacrament today is surely testament to this ongoing life stream, which is a gift from the very heart of God. The best of the gifts and experience of Anglo-Catholicism, derived from the deposit of faith itself, are therefore essential to a once and future church. This is story of love, and of hope and of human limitation. Although the heart of the story is old, the love, the hope and the limitation are ever new. ‘Anglo- Catholicism in Australia and New Zealand, A short history’, will provide a cairn sign to mark where the heartwood and the tap roots of the story, its shape, its colour and its locations down this way can be found. David Hillier’s book calls us back to those ever-refreshing wellsprings of grace that invigorated so many, in this particular expression of the cause of righteousness and justice.
