This is a marvellous read and would be an excellent introduction either for someone embarking upon their studies, or indeed for lay people both within and outside the Church as a general background history. It is medium brow to popular in style and content, but breathes not only considerable learning, but also a lifetime’s engagement with its subject matter. It really does cover the entire panorama of history hinted at in the title. As with any book of this sort, some sections are more profound than others and naturally within a number of sections there is heavy dependence on particular volumes. None of this, however, invalidates the usefulness and attractiveness of Patrick Whitworth’s account.
The first section is one of the most informative, and particularly on the church during the Roman occupation. This is a period rarely covered in an accessible volume of this sort and the endnotes suggest a wide range of research resources. Equally the Anglo-Saxon period is well summarized, albeit that material on this period is more readily available. The early Middle Ages, including both the Viking and Norman invasions are sharply focused in the pages allowed, and here – and throughout the entire volume – useful theological interludes are particularly helpful; the account of Lanfranc and Anselm is one good example.
Of course, in a book of this sort there are places where it does feel like a very swift gallop through a succession of monarchs, but often there will be concise accounts of the Church’s reaction and engagement with crises – successive plagues is one such case. The section on Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Abelard is admirable in introducing the novice to areas of considerable theological and philosophical complexity. With the English mystics we are reminded of the English spiritual tradition. Wycliff and the Lollards come together with the Peasant’s Revolt, hinting at a wider feeling of national instability and rebellion.
The coverage of the Reformation is not quite so sure-footed. The historical revisionism notably in the work of Eamon Duffy, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Jack Scarisbrick and Christopher Haigh is not focused as sharply as that revolution in focus requires. Some of these authors are referred to but the sheer shift in our understanding of the Reformation in England is not captured. The section touching on the Caroline period and then Wesley and Whitfield and the background in Georgian England is more certain in its approach, and avoids the pitfall of casting the eighteenth century as simply a period of decline and corruption within the Church in England.
The Victorian era indicates a strong dependence upon the work of Owen Chadwick, but the material on the Evangelical Revival and the Tractarians has elements of a critical edge. The rise in doubt and agnosticism and the response of the Churches – particularly with Essays and Reviews and Lux Mundi – are carefully crafted. The closer we come to the modern age, the less sure-footed is the feel; recent history is notoriously difficult to analyse partly due to its sheer proximity and thus less critical distance. Labels, such as charismatic, liberal catholicism and Protestant, are too easily resorted to here. Also the detail is swamped in the effort to stride effortlessly through great swathes of history. So the Catholic Modernist movement undoubtedly requires more space. The Great War was such a watershed, and neither the intellectual/cultural impact nor the response of the churches to that enormous human catastrophe are sufficiently analysed even in miniature; neither Alan Wilkinson nor Michael Snape are given a mention when analysing the Church of England’s response in the trenches.
More recently still, one feels that one is racing on at a terrifying speed by the time we reach the 1960s and Vatican II. So, Pope John XXIII receives a good if limited press, whereas Paul VI is effectively dismissed as ‘anxious and conflicted’, with ultramontane convictions and he is described simply as ‘closing the Council’. In fact Pope John only lived long enough to open Vatican II whereas Pope Paul presided throughout and steered the course into modern Roman Catholicism, including even a sensitive openness to Liberation Theology. It was Humanae Vitae and pressure from a conservative lobby that forced Paul into the corner, which he regretted.
The final sections on the relative decline and increasing weaknesses of the churches is fairly drawn and the period in the 1980s, when the Church of England was, as he implies, the effective political opposition, is well captured. The suggestion that the established church grew in confidence during the 1990s seems an odd conclusion in the face of continuing decline and a very ineffective response to the wider challenges in society in relation to sexuality; here the church is still paying the price. The final chapter’s brief reflections pick up some recurring themes, concluding with the famous quotation from the court of King Edwin of Northumbria describing life as ‘swift as a sparrow’s flight through the house’. The final timeline is a useful tool. Despite any of these criticisms, this book is a very attractive introduction to almost two thousand years of England’s religious history.
