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‘A Church without Discipline is No Church at All’: Discipline and Diversity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Anglicanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Frances Knight
Frances Knight*
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Lampeter
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Extract

In the early years of the twenty-first century, ecclesiastical discipline in an Anglican context has been very much a hot topic. Internationally, there has been intense debate over the decision by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America to ordain Gene Robinson, a continent yet avowedly homosexual priest, as one of its bishops, and over the decision of the diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorize liturgical services of blessing for same-sex couples. The Windsor Report of 2004 was commissioned in order to formulate a Communion-wide response to these developments,1 and although ‘discipline’ is a word which is very seldom in its pages, it is, in effect, a study of the disciplinary framework which its authors believe necessary in order for the Anglican Communion to hold together. At a local level, the Church of England’s clerical discipline procedures are being thoroughly overhauled, following the General Synod of the Church of England’s 1996 report on clergy discipline and the ecclesiastical courts. This paper seeks to explore the themes of discipline and diversity in both an international and an English context. It attempts to shed a little more light on how the Anglican Communion, particularly in the former British Empire, got itself into its current position, as a loosely-federated assembly of provincial synods, without a central framework for handling disciplinary matters. Secondly, it examines how the Church of England has handled discipline in relation to its clergy since the mid-nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 43: Discipline and Diversity , 2007 , pp. 399 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2007

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References

1 The Lambeth Commission on Communion, The Windsor Report 2004 (London, 2004).

2 General Synod of the Church of England, Under Authority: the Report of the General Synod Working Party reviewing Clergy Discipline and the working of the Ecclesiastical Courts (London, 1996).

3 The other three instruments of unity are the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

4 Windsor Report, Appendix Two.

5 ‘Diversity is a great strength; without care, however, it can also be a source of great tension and division’. Ibid., paragraph 71.

6 At the point when this paper received its final revision, in January 2006, it remained unclear what the implications of this would be, although it appeared that support for Peter Akinola, the Archbishop of Nigeria, was less strong amongst some other leaders of the Anglican Churches of the Global South than it had been a few months earlier.

7 There are of course some notable exceptions, for example Archbishop Trevor Huddleston (1913–98), best known for his work in South Africa from 1943 to 1956, and then Bishop of Masasi, Tanzania, from 1960 to 1968, and finally Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, from 1978 to 1983. For more on the representative nature of Anglican bishops, see Michael Nazir-Ali in Working with the Spirit: Choosing Diocesan Bishops (London, 2001), 107. He argues that a bishop represents the local church to the wider world, but also the other way round. The bishop represents Christ to the people, but also the people and their prayers to God.

8 A less famous example is that of Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk of New York, a noted high churchman who was convicted of sexual impropriety in 1844. The Episcopal Church’s General Convention permitted a re-election to Onderdonk’s semi-vacant see in 1852. George E. De Mille, The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, PA, 1950), 63–5.

9 Windsor Report, paragraph 100.

10 Stephenson, Alan M. G., The First Lambeth Conference 1867 (London, 1967), 136.Google Scholar

11 Davidson, R. T. and Benham, W., Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 vols (London, 1891), 2: 397.Google Scholar

12 Ashwell, A. R. and Wilberforce, R. G., Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce DD, 3 vols (London, 1883), 3: 231.Google Scholar

13 Stephenson, First Lambeth Conference, 279–81.

14 Ibid., 306–8.

15 See Howell, P. A., The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 1833–1876: Its Origins, Structure and Development (Cambridge, 1979 Google Scholar) and Waddams, S. M., Law, Politics and the Church of England: the Career of Stephen Lushington (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

16 The full titles are: Judgment of the Lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the Appeal of the Rev William Long v. the Right Rev Robert Cray, D.D., Bishop of Cape Town, from the Supreme Court of the Cape of Good Hope; delivered June 24, 1863 and Judgment of the Lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council upon the Petition of the Lord Bishop of Natal, referred to the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty’s Order in Council of the 10th June, 1864; delivered 20th March 1865, Both are reproduced in full in Gray, Charles, Life of Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of Africa, 2 vols (London, 1876), 2: 577–91 and 641–50.Google Scholar

17 Howell, Judicial Committee, 234–7. Technically, the archbishops and bishops who were members were only there for the purposes of appeals brought under the Church Discipline Act, 1840. However, it is evident that there was episcopal representation during the Gorham Judgment. See Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Pt 1 (3rd edn, London, 1971), 258–9.

18 In reality, these powers had always been somewhat limited and difficult to exercise, as is shown in the discussion which follows of the situation both before and after the passing of the 1840 Church Discipline Act.

19 It is a major theme of the Windsor Report to try to pull Anglicanism back from its current position, by giving greater authority to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the other instruments of unity.

20 Jacob, W. M., The Making of the Anglican Church Worldwide (London, 1997), 147.Google Scholar

21 Hinchliff, Peter, Jhon William Colenso: Bishop of Natal (London, 1964), 127–9 Google Scholar.

22 Stephenson, First Lambeth Conference, 59, 64–5. See Jacob, Making of the Anglican Church for more on the introduction, use and abandonment of letters patent, esp. 74, 93–4, 103, 123–4, 126, 137, 146, 150–1, 154–5.

23 Gray, Life of Gray, 1: 474–5.

24 Stephenson, First Lambeth Conference, 66–8. The point was reinforced in the deliberations of the Committee on Synodical Government which Selwyn chaired, and which met in the November after the 1867 Lambeth Conference. Ibid., 307.

25 Jacob, Making of the Anglican Church, 145.

26 Ibid., 147.

27 Gray, Life of Gray, 1: 474.

28 Ibid., 1: 490.

29 Ibid., 1: 509.

30 As late as September 1867, Selwyn continued to believe that if a pan-Anglican final court of appeal were brought into existence, both the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the Supreme Court in the United States would have to take note of it, even if it could have no direct influence on them. Stephenson, First Lambeth Conference, 279. As we have seen, he changed his view by the following November.

31 Gray, Life of Gray, 1: 514. The entire judgment is reproduced as Appendix One in ibid., 2: 577–91.

32 Jacob, Making of the Anglican Church, 150–1.

33 Gray, Life of Gray, 2: 200–1. Letter to Edward Gray, 9 May 1865. Gray had had to wait on tenterhooks for seven weeks for news of the judgment to reach him in Cape Town.

34 Jacob, Making of the Anglican Church, 179.

35 Gray, Life of Gray, 2: 485–90.

36 Alan Hayes has argued that in Canada, the synodical model of government remained extremely forceful until the 1930s, when it began to be replaced by what he terms the bureaucratic model, which weakened the powers of synods and strengthened those of bishops. He argues that since the 1970s, there has been a complete refusal in some dioceses to acknowledge the powers which Victorian Anglicans in Canada gave to synods, as key canons have been redrafted in order to give the impression that current levels of episcopal power have always existed. Alan L. Hayes, Anglicans in Canada: Controversies and Identity in Historical Perspective (Urbana and Chicago, IL, 2004), 101–11.

37 See Stephen Sykes, ‘The Anglican Experience of Authority’, 419–27, in this volume.

38 Hayes, Anglicans in Canada, 87, 89.

39 Ibid., 88.

40 An Address of the Lord Bishop of Fredericton, at a Meeting of the Clergy and Lay Delegates, Convened by the Unanimous Desire of the Clergy Present at the Late Visitation of the Diocese, 5 July 1866 (n.p., n.d.). For more on the setting up of synodical government in the diocese of Fredericton, see Barry Craig, ‘Bishop John Medley: Missionary and Reformer’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter, 2001, 233–57.

41 Hayes, Anglicans in Canada, 91. This practice has also been noticed in the disestablished Church in Wales. For more on the current relationship between the Church of England and English law, together with helpful comparisons with the Roman Catholic position, see Norman Doe, The Legal Framework of the Church of England: a Critical Study in a Comparative Context (Oxford, 1996).

42 Hayes, Anglicans in Canada, 91.

43 The revival of the Canterbury and York Convocations left the Irish clergy without a voice, until the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871. The Welsh Church was dises tablished in 1920, and developed its own form of synodical government – the Governing Body – at that point. For a discussion, see P. M. H. Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales (London, 1969).

44 The first Lambeth Conference, in 1867, further accelerated this state of affairs when it recommended that wherever a Church was not established by law, provincial synods ought to establish rules and procedures for disciplining clergy. Jacob, Making of the Anglican Church, 167.

45 Burns, Arthur, in his chapter ‘Disciplining the Delinquent: Prelate, Peers or Profes sionals?’, in The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England c. 1800–1870 (Oxford, 1999), 162–91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yates, Nigel, particularly in his chapter ‘The Attempt to Control Anglican Ritualism’, in Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain 1830–1910 (Oxford, 1999), 213–76 Google Scholar.

46 For the Anglican Canons, see Bray, Gerald, ed., The Anglican Canons 1529–1947, Church of England Record Society 6 (Woodbridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

47 Burns, Diocesan Revival, 164. Burns suggests that between 1827 and 1832 only 2.57% of the ecclesiastical courts’ business was taken up with discipline cases.

48 Knight, Frances, ‘Ministering to the Ministers: the Discipline of Recalcitrant Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln 1830–1845’, in Sheils, W.J. and Wood, Diana eds, The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, SCH 26 (Oxford, 1989), 359–63.Google Scholar

49 Burns, Diocesan Revival, 173–81.

50 Ibid., 176–7.

51 Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, pt I (3rd edn, London, 1971), 491–5.Google Scholar

52 See, for example, Yates, Nigel, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain 1830–1910 (Oxford, 1999), 237–78.Google Scholar

53 Bray, Anglican Canons, lxxviii-lxxxiii. Bray makes the important point that the drafting and consultation which took place over the deposited canons of 1874–79 was the first time in the history of the Church of England that its laws were discussed and to some extent framed by the Church as a whole, rather than by a few lawyers and bishops in committee. He suggests that the suggestions submitted for these canons give a clearer picture of the overall state of the Church at this period than the ritualist controversies which have tended to occupy historians.

54 Ibid., 447–51.

55 An Act for better enforcing Discipline in the Case of Crimes and other Offences against Morality committed by Clergymen 55 &56 Vict c.32 (June 1892).

56 Ibid., 13 (I) a.

57 Incumbents (Discipline) Measure 10&11 Geo. 6. No. 1 1947, Paragraph 2.

58 General Synod, Under Authority, 45, 85. Paragraph 5.36 also includes political activity that breaks the law, although this would seem to be covered by the recommendation that any conduct that results in a cleric being convicted in a secular court is in itself an ecclesias tical offence.

59 Ibid., 57–60.

60 Ibid., 30–3.

61 Ibid., 107.

62 The cases took place in 1969–70, 1991–92, and 1995. General Synod, Under Authority, 106–8.

63 I am very grateful for the comments of all those who either read or heard earlier versions of this paper, and particularly for the observations made by Bill Jacob and David Thompson.