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The Church of England in the Diocese of London: What does History have to Offer to the Present-Day Church?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
On 21 February 1900 in St Paul’s Cathedral Bishop Mandell Creighton delivered his first, and what proved to be his last, visitation charge to the clergy of the diocese of London. He began by reflecting briefly on the particular challenges of his own position and of London itself, but quickly moved on to focus on current ecclesiastical controversies, especially the nature of holy communion and the practice of confession. Creighton had been a historian long before he became a bishop, and it was therefore natural that his response to contemporary issues should rapidly move into an insightful lecture on Reformation history. His analysis was both specific and general. For example, he pointed out that breakfast was not normally eaten in medieval and early modern societies and so congregations naturally came fasting to a late morning communion service. In changed social circumstances it would be inappropriate ‘to revive this custom as an absolute law’.
- Type
- Part I: The Churches’ Use of the Past
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2013
References
1 Creighton, Mandell, The Church and the Nation: Charges and Addresses, ed. Creighton, Louise (London, 1901), 287–323.Google Scholar
2 Ibid. 308–9.
3 Ibid. 297.
4 Ibid. 298.
5 As dean of St Paul’s and archdeacon of Charing Cross respectively.
6 Most notably in Williams, Rowan, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church (London, 2005).Google Scholar
7 RMA Sandhurst, <http://www.army.mod.uk/training_education/training/17057.aspx>, accessed 12 August 2011.
8 This development has been facilitated by further ‘Follow-On’ funding from the AHRC in 2012–13. Their essential support through both grants is most gratefully acknowledged.
9 ‘Building on History: The Church in London’, <http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/building-on-history-project/resource-guide/about.htm>. It is intended that in the longer term this material will be maintained on the LPL website.
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19 Bishop Phillpotts’s famous threat to break communion with Archbishop Sumner should he institute Gorham over his head (A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury from the Bishop of Exeter [London, 1850], 252) was indicative of the passions aroused by the Gorham case: see Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church: Part I, 1829–1859 (London, 1966), 250–71.Google Scholar On ritualism, see Bentley, James, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Attempt to Legislate for Belief (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Janes, Dominic, Victorian Reformation: The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England 1840–1860 (New York, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wellings, Martin, Evangelicals Embattled: Responses of Evangelicals in the Church of England to Ritualism, Darwinism and Theological Liberalism 1890–1930, SEHT (Carlisle, 2003).Google Scholar
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