Not Angels, but Anglicans: a history of Christianity in the British Isles

Ed. by Henry Chadwick and Allison Ward

(Canterbury Press, £25.00 /€33.00 pb)

Fergus O'Donoghue SJ

Based on a series of articles published in the Church Times (the Anglican weekly newspaper), and with a title based on a phrase of Saint Gregory the Great, this book is like a series of very good tutorials.

The writers are outstanding, as might be expected when Archbishop Rowan Williams and Professor Diarmuid MacCulloch are among them. The articles are short, with many inserts about particular topics, such as 'The Prayer Books of Edward VI' and 'Women Preachers'.

Every article has a useful chronological table, so you know exactly where the article fits into the progress of church and secular history. The scholarship is very impressive and the chapters on the medieval English centuries are outstanding.

The book's subtitle is deceptive, because this is a history of English Christianity, and becomes, after 1559, a history of English Protestantism. Wales and Scotland are mentioned only rarely, with Ireland making very few and very brief appearances.

Would this book interest a non-Anglican? Yes, because it addresses the question of why and how a religion that began ''in a group of neighbouring Galilean villages in a disturbed province of the Roman empire'' became the faith of vast numbers of people both inside and outside that empire.

The authors are very positive about the Celtic tradition, but there is greater enthusiasm for Pope Saint Gregory the Great (reigned 590-604), who sent missionaries to the pagan conquerors of Roman Britain, and equal enthusiasm for Benedictine monasticism. The confused politics of Anglo-Saxon England are made comprehensible. The brutality of the Vikings is described without excuses, unlike recent revisionist history that treated them as misunderstood migrants.

Medieval Christian England was extraordinary in its devotions and in its colourful churches, with a background of statues and shrines in every public place and a countryside dominated by monasteries large and small. This is portrayed very well.

The problem of the English Reformation was that it left English Christianity divided into three main groups: Catholics (increasingly small in number), Protestants who were content with the Established Church and radical Protestants, who thought that Reform should go much further. The authors do not really face the violence that was fundamental to all royal religious policies (not just those of Mary I), nor the importance of the system of care and compassion that vanished with the monasteries.

Tensions

The tensions within Protestantism were resolved only in the 1660s, when those who did not want episcopal government were pushed out of the Church of England. The Toleration Act of 1689 allowed Protestants to absent themselves from Church of England worship. Non-conformity became a part of English life, but Methodism came from the Church of England itself, as did the renewal of English Church life that evolved into 'Anglicanism', which is aware of both its Catholic and Protestant roots.

The Oxford Movement, in the 19th Century, changed the appearance of English churches and their forms of worship. Church interiors were no longer bare; grimly sung psalms were replaced by beautiful hymns; clergy began to robe more elaborately. The future Cardinal Newman had an enormous influence on the Church of his baptism, from which he converted to Catholicism in 1847.

The chapters on contemporary Anglicanism are interesting, realistic and challenging. Grace Davie summarises her famous thesis on 'Believing without belonging', which is a succinct description of Anglicanism in its country of origin. Growth is in the Third World, with the resulting tensions with advanced Western viewpoints. Anglicanism is remarkably comprehensive, but the Anglican Communion is increasingly less English.

The Reformation left the Established Church of England, with no activity outside church buildings, so a decision not to attend church means a much greater disassociation that in Catholic culture.

The beauty of the Book of Common Prayer was vital to the life and worship of the Church that produced it, but 16th Century English is often incomprehensible to the modern listener. The growth of Anglicanism is assured, because it no longer depends on its English roots.