The English Prayer Book to-Day

I

ACCORDING to a famous metaphor, the Senate of the United States is the saucer into which the hot brew of the House of Representatives is poured to cool. In the English system the ideal function of the House of Lords is similarly conceived to be that it shall serve as a moderating influence on the precipitancy of the House of Commons. We have lately had a striking instance of the reversal of this process. A bill approved by the Lords has been thrown out by the more conservative Commons as involving too radical a departure from the established practice of nearly three centuries. The measure giving the necessary Parliamentary sanction to the Revised Prayer Book passed the Lords on December 14, 1927, by 241 votes to 88, but was rejected by the Commons on December 15 by 238 to 205. In the belief that this result was due to ‘certain avoidable misunderstandings as to the character of the proposals,’ the House of Bishops undertook a further revision, for the purpose of making ‘such changes, and such changes only,’ as might ‘tend to remove misapprehensions and to make clearer and more explicit’ the ‘intentions and limitations’ of the new book. The measure, as thus amended, was presented to the House of Commons on June 13, 1928, and after two days’ debate was rejected by 266 to 220.

The history of the ‘Prayer Book Measure’ presents some points of unusual interest to the student of politics. During both debates in the Commons, the party whips enjoyed a vacation. Members were left perfectly free to speak and vote as they felt inclined. The Government assumed no responsibility in the matter. While the Prime Minister supported the bill, the Home Secretary led the opposition, and, of the other members of the Cabinet, some went into the ‘Aye’ lobby and some into the ‘No.’ The Liberal and Labor parties similarly left their followers untrammeled. It is significant that the speaking on both these occasions reached a much higher level than in any other debate of the session. There was a vitality about it that is commonly lacking at Westminster. One began to wonder whether the general dullness of the proceedings of Parliament may not be largely due to the curb that is normally set upon the tongues of individual members by the obligations of party allegiance.

The debates have raised a further question closely affecting the principles of representative government. In each division the Revised Prayer Book would have been carried but for the votes of non-Anglicans, — ‘promiscuous non-Anglicans,’ Mr. J. L. Garvin calls them, to emphasize the fact that they are members of various churches or of none at all, — and much rhetorical play has been made of the vote cast for the Noes by Mr. Saklatvala, a Parsee who sits for a London constituency. Mr. Garvin roundly declares that these men, while technically qualified to vote, had no moral right to decide an issue relating to a church to which they did not themselves belong. The same contention has been put forward by Lord Birkenhead and the Bishop of Durham, as well as by many writers in the newspaper press. A few Free Church M. P.’s, including at least one former Cabinet Minister, deliberately abstained from speech or vote, excusing themselves on the ground that they were not themselves members of the Church of England.

Such an attitude surely indicates a surprising misconception of the functions and obligations of a Parliamentary representative. Either the Prayer Book Measure is a legitimate subject for the consideration of Parliament or it is not. If it is not, then neither Anglicans nor non-Anglicans have any justification for dealing with it in the House. But if it is, every member, whatever his faith or no-faith, has not only the right but the duty of voting upon it. He is elected in order to contribute his share to the settlement of all questions that come before the Legislature, and he is not entitled to shirk that responsibility by picking and choosing between them, thus practically disfranchising his constituency as regards those which he evades. The fact that he will not himself be personally affected by the result of a division is an insufficient ground for abstention. He is not to be excused from voting on a Trade Disputes Bill because he does not himself belong to a trade-union, or on a bill for regulating divorce reports because he is not a newspaper man, or on a Landlord and Tenant Bill because he lives in a house of his own and possesses no other house property. True, there has grown up a practice of allowing a member to abstain from voting if he wishes, but that practice is really a lax concession, inconsistent with a fundamental principle of representative government.

Mr. Garvin’s argument meets its reductio ad absurdum if we reflect on what would have happened if on either occasion the division had resulted in a tie. In such emergencies the occupant of the chair is required to give a casting vote. Now on December 15 the chair was occupied by the Deputy Speaker, Mr. James Hope, who happens to be a Roman Catholic. If there had been a tie, would Mr. Garvin have thought it Mr. Hope’s duty to remain neutral? If so, there would have come about a situation absolutely unprecedented in the history of Parliament, for a measure duly submitted to it would have been neither passed nor rejected, but left in the air. And, on the second occasion, the refusal of a non-Anglican chairman to vote in the event of a tie would have resulted in a similar deadlock, for the House was then presided over by the Speaker, Mr. J. H. Whitley, a Congregationalist. It may be unseemly for a Parsee to take part in deciding what is to be the sacramental ritual of the Church of England, but the possibility of his doing so is an inevitable corollary of the unique relation of that church to the State. As the Home Secretary reminded the House, the Prayer Book is ‘the creation of Parliament,’ and it cannot be altered without an Act of Parliament. If the worship of the Roman Catholic Church had similarly been a product of Parliamentary legislation, it would equally be both the right and the duty of Protestant as well as Roman Catholic members to take their share in any proposed revision of it. Alike in doctrine, ritual, and discipline, the affairs of the Anglican Church come within the purview of Parliament as a whole, and not merely of the Anglican members of it.

II

Let us now turn from political to religious considerations. One of the outstanding features of the whole controversy is the evidence it has afforded of the keenness of popular interest in religion. This has been shown not only by endless discussions in the press and on the platform, but by the avalanche of letters from their constituents that descended upon M. P.’s. Sir George Courthope states that in twenty-two years’ experience in the House of Commons he has never known pressure from the constituencies to be so heavy. In the House itself the two debates revealed a well-informed, thoughtful, and earnest appreciation of the problems involved. Indeed, the verbatim reports in Hansard might almost be used as a textbook of the matters at issue between the Anglo-Catholics and the Protestants. The case for each side was put fully, candidly, and on a high level of argument. Whether one is pleased with the result of the debates or not, it will henceforth be impossible to say that the people of England are indifferent to those problems of vital religious belief which, we have often been told, have lost all interest for the present generation. More than any other group of persons in the country, the House of Commons is a microcosm of the nation, and its intelligent and earnest treatment of this question may justly be interpreted as a sign of the attitude of the general public.

Why did the Bishops fail in their attempt to modify the original Revision in such a way as to make it acceptable? Was the first rejection, after all, due to a mere ‘misunderstanding’? In a previous article ¹ I summarized the pros and cons of the controversy as they appeared before the introduction of the first Prayer Book Measure, and it is unnecessary to recapitulate them here. Nor would it be worth while to set forth in detail the changes proposed in order to conciliate the opposition. The root cause of the fiasco was the fact that, to quote Dr. Carnegie Simpson, ‘ the revision has all through been directed under the aim of placating different parties within the Church, rather than under the aim of expressing the true and fundamental character of the nation’s religious life.’ And the further the process of attempted compromise was carried, the less satisfaction did it give to either of the parties concerned. Not only was the rejection by Parliament more pronounced in 1928 than in 1927, but the approval of the Bishops’ proposals by the Church Assembly — a necessary preliminary, under the Enabling Act, to the introduction of the Prayer Book Measure into Parliament — was given by smaller majorities in the case of the second Revision than in that of the first. In their endeavor to win over the Protestant dissentients, the Bishops made certain alterations which led to the revolt of several influential Anglo-Catholic leaders who had supported the 1927 Revision. At the same time the changes did not go far enough to remove the objections of the Protestants, whose spokesmen were still able to describe the Revised Prayer Book as a milestone on the journey from St. Paul’s to St. Peter’s.

In a statement issued at the time, Bishop Barnes mentioned various specific proposals for further modification which had been submitted to his colleagues and rejected by them. And in the Commons debate on June 14 it was disclosed that the leaders of the Parliamentary opposition to the Revision had approached the Archbishop of Canterbury and told him that they were prepared to use all their influence in the House in securing the adoption of the Revision if only the provision for the perpetual reservation of the Sacrament were withdrawn. But this eirenicon proved futile. Accordingly, the question of reservation stands out as the crucial issue of the whole controversy. And the general popularity of the rejection by Parliament of this innovation on the traditional doctrine and practice of the Church of England is clear testimony to the continued attachment of the country to the Protestant faith.

III

The vote of the House of Commons now leaves the Church of England in an almost intolerable situation. Is there any way out of the impasse? One suggestion is that the Revised Prayer Book should be still further revised by eliminating the reservation clauses, while retaining those modifications of the 1662 Prayer Book to which no party in the Church offers any objection. There is little doubt that the book, thus purged of its offense, would readily be accepted by Parliament. But the Bishops will hear nothing of any such proposal. Their intransigence in this respect is hard to reconcile with the declarations made by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his episcopal colleagues when the result of their labors as revisers was first given to the public. They then argued that a Revised Prayer Book was imperatively necessary in order that the services of the Church might be harmonized with the thought and feeling of present-day worshipers. If the modernization of Anglican worship is so urgent, the rejection by Parliament of those sections on which there is a sharp difference of opinion is surely an inadequate excuse for throwing the whole book into the waste-paper basket. Be that as it may, the attitude of the Bishops — which would doubtless be endorsed by the majority in the Church Assembly — will prevent the suggestion of an agreed Revised Prayer Book from being adopted.

The policy which seems most in favor among Anglo-Catholics, at any rate, is that which was foreshadowed by the Bishop of Lincoln before the final Parliamentary debate. He declared that, even if the House of Commons rejected the book, that would not prevent its being used. The lesson of history was that liberty was seldom conceded; it must be taken. They must lake to themselves the liberty which they needed. And Lord Hugh Cecil, writing after the rejection, hopes that all the variations permitted by the Revised Prayer Book will be permitted by the advice of the Bishops. Such a challenge to constitutional authority has been justly described by Dr. Carnegie Simpson as ‘ecclesiastical Bolshevism.’ ’It is not a fair or right thing,’ he points out, ’for the Church to make the agreement known as the Enabling Act, giving Parliament the final voice in all Church legislation, and then, when it does not work out as desired, to disown it.’ But an attitude approximating to this appears to find favor in the highest ecclesiastical quarters. Addressing the first meeting of the Church Assembly held after the second rejection, the Archbishop of Canterbury disclaimed any intention on the part of the Bishops to authorize the use of the Revised Prayer Book ‘as such.’ But he made the significant addendum that ‘the Bishops will have to consider what variations from the old prescribed law, the unworkable law, they can or ought to sanction,’ and that ‘ in the book there are many things which will furnish us with guidance in determining what may rightly be permitted or prescribed in the present situation.’

One may infer, then, that an attempt is likely to be made to introduce into the worship of the Church, by a side wind, some of the practices whose inclusion in the Revised Prayer Book led to its rejection by Parliament. ‘That way madness lies’ is the only possible comment on such a policy. It would bring the Church into a conflict with the State, in which the Church would start with the discredit of having openly flouted the authority of Parliament and deliberately defied the law of the land. The inevitable outcome of such a conflict would be disestablishment. Parliament would soon find means of preventing those who are unwilling to pay the price of the State connection from continuing to enjoy the benefits of it.

In the opinion of most people, disestablishment is bound to come, sooner or later, but even those who are most eager for it would desire its accomplishment by a process that would not bear so much of the character of a reprisal. If the separation of Church and State were to become an issue at the polls under such conditions, a needless and lamentable element of bitterness would be infused into the whole campaign.

It may be that further compromises will be proposed and further experiments tried before the question is finally settled. It has already been suggested, for instance, that the Enabling Act should be so amended as to allow the Church a larger measure of freedom in the regulation of her own affairs on condition that the laity should be given a greater share in their administration. During the final Commons debate the Attorney-General was interrupted by an inquiry why the English Church should be debarred from the freedom possessed by the Established Church of Scotland. He promptly asked in reply whether, if such freedom were granted, the Bishops would agree also that congregations in England should, as in Scotland, have the choice of their own ministers. The roar of acclamation with which this retort was greeted is reported to have been the loudest and most prolonged demonstration in the whole debate.

That incident itself points out a path which ecclesiastical statesmanship might profitably explore, but one may safely predict that the temper of the Anglo-Catholic priesthood, whether on the episcopal bench or in the parishes, will effectively prevent any steps being taken in that direction. To the AngloCatholic clergy even disestablishment would seem a more tolerable fate. And disestablishment is now being frankly recognized, both in ecclesiastical and in political circles, as not only a possible but a probable outcome of what has just happened.

In the August issue of the Contemporary Review Dr. William Temple, the Archbishop-designate of York, contemplates this solution without serious qualms (except as regards disendowment), and indeed admits that it would have the dual advantage of removing a sense of inequality in the State’s relation to different religious bodies and of asserting the Church’s freedom. In supporting the Prayer Book Measure in the House, the Chancellor of the Exchequer declared that its rejection would inaugurate a period of chaos, which could only be corrected by disestablishment. The Prime Minister, too, expressed the opinion that disestablishment would have much more chance of being brought nearer to the political sphere by the rejection of the bill. He went on to predict that, if the Church of England were to be freed from such State control as exists to-day, she would not remain long as an entity with these two streams of spiritual life, the Catholics and the Evangelicals, running together. ‘I believe,’he said, ‘that this connection with the State, galling as it may be at times, illogical as it seems to many, alone keeps those two streams, unique in their confluence, running in the Church of England.’

That is perfectly true, and it goes to the root of the whole matter. The ‘comprehension’ so often acclaimed as the unique merit of the Anglican Church does not spring, as is sometimes supposed, from an exceptional endowment of the grace of charity, but is simply the binding together of incompatible and contradictory elements by the artificial tie of the State establishment. Break that, and these discordant elements will fly apart. Many years ago, in his delightful volume of essays entitled The Comments of Bagshot, Mr. J. A. Spender showed the essential difference between a compromise and an equivocation. ‘A compromise,’ he pointed out, ‘is a real mean between two extremes which both parties will accept as a basis of action; an equivocation is a verbal formula which can be so interpreted as to enable both parties to retain their original position.’ He illustrated this distinction by the specific instance of the controversies in the Church of England. The articles of that church, he said, were less a compromise than an equivocation. They were so drafted as to enable one party to maintain that it was Catholic and another party to maintain that it was Protestant. They represented, therefore, not a compromise on which the two parties could unite, but a formula which enabled them to go their separate ways under an appearance of unity. These arrangements, Mr. Spender continued, served the practical purpose of masking or concealing conflict, ‘but they are interpreted by each party with a mental reserve which may declare itself surprisingly in a moment of strain.’ That moment seems at last to have arrived.