A little History of The English Country Church

Strong, Roy: [isbn=9781844138302]A little History of The English Country Church[/isbn] (Vintage, 2008)

1. Buildings and Customs 507-1531

With the arrival in England (597) of Saint Augustine the monastery based, tribal, Celtic church - which had grown as paganism declined and was, to some extent, absorbed into Christianity - increasingly gave way to a church-based religion whose ritual and rules were dictated by Rome. Pope Gregory The Great (r 540-604) followed Continental precedent in both the Eastern and Western churches by ordering Pagan temples to be taken over, or their materials re-constituted, for Christian worship, primarily the Eucharist whose elaborate Celtic form gave way to the austere Roman rite which was, however, ultimately overtaken by a new fashion for splendour and spectacle enshrined in the 11th Century Sarum Rite. The design of buildings followed the mainland tradition of the Basilica with its rectangular nave and semi-circular apse; but at about the time when towns began to emerge and when the nobility began to build churches for its feudal communities, the style changed to the Romanesque with its cruciform ground plan and towers. Side aisles were developed as the population grew and the porch became the seat of commerce and the site for solemnising marriage. Ornamentation grew with sculpture being followed in the 12th Century by stained glass.

By then, dioceses had been organised but the local church was autonomous; nonetheless, bishops and nobles owned benefices and sub-contracted them to priests who were so poor that it forced the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to ban priestly marriage to save money, in exchange for granting freehold. The Fourth Lateran also promulgated the doctrine of Transubstantiation which led to the reservation of the host and the division of the nave from the chancel by a screen to emphasise the mysterious nature of the Sacrament which led, in turn, to a decline in reception, a rise in Marian and other saintly veneration and a proliferation of devices to aid personal piety. The upkeep of the chancel was the responsibility of the owner of the Benefice whereas the upkeep of the nave and the rest of the church and its churchyard belonged to the laity, the imposition of which led to Vestries.

Expanding population after the setback of the Black Death led to another period of church building, notably in wool growing areas, in the Gothic style which, like the music performed within, grew ever more elaborate. The economic pressure of church building led to the increased practice of exchanging money for indulgences which was the flash-point for the German Reformation.

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2. The Reformation 1531-1660

With the passage of the Act of Uniformity (1534), Henry VIII (r 1509-47) abolished Papal authority in England. For the ordinary person this simply meant praying for the King instead of the Pope but with the dissolution of the monasteries (1536) and the reduction of Feast Days from 50 to 6 the change became more obvious. On his death bed Henry VIII, who had extracted all the money he could from the English Church, was still attempting a reunion with Rome but his successor Edward VI's (r1547-53) Regency administration took a radical turn based on the introduction into Cambridge of Lutheran theology: the Sacraments were reduced to Baptism, Eucharist and Penance (although the last soon disappeared); candles, holy water and other pietistic paraphernalia was abolished (with the contributions converted to the poor box); and sacred art was destroyed and walls whitewashed.

Nowhere was the change in emphasis more marked than in the shift in the focal point in churches from the altar to the pulpit. On this basis, the state control of the Church was reflected in the necessity of issuing licenses to preach and the issuing of standard homilies where there was not (as was frequently the case) a properly qualified preacher, a situation made worse by the centrality of Scripture, exemplified in the massive printing of bibles, particularly that edited by Coverdale. 

There was a sharp, temporary reverse under Catholic Queen Mary (r 1553-58), reversed again finally by Elizabeth I (r 1558-1603) whose improbably long reign both nullified any possibility of change and brought a degree of stability with its renewed but not brutal austerity. Throughout this period it was the laity, under the governance of Churchwardens, which had to bear the cost of state imposed changes.

Elizabeth's 1559 version of the Book of Common Prayer was less radical than its 1552 predecessor, she being more interested in uniformity than piety. The Eucharist, though deeply suspected because of Catholic devotion, had to be preserved because of its Scriptural mandate but Matins and Evensong, with their emergent musical accompaniment, became dominant. Rather than the somewhat threadbare and hectoring 39 Articles of Religion, the BCP, together with the King James Bible (1611), became the foundation of the Church of England.

The accession of James I (r 1603-25) who resented the aggressive Presbyterianism of Scotland, brought about a gentler form of Protestantism, softening the starkness of churches through the "Beauty of Holiness" movement and reversing structural deterioration; but the trend was short-lived as tension between the monarchy and the Puritan movement broke into open civil war (1642-46, 1648)), resulting in the execution of Charles II (1649) and a destruction of church art and objects on an even greater scale than that of Henry VIII.

With the exception of "Puritan fundamentalism, the worship and practice of the Church of England was entirely determined for state purposes: the 'bottom up' "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi" was inverted so that doctrine and worship were simultaneously imposed. The ordinary people had not wanted the Reformation and they did not want what resulted from it but they would have to endure more than 100 years after the Civil War before the Wesleyan revival and almost another 100 years after that before the Oxford Movement.

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3. Modern Times

The Church of England was almost destroyed by the Puritan regime (1647-60) and although its post Restoration recovery could never be complete, as minorities such as the Puritans and Quakers established their own, sectarian places of worship, nonetheless it settled back into its place as a state-directed part of the political, cultural and, perhaps least important of all, religious establishment, with many practices, such as the nepotistic assigning of benefices, recalling the late Medieval corruption which the national church had been founded ostensibly to abolish. Increasingly as the 18th Century advanced, clerical office became part of the commerce of wealthier families, ever more distant from the labouring class and oblivious of the gathering Industrial Revolution: The Bishops were in the House of Lords; the clergy were on the land; and the labourers knew their place. Rural churches, with their box pews and carefully ordered ranking of worshippers, reflected the fundamentally social, rather than spiritual, function of church-going.

A two-pronged spiritual revival began with the emergence of Methodism and it can fairly be said that at the end of the 18th Century to be holy was to be Methodist but the Evangelical fervour spread into the Church of England in the first decade of the 19th Century. The second prong, the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, strove to bring the Church of England into better accord with Continental churches and supposed patristic practice. The Movement brought about four major changes: a growth in self-conscious piety and spiritualism; the establishment of many new churches in city slums; the greatly increased ornamentation of churches and the elaboration of worship, not least in music Hymns Ancient & Modern, the English Hymnal); and a steady shift back from the offices of Matins and Evensong to the Parish Eucharist.

The last great period of church building took place in the agricultural boom of 1850-1870 but this never reflected a concomitant growth in church attendance which steadily fell, even among the middle class, throughout the 19th Century.

The diversification of worship and witness at both ends of the Anglican spectrum had much less effect in rural areas where people only had one church to go to than in cities where there were many in a small area. The BCP remained central from its 1449 beginning up until the creation of the Alternative Service Book in 1980, followed by Common Worship two decades later in spite of which most of what we experience in church bears remarkable similarity to the first Edition of the BCP. In spite of repeated efforts to radicalise English Christianity it has remained remarkably pragmatic.

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