Cloud of Witnesses: Unexpected Clergymen

As you walk around the cloisters of Chester Cathedral, some of the most famous saints in Christendom are looking down at you from the stained glass windows. So too are several biblical characters, together with an assortment of angels and archangels. It comes as a surprise, then, that in the south walk you suddenly encounter the images of three men who seem out of place in this saintly congregation – clergymen in full-fig clerical dress from Tudor and Stuart times. They are Matthew Parker, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. A little history is needed to set them in context.

The Reformed Protestant Church of England began life under King Henry VIII when he finally broke from the authority of Rome in 1533 and declared himself to be the Church’s Supreme Governor. There were stops and starts in the process under his two successors on the English throne, King Edward VI and Queen Mary I, but Anglicanism finally became the established religion of England when Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. Elizabeth was sensitive to the complex religious make-up of the country, and she tried to steer a ‘middle way’ for Anglicanism between the old Roman Catholicism and the new varieties of Protestantism that were emerging, particularly Puritanism. Religion was hugely important in the life of the nation, and Elizabeth needed strong and committed churchmen to carry through her project. She made her choices carefully.

Matthew Parker was Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury. Installed as primate in 1559, he came with irreproachable Protestant credentials; but he was a reluctant innovator and a somewhat uninspiring leader. This, though, was a time when it was more important to consolidate the Protestant legacy of Thomas Cranmer than to take the church into unknown territory; and Parker proved himself capable of suppressing Catholicism in most parts of the country while facing down the increasingly clamant demands of Puritans. After the religious turmoil of Queen Mary’s reign, Parker began to steer the Church of England into calmer waters.

Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes, who were exact contemporaries, came onto the Anglican scene towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign. After a brief academic career at Oxford, Hooker became a parish priest, ending his ministry at Bekesbourne, near Canterbury, where he was buried. Fully committed to Elizabeth’s ‘middle way’ for the Church of England, Hooker took on both Catholics and Puritans over the contentious question of religious authority. Catholics regarded the teachings of the church, mediated by the papacy, as the ultimate fount of authority, while Puritans saw the scriptures, particularly the New Testament, as the only true source. Hooker countered both of these positions by propounding a tri-partite basis to authority in the Church of England: the Bible, tradition, and human reason. Scripture, he argued, should be the primary authority when it spoke plainly and unequivocally, but where it was silent or ambiguous, church tradition should be invoked. If there still remained any confusion, then human reason came into play. Biblical revelation, church tradition and human reason: this was Richard Hooker’s abiding legacy to Anglicanism.

Lancelot Andrewes’s legacy, not just to Anglicanism but to the whole of Christendom, sprang from his membership of a group of scholars commissioned to prepare a new version of the Bible in plain English. He worked on the translation of the early books of the Old Testament as well as acting as a general editor to the whole project. The appearance of the Authorised Version of the Bible in 1611, popularly known as the King James Bible, was a stellar event in the history of English language and literature, and Andrewes was much admired for his part in the project. He was also an inspiring preacher and the originator of ‘bonfire night’ as a celebration of the failure of the Catholic plot to blow up parliament in 1605.

Matthew Parker, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes were men of high intellectual capacity who took theology seriously. They lived at a time when theology mattered: the tensions between the old Catholicism and the new forms of Protestantism were fought out as much in the cockpits of theological debate as in the centres of political and ecclesiastical power, and they produced some of the finest literature of the early modern period: the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible and the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes. These were the products of a society that took religion seriously and cared about the meaning of words. Can we say the same today? Do we take theological discourse seriously, or are we too wrapped up in serving the community? And if we are, does it matter?