Book Review - The Reformation by Owen Chadwick

 The Reformation by Own Chadwick (Pelican History of the Church v. 2)

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986 (first published 1964, rev. ed. 1972) ISBN 0140205047

This book has travelled around with me for about 30 years - well, not this book, but the various editions I've owned and then lost or given away through my various moves. This copy I bought for $2 at a charity shop. In all that time, I've never read it cover to cover until now.

And I'm glad I did. Owen Chadwick has written a lively and comprehensive history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, covering not only Luther's revolt, but all that followed - Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Calvinism and all the other groups that grew from the great initial revolt at the torpor and corruption of the Catholic Church. He also covers the Catholic reaction to these changes, with the growth of the Jesuits, and the attempts to clean the Augean stables that was the Medieval Catholic Church.

We all know the outlines of the Reformation - disgusted at the corruption and sinfulness of much of the church, Luther famously set out to clean up church doctrine, liturgy and ritual. He never intended to set up a rival religion, but, partly through mismanagement by the Pope, and the political situation in Northern Germany, that is what happened. Once the Pandora's box was open, many went further than Luther in ridding religion of ritual, music, pictures, bishops, and in fact most of what made the Catholic Church the Catholic Church.

Chadwick covers both the political and religious sides of the history, and explains how the Catholic Church "fought back", with Jesuits and Dominicans in particular bringing the Catholic Church back to the people. Chadwick also writes about the Church's move into the Americas, and how the way the Conquistadors treated the natives made many churchmen consider what the church should be to all people, and how Christ's message should be delivered.

Chadwick weaves his way through the chronology of the Reformation quite skillfully, and towards the end has an interesting chapter on how the average peasant coped with the changes that occurred not only in areas that turned Protestant, but also in the Catholic world, where services changed and many excesses were done away with.

Overall, if you want to read a comprehensive, well-written account of the religious upheavals of the Sixteenth Century, this is well worthwhile.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Anglican Way by Verney Johnstone

 The Anglican Way: a Plain Guide for the Intelligent Layman by Verney Johnstone

London: A.R. Mowbray & Co. Limited, 1948 (ninth impression 1961)

I love these kinds of books. Invariably published in England, they are a wonderful evocation of the English social order of pre- and post-war - working men who are keen to "improve" themselves, and being told how to do so by those in the upper middle class. That these sort of books were very popular is in no doubt - first published in 1948, this particular title had reached a ninth impression by the time my copy was printed in 1961.

The Anglican Way is written by a former Canon of the Church, and is a wonderfully crisp evocation of what it means to be an Anglican as opposed to a Roman Catholic or a Non-Conformist Protestant. As Johnstone points out, the Anglican Church is actually a Catholic Church more than it is a Protestant Church, although it does have space for those who find the trappings of Roman Catholicism too much. While Johnstone doesn't delve too deeply into Church history, as this book is meant as a guide for the current practicing Anglican of his time, he does have succinct explanations of why and how the Anglican faith has developed in the way it has.

The heart of this book is a guide to how to be a good practicing Anglican. Johnstone explains that it is the Book of Common Prayer that guides the worship of Anglicans. Much of The Anglican Way is concerned with the text of the book (both the 1662 and 1928 versions), and how the worshiper should interact with it. Johnstone certainly has his own view on the best form of Anglicanism - certainly more to the Anglo-Catholic than the "Low" Church, and a great lover of the austerity of much of the texts. He would certainly be horrified with a lot of current Anglican practice, even in the "High" Church.

This book, written about 70 years ago, prefers an Anglican that attends Morning and Evening prayer perhaps more than the Sunday Communion, one who prepares for services by meditating on the scriptures before attending, one who doesn't substitute "personal fancy for corporate duty in the national attitude to religion" and any other things that "militate against Sunday church-going." He certainly doesn't like a priest who gives the Church notices before the Homily!

While this book is obviously out-of-date as a guide to worship, and almost laughingly pompous and out-of-tune with the current day, I found it a useful guide to the structure of the Book of Common Prayer - why it is set out the way it is, and why there is so little about remembering the dead, among other things. I picked up this book for fifty cents in an op-shop, and realistically that is all it is worth. However it did give me a few hours of enjoyment and education.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Silence a Christian history by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Silence : a Christian history by Diarmaid MacCulloch

New York : Viking, 2013                     ISBN 9780670025565

This book was not what I expected it to be... it was much more. Picked up on a bargains table at my favourite bookstore, in its handsome dustjacket with an Angel (or is it Mary?) gazing beatifically out from under a golden halo, I was expecting this book to focus on the Christian ascetics and monks of the Middle Ages, and their continuation on into today. Of course that subject is discussed, but this book paints a much larger canvas, exploring the concept of silence itself in all its facets through Church history.

MacCulloch starts before the birth of Christ, investigating silence as it was seen in the Jewish books of the Bible, and finds that initially silence was seen as a bad thing, invoking the devastation of post-war, and of death. Under the influence of Greek thought and philosophy, silence as a sacred state began to enter Jewish thought, via Job and others, and the Temple in Jerusalem would have used silence as part of its ritual.

It was hundreds of years after the death of Christ before the idea of the pursuit of God through silent prayer took hold. The Desert Fathers were, by their very nature, not part of the mainstream Church, and it took some time for their views to break into the mainstream. The institutional Church - especially in the West - was fearful of individuals praying for themselves by themselves as the priests wanted control over people, and so monasticism grew as a way that the hierarchy could control silent prayer. In the East the iconoclastic battles occurred for similar reasons, the difference being that the institution lost and the individuals won, which is why the individual ascetic experience is much more common in the Orthodox world.

As it was the Protestants that opened the Bible up to more people via vernacular translations, it is ironic that MacCulloch shows us that for Protestants silence was usually seen as wrong, or at least suspicious. And yet silence became very important for some for mere survival. Nicodemism in many of its forms is well represented in this book, as the silences involved often were a matter of life and death, when the Inquisition or Elizabeth's Secret Service were asking questions. Gay clergy falls into this section of MacCulloch's book and in some ways is a slightly separate issue, as there was not only often silence on the side of gay clergy, but silence from the Church as well - a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy, with those that did tell made to be silent.

The last section of the book deals with more disturbing uses of silence within the Church, if not within Christianity in general. MacCulloch delves into Church silences that surround the Holocaust, sexual abuse, and slavery. For those, like me, who thought that the Church was one of the institutions that helped rid the (Western) World of slavery, MacCulloch provides a corrective, when he describes how various Churches provided those who engaged in the practice religious cover for their activities. While the abolitionist story is well known, this murkier relationship of Church and slavery has been subsumed into silence.

This brief description does not do justice to this book: extensively researched (excellent apparatus and bibliography), lucidly argued and packed with information, it is truly a mind-expanding work. This is surely the masterpiece on this subject and will be the foundation of any future work in this area.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - John Henry Newman by Frank Leslie Cross

John Henry Newman by Frank Leslie Cross (Librarian of Pusey House, Oxford)

[London] : Philip Allan, 1933

I knew a little about John Newman before I read this book - Newman College at the University of Melbourne, his book The idea of a University, and that he had converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. I picked this book up for nothing a few years ago, with an idea that it would fill out my knowledge somewhat, and that it has.

Frank Cross was an academic and an Anglican priest, and in this work he lays out Newman's life as an Anglican, up to his publication of the notorious Tract 90 and his "secession" to the Roman Church. Cross gives us an outline of Oxford in Newman's time, and shows us how Newman and his fellow Tractarians - or Pusey-ites, as they were called at the time - lit a fire under the somnolent Church of the early 1800s, with their scholarship and activism.

Cross shows us how Newman's study of the Church Fathers drove his ideas of how the Anglican Church could be structured - that tradition and Apostolic succession was a very important part of the Church, and that the Anglican Church was more faithful to that tradition than was the Roman Catholic Church. This attachment to tradition naturally drew Newman to the Anglo-Catholic branch of the Church, and to repudiate both the Evangelical and Liberal sections of the Low Church movement.

Cross points out that in Newman's time the writings of the early Church were only beginning to be made available in English, and so Newman was slowly absorbing what they had to say. Eventually he came to see that in his reading of the Fathers, the idea of one Church was important - which obviously caused some problems for Newman, given the challenge that this proposed for the idea of a breakaway Church like the Anglicans. It was also a particular problem for Newman, who had a predilection to obey authority figures almost unquestioningly. This collision of information and belief led Newman to write Tract 90, which was an attempt to read the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church as not being at all in conflict with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. To do this Newman used many tricks of logic and rhetoric, and publication caused a storm in the Church, and at Oxford. Newman seemed genuinely surprised that the Anglican and University hierarchy set themselves against him. This led to a period of seclusion before his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church.

Cross's chapter on Newman's conversion is quite insightful - he points out that much of the reasoning that Newman sets out in his Apologia is post ipso facto. Cross discusses the psychological effect the Tract 90 affair had on Newman - how he felt that his obedience to his Bishop and the Church was almost a contract, that he was devastated by what he saw as abandonment, and that abandonment was the driving force behind his conversion. Cross finishes his work with a chapter dealing with Newman's reaction to the First Vatican Council, where he used the same logical twists he used in Tract 90 to support the outcome of the Council. The book ends with a collection of letters written by Newman discussing the Council.

Once Newman changed over to the Roman Church, he had another 40 years to live, in which he became a stalwart of the English Roman Catholic Church, ending up a Cardinal, and as of today on the path to Sainthood. This book doesn't cover any of that part of what was by any measurement a remarkable life.

As an introduction to Newman, at least the Anglican Newman, this book has done the job. I'm sure it's probably scarce, so I won't recommend it, and I'm sure there are more modern and comprehensive works available.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell