1 - Diversity and Discipline: The Church and the Prayer Book

Summary

In order to assess the relationship between national identity and the controversy of 1927–28, it is necessary to understand the nature of the Church of England's revision project. Such a comprehension is foundational – the content and implications of the final revision proposals placed before Church and nation require interpretation. The details of the proposals are made all the more significant because many members of English, and broader British, society, who took an interest in revision had, in a large measure, a good grasp of the doctrinal and liturgical issues associated with the bishops’ proposals. The standard of reporting in both the London and provincial press on liturgical matters was of considerable quality, and the correspondence pages and ecclesiastical columns of the main newspapers indicate that a national theological conversation ensued. A reading of Hansard's report on the Prayer Book debates underlines that contemporaries were well aware of the liturgical issues; indeed, G. K. A. Bell, perhaps somewhat generously, described parliament's discussion of revision in 1927 as ‘high doctrinal dispute’. The political, cultural and national dimensions of the revision controversy all emerge out of these liturgical and doctrinal developments.

From the beginning of the process, the aim of revision had been to bring ‘peace and order’ to the Church and end the ritualistic lawlessness and internal strife that had been a major feature of Anglican life since the 1860s. In the words of Anglican academic Maurice Relton, the bishops hoped to call an armistice to the ritualistic battles being fought in the Church by removing ‘legitimate excuses for inability to conform to the old rubrics and regulations which we have outgrown’ and providing ‘a new set to which all can conform’. The new liturgy would confirm that moderate Anglo-Catholicism was now welcome in the life of the Church. It was hoped that such a measured Catholicisation of the Prayer Book would encourage ‘advanced’ ritualists to show loyalty to the Church and a new willingness to conciliate by refraining from various un-Anglican practices. The bishops envisaged that this programme of compromise would win the support of the majority of Evangelicals, who would put concerns over developments such as reservation of the sacrament to one side in the hope of securing a more satisfactory level of Church discipline.