5 - Nation and Religion: Revision and Parliament

Summary

During the House of Lords debate on the Prayer Book, Randall Davidson gave a final plea to Britain's political representatives to accept the revised liturgy that he had spent almost an entire career as Archbishop guiding through the Church's representative assemblies:

I am an old man. I have been a bishop for nearly 35 years and an Archbishop for nearly 25 years and my life has not been lived in private or silently or unrecorded. Standing here I assure your Lordships to-day that I am absolutely unconscious of any departure from the principles of the reformed Church of England to which I declared allegiance at my ordination fifty two years ago and I have strive to maintain them ever since.

Presumably the powerful words of this elderly and esteemed ecclesiastical figure were evocative to the peers who heard them and the MPs who read them. It is astonishing that only a few days later Members of Parliament rejected Davidson's personal guarantee and solemn appeal, as well as the declarations of the Church's voting bodies. Some admired parliament's stubborn stance, while some found it profoundly distasteful. A measure of pride in Britain's electoral representatives was detectable in the front-page declaration of the Daily Express that ‘The cry of “Rome” had been raised, and the House of Commons revealed itself to be the implacable defender of the Reformation,’ and the assertion in the Daily Mail that the speech given by Scottish Labour MP Rosslyn Mitchell was the most moving in modern parliamentary history. Others were bemused at parliament's outcry; William Churchill commented during the 1928 debate that it was a ‘strange spectacle, and rather repellent’ watching MPs discuss matters of which they had little understanding. Certainly, there was a sense of surprise that parliament was so animated by a religious issue. ‘The Protestant watchdog has barked,’ remarked the Manchester Guardian, ‘and has proved to be a bigger dog than was perhaps expected in these Laodicean days.’ 1927 saw the bishop's book rejected by 240 to 207 votes, and the following year the re-revised book was overruled by 268 to 222 votes.