P.D. James : a woman of exceptional grace

Presented by Philippa Wetherell

P. D. James – Phyllis Dorothy James – was born and died in Oxford though she lived much of her life in London, becoming in 1991 Baroness James of Holland Park. Acclaimed as the writer of nigh on twenty erudite crime novels, classical detective stories, James’ stories reflect her belief that “it is perfectly possible to remain within the constraints and conventions of the genre and be a serious writer, saying something true about men and women and their relationships and the society in which they live.”

I have enjoyed many of her novels, admiring her imaginative and stylish use of the English language, fascinated by the ingenuity of her plots, transported by her depiction in meticulous detail of settings both strange and humdrum, and caught up in the workings of the mind and the controlled emotions of the heart of her favoured protagonist, Commander Adam Dalgliesh. That poet and lover of poetry is at the centre of fourteen of her crime novels. Indeed in an interview James considered him to be “a male version of me, brainier than me, but his emotions are mine, very unsentimental like me.”

However it was only when I read ‘A Fragment of Autobiography’, a kind of diary that P. D. James kept between her seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth birthdays, that I came to know something of the woman behind the stories. Written in 1997-98 and prompted by that great man of letters, Samuel Johnson, who wrote that “at seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest”, she reluctantly agreed to record her thoughts as they arose out of day-to-day happenings, perhaps with “a need to capture time, to have some small mastery over that which so masters us.” The memoir was published under the title ‘Time to be in Earnest’.

In an interview in 2010 in her ninetieth year, James said, “I have lived a very happy and fulfilled life.” That she could say this with sincerity is testament to her strength of character and her Christian faith, for her growing up and her married life were both scarred by the mental illness of the two people she loved most dearly, her mother and her husband. Compassion and sensitivity she showed in abundance in her person and in her writing, but with a spurning of the sentimental and the mawkish. In the prologue to the diary she admitted that there was much in her past painful to dwell upon but “it is over and must be accepted, made sense of and forgiven.” And she adds: “I have always known that happiness is a gift, not a right.”

P. D. James was a conservative both in faith and in political allegiance. An Anglican, who worshipped at the Anglo-Catholic church of All Saints’, Margaret Street, she preferred the 1662 liturgy, delighting in the beauty of Cranmer’s language. “Words in their beauty, their simplicity, their numinous power, should be capable of so entering our consciousness … that we rest confidently in their familiarity to bring us into that hoped for communion with God which is surely at the heart of prayer and worship.” Yet she was far from closed to contemporary ideas. After attending a conference in Cambridge in 1998 under the title ‘Sexing the liturgy’ (perhaps ‘Liturgy and Gender’ would have been a more appropriate title  -  her words) she wrote that it was “interesting and educative for me.”

Surprised in 1991 to have a life peerage conferred upon her, Lady James took her responsibilities very seriously, sitting in the House of Lords with the Conservatives and taking a keen interest in the debates. She had worked hard from her mid-teens entering first the National Health Service then the Home Office, at first in the Police Department and then in the Criminal Policy Department, from which she retired in 1980. She put to good use the knowledge she gained there, her crime novels from ‘Cover her Face’, her first in 1962, to ‘The Private Patient’, her last published in 2011, reflecting her keen interest in forensic matters. In this last novel she finally allowed Adam Dalgliesh to wed his Emma, an elegant and dignified occasion as would be expected.

P. D. James was the devoted mother of two daughters, Clare and Jane, and the delight she took in them and their families, her five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, was evident in her memoir. She shared many occasions with them in the midst of a very busy round of speaking engagements, meetings of various boards, public lectures, supporting charitable fundraising activities, especially those that promoted all kinds of literary endeavours. I should mention her great admiration for Jane Austen and her writing, which led to he final production, a novel, indeed a murder mystery in the style of Austen and featuring the ‘Pride and Prejudice’ characters: ‘Death come to Pemberley’.

P. D. James was a woman and a writer to be admired, I believe. I can do her no more justice than to use words from her friend Nigel Williams who described her as “funny, warm, self-critical and never puffed up.” Kingsley Amis called her “Iris Murdoch with murder.”   

 

  

The Well-Embroidered Chasuble -- Riot Starter or Divine Reverence?

In the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, the chasuble was retained, with the cope as an alternative garment during worship. In the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 it was abolished. But it is widely held that the Ornaments Rubric of 1559, re-enacted in 1661, reimposed its use. Throughout the Anglican Communion the chasuble is in common use, while peculiarly in the Archdiocese of Sydney the chasuble is banned. So, what is it about the chasuble? Kathleen Alleaume-Ross provides some history.

       “And we do not mind confessing

       (Though that’s bad) we get irascible

       When we see a parson blessing

       In a well-developed Chasuble.

If you want a feast of horrors you can get your very fill

If you come along on Sunday to St Peter’s on the Hill.”

       (Anti-Ritualist Verse, published in ‘The Argus’, 1906.)

Controversy reveals meaning, questions historicity and challenges authority. Within the Anglo-Catholic tradition the chasuble has had the power to unleash riots and, as the opening ditty suggests, is able to render ordinary man irascible.

A pamphlet obtained from St Peter’s describes the chasuble as “the outer most garment worn by bishops and priests celebrating the Eucharist, [it] is the emblem of virtue of divine charity, the virtue that should permeate all that a priest does.” Liturgically the chasuble is the most important of vestments because it is associated with the Eucharist, the most important moment in the liturgy, and referred to as “the vestment par excellence,” particularly in the Anglican Church. Made of superior quality material and beautifully embroidered, often by hand, it is a treasured sight.

The chasuble is part of the Catholic tradition and started life as a garment made of good cloth, furnished with a hood, with the purpose of shielding anyone who cared to wear it from the cold. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) referred to it as a casula and St Isidore of Seville (530-636) likened it to a ‘little house’ because of the way it covered the whole person. Originally it was known as the paenula, then as casula (‘little house’) and after the fifth century as the planeta. The chasuble was worn over the clerical white alb by the celebrant of the Eucharist, at this stage intended only to keep the celebrant warm, or as a sign of humility.

The fact that it is worn as an outer garment and that it entails very little tailoring as such, makes it the perfect vehicle for some of the very finest and complex examples of ecclesiastical embroidery throughout the ages. The Y column design on the vestment represents the scourging and the cross, the death of Christ for love of us. As a vestment, it is similar in shape to what is known as a poncho. Later the Y-shaped columns in the centre of the garment were known as orphreys, and they double as adornment. It is not until 554 that its clerical use is acknowledged by St Germanus, Bishop of Paris, and only in 633 at the Fourth Council of Toledo that it becomes known as a clerical vestment. From this time onwards the garment becomes known as the chasuble and begins to garner silk, precious and elaborate embroideries. What begins life as a warm poncho worn by Romans in need of protection from the cold, evolves into a garment fit for a king, or bishop. It is around this time that its importance in the liturgy begins to be taken for granted.

But how legitimate is its place in the liturgy? To answer this we must return to biblical times. In Jesus’ day Jewish religious leaders wore distinctive and magnificently adorned vestments. Whilst this has led to the justification by some traditions that use vestments that they were preordained and inherent in Christianity, it is important to note that on this question there are opposing views. The first view favours the notion that the first vestments were modelled on the vestments of the Jewish priesthood and according to minute instructions laid down in divine laws as revealed to Moses. After all, did not the Hebrew Bible say in Exodus, when it spoke of Bezalel embroidering winged creatures upon the sacred tent, at God’s bidding, that “He made the curtain blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine twisted linen, with cherubim skilfully worked into it … embroidered with needlework”? But while this is so, why is it that Jesus in Marks’ Gospel exhorts against the scribes of his day who use dress to symbolise power: “Beware the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces.”

Some scholars believe that ecclesiastical vestments originated from the street wear of the ordinary Roman citizen and not from the priesthood at all. R.A.S. Macalister (1896) claims that “during the first centuries of the Christian Church, no vestments were definitely set apart for the exclusive use of the clergy who officiated at Divine service: that clergy and people wore the same style of vesture both in the church and out, subject only to the accidental distinctions of quality and cleanliness.” This indicates that the tradition common to Jewish priesthood did not carry into the early Christian era. Jesus, it could be argued, did not wish to adopt the tradition of Jewish vestments. This view is held by Robert Gribben, who writes in ‘Liturgical Dress in the Uniting Church’ that not only does the above quote from Mark indicate Jesus preached against such attire, but in fact the disciples he chose were used to common everyday wear. We are left with the uncomfortable view that whilst we might associate divine power to what we know as ecclesiastical vestments, we cannot prove that they were legitimate to the Christian tradition. How is it that from its humble beginning as a warm poncho, the chasuble came to be associated with the sacrament of the Eucharist?

The answer, it would seem, is that the chasuble became part of the sacred because it was decreed to be part of the sacred. But the chasuble’s authority as it is, was not so much decreed, as acquired over time. According to C. McDannell (1995), “objects may be powerful because something else powerful has decreed them to be so.” The chasuble becomes a symbol of clerical power as centuries go by, and as Christianity gains in popularity and political support. Vestments become more and more a signal of “who is in the group, and who is not.” But to the keepers of the Church they represent more than a clerical uniform associated with status. The debate as to whether or not they are keeping with Christian faith continues.

Long before Toledo, during Pope Celestine’s See (423-432) he finds it necessary to caution the bishops of Vienne and Narbonne against “devoting themselves rather to superstitious observances in dress than to purity of heart and faith.” It is a direct attack on the use of vestments and one by which the Pope hopes to make his feelings clear. So why, in spite of this, did the chasuble gain both in popularity and embroidered excellence? By the eighth century the embroideries begin to be very rich, typical of the decoration to be found on Byzantine royal costumes. By the tenth century ornamentation has taken on a celtic feel. The chasuble is shorter, pointed in front, the fabrics used are predominantly silk and embroidery is still prominent. The shape of the chasuble changes largely for practical reasons, as celebrants required the free use of their arms during the Eucharist. As this trend continues we see the appearance of gold, and sometimes precious stones. The use of gold heralds the advent of the greatest period of English church embroidery.

Opus Anglicanum was to church embroidery what Beethoven was to music. Herbert Morris (1950) tells us that as the twelfth century nears, silks are more likely to be used in the making of vestments and church embroidery reaches a degree of magnificence never again to be seen. No other country excelled in embroidered work quite as England did, an opinion echoed by virtually ever writer on the subject. When Pope Innocent enquired of a cleric as to the origins of his embroidered orphreys and copes, he was told they were from England: “Truly is England our garden of delights … truly it is a well inexhaustible.” Opus Anglicanum is characterised by the use of gold allegorical and naïve figures. It features mystical beasts. 

The shape of the chasuble however came under dispute in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. It was cut right back, so that it comprised a much narrower front and back. Contemporary images of St Ignatius of Loyola, for example, show him in this style which became known as Roman, or more commonly as fiddleback-style chasuble. With the Catholic Reformation it was St Charles Borromeo, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan (1560-1584), who was responsible for laying down regulations about the dimensions of vestments within the Roman Church. It is under his influence that the chasuble returned to its original ample poncho-like shape, a style which will from thereon be referred to as Gothic, or Borromean style. Meanwhile in England, the Reformation saw a movement against the use of vestments, which by then had become associated with the Roman Catholic faith.   

Church embroidery was recognised as an art during the era of Opus Anglicanum, but underwent some massive makeovers as a result of the Reformation. The tradition was revived in the 19^th century, with the Victorian tendency to romanticise medieval embroidery, to associate it with ‘women’s work’, and through the Arts and Crafts Movement. An example of this revival is the festal chasuble from the collection at St Peter’s, made from white brocade and which was embroidered in 1928 by the Community of St Margaret, East Grinstead. The viewer should note in particular the use of gold, and the use of the pelican as an emblem from the medieval bestiary, which epitomises Man’s redemption from the Fall through the blood of the Redeemer. The embroidery is highly skilled and the design well-researched to reflect the era of Opus Anglicanum. As a white vestment, it is still in use at St Peter’s for High Mass. In keeping also with Opus Anglicanum, this piece was embroidered by members of a cloistered order.

The Sarum model of liturgy is the same, Colin Holden tells us, that Selwyn Hughes adhered to. Holden tells us that in the Sarum model, “the chasuble, the main vestment worn by the priest celebrating Mass, was a much ampler garment, cut on the round, and circular in shape, based on Gothic chasubles seen in church brasses and illuminated manuscript illustrations.”

It should also be noted that in the field of ecclesiastical embroidery commercial competition began as early as 1789, when firms such as Wippells of Exeter were founded. In 1874, Watts & Co. of London established itself as a purveyor of ecclesiastical design, producing chasubles in a number of styles to suit all traditions and clerical predilections. Today larger parishes such as St Peter’s own and use vestments made by Wippells, who are still going strong, specialising in the transfer of hand embroideries from old fabrics to new vestments.

Books referred to in this article:

Gribben, R. Liturgical Dress in the Uniting Church. (1993)

Holden, C. From Tories at Prayer to Socialists at Mass. (1996)

Macalister, R.A.S. Ecclesiastical Vestments. (1896)

McDannell, C. Material Christianity. (1995)

Morris, H. Church Vestments. (2002)

This article first appeared in print in the parish paper of St. Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne, in 2010.

Episcopally Led and Synodically Governed

Book Review:

Episcopally Led and Synodically Governed : Anglicans in Victoria 1803-1997, by James Grant. Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010. ISBN 978-1-921509-40-7 RRP $55

It is impossible to name anyone with a more detailed knowledge of the intricate social networks of Melbourne Anglicanism, past and present, than the author of this book. It has been a long time coming. Bishop Grant has chosen the convention of setting his history around the leading episcopates. He is able to sketch effective portraits of the leaders so that, for example, we learn how the first Bishop of Melbourne, Charles Perry, was someone ready for the challenges of a wild, new country, while at the same time being painfully narrow-minded in his ideas about religion.  James Moorhouse introduced tolerance of all church parties and an honesty about the larger issues facing Victorian society. It is Moorhouse who showed the worth in all forms of Anglicanism, thus setting in train the variety of Highs and Lows that flourish to this day. The book is a timeline of names and events, handy for those who need to mark the changes. It is in many ways what Edmund Campion, the Sydney Roman Catholic historian, calls Headquarters History, a literature all too common in that Church. This is alright if you enjoy the view from Bishopscourt and have a nose for the buckets and bouquets of Synod. However, this reviewer was left wanting something more and I’m sure Bishop Grant would agree that there is still much to be said.

My first thought upon seeing the title was the desire to add an extra adverbial phrase: and Parochially Based. After all, it is the local and the peculiar that helps define personal identification with church. It is critical that our own city church of St. Peter’s be explained to the general reader and the Bishop supplies enough colour there. But parish churches and their life are noticeable by their absence. Obviously not every parish can be mentioned, but the character of individual parishes, and their sheer diversity, has been a major contributing factor to the meaning of Melbourne especially as the most expressively varied and therefore most truly Anglican of any of the Australian dioceses. A post-modern history is waiting to be written that analyses the diocese through the life of significant parish times, incumbents, and individual parishioners –their inspirations and motivations.

The Aborigines are no small point. Australian style for the past twenty years dictates that the native peoples of Australia are always capitalised, i.e. Aborigines, Indigenous. No-one calls a person from London a londoner. Small-a Aborigines play a quiescent, almost anonymous role in this history. This is an imaginative and historical absence that needs to be filled by a younger historian.

A third concern is the relationship with Britain, and England and Ireland in particular. It is central to the narrative, yet how that relationship works, and the many questions good and bad that rise out of that reality are hardly raised. Some of the most interesting issues in the church history of Australia, for example how Australian is the Australian church and how culturally-bound are its manifestations, reside at the margins of this book. Post-colonial history teaches us to address in new ways the imperial constructs of our own societies. This is not something to be afraid of, indeed what such questions open up are central to our self-understanding. What surprised me most about this history was how little is made of the Anglican Church’s enormous influence on, indeed centrality to, modern Australian life.

-- Philip Harvey. This review first appeared in the parish paper of St. Peter's Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.

Samuel Johnson's Anglicanism (1)

 Through his essays and composed sermons Samuel Johnson made available a complex portrait of the man and his religion. Here are excerpts taken from a paper by Philip Harvey delivered to The Johnson Society of Australia.

  

It is commonplace to speak of Samuel Johnson’s essays as moral examples based squarely, if usually covertly, in Christian teaching. Stand back from such popular, or secular essays, and the classical epithet at the head may as easily be a saying from the Bible or the Fathers of the early Church. This grand endeavour of preaching and exhorting by other means joins together separate literary forms that reached a special level of popularity in the 18^th century: the urbane essay composed along classical lines; the burgeoning fictional form of parable and allegory; and the inspiring sermon. Some of Johnson’s Rambler essays are overt works of Christian meditation.

Rambler no. 44 is an allegorical essay that contrasts two female figures met by the author in a dream. The first is a “most shocking figure.” “She was drest in black, her skin was contracted into a thousand wrinkles, her eyes deep sunk in her head, and her complexion pale and livid as the countenance of death.” This figure, we live to learn, is Superstition. The other figure, “the loveliest object I had ever beheld,” calls herself Religion. “The most engaging charms of youth and beauty appeared in all her form; effulgent glories sparkled in her eyes, and their awful splendours were softened by the gentlest looks of compassion and peace. At her approach, the frightful spectre, who had before tormented me, vanished away, and with her all the horrors she had caused.”

By 1750, superstition had taken on new meanings. For some, religion itself was no more than superstition. For the English, superstition had come to be a word synonymous with Roman Catholicism and all the works of the ‘old religion’, suppressed at the Reformation. But Johnson quietly avoids branding. His Wisdom figure exclaims: “My name is Religion. I am the offspring of Truth and Love, and the parent of Benevolence, Hope and Joy. That monster from whose power I have freed you is called Superstition, she is the child of Discontent, and her followers are Fear and Sorrow. Thus different as we are, she has often the insolence to assume my name and character, and seduces unhappy mortals to think us the same, till she, at length, drives them to the borders of Despair, that dreadful abyss into which you were just going to sink.”

Johnson is condemnatory of any religion that drives people to Despair, and this is being directed at any form of Christianity, whether Catholic, Dissenter sect, or within his own Church of England. Johnson makes no distinctions and gives no favours. All forms of Christianity, organised or not, have the potential to drive their adherents into wrong religion and despair. What follows is an extensive discourse from the fair figure of Religion, in which she adumbrates the identifying marks of true religion.

“For what end has the lavish hand of providence diffused such innumerable objects of delight (the various beauties of the globe), but that all might rejoice in the privilege of existence, and be filled with gratitude to the beneficent author of it? Thus to enjoy the blessings he has sent, is virtue and obedience … Infinite goodness is the source of created existence.”

Confronted with the objection that such religion invites an unlaborious life and escapes the “painful toils of virtue”, she replies: “The true enjoyments of a reasonable being do not consist in unbounded indulgence, or luxurious ease,” before instructing that “whoever would be really happy must make the diligent and regular exercise of his superior powers his chief attention, adoring the perfections of his Maker, expressing good-will to his fellow creatures, cultivating inward rectitude.”

Elsewhere she says of suffering: “Suffering is no duty but where it is necessary to avoid guilt, or to do good; nor pleasure a crime, but where it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations, or lessens the generous activity of virtue.”

All told, Johnson is saying that where there is happiness you will find true religion and that one of religion’s certain signs of truth is, indeed, happiness. Salvation is the ultimate aim of a Christian life, yet happiness in this life is “a needful support and refreshment for the present moment.” Again, enjoyment of the created world and, despite all travail, an emphatic trust in happiness are not by any means uniquely Anglican preserves, yet Johnson’s measure of happiness (or call it felicity or bliss) as a sure indication of spiritual well-being is one that has become familiar in Anglican life. Only listen to the final call of the figure Religion and you can hear Johnson hearing his own command: “Return then with me from continual misery to moderate enjoyment, and grateful alacrity. Return from the contracted views of solitude to the proper duties of a relative and dependent being. Religion is not confined to cells and closets, nor restrained to sullen retirement. These are the gloomy doctrines of Superstition, by which she endeavours to break those chains of benevolence and social affection, that link the welfare of every particular with that of the whole. Remember that the greatest honour you can pay to the author of your being is by such a cheerful behaviour, as discovers a mind satisfied with his dispensations.”

Laden with big words, Johnson’s essay on forgiveness [Rambler no. 185] is directed at the educated reader, not at a mixed congregation of the literate and illiterate. It opens, forbiddingly: “No vitious dispositions of the mind more obstinately resist both the counsels of philosophy and the injunctions of religion, than those which are complicated with an opinion of dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in the hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our own prejudices some imputation of pusillanimity.

“For this reason scarcely any law of our Redeemer is more openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than that by which he commands his followers to forgive injuries, and prohibits, under the sanction of eternal misery, the gratification of the desire which every man feels to return pain upon him that inflicts it. Many who could have conquered their anger, are unable to combat pride, and pursue offences to extremity of vengeance, lest they should be insulted by the triumph of an enemy.”

Before dealing with long term consequences of not forgiving, Johnson then details a distinctive psychology of wilful vengeance: “He that, when his reason operates in its full force, can thus, by the mere prevalence of self-love, prefer himself to his fellow beings, is very unlikely to judge equitably when his passions are agitated by a sense of wrong, and his attention wholly engrossed by pain, interest, or danger. Whoever arrogates to himself the right of vengeance, shows how little he is qualified to decide his own claims, since he certainly demands what he would think unfit to be granted to another.”

Johnson follows the deepening convolutions that beset an unforgiving person: “For it can never be hoped, that he who first commits an injury, will contentedly acquiesce in the penalty required: the same haughtiness of contempt, or vehemence of desire, that prompt the act of injustice, will more strongly incite its justification; and resentment can never so exactly balance the punishment with the fault, but there will remain an overplus of vengeance which even he who condemns his first action will think himself entitled to retaliate. What then can ensue but a continual exacerbation of hatred, an unextinguishable feud, an incessant reciprocation of mischief, a mutual vigilance to entrap, and eagerness to destroy?”

Forgiveness is one of the central commands of Christian life. Johnson expresses with energetic mind how real is the possibility for a person to forgive and be forgiven. This possibility has a special place in Anglican thought, with enormous emphasis in Johnson’s main reference, The Book of Common Prayer, which was edited in its 1662 form after years of divisive civil war; the Book of Common Prayer was a serious solution toward national reconciliation. Johnson’s essay takes time to warn just how far an unforgiving individual can go, while all the time convincing himself he (or she) is right. It asserts, “Nothing is more apparent than that, however injured, or however provoked, some must at last be contented to forgive.” It shows that forgiveness is possible for all. One reason the essay works is that any reader can see themselves in any of the roles – persecutor, victim, sinner, redeemed.

Perhaps nothing in Johnson’s religious writings is more “serious and surprising” than the 28 known sermons. Fulsome and authoritative, they are written using the complete support of Anglican doctrine. They are also written to be delivered by clergy friends, not by Johnson himself. Some of these sermons were paid for by the clergyperson, privileged to repeat the measured and handsome language of Johnson. Whether the clergy assisted in the final drafts is impossible to discern. The Revd John Taylor of St Margaret’s Westminster was a special beneficiary of this unusual practice, though commentaries on the composition hint that Johnson wrote sermons for Taylor in order to get a free lunch after the service. All this seems to be perhaps somewhat unAnglican behaviour and there are good reasons why records of such practice are scarce.

Of use in this context are Johnson’s two sermons on the Eucharist. In Sermon 9 Johnson places value on the Lord’s Supper as a means for repentants to improve their lives, and therefore find a better life. “The terms, upon which we are to hope for any benefits from the merits of Christ, are faith, repentance, and subsequent obedience. These are therefore the three chief and general heads of examination.” While Sermon 22 uses the same essential and superlative language to extol the Eucharist in the following way, its emphasis is on the necessity of all Christians to partake of the Communion: “The celebration of the sacrament is generally acknowledged, by the Christian church, to be the highest act of devotion, and the most solemn part of positive religion, and has therefore most engaged the attention of those, who either profess to teach the way to happiness, or endeavour to learn it.”

Johnson’s own failure to attend church as regularly as he thought fit is made abundantly clear in the Diaries, as we have seen.  The old line about those who write CE in the census when they mean Christmas-Easter, does not apply to Johnson. At home he regularly said prayers, made devotions, and went through long self-examination, all part of preparation for the sacrament of Eucharist; even if he did not then attend the service. This pattern of worship, serious and surprising in its method, remained his usual way throughout his life. Johnson maintained the potential for communicating, even if his attendance was sporadic.

The accepted view of eighteenth-century English religion as decadent, uneventful, even moribund, is gradually being overturned by recent historians. Rowan Williams may have explained this perception when he said that far more work has to be done. Samuel Johnson contradicts the perception in an overwhelming manner. By his life and manner, an Anglican layman shows how to adapt his religion to everyday life more effectively and creatively than almost any of the contemporary clergy of his time. 

Samuel Johnson's Anglicanism (2)

In a conclusion to a paper given to The Johnson Society of Australia, Philip Harvey sets out ten Johnsonian contrasts, not contradictions or paradoxes, but contrasts that help define what we may call his Anglicanism.

1. Johnson made what we would call religious retreats from the world, and he did this in every year of his life. Retreats that were often no more than staying at home to read the Bible, to pray, meditate, and renew faith.

By contrast, he spent the rest of his time immersed in the world and all its doings, with little indication from Johnson that he saw these as separate worlds. [In his sermon on Religion and Superstition,] Johnson says that “society is the true sphere of human virtue.” He means that social life, with its restraints and sufferings, as well as its freedom and promise, is the real test of our ability to grow, and that religious retreat prepares for and explains these experiences.

2. Johnson used the Easter self-examination as a means to self-reform. Some of these Easter programs were evidently intense religious experiences. He turns again to his need for salvation. Read together, they exhibit a pattern of devotion that remains consistent until his final year, when the pattern is intensified to the degree that prayer is his constant resource.

When we contrast the depths of his despair and terror, and like words he often uses in these self-examinations, the certainties he keeps finding are that he can be heard and that the process itself is always available. Access is never denied.

3. In The Vanity of Human Wishes, questions exist in their own despair:

Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?

Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant mind?

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,

No cries attempt the mercies of the skies?

In the poem, this grim report about experience remains perpetually in contrast with:

Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind,

Obedient Passions, and a Will resign’d;

For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill;

For Patience sov’reign o’er transmuted Ill;

For Faith, that panting for a happier Seat,

Counts Death kind Nature’s Signal of Retreat,

4. Boswell records Johnson saying that “I would be a Papist if I could.” This is a self-explanatory conundrum. The blatantly negative connotations of the word ‘Papist’ explain why he wouldn’t be a Papist

Contrast that with ‘I would be a Roman Catholic if I could’: the intent becomes more serious, but the edge is lost. Likewise, say ‘I would be a Puritan if I could’ and we have a reductio ad absurdum.

5. A firm believer and defender of church doctrine, Johnson argued for and defended what he believed to be true, in line with the Anglican apologists he knew so well.

Contrast this same person when he spoke strongly against the doubtful or heretical doctrines of other churches. He spoke only when the situation warranted. He was not an habitual polemicist and sought common accord rather than discord.

6. Johnson understands the man of the world and the monastic contemplative alike when he transforms Robert Burton’s saying ‘Be not solitary, be not idle’ into:

If you are idle, be not solitary.

A recommendation for good business activity, in contrast to:

If you are solitary, be not idle.

A good start for any recluse fighting the evil of acedia.

7. In Johnson we meet the genuine desire to know everything there is to know, to have read much.

Contrast this with his constant wariness of pride and vanity, his refusal ever to think that anyone knows everything. Or that what he thinks has to be right, or that anything he says (however definitively) is necessarily the final word.

8. Johnson’s infamous reaction upon seeing a party of happy clergy chatting in a pub – “This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive” – denotes the social expectation that clergy were expected to be moderate, sober and upright models to others. These men were not serious enough.

Contrast this with Johnson’s own public bearing, his self-presentation to the world. For it is noticeable that Johnson also sees himself as just such a model. Johnson, the upholder of proper standards and guide through discussions of moral complexity, in part lives out a pastoral role entirely similar to a parson.

9. A corollary to this, is what seems to be an absence of like-minded spiritual guides in his own life. Did Johnson take on the role of a spiritual guide and adviser to his friends, acquaintances and readers because of a seeming lack of such persons in his own world?

This religious vocation is highly plausible when we contrast the spiritual guides we know he used throughout his life: the products of the past, especially books; the lessons of conversation; and his church going.

10. His essay on forgiveness is structured and formed by biblical knowledge. It draws its primary justifications from the Bible.

While in contrast, it is Johnson’s powerful psychological insights, both in himself and others, that are the basis for the persuasive arguments he puts for acting in reconciliation now, not when we feel like it, if ever. This innovative and remarkable achievement of moral exposition comes from a moment in history where reason, combined with biblical example, delivers practical religion, which was and is an integral part of the Anglican tradition.

The Community of the Holy Name

 on Associates Day in January 2016