CHAPTER 1

The Anglican Consciousness

Anglicanism is a mode of making sense of the experience of God. To put itanother way, Anglicanism is a particular approach to the construction ofreality, or to the building of a world.

What do I mean by "building a world"? The point is crucial for our discussion;so this illustration may help. Three couples are planning to take a vacationtogether and they are discussing whether or not to go to the beach. One couplestrongly urges that they go. Think of the sun, the sound of the ocean, they say,lying on the beach with nothing to do but relax. They recall their own youthwhen trips to the beach were the happiest occasions of their lives. Anothercouple resists. One of them recalls when as a small child she almost drowned inthe ocean. She retains a deep fear of water. The husband finds lying on thebeach a waste of time. He recalls a life of having to prove himself by hardwork. The third couple is willing to go, but memories of sunburn and a week ofrain two years before dampens their enthusiasm.

What is the question here? It is not what is intrinsically the nature of anexperience of the beach — "the beach in the raw." None of us ever experience thebeach that way. It is what each couple makes of the experience of the beachbased upon their memory and its way of shaping their consciousness of the beachthat makes the difference. It is not necessarily a matter of whether one coupleis right and the rest are wrong, although it would be if one insisted the beachwas inhabited by man-eating tigers. Each couple has a distinctive way ofbuilding a world of meaning or constructing a reality around the experience ofthe beach. That world of meaning obviously determines each couple's willingnessto go to the beach.

One way of understanding Anglicanism is to know that it is a unique way oflooking, making sense, and acting in the experience of God disclosed to us inthe person of Jesus Christ. This is to say that it is a manner of beingconscious, which manner was given birth in the history of a people whoseculture, language and institutions came into being in the British Isles. It iswell to remember that these islands, until the discovery and colonization of theNew World by Europeans, were the frontier of the civilized world, removed fromthe centers of culture. It was the end point of successive invasions from thenorth and east: the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Norse and the Normans (who wereNorse that had originally settled in France). Anglican consciousness is theproduct of a montage of geographical, social, political, economic and racialforces that have created a peculiar historical memory. That memory has beenhanded on through the centuries, and while modified by subsequent events (e.g.,the colonization of North America) remains distinctive at heart.

An example of Anglican consciousness is Julian of Norwich, an obscure fourteenthcentury anchorite. In some ways Julian was a commonplace phenomenon of her age.She lived in a cell attached to the parish church in an East Anglia town. From awindow in her cell she could view the Eucharist and from another window shecould assist people seeking spiritual counsel. There were many such persons inlater medieval England, but none known to us of the genius of Julian.

In 1370, Julian received a series of revelations or showings, in which thecrucified Lord appeared to her. The image of the suffering Christ, which was thepersistent form of these visions, was not remarkable for the times. It wasconsistent with the popular religious art of the century. What is arresting isJulian's reflections upon this experience setting forth the world sheconstructed out of her experience.

Julian lived in a time of suffering and confusion. The Black Death had wiped outperhaps as much as a third of the population of England. The once proud andnoble warrior-king, Edward III, was living out his last years in senility,mourning the death of his promising son, the Black Prince. Edward III wasfollowed by his grandson, Richard II, who was broken against the misfortunes ofhis times despite his efforts to resolve England's problems. Deposed, Richard IIdied in prison. Throughout this period England was enduring an incredibly crueland draining war with France, which we know as the Hundred Years War.

It is in this world that Julian spoke with a certain calm. "Our life isfounded," she said, "on faith with hope and love." The basis of her faith wasthe Christ, who described himself to her as "the ground of her beseeching."Julian was no foolish optimist. She had a deep awareness of our sin, yetbelieved that God has allowed us to fall that he might raise us up that muchhigher. "Sin is necessary," she says; but immediately adds in her best knownwords, "All will be well, and every kind of thing will be well."

What kind of world does Julian see which allows her such confidence in a time ofconfusion and despair? It begins, first, with sensibility. I use the word"sensibility" in an unfamiliar meaning. It is the ability to apprehend orincorporate into our awareness the totality of an experience in all depth andbreadth. Sensibility refers to the capacity to be sensitive and to accept whatour senses tell us, even when that is not what fits into our neat categories. Itimplies an openness to experience, even when the meaning of that experience isambiguous, incongruous and obscure.

Julian's sensibility is seen in her insistence that God lets us rebel againsthim in order that he might raise us up even higher, which is a profound paradox.She said that there are five activities that arise in her at the same time:rejoicing, mourning, desire, fear and true hope, meaning that we know Jesus inboth consolation and desolation. We are repelled by God and drawn to him at thesame moment. There is an ambiguity to our awareness that reflects aconsciousness of the experience that is not neatly drawn. Life is like that whenperceived in its fullness, light and darkness, with shades of gray in between.

Secondly, Julian is aware that the extraordinary love of God is to be foundwithin the ordinary. The vision of a hazelnut comes to mind, from which Julianlearns three things: that God made, loves and preserves his creation. What couldbe more ordinary than a little hazelnut? Julian had a gift for perceiving whatanother Englishman, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) called the inscape orinner reality of things. This takes a way of seeing beyond the common sensereductions of the cynic, who can only see the outer appearance.

This gift for the extraordinary sometimes works in another direction. Thecommonplace ideas of the culture can be elevated to illumine the meaning of Godin a new way. Julian takes the dying ideal of feudal chivalry, with its notionof the courteous knight, and applies it to God. "For God sees one way and mansees another way," said Julian. "For it is for man to meekly accuse himself, andit is for our Lord God's own goodness courteously to excuse man." The word"courteous" carries all the meaning of mercy, gentleness and compassion. God isseen in a startling new, but recognizable light. He becomes almost human in hisgoodness.

Thirdly, Julian attributes to God the consciousness of a mother. She is, infact, placing upon God that awareness which is characteristic of herself and herEnglish church. "Jesus is our true Mother," she said, "and he is our Mother ofmercy in taking our sensuality." This is a remarkable statement, which, whilenot original with Julian, has been made most evident in her writings, thatChrist thinks as a woman is one way of translating what she is saying. Whatcould she mean? God is caring, intuitive, receptive and open. As Christ wasincarnate he knew what it was to live in a body, and like a pregnant woman tosense in the body the joy of new life.

Perhaps Julian could be criticized for not revealing the dark side of thatmotherly or feminine consciousness, which through the ages humankind hasassociated with death, the unpredictable and the ominous. The awareness at oneand the same time of good and evil, so characteristic of a feminine mode ofconsciousness, is dread. Dread is a property of that sensibility of what we havealready written. It is the knowledge that in nature where there is life there isdeath, where there is joy there is pain, and where there is knowledge there isignorance; but ultimately, Julian tells us, there is also true hope.

Julian provides a prototype of Anglican consciousness. In order to explain howthis is so I need to describe a theory — perhaps we could call it a model whichchallenges us to look further — of human consciousness. It is that our thinkingfalls into one of two patterns or modes. Traditionally these modes have beencalled "thinking with the right hand" and "thinking with the left hand." Righthand thinking is analytical, logical, requiring one-to-one unambiguousrepresentations, and is characteristic of computers. Left hand thinking isintuitive, analogical, metaphorical, symbolic and characteristic of poetry, artand music. If our primary goal in thinking is to be as clear as possible with noloose ends, and the experience related to a system, we think with the righthand. This is the consciousness of science, but it only describes things as theyappear to be. If our intention in thinking is to draw together as much of anexperience as possible, with items unresolved and with large, nagging questionsin the middle of what we have described, then we are thinking with the lefthand.

Fantasy literature is an example of thinking with the left hand. The English arerather good at this kind of writing. The Inklings, a literary group that met inOxford during World War II to criticize one another's work, produced someremarkable fantasies. They included Dorothy Sayers, who wrote mystery novels; C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia chronicles and three science fiction novels;Charles Williams, who wrote novels dealing with the occult; and J. R. R.Tolkien, who is famous for the stories of the Hobbits. I would claim that thereis a relationship between the gift for writing fantasy literature found amongthe English and that thinking with the left hand which is characteristic ofAnglicanism.

We Anglicans are not given to writing great theology. There are notableexceptions, but they are difficult to remember; but when Anglicanism is at itsbest its liturgy, its poetry, its music and its life can create a world ofwonder in which it is very easy to fall in love with God. We are much more adeptat the left hand than at the right.

In this spirit the three points we made about Julian of Norwich are to beunderstood as characteristic of our particular way of constructing reality.

First, there is the Anglican proclivity to sensibility, the taking into accountthe whole of an experience — ambiguity and all. Sensibility is a difficultquality. T. S. Eliot suggested that English literature has failed to capture itsince John Milton. The antidote to sensibility is common sense and if we wish toavoid living in a perpetual paradox, we insist that everything is simply amatter of common sense. Anglicanism can appear this way; but we are at our bestwhen we acknowledge the penultimate nature of our answers to the character ofGod and his will for us. This modesty is often expressed as a "yes, but." "Yes,Jesus is my personal Savior, but this does not mean he is a white, upper middleclass American. Yes, I believe that God has a purpose for me after death, but Iam skeptical of the accounts of people who claim to have died and lived again.Yes, I believe that Christ is present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist,but this does not mean that for a particle to fall on the floor is tantamount tosacrilege."

Sensibility requires a willingness to face the darkness of chaos withoutromanticism. One of the reasons that Anglicanism sometimes appears merelycynical or sentimental is that we do not have the courage of our best instincts.We refuse to enter the darkness. Obscure essays from the pulpit, a fascinationwith the past and a fondness for empty, polite chatter are among the ways wedefend ourselves from our birthright.

Sensibility is a recognition that the inexpressible nature of God can never bereduced to our categories or our simplistic notions of the divine will. Thisleads us to acknowledge the metaphorical nature of all religious conversion andtheological discourse. For Anglicanism this recognition is coupled with the factthat God is the creator of everything that is, and that the knowledge of Godrequires only that we look at his handiwork. This is the second point. It is whyBritish empiricism and its ally, American pragmatism, are very much a part ofthe Anglican way of thinking. For example, an Anglican approach to miraclesmight be that God does not run around suspending the predictable course ofnature, but that there is more to God's creation than that for which ourintellectual constructs can account.

Radical Protestantism and its expectation that the presence of the Holy Spiritis evident in unusual phenomena, such as speaking in tongues, finds itsadherents within Anglicanism from time to time. We have no need to repudiatethis. After all, Julian of Norwich, for one, exhibited some fairly unusualbehavior. Our tendency is to look for a natural cause for such phenomena, notbecause we do not believe God speaks to us in this way, but because we believethat God makes himself known and is known in the ordinary routine of life. TheCarmelite mystic, Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), who came to know God in thekitchen, is someone whom we can appreciate more than Simon Stylites (c. 340-459)sitting on a pillar for forty years.

Taken too far, of course, this fondness for the ordinary can make us very dull.Unless we enter into the world of the left hand, we will end up like atheological Scrooge (a character typical of English literature). The mystery ofthe ordinary will be dismissed with a "bah" and a "humbug." There is aperversity within us to carry the metaphor along, which produced in Puritantimes the town crier, wandering the streets of the village on the night ofDecember 24, calling, "No Christmas tonight." It is not that we should reduceour transcendent to the ordinary routine. It is that for the sensibleconsciousness the extraordinary shines through the ordinary.

Thirdly, the consciousness of Anglicanism is dominantly feminine. In medievaltimes England was known as the "land of Mary." The devotions that developedabout the Mother of Jesus have always found a receptive home in the BritishIsles. This should not be too surprising in a country which counts among itsgreatest monarchs several queens. There is something peculiarly compatiblebetween a feminine consciousness — be it in a man or woman — and the Anglicanoutlook. This is another way of speaking of the sensibility of Anglicanism, butone that will lead to some distinguishing characteristics discussed later inthis book.

We often speak of Anglican "comprehensiveness." If this is a way of makingrelativism palatable or a means of accommodating all shades of opinion with noregard for truth, then it needs to be rejected. If by comprehensive we mean thepriority of a dialectic quest over precision and immediate closure, then we arespeaking of the Anglican consciousness at its best. This sense of a community ofthought as opposed to a well-defined, definitive position, is what is meant by afeminine consciousness. This is why Anglicanism has never been a confessionalchurch, as in the case of Lutheranism and Presbyterianism. It is the reason thatwhile Puritanism, Latitudinarianism, Evangelicalism, Ultramontanism, Modernismand American Protestantism (i.e., a kind of banal "practical religion") have allbeen embraced by some Anglicans, none of them have been capable of comprehendingthe Anglican experience. They are all ultimately out of place.

A particular danger of the feminine religious consciousness is that it becomesdotty, what the dictionary defines as "amiably eccentric." In the 1980 movie"10," the role of the priest was obviously that of an Anglican. His insinceregrin, his huge dog, the flatulent, ancient housekeeper, his inane conversation,the grossly lighted portrait of himself in vestments and his terrible music wereall a caricature of the dotty Anglican. It is the same genre as the novels ofAnthony Trollope.

Feminine consciousness possesses a darkness, as well as a light, and it is thiswhich protects itself against amiable eccentricity. It is helpful to keep inmind that Mother of God was the person who held both the infant at Bethlehem andthe crucified body of the dead Savior. The angels and demons inhabit theawareness of reality, and herein lies the ability to speak to people in the verydepths of their souls. The Puritan Richard Baxter (1615-1691) reminded us that"Christ leads us through no darker rooms than he has gone before," and if we arenot aware of those dark rooms we are missing the point. Julian put it this way."For our sin is so foul and so horrible that our Lord in his courtesy will notreveal it to us except by the light of his mercy."

The form of our consciousness obviously shapes what we make of our experience.This initial chapter has far-reaching implications, therefore, for the rest ofthis book the reader needs to carry the awareness of this particular outlookwith him or her as the exploration proceeds in the subsequent chapters. It willenable, explicitly or implicitly, much to come clear.