Roger Scruton

Prayers in stone

The meaning of an English church

No institution is more vividly expressive of the English genius for creative muddle than the Anglican Church. A Protestant church whose liturgy declares it to be Catholic; a national church with a worldwide congregation; a repository of holy sacraments, which is regulated by a secular parliament; an apostolic communion whose authority descends from St Peter, but whose head is the English monarch: looked at from close up it is all nonsense, fragments left over from forgotten conflicts, about as coherent as the heap of broken crockery that remains after a lifetime of marital -quarrels.

But English institutions should not be seen from too close. They are best observed from a distance and through an autumnal haze. Like parliament, the monarchy and the common law; like the old universities, the Inns of Court and the county regiments, the Anglican Church stands in the background of our national life, following inscrutable procedures, and with no explanation other than its own existence. It is there because it is there. Examine it too closely and its credentials dissolve. How can we receive spiritual comforts from an institution that is so much a thing of this world? How can we believe in the Church’s power to baptise us, to marry us and to bury us, if we see it merely as a compromise solution to territorial conflicts that ended long ago?

However, since the end of the 17th century, when the Puritans at last calmed down and the clergy signed up to whatever was needed for a quiet and prosperous life, the Anglican Church has done its bit for our national way of life. It has baptised, married and buried our countrymen with no sense that it was trampling on their sensitivities or presuming to ask more of them than the minimum required by decency.

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