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Fifteen

THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN STATE

T HE difficult practical problems suggested by the famous

phrase, Church and State, have their roots in the essential
character of Christ's Religion as involving for its professors both
membership of an ordered society and personal discipleship to a
Divine Lord. The historic Church is integral to Christianity, and,
therefore, finds its place in the Creed. It is no afterthought, no
mere creation of apostolic statesmanship, no untoward product of
history, no perversion of the Founder's original intention, but an
essential element of His Gospel, inseparable from His redemptive
plan, the ordained instrument of His Providence. Our earliest
documents-the Epistles of S. Paul-attest the existence of an
organized militant society, taking shape under the conscious
guidance of the Holy Spirit in the school of experience, and addres-
sing itself with courage to the answering of the novel questions
which were for ever being presented. This Church had almost
immediately to determine its attitude towards the established
authorities of the civilized world. What should be its relation to
the State? The problem which would inhere in ecclesiastical his-
tory, and take many shapes, was implicit in the astounding protest
with which S. Peter and S. John met the order of the Sanhedrin-
'We must obey God rather than men'. The two Apostles, though
described as 'unlearned and ignorant men', were seen to be the
representatives and recognized leaders of a society to which in some
sense, they were responsible. 'And being let go, they came to their
own company, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders
had said unto them. ' All the distinctive institutions of the historic
Church are apparent in the Pauline picture-the two Sacraments,
the tradition of faith, the Scriptures, the Divinely instituted
Ministry, the distinctive Christian morality, the First Day of the
Week, a Membership larger than the merely local fellowship, a
common dIscipline which overrides local preferences. The notion
that this articulated ecclesiastical life had come into existence
apart from the action of Christ, and contrary to His intention, is
equally unhistorical and unreasonable. For good and for ill the
155
 156 B ISH 0 P RIC K PAP E R S
Religion is inseparable from the Society. Historic Christianity is
incorrigibly ecclesiastical.
Christian history records a process of adaptation, assimilation,
and development which, as it is traced through its successive
phases, appears truly amazing. It is strangely mingled, here
darkened by gross scandals, there lightened by sublime achieve-
ments. In short, Christianity, as it traverses the centuries, 'takes
the colour of the soil'. It is imperial, barbarian, feudal, papal,
national, denominational, grotesquely individualistic. Always,
since it comes to men as·they are and where they are, its ecclesi-
astical system is strangely parasitic, fitting on to the secular frame-
work of human society, and thus affecting it mainly for good, but
not always, yet preserving in its worst aberrations an energy of
moral recuperation which saves it from total perdition. Historic
Christianity, as it reaches the twentieth century, carries on to the
stage a Society which bears the scars and stains of nineteen cen-
turies, at once alluring ahd repulsive, startling us by its paradoxes,
and arresting us by its indestructible moral vitality. To say with
a brilliant modern divine, that' nearly the whole of Church history
is an aberration from the intentions of the Founder', argues a
strange misunderstanding of Church history and an arbitrary
handling of the New Testament.
At every phase of the historic development the same pheno-
menon is observable, viz. a conflict between what is properly
obsolescent, if not even obsolete, and what is actually taking shape.
Always, at the time of transition, there is friction, resistance, con-
flict, infinite distress of mind, a cruel clashing of rival loyalties, for
the Old is never let slip without protest, ner is the New accepted
without reluctance. 'No man having drunk old wine straightway
desireth new, for he saith, the old is good.' lhe student of history,
and especially of ecclesiastical history, must be vigilant against the
anachronistic habit of mind, which leads him to judge the systems
and procedures of the past by the standards of the present. What
once was hailed as an Enfranchisement may now be felt as an
Oppression. 'Nothing continues in one stay.' It is easy to con-
demn beliefs and, disciplines which have survived their condition-
ing circumstances, but it is none the less irrational and unjust. We
must recreate the secular environment before we can appraise
equitably the ecclesiastical system which it determined. The
iconoclastic zeal of reformers may be excused by the grossness of
immediate abuses, but' the historian will recall the conditions under
which the abused institutions took shape, and mitigate the severity
 THE C H U R CHI NTH E MOD ERN S TAT E 157
of his verdict by the measure of his knowledge. An early letter of
Dr. Church, afterwards not the least eminent of the many eminent
Deans of S. Paul's, is worth quoting. He was writing to Arch-
deacon Manning who had delivered a fiercely Protestant sermon
in Oxford on 5 November 1843, and he was protesting against its
vehemence and lack of discrimination. He insisted on the equit-
able method of judging ecclesiastical dogma in the light of con-
temporary history:
What I mean, then, is this.:-that the circumstances of the time
explain, and to my mind, justify, in Gregory VII. and Inno-
cent 111., opinions, claims, and conduct which, if thrown into
the shape of univ~rsal Theological dogmas for the Church in all
ages are groundless in reason, and have been, and may be,
indefinitely mischievous. 1
The Church reviewing its history may adopt the words of S.
Paul, {When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I
thought as a child; now that I am become a man, I have put away
childish things'.
The relations of Church and State, then, have varied from time
to time, and no permanently binding rules can be deduced from
the past for the guidance of the present. Roughly the record of
ecclesiastical development may be divided into six periods, which
the historical student may conveniently distinguish.
1. The Church's conflict with the pagan and sometimes per-
secuting State includes the whole period before the conversion of
Constantine. During these centuries the Christian Society was
effectively organized as an episcopal federation with an authori-
tatively settled creed and discipline.
2. The Church's absorption in the system of the Christian
Empire followed from Constantine's conversion, and lasted in the
West until the downfall of the Empire. In the East it persisted
until the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453; and sur-
vived in Russia, where Byzantine Christianity had found its
completest expression, until 1917, when the Tsardom was finally
overthrown.
3. The Church's conflict with Teutonic barbarism followed
the ruin of the imperial system. This phase, sometimes described,
not wholly without fitness, as (the Dark Ages', covers the whole
period from the fifth century to the eleventh. The brilliant
episode associated with the name of Charlemagne forms no real
break. While bringing to the Teutonic peoples, together with the
1 v. Purcell's Life of Cardinal Manning, vol. i, p. 698.
 158 B ISH 0 P RIC K PAP E R S
Christian Religion, such civilization as had survived the wreck of
"the Empire, the Church, inevitably identified with its hierarchy,
became itself partially barbarized. During this period the Roman
Popes, garnering the prestige of the absent Emperors, to whom
they long acknowledged a rather hollow allegiance, acquired a
secure predominance throughout the West.
4. The State became absorbed in the Church. Society in the
West, unified by a single ecclesiastical membership, became a
literal Christendom, that is, a Kingdom of this world governed
by Christ through His two Vicars, the Holy Roman Emperor
exercising authority by Divine right in the temporal sphere, and
the Holy Roman Pope, exercising authority by Divine right in the
spiritual sphere. The delimitation of spheres led to continual
conflict between these Vicars, and finally resulted in the supre-
macy of the Popes. This phase may be said to have extended from
the eleventh century until the sixteenth, that is, from the Hilde-
brandine Movement until the Reformation. The Papal Monarchy
reached its culmination in the thirteenth century, and then rapidly
declined until, in the Conciliar Movement of the fifteenth century,
its definite reduction was attempted. The failure of the Conciliar
Essay at Reformation postponed, but could not avert, the final
ca tastrophe.
5. The disruption of Christendom in the sixteenth century
revolutionized the relations of Church and State. The ancient
problem received new forms, and presented itself under new condi-
tions. The victory of the Reformation was a victory of the Laity
over the Clergy. The lay State of Machiavelli emerged. Within
the narrow limits of the independent territorial sovereignties of
Europe, the medieval identification of Church and State still per-
sisted. t Cujus regio ejus religio' continued to be the rule by which
the establishment of the Reformed Churches was determined, but
its application within the smaller areas could not but emphasize
its intrinsic unreasonableness and greatly increase the power of the
local monarchs. Even within the area of the Counter-Reformation,
in Spain and in France pre-eminently, it secured to the Sovereign
an ecclesiastical dominance which far exceeded the theory and
practice of the Middle Ages. Membership in the Universal Church
was exchanged as the postulate of Christendom for Profession of
the Christian Religion, and, since this was very variously inter-
preted, the door was opened to many local varieties of creed and
system. Roughly this state of affairs obtained until the close of
the Religious Wars. A by-product of the history was the recogni-
 THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN STATE 159
tion of variety in religious system-Toleration. Secular policy
imposed a measure of religious liberty on the reluctant Churches,
and throughout the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries,
Religion as a political motive gave place. to the ambition of
dynasties and the interest of commerce. A process of moral and
intellectual alienation from the Christian Tradition set in through-
out Europe, and found terrible expression in the French Revolu-
tion, when for some years the Christian Religion was officially
suppressed, and the Church subjected to violent persecution. The
Secular State of our own experience came to the birth.
6. The French Revolution created the Secular State which is
distinctive of the modern epoch. Citizenship is now frankly
separated from ecclesiastical membership and religious profession.
This separation may indeed be obscured by the fact that for its
own purposes the State has entered into special relations with the
Church, whether by way of a 'Concordat' as was formerly the case
in France, and appears to be now the case in Italy, or by way of a
legal establishment as was formerly the case in Germany, and is
still the case in England, Scotland, and Sweden. But while such
special arrangements may secure privileges to the Church, they
are never suffered to impinge on the indefeasible rights of citizen-
ship. They are indeed commonly defended rather as salutary
devices for holding Churches in check, than as benevolent provi-
sions for the interest of the Churches themselves. Moreover, the
Secular State recognizes no limits to its authority. The allocation
of spheres between Church and State, which was integral to
medieval politics has ceased. The State has reverted to its pre-
Christian omnipotence, and reclaims its old functions. 'The fault
of the classical State was that it tried to be Church and State in
one', said Lord Acton. If the modern State does not create an
official religion analogous to the Emperor-worship of Imperial
Rome, it is because it has ceased to be religious at all, and tends
everywhere to become not merely secular, but also secularist. It
covers the whole area of civic life, and leaves there no sphere to
ecclesiastical action. The only functions left to the Church in the
modern State are those which are technically religious, and as such
lie outside the normal concern of citizens. Even these functions-
the organization of public worship, the teaching of doctrine and
morals, the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline-are only
tolerable in the modern State in so far as they have no bearing on
the interests, policies, and prestige of the State itself. So long,
therefore, as the prevailing sentiment of the community is friendly
160 B ISH 0 P RIC K PAP E R S
to Christianity, the action of the modern State is likely to be con-
siderate, and even sympathetic. This is broadly true of Great
Britain and America at the present time. But if it should fall out
that Christianity were generally abandoned by the population,
and that its distinctive procedures conflicted with prevailing
currents of popular opinion, the relations of Church and State
could not but become dangerously strained, and might very easily
become actually hostile. The modern State is secular because it is
democratic, not in the ancient but in the modern sense of the word.
The entire adult population of both sexes, and of every variety of
religious description, is possessed of the franchise, and at the polls
'calls the tune' of public policy. Government by Divine right has
everywhere ceased, and been replaced by government by the
popular will. Even despots and dictators affect to be exponents
of the general mind, and to rule by that title. The area of possible
conflict between the Church and the State has been extended to
include the whole relation of the Christian Society to its secular
environment. The Church therefore is no longer identified with its
hierarchy and envisaged as a factor within a Christian community,
but it is seen to be a society of persons pledged to principles which
are other than those which are integral to citizenship, and servants
of 'another King, one Jesus'. Professor (now Sir Ernest ) Barker
has well shown the nature of the difference between medieval
and modern conflicts between Church and State:
To-day the world recognizes, and has recognized for over three
centuries, not only a distinction between States, but also a dis-
tinction between two societies in each State-the secular and the
religious. These two societies may have different laws (for
instance, in the matter of marriage), and conflicts of duties and
jurisdictions may easily arise in consequence. The State may
permit what the Church forbids, and in that case the citizen
who is also a churchman must necessarily revolt against one or
other of the societies to which he belongs. The conflict between
the two societies and the different obligations which they impose
was a conflict unknown to the Middle Ages. 1
The Church, that is, the organized Christian Society, must make
its count with a State which will always be partly, and may even
be predominantly, anti-Christian. The day of which the llebrew
prophet wrote, when 'kings should be nursing fathers' of the
Church, and 'their queens nursing mothers' has passed for ever.
Constantine, Charlemagne, S. Louis, and S. Edward have no
1 v. Church, State and Study, p. 65.
 THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN STATE 161
successors; their succession has closed as completely as that of
Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and Charles I. The personal convictions
and private virtues of constitutional sovereigns can have no direct
influence on national policy. Modern Monarchs can be no more
than the figureheads of the democratic State, and the obedient,
albeit reluctant, servitors of the popular will. And the popular
will is largely an unknown quantity. Public policy in modern
Europe is determined not by the unquestioned religion of Christen-
dom, but by the varying moods of the populations. We need not
idealize the past in order to perceive the gravity of the difference.
The congenital weakness of medieval Christendom was at all times
the inevitable discord between theory and fact. Vnder the impos-
ing appearance of universal orthodoxy there existed elements,
moral and intellectual, which were incongruous, unreconciled,
and even revolting. But these dissident factors were desti-
tute of any means of expression. They were ignored, or brutally
silenced. In the modern world they are vocal and politically
competent.

The general problem is presented in England in circumstances

which are not paralleled elsewhere. For in England-it is
hardly excessive to say-a Medieval Church confronts a Modern
State. Among the Reformed Churches the Church of England has
a place apart. I t was reformed by constitutional process, and it
preserved the main legal and constitutional features of its earlier
history. The order in which the English Reformation was effected
had decisive influence on the Reformation itself. First, the polity
was revised by the repudiation of the Papal authority, and the
substitution of the authority of,the Sovereign. Next, the doctrinal
and liturgical system was gradually reshaped. In Germany,
Holland, and Scotland the order of reformation was different.
Doctrinal changes preceded ecclesiastical, and gave them a ruth-
less revolutionary character which was absent from the English
process. Thus while ecclesiastical innovation was characteristic
of the continental- and Scottish reformations, ecclesiastical con-
tinuity was characteristic of the English. The method of English
constitutional development facilitated the conservatism of English
religion. Forms have been preserved unaltered, while their sub-
stance and balance have been drastically changed. In outward
aspect the medieval Estates survive in the modern Parliament.
M
 162 BI SH OPRICK PAPERS·
The Monarchy of George V speaks the same official language as the
Monarchy of Henry VIII. In fact, under a delusive aspect of
identity, the passage from the medieval and the autocratic
phases of the, English State to the modernly democratic has been
silently carried through. The most genuinely democratic com-
munity in the world parades the symbols of long obsolete subjec-
tion. 'England', said a French critic, 'is a Republic with a heredi-
tary President: the United States is a Monarchy with an elected
King.' Nowhere has this process of veiled innovation been more
apparent than in the relations of Church and State. In the, year
1930 the clergy of the Established Church are bound by medieval
and early seventeenth-century canons: the parishes and dioceses
are l~rgely medieval: the ecclesiastical system is mainly deter-
mined by the sixteenth-century statutes: and public worship is
controlled by a Prayer Book which received its present form in
1662. It is obvious that an Establishment of this description can
only be tolerable if its anachronistic and anomalous character is
frankly accepted, and so long as no attempt shall be made to bring
it into active exercise. The notion that a living Church can be
controlled, in its doctrinal and liturgical forms, by decisions nearly
four centuries old is indeed truly absurd. For throughout that long
time the movement of thought has been rapid, and the accumula-
tion of knowledge has been vast. Neither our moral standards nor
our religious assumptions are the same. Religious toleration, for
example, was unknown in the sixteenth century, cautiously
adopted by the State in the eighteenth, and silently established
as an axiom of Christian thinking in the course of the nineteenth
century. It is now the assumption of civilized politics. It has had
the effect of multiplying varieties of religious opinion, and foster-
ing the growth of religious denominations. Yet the assumption
of the English formularies and of our parochial law is that the
ancient monopoly of the English Church still prevails. Accordingly,
the parishioner as such is given authority which only loyal mem-
bership of the Church of England could justify. Persons of any
religion or of none, even notorious opponents of the established
system of, faith and worship, are legally entitled as parishioners
to interfere with the worship of the parish church, and, by putting
the obsolete law in operation, to impose their will on the congrega-
tion of English Churchmen which habitually attends the services
of the parish church. The same offensive ,anomaly is everywhere
apparent. Parliament still retains the supreme authority over the
Church of England which was only intelligible, albeit even then

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 THE C H U R CHI NTH E MOD ERN S TAT E 163
barely legitimate, when its Members and their constituents were
legally required to be communicant members of the Established
Church, although the legislation of the last century has com-
pletely secularized both electorate and Members of Parliament.
We have recently witnessed the portentous spectacle of a Parsee
CommlJnist voting in the House of Commons against the adoption
of a Prayer Book which had been carefully revised by the authori-
ties of the Church of England. The scandal is gross, extreme, and
dishonouring. In a word, the Establishment is now only tolerable
so long as it is inoperative. Treat it as a working system and it
immediately becomes morally indefensible.
The English Establishment is tenacious of life, and will not soon
or easily be brought to an end. It is ancient, picturesque, and rich
in vested interests. Disestablishment wakes many fears, and
violates many traditions. Erastianism is the natural temper of
Englishmen. Few English Churchmen have been accustomed to
think of the Church as a religious society, bound by principles
which are independent of national preferences, interests, and sanc-
tions, and committed to obligations which must finally override the
requirements of secular citizenship. Such is the confusion of issues
in the general mind that even so strange a paradox as the rejection
of the Revised Prayer Book by the House of Commons is readily
obscured and easily condoned. Mainly, however, the continued
survival of the discredited Establishment depends on two factors,
which, though apparently growing weaker, are yet very strong-
.on the one hand, the resolute protestantism which will not willingly
surrender even an iniquitous anomaly so long as it seems to impose
restraints on a Church which no longer echoes its prejudices or
serves its interest; and, on the other hand, the indifference of the
Nation as a whole to such relatively petty concerns as those of the
Church. In the sum of public business ecclesiastical affairs are apt
to have the aspect of troublesome irrelevances, and thus the
strangest anomalies survive per incuriam populi.
Nevertheless, the spiritual health of the Church of England, and
its ability to fulfil its mission to the English Nation turn finally on
its spiritual independence. No living Church can permanently
acquiesce in a situation which contradicts its essential character as
a branch of that Divine Society which fulfils in the world the
Redemptive Ministry of Christ. Disestablishment is a small price
to pay for the indispensable boon of freedom.
Hard times lie before the Christian Church throughout the
world, and not least in England. In view of the anti-Christian
164 B ISH 0 P RIC K PAP E R S
drift of modern democracy (of which a fearful illustration is pro-
vided in Soviet Russia, and many highly disconcerting indications
are apparent among ourselves) no considering English Churchmen
can reflect without alarm on the potencies of evil which are bound
up with such abject subjection to the State as the Establishment
implies. The public opinion of a secularized community is our
only protection against the worst abuses of a cynical Erastianism.
Prudence would suggest that the recovery of liberty, even at a
heavy material cost, would be the wisest, as it certainly would be
the most dignified, policy for English Churchmen to pursue.

1
HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON

BISHOPRICK
PAPERS

GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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