Religion: Divided Anglicans

Divided Anglicans We are not divided, All one body we . . . So sang some 4,000 Londoners in Hyde Park one day last week to the thump of a Salvation Army band. With the Archbishop of Canterbury as keynote speaker, they were celebrating the United Christian Rally—one of the opening events in the Festival of Britain. Meanwhile, only a few blocks away in a church off Marble Arch, a Church of England service was being held expressly to proclaim the fact that even England's state church is divided and that Britain's Christians are not one body at all.

The dissidents were no fiery-eyed hotheads, but the most conservative, high-church wing of the Anglican Church—the Anglo-Catholics. Increasingly disturbed over what they consider a dangerous drift toward collaboration with the sectarian "free churches" (Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, etc.), they have been quietly protesting for years at such unity symptoms as the proposed Chapel of Unity in the plans for rebuilding Coventry Cathedral. Last week's service was something more than the customary soft-voiced protest.

It began with a letter to the Church Times, signed by four clergymen and four laymen, among them such prominent Anglican names as Deacon Hugh Ross Williamson, Church Architect J. Ninian Comper and Poet John Betjeman. The "proposed United Christian Rally," they wrote, "has filled us with misgiving . . . We . . . think that the participation of the Church of England may give the . . . impression that the Roman Catholics are the only religious body which defends the full Catholic faith. Whatever may be the intention of the organizers, the effect can hardly fail to be an emphasis on the 'churches' with the Church of England as one, even if a leading one, among a multiplicity of sects.

"As we are in conscience unable to take any part in the proceedings, we propose to make a public act of affirmation that the faith of the Church of England is the historic faith and tradition of the undivided Church, and we invite any member of the church, who is so disposed, to join us."

Some 650 did join them, filling the Church of the Annunciation to capacity. "It's only just beginning," said Deacon Ross Williamson after the service, "but we have hundreds of telegrams from all over the country, wishing us well. Something must be done. One gets so tired of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the way he carries on."