{"id":208,"date":"2018-09-04T16:21:37","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T15:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.dur.ac.uk\/henson.project\/?page_id=208"},"modified":"2019-05-24T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T11:07:52","slug":"henson-and-modernism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/henson-and-modernism\/","title":{"rendered":"Modernism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon Green<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Handley Moule, Bishop of Durham.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On 2 February 1918, Henson was consecrated bishop of Hereford in Westminster Abbey.\u00a0 This was no ordinary inauguration ceremony.\u00a0 Several of his new episcopal colleagues \u2013 including Winnington-Ingram of London and his old friend, \u2018Fish\u2019 Cecil of Exeter \u2013 refused to take part in the event.\u00a0 His own bishop, Moule of Durham, declined to present Henson to the archbishop.\u00a0 Archdeacon Hough, who was appointed suffragan bishop of Woolwich at the same time, made it very clear that he did not appreciate sharing his elevation with someone criticised as a \u2018heretic\u2019.\u00a0 At nearby St. Matthew\u2019s Church, Great Peter Street, an irate Anglo-Catholic priest preached a sermon vehemently denouncing everything that was then going on in the nearby Royal Peculiar, and also ruefully predicting the inevitable separation of the English established Church from the universal Christian Church that this entailed.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Exterior of Hereford Cathedral.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These bizarre proceedings constituted the culmination of six weeks of frantic struggle between the various factions of the Church of England, set in motion by the decision of the prime minister, Lloyd George, to nominate Henson to the vacant see of Hereford, on 8 December 1917.\u00a0 During the intervening days, the archbishop of Canterbury had threatened to resign his primacy while Henson considered abandoning the Christian ministry altogether.\u00a0 Bishop Gore of Oxford lodged a formal protest against the appointment (on 3 January 1918); other clergy, numerous laymen and various church societies made their criticisms public, and a petitioning campaign was begun; the Church was seriously threatened with schism.\u00a0 Only a last minute \u2018declaration\u2019 of Henson\u2019s \u2018orthodoxy\u2019, achieved by way of an exchange of letters with the archbishop (both letters, in fact, written by archbishop Davidson), saved the day \u2013 or at least, Davidson\u2019s long-standing archiepiscopacy and Henson\u2019s first episcopal appointment.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

No senior nomination had provoked so much opposition for more than seventy years.\u00a0 The reason was, at one level, simple.\u00a0 Many in the Church, particularly on its (otherwise rarely concordant) Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings, regarded Henson as a renegade.\u00a0 This was because from the time of his appointment as rector of St. Margaret\u2019s, Westminster, and through his years as dean of Durham, Henson had repeatedly and publicly argued that affirmation of the two great miracles of the Apostle\u2019s Creed \u2013 namely, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of the body of Christ \u2013 was not required of those seeking holy orders.\u00a0 More controversially still, he had pronounced \u2013 if not his denial of these two miracles \u2013 certainly his agnosticism about them. \u00a0Yet Henson was about to become an official guardian of the Truth.\u00a0 For conservative evangelicals, such as Dean Wace of Canterbury, or Anglo-Catholics, like Bishop Gore, this was a test case.<\/p>\n

It was also a critical episode in the history of English modernism and liberal protestantism, more generally.\u00a0 \u2018Modernism\u2019 had begun as a specifically Roman Catholic response to the ultramontane challenge posed by the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870.\u00a0 It had developed an alternative teaching designed to make the Church both scientifically relevant and morally progressive.\u00a0 To that extent, it also spoke to, and even informed, a parallel form of protestant liberalism.\u00a0 Certainly, both sought a similar synthesis between inherited Christianity and modern forms of knowledge, especially in that kind of historical theology which grew out of German biblical criticism.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 By 1917, Henson was firmly established in the public mind as the most prominent and outspoken \u2018modernist\u2019 \u2013 perhaps better, theological liberal \u2013 in the higher echelons of the Anglican establishment.\u00a0 This was in many ways an unmerited reputation.\u00a0 Henson was no great theologian, having failed to complete his studies of this subject at Oxford.\u00a0 Nor was he much of an institutional partisan.\u00a0 He continually declined to become a member of the Churchmen\u2019s Union (founded in 1898, to \u2018maintain the right and duty of the Church to restate her belief from time to time as required by the progressive revelation of the Holy Spirit\u2019), despite being urged by Dean Inge and other friends to do so.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 To be sure, he wrote regularly for Henry Major\u2019s Modern Churchman<\/em>, a journal inaugurated in 1912 specifically \u2018to vindicate the truths of Christianity by the light of scholarship and research\u2019, though by no means always on specifically \u2018liberal\u2019 subjects.\u00a0 Moreover, he became more critical than supportive of its efforts to alter Anglican doctrine and practice after World War I.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Even as Dean, and increasingly in later years, Henson sometimes rejected the label \u2018modernist\u2019 altogether, preferring to describe himself as \u2018an old-fashioned \u201cLatitude man\u201d, who had strayed from the seventeenth century into the twentieth.\u2019[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

It was not that Henson was ever an anti-modernist.\u00a0 This was not least because he never regarded \u2018modernism\u2019 as a specifically Anglican issue, but rather a problem that confronted every aspect of the modern Christian Church; this could not be avoided by any \u2018educated \u2026 or thinking \u2026 Christian\u2019.\u00a0 It had been specifically repudiated only by a backward-looking Papacy and those biblical illiterates increasingly attracted to Protestant fundamentalism.[7]<\/a> To that degree at least, Henson regarded modernism, broadly conceived, in much the same light as the radicals of the Churchmen\u2019s Union: namely, as the proper response of sincere Anglicans \u2018to the needs and knowledge of the day.\u2019[8]<\/a>\u00a0 However, Henson came to that view by a different route from most of those he long called his \u2018fellow liberals\u2019.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 This made a considerable difference to the extent to which he ever became a true \u2018modernist\u2019 or, indeed, a \u2018liberal\u2019, whether in their eyes or his.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Henson began his ecclesiastical life as something of a Goreite.\u00a0 It was Gore\u2019s writings \u2013 and not, for instance, Essays and Reviews <\/em>(1860) \u2013 that first led him to modernism.\u00a0 Gore\u2019s essay in Lux Mundi <\/em>(1889) broke with the Tractarian tradition, by embracing German biblical criticism and integrating historical scholarship into Anglo-Catholic theology.\u00a0 Henson often doubted just how profound Gore\u2019s departure had been in this respect.[10]<\/a> \u00a0But it was sufficient to enable a young English Catholic to interpret the teaching of his other Oxford mentors, above all Lightfoot and Westcott, as recognisably and admirably \u2018modernist\u2019, at least in their interpretation of the Bible. It was also useful, especially in his opposition to the \u2018ritualist\u2019 lawlessness then endemic in the later-Victorian Church, for Henson to note that the most brazen ceremonialists were also amongst the most antediluvian creedalists of the age.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

In rejecting Goreism, Henson opened himself up to the possibilities of liberal protestantism.\u00a0 In this way, he became thoroughly historical<\/em> in his approach to theology, more particularly in relation to the religion of the Incarnation.\u00a0 That led him to the \u2018agnosticism\u2019 he increasingly expressed about the miraculous aspects of the creed.\u00a0 He also acquired an ever more pragmatic attitude to the organisation of the visible church.\u00a0 These were not, in themselves, particularly unusual beliefs for an educated clergyman to hold during the years before the outbreak of the First World War.\u00a0 What was unusual was Henson\u2019s willingness to state them so clearly and so often.\u00a0 The result was an outpouring of sermons that both repudiated a traditional Patristic Christology and rejected the Anglo-Catholic insistence upon a divinely ordained episcopacy.\u00a0 That capacity for limpid argumentativeness that induced Asquith to offer him the Regius chair of ecclesiastical history at Oxford in 1908.\u00a0 And it was for the very same reason that Archbishop Davidson was unable to conceal his disappointment that Henson had not accepted the institutional marginalisation that this otherwise prestigious appointment would probably have entailed.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

Lloyd George was the first anti-Anglican ever to be put in charge of Church patronage.[13]<\/a>\u00a0 Hereford was the most rural and conservative diocese in the country.\u00a0 The frenzied state of the wartime Church did the rest.\u00a0 But the great scandal of 1917-18 turned out to be the high point of Henson\u2019s modernism.\u00a0 Certainly, the more thoughtful amongst contemporary Anglo-Catholics (notably Bishop Talbot), similarly the serious radicals amongst the \u2018modernists\u2019 (for instance, Mrs. Humphrey Ward), noted that Henson, in making his declaration, committed himself to nothing incompatible with the Incarnation, the Trinity and at least some form <\/em>of the Resurrection.\u00a0 Moreover, as a bishop Henson increasingly came to see his ecclesiastical responsibilities less in terms of bold speculation and more about that proper \u2018wardship of the integrity and due proportions of the Christian religion as these had received authoritative expression in the Apostolic literature of the New Testament.\u2019[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Little of this ever found its way into the pages of The Modern Churchmen<\/em>,<\/span> after 1918.\u00a0 Indeed, Henson wrote just one further article for that journal subsequent to his appointment to the see of Durham.[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

The effect was subtle but striking.\u00a0 The free-thinking dean proved a cautious prelate.\u00a0 Indeed, as the \u2018Modernists\u2019 became more strident, he turned more critical \u2013 <\/span>of them.\u00a0 So much so that, in 1921, the leading Anglo-Catholic Lord Halifax felt moved to convey his \u2018warmest approval\u2019 to the bishop of Durham for suitably pungent remarks made during a sermon to the Church Congress at Birmingham about \u2018extremist modernist opinions\u2019 expressed at the Cambridge conference of the Churchmen\u2019s Union that year.[16]<\/a>\u00a0 As \u2018modernist claims\u2019, particularly about the \u2018person of our Redeemer\u2019 became more subversive, so Henson\u2019s criticisms of them were that much more pointed.\u00a0 This reached a stage when, in 1930, he was approached by \u2018a group of young clergymen\u2019 to \u2018lead some kind of organised counter-movement to the Modernist teaching about our Blessed Lord.\u2019\u00a0 In the event, he declined, citing his long-standing opposition to \u2018Movements\u2019 and urging them to wait upon the verdict of the Doctrinal Commission (1922-38).[17]<\/a>\u00a0 None of this prevented him from taking the lead in condemning Bishop David for inviting a Unitarian minister to preach in Liverpool Cathedral four years later.\u00a0 His public opposition to any further toleration of \u2018Unitarian attitudes\u2019 towards the founder of Christianity, rendered official in a resolution passed at the Convocation of York, even won him \u2018orthodox\u2019 approval in The Times<\/em>.[18]<\/a><\/p>\n

So did the poacher turn gamekeeper?\u00a0 Not really.\u00a0 The clerical polemicist may latterly have assumed an episcopal gravity in matters doctrinal that others had not have expected of him.\u00a0 But if Henson never became a thoroughgoing \u2018modernist\u2019, nor even a theological \u2018liberal\u2019, in the precise sense of those terms, his subsequent \u2018rejection of the new\u2019 was influenced as much by tone and implication of contemporary modernist writings \u2013 most notably in their apparent contempt for the Church and its traditions \u2013 as it was determined by his conception of the truth of things.\u00a0 There were certainly strict limits to his back-tracking.\u00a0 When he came to construct a personal confessio fidei <\/em>at the end of his life, Henson could still not help observing that \u2018I find myself compelled to accept an agnostic position over an ever larger proportion of the ground which is covered by official and conventional credenda.\u2019[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0<\/a> Chadwick, Henson<\/em>, 136-45.
\n[2]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>
\n[3]<\/a> Graham Ward, \u2018Modernism\u2019, in Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason and Hugh Pyper (eds.), The Oxford Companion of Christian Thought<\/em> (London, 2000), 442-3; Alistair Mason, \u2018Liberal Protestantism\u2019, idem<\/em>., pp. 385-7.
\n[4]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect, <\/em>2,<\/em> 315.
\n[5]<\/a> The Modern Churchman<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1912), 51.
\n[6]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 2, 315.
\n[7]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 158 and 212-13.
\n[8]<\/a> Objectives of the Churchmen\u2019s Union; Object 3, part II: \u2018[W]hile paying due regard to continuity, to work for such changes in the formularies and practices in the Church of England as from time to time are made necessary by the needs and knowledge of the day.\u2019
\n[9]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 2, 315.
\n[10]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, <\/em>53, 155.
\n[11]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 2, <\/em>188-9.
\n[12]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 3, <\/em>178.
\n[13]<\/a> Rosebery, Balfour and Campbell-Bannerman were Scottish Presbyterians who behaved as Anglicans when they were south of the border.\u00a0 Lloyd-George was a Welsh nonconformist, wholly out of sympathy with its established church, and not much enamoured of the English version either.
\n[14]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 2, 315-16.
\n[15]<\/a> Henson, \u2018Christianity as the way\u2019, The Modern Churchman<\/em>, 16 (April 1926), 30-6.
\n[16]<\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 2, 143-4.
\n[17]<\/a> Henson to Bishop Lawrence, 21 Oct. 1930, in Braley, More letters<\/em>, pp. 65-6 at 66.
\n[18]<\/a> Anon., \u2018Unitarians and unity\u2019, Times<\/em>, 9 June 1934, 15.
\n[19]<\/a> Henson to the Bishop of Derby, 27 Sept. 1943, in Braley, Letters<\/em>, pp.145-6 at 146.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Green On 2 February 1918, Henson was consecrated bishop of Hereford in Westminster Abbey.\u00a0 This was no ordinary inauguration ceremony.\u00a0 Several of his new episcopal colleagues \u2013 including Winnington-Ingram of London and his old friend, \u2018Fish\u2019 Cecil of Exeter \u2013 refused to take part in the event.\u00a0 His own bishop, Moule of Durham, declined … Continue reading “Modernism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-208","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}