{"id":230,"date":"2018-09-05T11:57:20","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T10:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.dur.ac.uk\/henson.project\/?page_id=230"},"modified":"2022-02-13T14:07:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T14:07:21","slug":"henson-and-nonconformity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/henson-and-nonconformity\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonconformity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Henson was an ordained priest in the Church in England for nearly sixty years; he was, at various times, an incumbent vicar and rector, a canon and dean, and twice a bishop. These commitments, in both belief and practice, necessarily placed him in an ambivalent relationship with the many branches of English nonconformity. Moreover, what institutional differentiation demanded, personal experience for long corroborated. His father\u2019s sectarian intolerance, the outcome of an association with the Plymouth Brethren, left Henson with an enduring hatred of protestant fanaticism. His early appointments in Birkenhead, Bethnal Green and Barking were spent almost entirely amongst the poor, which convinced him that the true mission of the visible church was best pursued under the liberally endowed auspices of a national church. Henson came to fame as an eloquent defender of the Anglican establishment against what he saw as the unjustified assaults of \u2018political non-conformity\u2019 upon the integrity and endowments of the Church. For years, he was a sworn opponent of the Liberation Society, the principal nonconformist body that sought disestablishment of the Church of England.[1]<\/a> He long regarded the existence of more than 150 dissenting bodies in later-Victorian Britain as evidence of little more than the perverse consequences of \u2018religious freedom\u2019. As late as 1938, he urged one correspondent to obey the \u2018rules of godly discipline\u2019 to ensure that the \u2018tendency, already disastrously strong among all Protestants, to regard religion from a merely individual point of view\u2019 was not strengthened further.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

For all that, Henson\u2019s attitude towards, and relations with, the major branches of English nonconformity changed very significantly during the course of his career. Scarcely less did their feelings for, and connection to, him. The young Goreite[3]<\/a> openly conceded in his Journal that the \u2013 his \u2013 Anglican mind desired \u2018nothing less \u2026 than the annihilation of dissent.\u2019[4]<\/a> Yet twenty years later, Henson\u2019s name was widely circulated in Church circles as a suitable candidate for the vacant see of Truro, on the grounds that he was \u2018persona grata<\/em> to the dissenters in a diocese full of [such men and women].\u2019[5]<\/a> By the time he left Hereford for Durham in 1920, he had even come \u2013 anyway, publicly \u2013 to regard the border county\u2019s nonconformists as \u2018among my colleagues in the great spiritual venture to which I was committed.\u2019[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

In truth, there were always subtleties to Henson\u2019s position in this matter. The young firebrand had still professed himself willing to \u2018assume an attitude of friendliness\u2019 to those otherwise \u2018odious\u2019 people, so long as they \u2018consent[ed] to resist the ruin of the Church.\u2019[7]<\/a> The studied hypocrisy which that stance might have required was long rendered unnecessary by the fact that so many amongst this nefarious multitude seemed unwilling to countenance any such concession at all. But the imminent threat of \u2018political nonconformity\u2019 \u2013 that is, the spectre of General Disestablishment across both England and Wales \u2013 gradually waned with the years of Unionist rule, after 1886. Henson\u2019s Churchmanship evolved during the same period. The \u2018English Catholic\u2019, who had insisted upon \u2018the apostolic origin and unique authority of Episcopal [government] in the Church\u2019 offered little with which Barking\u2019s nonconformists could have found common cause.[8]<\/a> But the author of Godly Union and Concord<\/em> (1902), who concluded as a result of \u2018theoretical enquiry\u2019 and \u2018practical experience\u2019 that \u2018ecclesiastical organisation\u2019 could \u2018never be primary\u2019 in true Christian witness \u2013 put bluntly, that bishops were not essential for the administration of the Church \u2013 pointed to an altogether more ecumenical understanding of the potential \u2018unity of all English Christians.\u2019[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

This is what Henson preached for a decade, following his appointment as rector of St. Margaret\u2019s, Westminster.[10]<\/a> These were the most fertile years of his protestant latitudinarianism. It was not that everything he said was pleasing to contemporary English nonconformity. Indeed, his ever more radical engagement with modern biblical criticism and those reinterpretations of the biblical story which it entailed (e.g.<\/em> about the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection) often struck a discordant note with those literalist readers of the scriptures amongst English dissenters increasingly tending towards \u2018fundamentalism\u2019.[11]<\/a> Nor, despite his admiration of individual adherents, did Henson\u2019s institutional toleration extend as far as Quakers or Unitarians. The former were judged in \u2018error (for such I must needs hold it to be)\u2019 about \u2018the external ceremonies appointed by Christ and His Apostles.\u2019[12]<\/a> The latter, he insisted, fatally failed to recognise, \u2018the Person of [Our] Redeemer.\u2019[13]<\/a> But the man who, in mid-life, observed that this \u2018passion for religious unity\u2019 had been forged at least as early as any \u2018defence \u2026 of the principle of Establishment\u2019 \u2013 moreover, that each had begun with a \u2018dread of bondage to [any] system\u2019 \u2013 argued with ever increasing vigour for closer connections between the Church and mainstream English nonconformist organisations, from the death of Queen Victoria onwards.[14]<\/a> He even achieved some success in this goal, at least until his perceived apostasy (in terms of the Church, i.e. disestablishment, but not at all in terms of the free churches) of 1928.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Charles Gore later in his career, as Bishop of Oxford.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Henson\u2019s theory of Church unity was profoundly radical in its potential implications. It might have created a very different established church in England. His practice tended to be rather more cautious. He began by preaching about the possibility of inter-communion between the protestant churches in England. He came to argue for the propriety of admitting non-Anglicans to communion and of Anglicans receiving the sacrament from non-episcopal bishops.[15]<\/a> From the time of his appeal for the reunion of the protestant denominations in 1901, he frequently received invitations to preach in non-Anglican churches. After some hesitation, and even tactical refusals, he generally accepted.[16]<\/a> That proved controversial enough. When he agreed to preach at Carr\u2019s Lane Chapel, Birmingham, in 1909, Gore issued an Inhibition against him. When he fulfilled his promise, Gore threatened to prosecute him.[17]<\/a> He was an enthusiastic supporter of those joint services, held by the several churches together, during the Great War. He long hoped that this might prove to have a lasting legacy.[18]<\/a> As bishop, both in Hereford and Durham, he sanctioned occasional sermons by nonconformist ministers in parish churches.[19]<\/a> Henson remained optimistic about further progress towards reunion until the mid-1920s. He took particular pleasure in the declaration of the Lambeth Joint Conference (1920) that \u2018Free Church ministries [were] to be recognised as true ministries [both] of Christ\u2019s Word and Sacraments in the Universal Church.\u2019[20]<\/a> For that acknowledged them as members of true churches with which reunion was possible. As such, he argued that Anglicans and \u2018our Nonconformist brethren\u2019 were kept apart less by \u2018conflicting dogmata\u2019 and more by \u2018inbred divergences of religious taste and habit\u2019, particularly \u2018our monotoned prayers\u2019 and their \u2018extemporaneous outpourings\u2019.[21]<\/a> These, he long believed, might eventually be overcome.<\/p>\n

However, this enthusiasm eventually faltered. Indeed, Henson came to observe how such hopes had faded more generally as the religious world became \u2018weary of discussions about Reunion.\u2019[22]<\/a> The old polemicist in him had little doubt where the greater part of the blame for such disillusion lay. It could be traced to those \u2018Anglican enthusiasts\u2019 (for which, read Anglo-Catholics) who sought union not with their fellow English protestants but to \u2018any and every sect in West or East\u2019 (Roman Catholic or Orthodox) which, no matter how \u2018paltry or degraded\u2019 yet \u2018possessed an historic episcopate.\u2019[23]<\/a> But it was best attributed not to the bigoted infantry but to their benighted generals: more particularly, to the \u2018present guidance\u2019 which, from the primacy of Lang onwards, had not merely sanctioned but actively promoted the policy thereby ensuring that such success as may be \u2018attained\u2019 would be \u2018purchased by the alienation of our true allies \u2013 the other Churches of the Reformation.\u2019[24]<\/a> As Henson summarised the matter, less than one year before his death, \u2018the real hindrance\u2019 to reunion \u2018is not with the non-Episcopalians but with ourselves.\u2019[25]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1] <\/a> See essay \u2018Henson and (dis)establishment\u2019.
\n[2] <\/a> Henson to Miss Jean Bovey, 27 March 1938, in Braley (ed.), More letters<\/em>, pp.128-9, at 128.
\n[3] <\/a> See essay \u2018Henson and modernism\u2019; and \u2018Henson and (dis)establishment\u2019.
\n[4] <\/a> Cited in Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 9 (Journal, May 1885).
\n[5] <\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 143 (Journal, 26 July 1906).
\n[6] <\/a> Henson, \u2018A farewell letter to the clergy and laity of the diocese of Hereford\u2019, 4 Sept. 1920, in Braley, More letters<\/em>, 16.
\n[7] <\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 13.
\n[8] <\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, p. 36.
\n[9] <\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, p. 76.
\n[10] <\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, p. 114.
\n[11] <\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, p. 36.
\n[12] <\/a> Henson to Faise Pease, 16 Dec. 1923, in Braley, Letters<\/em>, pp. 28-9.
\n[13] <\/a> Henson to the Archdeacon of Northumberland, 28 Mar. 1934, Braley, Letters<\/em>, pp. 83-4.
\n[14] <\/a> Henson to Lady Frances Balfour, 4 Nov. 1903, as quoted in Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, pp. 75-6.
\n[15] <\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 162.
\n[16] <\/a> Henson to Rev. Dr. John Hunter, 21 Dec. 1903, in Braley, Letters<\/em>, 7.
\n[17] <\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 93-4.
\n[18] <\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 237.
\n[19] <\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, p. 299.
\n[20] <\/a> Henson to A.A. Boddy, 23 Sept. 1926, in Braley (ed.), Letters<\/em>, p. 48.
\n[21] <\/a> Henson, Retrospect<\/em>, 1, 297 (Journal, 28 July 1918).
\n[22] <\/a> Henson to the Bishop of Eau Claire, 24 Feb. 1935, in Braley, Letters<\/em>, p. 88.
\n[23] <\/a> Henson to the Archbishop of Armagh, 21 Oct. 1931, in Braley, Letters<\/em>, pp. 63-4.
\n[24] <\/a> Ibid.<\/em>
\n[25] <\/a> Henson to the Bishop of Chichester, 29 Dec. 1946, in Braley, Letters<\/em>, p. 193.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Green Henson was an ordained priest in the Church in England for nearly sixty years; he was, at various times, an incumbent vicar and rector, a canon and dean, and twice a bishop. These commitments, in both belief and practice, necessarily placed him in an ambivalent relationship with the many branches of English nonconformity. … Continue reading “Nonconformity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-230","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/230","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=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hensonjournals.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}