Anglican Religious

by Petà Dunstan

Religious Life among Anglicans has usually been seen as a development of the Victorian era. However, in this article, Dr Petà Dunstan, a Fellow of St Edmund's College in the University of Cambridge (England), considers the Religious communities of the 1840s in a wider perspective. She explores the idea that Religious Life is latent in all Christian communities and therefore Anglicans should not define Religious Life only in the terms of their own nineteenth-century revival.

A few years ago, I gave a talk at my college in Cambridge on the subject of Religious Life among Anglicans. It was to a small group of interested academics and, at the end, we had a question-and-answer session. The audience included a distinguished American Roman Catholic nun, who was on sabbatical with us, and her question took me by surprise: with there having been fewer vocations in the past thirty years, did I think Anglican Religious Life would survive? Without a moment’s hesitation, I found myself answering a confident yes.
Reflecting later on the exchange, I realized that this strong conviction was connected to my historical perspective. For to me, the Church and Religious Life are intimately connected. It is never the presence of Religious Life which should surprise or need explanation but its absence. The impulse to Religious Life is endemic among Christians. It is merely the forms and expressions of it which differ in various historical situations. I would contend that only particular expressions of the vocation die out. The call itself is ever present.
In looking at the Anglican Communion, this means therefore leaving behind the idea that Religious Life ‘began’ in the 1840s. It is true that the Oxford Movement, from 1833, provided a theological perspective and dynamic in the Church of England which gave many the confidence to found Religious communities in its wake. These communities were a particular response to the social and religious situation in which they found themselves. The Religious wore the clothes appropriate to their time and developed patterns of life conducive to success in their own era. (Those that did not soon faded away.) Their work was heroic and the success of all they did, particularly pioneering in health and education and social projects, is seen in the fact that so much of what they did has now been taken over by the state. Communities showed the need: society then responded. This was prophetic work.
Ironically however, the very achievements of these communities meant that they themselves would no longer be needed in the same specific form. The fall in vocations in nursing and teaching orders from the First World War onwards was a reflection of this. The decline was a sign of tasks successfully completed. Yet, for those who associated Religious Life with those particular jobs and institutions, and with the wearing of particular habits, this decline was painfully interpreted as a decline in Religious Life itself. Many have felt diminished and despairing as once flourishing orders have been reduced to a handful of members and some communities have died altogether. Seen exclusively from the view of the past one hundred and fifty years of the Church of England, the statistical decline might be interpreted as marking the ‘end’ of the movement.
Yet seen from a wider historical perspective, going back to the early centuries of the Church, the rise and fall of specific communities and specific works is part of the rhythmic cycle of Religious Life. The spark is lit and burns brightly, only to die down in another generation, before re-emerging, perhaps in a different form, in another time. Even the Reformation, with its staunch and emotive propaganda against the vowed life, did not destroy the possibility of Religious Life forever. There are now monks and nuns in the churches which are the direct spiritual descendents of Martin Luther.
For Anglican Religious Life, the passing of some communities founded in the Victorian era is not therefore the end of a story. It should be remembered that from the 1540s to the 1840s, when in the Church of England vowed Religious seemed only a remote echo from the past, the values - and sometimes corporate traditions - of Religious Life nevertheless survived under many guises. One example was within College chapels in Oxford and Cambridge, which remained distinctly Benedictine in ethos and arrangement of worship. Fellows of Colleges even had to resign if they married, a custom which continued until the second half of the nineteenth century. Similarly, some traditions of cathedrals remained intertwined with the patterns of Religious Life. Amongst some families, the idea of community took hold, most notably that of Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding; where the family and household gathered daily to say the Office together. Yet again, there were alms houses where all those admitted became ‘brothers’ and wore a distinctive ‘habit’. Similar observations might be made regarding hospices and the care of the sick, and also with respect to some missionary movements. The Reformation had banished the communities - but not the call to live out their values.
The explanation for this is simple. Religious Life is not an added extra to the Church, but rather it is at its heart. For Religious Life is nothing more nor less than the living out of Christian values - but in a particular and intense form. The desire to seek God, to study the scriptures, to practise Christian virtues through community life and to serve the poor and needy in the world - these are all aims of the Christian life. The vows and traditions of Religious are a means of pursuing these goals from a position beyond the conflicting responsibilities that can arise from wealth, marriage and children, and power. But the aim is essentially the same seeking of God that is the heart of any Christian witness. Religious Life, therefore, does not belong to any one denomination or part of the Church, but is a resource, an impulse, a potential for any faith community rooted in the Christian gospel.
The consequences of this perspective for Anglican communities are important. First, they have a much longer and broader tradition to draw upon than the patterns which inspired the pioneers of the 1840s revival. The founders and foundresses of the last century have much still to teach but they are only a part of the riches available for Anglican Religious as they enter the twenty-first century. The writings of the early monks and nuns and their way of life are the inheritance of all Religious, whatever denomination they belong to.
This is emphasized by the fact that in the past few decades, Anglican Religious have finally been able to disassociate themselves from the Victorian controversies over churchmanship, so bitter and divisive, of which they were seen by many as a symbol. The days when monks and nuns were seen as part of the partisan army of an Anglo-Catholic party fighting for recognition are now gone. Some of today’s Religious are from Evangelical church backgrounds, in which fifty years ago a conventional Religious vocation would have been unthinkable. Equally, others come from non-church-going families, for whom the old ecclesiastical battles have no meaning in their own Christian journey.
Second, if Religious Life is a universal call then the ecumenical implications are immense. For Religious, the opportunities for building bridges between denominations are strong. The presence of Religious in the Anglican Communion is in itself an ecumenical witness, to which the Archbishop of Canterbury attested in his Foreword to the 1999 Year Book. This is because, for many churches, the presence of Religious Life is a sign of the depth of another church’s spirituality and way of life. The late Father Pedro Arrupe SJ drew out the full ecumenical implications of this when he said that the vows of Religious transcended denomination. They created a unity between Religious of different churches which was of more significance than all that divided them. Religious can be a part of what brings the Christian family together if this truth is fully understood.
Finally, the historical view of Religious Life can only be a source of confidence for all Religious, even those whose communities may seem frail. For at many times in the long unfolding of the Church’s journey, communities have suffered loss - and sometimes persecution - and yet their values have survived. As one community fades away, another is born, perhaps in a different part of the world. When First Order vocations are down, Third Order numbers may be rising. One has only to think of the pressures on the early monks and nuns, such as for the hermits of the desert, or the women of Rome - in the face of ridicule - making their homes into Religious houses, to understand the strength of the vocation. Many Religious in the developing world face the same threats today of war and upheaval, hostile governments and conflicts. In the West, dangers such as secularization, indifference to religion, and the lack of commitment that can arise from an over-emphasized individualism are every bit as threatening, even if in a different way. Yet, the values of Religious Life are not destroyed. The need for them is instead made more clear.
This is not to say that particular expressions of Religious Life will all survive. An attachment to externals can be a problem for some communities: a style of dress, a pattern of customs, a particular work, an institution, or a set of buildings. All these may not survive, but their disappearance would not signal the end of Religious Life. The Cluniac Benedictines, a well-known order of the medieval period, died out and yet their demise did not mean the end of the Benedictine witness. Similarly, the seed of Religious Life proved so embedded among Anglicans that even three hundred years of suppression could not eventually stop communities being formed again, once conditions allowed.
That is why I had such confidence to answer in the affirmative when asked the question with which I began this article. Even if sociology and other academic disciplines are not always encouraging to Religious, the witness of history has something different to say.