The Perils of a National Church: A.C. Tait and St Paul’s Cathedral

Regardless of whom you agree with in present debates about whether or not to participate in the eviction of protestors around St Paul’s Cathedral in London, what this controversy shows is how difficult it is for the modern Anglican church to find a genuinely prophetic and dynamic role in British society. Establishment, money and property are burdens as well as benefits of being an old religious body. The Anglican Church is so complicit in the financial structures, political structures and the commitments that owning expensive and ancient property entail that it is difficult for it to be the prophet and stand up for the margins in society, even if there are voices within it that call for action.

Half a year ago, I actually went to a service at St Paul’s. It was a nice service, with a suitably general and un-provocative sermon. It was held beneath the dome, with the bulk of the nave being fenced off for tourists, who paid some ridiculous sum (perhaps 20 pounds?) to enter the cathedral. Part of my desire to go to the service came from my indignation at the very idea that a church should charge an entry fee, but St Paul’s is careful about its market, and congregants were funneled out, and were not allowed to become tourists. I specifically wanted to go into the crypt to view a small chapel in which I had a particular intellectual and personal interest, but a verger told me that it was closed, and that I wouldn’t be allowed to go there anyway unless I were a paying tourist. This did not make me happy.

Archibald Campbell Tait was the Bishop of London from 1856-1868, and Archbishop of Canterbury from then until his death in 1882. His career success in holding two of the three most senior positions in the Church of England was tempered by almost continual personal tragedy. Struck down by rheumatic fever as a young man, he was sickly, and his wife and all of this children predeceased him. He was well-liked by Queen Victoria (his Scottish origins and amiable personality helped him on that front) but struggled to contain the various divergent strands in the Anglican church of his time.

However, I want to briefly describe an episode from his time as Bishop of London, which served as an attempt to reinvigorate the Anglican Church’s prophetic role in Britain. At the time, the church was facing the problem of urban growth and the need to create new parishes – a cumbersome process for an established church that was integrated with the government. Tait went out and preached in the open air in the more depressed areas of London, such as the docks where tens of thousands of workers jockeyed for jobs unloading the produce of a burgeoning empire. As the Bishop of London, he felt called to talk to all of his flock (which, since he was of broad inclinations, he interpreted as everyone in London) focusing on churches in poor areas. Although he was not an evangelical, he allowed those among his clergy to use theatres to do outreach to the masses, even though such a move was unconventional.

He also opened up Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s to the people. Previously, they had not been used for mass services except on state occasions, where they were closed but to the elites involved. Extraordinarily, these great churches were not used for services. When (after much resistance from the Cathedral chapter) he finally opened up St Paul’s to a service for the people as a whole, thousands of people crowded in; so many, in fact, that no-one could hear him preach in the huge space (interestingly, Westminster Abbey was much more open to holding services). Most of those who packed into the cathedral would have been people who could not yet vote, and had no say in the political process (a majority of adults in Britain were not entitled to vote until after 1918, and full adult suffrage had to wait until 1928). Yet in opening up the cathedral Tait made a statement about their place in a broad Anglican Church, and, therefore, in British society as a whole.

Have we come back to a situation where, once again, St Paul’s is open only to elites? Those with tourist cash and potential donors are, arguably, more important to the cathedral than pilgrims, seekers and the lost souls of London generally. Will the powers at the head of the church open it or close it, as social and economic change drives Britain towards a less comfortable, more divided and more desperate future?

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