Disestablishment 15007 Feb 20

Archbishop Clarke speaks on Disestablishment

In his final public engagement in Dublin before his retirement, Archbishop Richard Clarke spoke on the Church of Ireland’s perspective on Disestablishment at Christ Church Cathedral on Friday, 31st January.  This was the last in a series of lunchtime lectures on the theme, hosted by the cathedral.

The Archbishop noted that the prevailing emotions among members of the Church of Ireland at the time of Disestablishment were probably resentment and fear, especially around its financial future and the risk of fragmentation.  The financial question was dealt with through the “considerable generosity” of the State in the commutation scheme.  At the time, the Church was “heavily evangelical” but also had liberal and High Church elements.  Evangelicalism comprised the trustee chapel movement (mainly in Dublin), the Protestant crusade of the Second Reformation (mainly in the West), and revivalism (particularly in Ulster).

He added that it should not be assumed that evangelicalism was necessarily opposed by the rest of the Church.  The then Bishop of Down, Dromore and Connor, Robert Knox, saw the Ulster revival as a “great and holy work”.  A liberal, broad church, strand in the Church was epitomised by Richard Whately (Archbishop of Dublin, 1831–1863) and saw the Church as “a divine institution” with an emphasis on its organisation rather than the “transmission of spiritual power.”  It took a low view of ministry and sacraments, and had an intellectual distrust of “anything seen as remotely superstitious.”

The High Church element was far removed from the Anglo–Catholicism that was developing in England and was, above all, intent on maintaining an “ecclesiastical and therefore doctrinal consonance” with the Church of England.  Many of the Bishops at the time of Disestablishment, were High Churchmen, including the Primate (Archbishop John Beresford) and Bishop William Alexander (Derry and Raphoe).  There was also a small element of Tractarianism, with fine scholarship, to which Archbishop of Dublin William Trench was close.

A dispute over the Book of Common Prayer arose in 1870, around issues of personal conversion and the role of confession in the Church, with many select vestries calling for its revision to prevent perceived false teaching.  This took up a large part of the agenda of the new General Synod in the early 1870s, a debate partly concluded by the Preface to the revised Book of Common Prayer in 1878.

Disestablishment “forced the Church of Ireland … to face up to what a true comprehensiveness might actually mean” and also, he continued, probably forced it to understand “how divisiveness, as distinct from divisions, could fatally damage a small Church.”  A high priority was placed on its internal unity and this has continued “for better or for worse” since that time.  While conservative in some senses, the Church has also been at the forefront of Anglican liturgical development e.g. regarding the marriage of divorced persons, and the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopacy.

The Church’s “somewhat ambiguous” relationship with the Church of England, he suggested, was partly due to Disestablishment taking place without its consent and the “mood of betrayal” that was created: “And, of course, today, almost every member of the Church of Ireland would bristle at the slightest suggestion that the Church of Ireland is an adjunct to the Church of England, or that the Archbishop of Canterbury has any position within the Church of Ireland.”  While distinct from the Church of England, it is a “more than full part” of the Anglican Communion.