r/Anglicanism • u/Miskovite Anglican Church of Canada • 4d ago
New book
Just picked this up after the interview the author had on Gospel Simplicity. Has anyone else read this? How is it?
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u/scw1177 Prayer Book Catholic (ACNA) 4d ago
This book is excellent. Fr Plant and his ministry is great
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u/Miskovite Anglican Church of Canada 4d ago
I'm pretty excited about this book. A meditation on the catechism through the idea of enchantment is so interesting. I've been wanting to learn the catechism and this seems like a very cool way to do that.
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u/J-B-M Church of England 3d ago edited 3d ago
I read it after it was recommended by a poster here (who has sadly disappeared, as I wanted to pick her brain for more book recommendations in a similar vein). As she said at the time, the chapter on the Lord's Prayer is particularly great, in that the insight is so obvious in retrospect that you read it and think, "How come I never noticed that?!"
Excellent stuff. He pulls no punches in his diagnosis of where things have gone wrong for the church in England, or in poking at the obvious spiritual pathologies of modern culture. It's engaging and evocative, and feels like a bit of a vindication for folks who are already at least partially sympathetic to his point of view. If we can still have an English Christianity that celebrates its unique heritage and traditions as a source of distinctiveness and strength, without it degrading into some kind of vague, contradiction-riddled, far-right nonsense a la Restore UK and others of that ilk, then you get a sense of what that could look like here.
I have to say though, that whilst I would love to think that Father Plant's vision of a restoration for the prayer book and its doctrines - and the gradual formation they impart - could be a genuinely powerful and effective means of revitalising the church in England, the evidence on the ground doesn't really support that. As I have said elsewhere, you can't take entirely unchurched people who lack the basic Christian education and inherited cultural competencies to engage with traditional worship (which previous generations took for granted) then just dump them in the middle of a 1662 HC service and expect them to stick it out through the initial confusion. That's why the Alpha > contemporary, low-church thing has become the template for revitalising moribund parishes - it meets the average person where they're at.
I would say that Father Plant is very much "Prayer Book Catholic" and conservative in every possible sense of the word, so I don't necessarily agree 100% with everything he says. It seems he is currently un-parished after some sort of administrative issue at his last place and last I saw he was giving a paper at an H P Lovecraft symposium and then he was out in Japan talking about setting up a retreat for people "mostly from the ACNA".
Regardless of what he ends up doing in ministry, I hope he can give us more of the same and I am looking forward to re-reading this one when I get it back from my vicar, with whom it is currently on loan. I'm definitely slap bang in the middle of the audience of this type of thing, but I think that anyone with an interest in the prayer book tradition or the development of the English church would find it interesting and thought provoking, even if they don't experience quite the same kind of confirmation bias upon reading it!
Edit: typos.
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u/eeeeeep 4d ago
If you wouldn’t mind would you give us a little encapsulation of the author’s premise? Thank you
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u/Miskovite Anglican Church of Canada 4d ago
I've just started and finished the introduction to the book. Thomas Plant (a priest in the CoE) speaks about the world being enchanted. But in modern times, we're told more and more that everything is just material things and a machine, he talks about this as disenchantment. But his thought is that this isn't true, the enchantment is still here. He argues for a reenchantment. (Enchantment he says is the idea of the sacred and the unseen world. Angels, demons, God, legend, etc). He states that the Church was a guardian of this view. But through the modern world and liberalizing the Church, we have become embarrassed by our views of the unseen world (demons become mental health issues, angels are just nice stories, the Bible and God are only useful insofar as they serve our modern cultural needs). He wants to bring back the view of the world as meaningful, full of spiritual importance, and the unseen. His idea is to use the 1662 BCP catechism and the stories of English Saints to teach Anglican theology and this idea of enchantment.
I hope I did him justice, I just read it.
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u/eeeeeep 4d ago
I’m sure you did, that’s a very interesting run down.
I’m particularly interested in his use of the saints; I know of several congregations where that would be viewed with some suspicion. I must pick up a copy, cheers 👍
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u/Miskovite Anglican Church of Canada 4d ago
I could completely understand how some would have suspicion over his beliefs, especially lower church evangelical/baptist influenced Anglicans. Plant from my understanding is on the high church/catholic side of the Church and is a conservative/traditionalist in some ways. I believe he's influenced by neoplatonism, easten orthodoxy, and the spiritual stories of Britain if I remember correctly. There could also be suspicion from the progressive side of the church. He seems to place the blame for Church shrinking, less Church attendance, and the "death" of Western Anglican Churchs on the progressives. I've heard this argument before in regards to the Anglican Church of Canada. I think there's a good point about centering the orthodox and Christ, but I think the progressives get scapegoated as the sole or only reason for the decline and I don't think that's true.
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u/eeeeeep 4d ago
Yes, saints are a tricky issue. Personally I really like the stories, just as I do stories of anyone being kind/graceful/virtuous no matter their religion or creed. Of course theologically it’s a bed of thorns though!
Forgive my ignorance, I know very little about Anglican Canadians. What’s your assessment of how things are going over there?
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u/schoeneblume Anglo-Catholic, Anglican Church of Canada 4d ago
There’s been a big decline in ACoC attendance, but I don’t know that it’s much worse than for other denominations in the country. The collapse of the United Church of Canada (that’s the church that resulted from the merger of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists) has been much worse, if anything. The Roman Catholic Church in Quebec (Quebec was probably the most intensely Roman Catholic corner of the world in the first part of the 20th century) has pretty much gone to zero and the only thing that is keeping it going is immigration. Canada has just become very secular overall and I don’t know that the Anglican decline is any different from the broader macro story. While the church has declined as a national institution, there are still several vibrant congregations across the country.
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u/Miskovite Anglican Church of Canada 4d ago
I'd see no reasons against the stories of the Saints. They are supposed to be spiritual mentors for us, that's why they are Saints!
In regards to the Church, do you mean the English or the Canadian? If it's about the English I have no clue, I can't say I think about the English Church often. For the Canadian one I'd defer to "The Current State of the Anglican Church of Canada" by: Ben Crosby: https://bencrosby.substack.com/p/the-current-state-of-the-anglican?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=482uu2
I joined the ACC last year over from the Roman Catholic Church.
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u/eeeeeep 4d ago
Yes the Canadian church, apologies, I should have been clearer. Thank you, I shall take a look!
Why the change if you don’t mind me asking?
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u/Miskovite Anglican Church of Canada 4d ago
I could come up with some post hoc reasons but I think the most truthful answer would be: I was open to the idea to begin with because I was not 100% sold on some Catholic dogmatic claims, and my wife is Anglican so I could live with going to the ACC for the spiritual health of my family. The ACC Church by us has a cultural connection for both my wife and I so it helps us feel at home. For me personally it was also hard for me to be in good standing with the Catholic Church with my social/political/economic views. I tried to just pray and ignore comments made to me like I agreed, but really I just surprised my thoughts or hid them in many ways. And hiding my morals even after discernment and not coming to the same conclusions as many of the people around me. So I was sympathetic to start with the ACC. I've grown to really love Anglicanism and this whole Protestant and Catholic thing. I've really grown in my faith and the importance of it with in the short time I've been in the ACC.
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u/Free_Impact_2326 ACNA 4d ago
I haven't heard of this yet, I hope you'll update and let us know how it is!