Phillips Brooks: When Orthodoxy Becomes Optional

Was the little town of Bethlehem really that still? And did the morning stars proclaim the holy birth while mortals slept, as Phillips Brooks wrote in his well-known hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? Underlying the romanticized picture of the first Christmas morning is an empty theology that R.R. Reno describes as “a pallid Christian humanism.” The 19th century Broad Church movement booted the Episcopal Church down the road towards lukewarm Protestantism. Brooks, the charismatic rector of Boston’s Trinity Church and briefly bishop of Massachusetts, died on this day, January 23, 1893.

Phillips Brooks was the most famous preacher of his day and the archetypical Episcopalian and Broad Churchman. He held himself above the doctrinal issues that concern theologians, harped at his congregation to just be better Christians and citizens, and he was completely fine with mindless pageantry and the beauty of entertaining Episcopal worship. He, who famously admitted that “the church does not remember [Christ], it feels him,” delivered messages that were based on “a sunnier picture of human nature” (Gillis Harp’s description), and then he wrote a book on preaching that became required reading for all future priests down to our own day. The Broad Church influence describes the shift in Anglicanism from the Cross of Christ to the Incarnation. Anglicanism today is in trouble here and around the world for a lack of theological definition or historical context because the church that stands for nothing will fall for anything! Richard John Neuhaus was right: where orthodoxy becomes optional, it will eventually be forbidden (proscribed).

Is there hope for a church in which its members are encouraged to stroll through our five hundred year history (really two-thousand years) picking and choosing from the buffet of different movements, trends, and theological aberrations to fit our personal aesthetic tastes? No, no hope for that church at all. The Vicar of Bray may keep his job, but he contributes pitifully little to God’s Kingdom. But there is wonderful hope for those who can recapture the biblical, generous and beautiful aspects of our Anglican heritage. Those who look to Reformation Anglicanism look to our traditional historic formularies, viewing Holy Scripture as God’s uniquely inspired word that transforms human affections towards loving God and loving neighbor, and who see justification by grace through faith alone as the doctrine on which the church stands for worship, theology, and Christian living.