Forgotten Anglican Homilies
The “Homilies” are an interesting footnote in Church of England history that nobody ever reads. They haven’t left the bookshelf in centuries judging by the dust on them. Even though Reformation scholar Ashley Null identifies them as “the touchstone of all Cranmer’s efforts” and “the [Protestant] regime’s theological agenda and the means of its revolutionary implementation,” I managed to graduate with a masters degree from an Episcopal seminary and finish most of the class work on a doctorate at an Evangelical Anglican seminary without reading a single Anglican homily. Why weren’t they foundational along with the other formularies in our theological formation instead of John Macquarrie and Karl Rahner? Perhaps they are ignored because of the long Elizabethan English sentences, or the deep-end theological constructs that are challenging for our sound-bite culture. And even though these are the sermons that “established an official epitome of scriptural teaching on the way of salvation by which all received and future doctrinal formulations were to be judged” (Null); oopsie, someone forgot to mention them in the ACNA Constitution and Canons, the 2020 Catechism, and Gafcon’s Jerusalem Declaration - in effect guaranteeing that they will be forgotten by yet another generation of Anglicans.
The homilies mentioned in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (2 and 35) refer to the original 12 sermons written in 1543 — were then forgotten — and then resurfaced to be published in 1547. The second book of Homilies, twenty of them, was published in 1563, and the 21st was added in 1571. Together they constitute the Edwardian and Elizabethan settlement into Protestantism of the Church of England. The two books are usually published together, and along with the Thirty-nine Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer are considered the defining doctrinal statements of Anglican identity - Anglican formularies.
The Homilies are sermons of a topical nature that were written to be read (preached) in all the churches of England in sequence. They “were designed to introduce biblically-starved people to doctrinally-healthy teaching in their own language, such as they had never experienced before in a regular and systematic way” (Lee Gatiss). It was not unusual for clergy in pre-Reformation times to be untrained preachers, and not at all uncommon for them to read a homily from an established collection. The purpose of the two books of Homilies was not only to provide sound teaching, but to also compensate for the lack of skilled preachers in England. “Despite the Protestant priorities, and even the subject of the first homily [Holy Scripture], the Reformers’ intention for the homilies was not to teach people the Bible itself, but instead to teach them a systematic doctrinal framework” (Tim Patrick). It’s easy to see how God used the Homilies to help ordinary people understand what the Reformation was about, and to impart a theological mindset around the authority of the Bible and the central doctrine of justification by grace through faith. They weren’t originally written to be official doctrine or to serve as a “formulary,” but over time they were recognized as a sound source of Anglican teaching. Thomas Cranmer was the author of four of the original twelve homilies: Holy Scripture, Salvation, Faith, and Faith and Good Works. Historian Gerald Bray writes that the homily on Holy Scripture gives us the context for which Articles 6 and 7 of the Articles of Religion were written and is “the most extensive exposition of the doctrine of Scripture to be found in any official Anglican document of the Reformation era.”
If Anglicanism is in trouble today for a lack of definition, I wonder how difficult it would be for the Homilies to be added as a formulary to the ACNA Constitution and Canons and to cross reference the questions of our Catechism from the teaching of the Homilies. The historic formularies provide the infrastructure to our Anglican heritage that will give us our future.
“With the advent of the Second Book of Homilies, the people of England, even thoroughly traditionalist parishes such as Morebath, were forced to hear week after week an uncompromising condemnation of essential Roman Catholic beliefs and faced constant encouragement to adopt, or at least adapt to, the distinctly Protestant religious culture now mandated by their government.”
“Official Tudor Homilies” by Ashley Null (The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, Ed. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan)
The First Book of Homilies: The Church of England’s Official Sermons in Modern English by Lee Gatiss
A Fruitful Exhortation: A Guide to the Homilies by Gerald Bray