Reflections on My English Pilgrimage, Part 2

The second set of reflections I've been ruminating on have to do with the Eucharist (that is, communion). If I had to look back and say which experiences most captivated me and produced the most profound spiritual effects in my interior life during the trip, they were all centered on the Eucharist. While I attended nearly as many church services as it is possible to attend while in England (many churches, following a pattern set down in the English Reformation, hold twice-daily prayer services and offer communion several times a week), three such experiences stood out to me: a communion service in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral at the end of my walking journey across Kent, another at the high altar of Lichfield Cathedral on the Feast of the Transfiguration, and a third in the nave of Southwark Cathedral on my final day in England. In each case, the moments of consecration and reception in the communion liturgy struck me with raw and unexpected emotional power, in a way that has stuck with me over the succeeding weeks.

My own Baptist tradition celebrates communion on a monthly basis (which is itself a far more frequent schedule than some earlier Baptist groups would have offered), but I'm also connected with a few groups that make it the central feature of the church's weekly worship. The latter position, in my opinion, tends to accord best with the earliest practice of the Christian church, as witnessed in both the New Testament and the apostolic fathers. Most of the churches which now hold a weekly Eucharist tend to hew to a high-church, sacramental position, while those that offer communion more infrequently generally hold a low-church, symbolic view of the rite. And while many of the debates between these two wings of the church rotate around the question of whether communion represents the real presence of Christ (and if so, in what way), I'd like to draw attention to a different feature of the early Christian practice with regard to the Eucharist. 

One of the curious features of the earliest post-NT accounts of communion liturgies is that none of them put significant stress on the institution narrative or the question of body/blood relative to the presence of Christ. That is, none of the mentions of Eucharistic celebrations from the late first, second, or early third centuries delves deep into the words of Christ at his Last Supper with his disciples, beyond the observation that he commanded this ritual. This is something of a surprise, since nearly all modern liturgies place their greatest attention on this aspect, and the interconnectedness of Communion and the Last Supper is clearly visible in both the gospels and the letters of Paul. So why the strange absence of a historical reference to Jesus's passion?

As I was looking over the earliest sources at the patristics conference, something struck me. When the Didache and Justin Martyr and Irenaeus speak about communion--all while strangely omitting the sort of body/blood reflections on the Last Supper which we would have expected--they all nevertheless do have a shared theme in common. Each of them connects the celebration of communion with the idea of creation, and often with a secondary connection to the idea of the New Covenant. The idea being presented, then, is this: that just as the Old Testament covenants with Noah and Moses were oriented around the presentation of sacrifices that represented the gift of created things being offered back to God, so the New Testament covenant is oriented around these symbols of New Creation: bread and wine, drawn from the stuff of creation but mystically representing the body and blood of Christ, who is himself the first instantiation of the New Creation. To eat the offerings of the Old Covenant (as was part of the ritual practice) was to gratefully accept the goodness of God's creation as our sustenance. Now, however, as human beings who have entered the New Creation through Christ's death and resurrection, we must be fed and sustained by the stuff of the New Creation--Christ himself. Since we belong to a new and different world, our spiritual sustenance comes from that world, from the work of God in New Creation, offered to us through Christ our Lord. As Irenaeus puts it, communion is "the new oblation of the new covenant" and "the means of subsistence, the first-fruits of his own gifts" (Adv. Haer. 4.17.5). This perspective undergirds the early Christian sensibility about the necessity of communion as a continuing part of Christian worship: we offer back to God the goodness of what he has given to us in a pure sacrifice (Mal. 1:11), and we then receive it as our food, the food of the New Covenant and the New Creation. Since Jesus himself is the first-fruits of that New Creation in a way that nothing else in creation is, it necessarily must be a representation of his own flesh which we consume. His body is so far the only physical element of the New Creation which has sprung forth into the world, and so if we are to offer and eat the fruits of New Creation (just like the old sacrifices offered the fruits of created things), it must be his body which is offered in the rite. We are being re-made as creatures of the New Creation, looking forward to the eschatological fulfillment of all things, and so we eat the bread of the New Creation in expectation of the fullness that is to come.

I'm not sure this particular perspective in early Eucharistic theology has really been properly considered by contemporary scholars, so it's something I'm continuing to think about. It may have further ramifications for our life in Christ, or it may not, but at the very least, it's certainly a point of interest. To receive communion is to take part in an eschatological sacrifice, a foretaste of the New Creation that is to come, and the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. And that is something worth reflecting on.

Reflections on My English Pilgrimage, Part 1

Part of the ruins of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury

In thinking over my English pilgrimage, I have three sets of reflections that have been rattling around in my brain, and I'll share them here in a series of posts, this week and next. First, about Christianity and the West; second, about the Eucharist; and third, about my own relationship to the church. So for this post, I'm looking back at the story of Christianity's re-emergence in Britain in the early medieval period, and what a burst of light in the so-called "Dark Ages" can tell us about our own day.

As a scholar of church history, and with a particular focus on the history of missions in early Christianity, I wanted to explore sites associated with the re-evangelization of Britain in the seventh century. Re-evangelization, you say? Well, yes. Britain had already received the gospel before that date, back when the native Britons were under the sway of the Roman Empire, and several of the sites I visited attested to that ancient heritage. There was St. Alban's Cathedral, marking the spot where--according to tradition--the first Christian martyr in England was killed, sometime in the late third or early fourth century. And there was St. Pancras Old Church in London, marking an old Roman encampment where, some believe, the first Christian church in Britain was erected after Constantine's edict of toleration in 313 AD. This Roman Christianity spread through the local population, such that the Britons largely became a Christian people over the succeeding years.

But paganism was about to mount a swift comeback in Britain, and it came in the form of a settler-invasion: the Angles and Saxons, Germanic stock from across the North Sea, settling first in Kent and East Anglia and gradually sweeping across the island. By the time the late sixth century rolled around, the Britons had been pushed back into Wales, and all of what is now England was once again pagan, bereft of the gospel. 

St. Chad, Lichfield Cathedral

It's at this point that my interest in the story picks up, because England would be the beneficiary of two great waves of missionaries, coming from the south (Rome) and the north (Irish monks in Scotland). While only one of the sites I visited on this trip attested to the legacy of the Celtic monks from the north (Chad's preaching in Mercia, where Lichfield Cathedral now stands), many of them were associated with the surge of evangelization from the south. Both the Roman and Celtic mission movements were spectacular: in the seventh century AD, in a time when the transmission of people and information was far, far slower than it is today, the message of the gospel raced across the hills and heaths of England at an astonishing pace. One needs only take a look at the handful of cathedrals I visited to see the story in real time: 

- Canterbury Cathedral, built on a site sacred to the memory of the original Roman missionary to the Anglo-Saxons, Augustine of Canterbury, who arrived there in 597 AD;

- Rochester Cathedral, marking the mission of Augustine's friend Justus, who planted the faith there just a few years later; and which cathedral is also the resting place of Paulinus, yet another member of the Roman mission team, whose ministry of evangelization in the early seventh century took him all the way northward, into York and Northumbria;

- St. Paul's Cathedral, which likely goes all the way back to the ministry of Mellitus, a fourth member of that same Roman mission team, consecrated by Augustine to plant a church in London;

- Christ Church Cathedral, marking a Christian abbey founded in the latter half of the seventh century by the Anglo-Saxon princess Frideswide;

- Ely Cathedral, also founded as an abbey in 672 by the Anglo-Saxon princess Etheldreda;

- Lichfield Cathedral, marking the seventh-century ministry of Chad, who had pressed the Celtic Christian evangelization of England deep into the last remaining pagan territory, adding to the legacy of a whole generation of Celtic missionaries like Cuthbert, Aidan, and Mungo.

Memorial to St. Paulinus, Rochester Cathedral

All that to say: many of the greatest churches of the land attest to a dramatic turning of the tides that came within the span of a single century. Britain had fallen from Christianity to paganism, and that violent conversion was, to all eyes, utterly complete. And then, in the blink of an eye, the whole thing was transformed completely, and the gospel made its second passage across the land in a way that transformed Britain entirely. It was a startling turn of events, and not by any means a guaranteed outcome--some of the other Germanic peoples of central, eastern, and northern Europe would take another half-millennium to fully convert to the Christian faith. Something swift and striking was afoot in seventh-century England, and it gives me hope for today.

We too live in an age where it looks like the former place of Christianity in our society is vanishing before our eyes. Like the earliest British Christians, we've seen tides of unfaith roll into our civilization with all the alarming power and swiftness of an invasion. Not only atheism, but paganism itself is making a startling return, and one gets the sense in visiting some of these old churches that one is really just walking through the ruins of a bygone age. The Christian world has fallen, and a new Dark Ages opens before us. Many readers will feel this sensibility about the course things are taking in America, but it is far more visible in western Europe, where the old churches built to call all the people to worship largely stand empty, save for a handful. Like Britain in the sixth century, it looks like Christianity's time has come and gone, and a pagan and disinterested populace looks everywhere for solace except to the old faith.

Marker in Ely Cathedral

But the sixth century was not the end of the story. Let's not forget just how fast the story changed, and how complete was the transformation effected by that change. There is no falling away so far and so completely that God is not mighty enough to bring us back. Even now, I wonder if we're not already seeing the seeds of a significant revival, as more and more public intellectuals begin to voice their doubts about the explanatory power of atheism. Walking around Oxford, the greatest university in the world, it is almost impossible not to bump into the question of God around every corner. It might be the case, just maybe, that the bleakness of European atheism in the twentieth century will fade in the memory as a blip in the storyline, like the pagan resurgence of sixth-century Britain, and that the twenty-first century will one day be remembered for a host of missionary-saints, with new cathedrals shooting up to embrace the sky. Bottom line: it's worth remembering that the West has seen a "post-Christian" age before, back in sixth-century Britain (and it's far from the only one). But it wasn't really post-Christian after all. It turned out, in the most marvelous way, to have been a pre-Christian age, a mere pause in the music before the symphony thundered on. 

A London Day before Heading Home

The final part of my trip was a little stopover in the London area before my flight home to Maine (where I'm now trying to recover from jet lag). As with much of the trip, I wanted to take the opportunity to see a few important church history sites, so I spent the day checking off a few more cathedrals (St Albans, Southwark, and St Paul's) and zipping around the Tube to see churches and memorials associated with some of my post-Reformation heroes.

Stayed at the Highbury Centre, the same place my friends and I had stayed
during a college semester in London some 20+ years ago

At the Isaac Watts memorial in Abney Park

John Wesley's memorial and historic chapel

John Bunyan's memorial in Bunhill Fields

St. Mary Woolnoth, John Newton's church

The old pub on Fleet Street that G. K. Chesterton frequented

Southwark Cathedral, where Shakespeare was a parishioner

The Lancelot Andrewes memorial in Southwark Cathedral

Metropolitan Tabernacle, Charles Spurgeon's old church

Holy Trinity Church in Clapham, the church that William Wilberforce
and his friends attended in London

The altar in St. Paul's Cathedral, where (in a previous edifice)
John Donne had served as rector

Norwich and the Eastern Cathedrals

After my conference in Oxford wrapped up, I took a couple days to head east, into East Anglia and Norfolk, which, like Kent, were early centers of the Anglo-Saxon reception of Christianity in the 7th century. I stopped at cathedrals in Peterborough, Ely, Bury St Edmunds, and Norwich, but the real goal for me was to reach a much smaller church, and one that came a little later in Christian history: St Julian's church, Norwich. This medieval church had been home to one of the great Christian writers of the Middle Ages, an anonymous woman now know only for the church in which she lived as an anchorite (a hermit-like monastic in permanent residence in a cell attached to a church): Julian of Norwich. Her book, Revelations of Divine Love, has long been among the books I've most highly treasured, with words that elucidate the love of God to me. So amid all the cathedrals and their splendor, I spent most of my time in the reconstructed Church of St Julian (there's a guesthouse nearby where I stayed), and was privileged to have church there Sunday morning. Next up, after a bit of birding here in the Norfolk area, it's back to London for a whirlwind look at some of the city's church history sites, and then a flight back home.

Peterborough Cathedral 

Norwich Cathedral

St Edmundsbury Cathedral 

Ely Cathedral 

A rose growing outside the Lady Julian's cell

This Week in Oxford, Part 2

Most of the week was spent at the patristics conference in Oxford. I presented my paper on Thursday--"The Advantage of Rusticity: Patrick's Dissent from Patristic Interpretations of Great Commission Texts (Confessio 40)"--and it seemed to be well-received. Here are a few more pictures from around the city. Next, it's off for a few days to see a site associated with one of my favorite medieval writers, Julian of Norwich.

The Radcliffe Camera (part of the Bodleian Library),
an iconic Oxford landmark 

The Examination Schools, where most of the
conference's sessions were held 

Paying my respects to C. S. Lewis at his grave
in Headington Quarry, just outside Oxford

The conference's opening session 
in Christ Church Cathedral

Christ Church College and Cathedral
(where John & Charles Wesley studied and were ordained)

This Week in Oxford, Part 1

With my walking pilgrimage complete, it was off to Oxford for the International Conference on Patristic Studies, and naturally I've taken time to explore some of the history of the city in between conference sessions. I'm staying in Magdalene College, C. S. Lewis's old teaching post. Here are a few shots of some notable Oxford spots:

Magdalene College Chapel 

On the cloistered quad of Magdalene College 

Pulpit from which Lewis preached his
"Weight of Glory Sermon," at University Church
(John Wesley also preached here)

Martyrs Monument, commemorating the executions
of great Reformers like Thomas Cranmer

The pub where Lewis & Tolkien used to hang out

Keble College Chapel

Day 4

On Sunday I finished the pilgrimage trail, walking the last few miles through the woods from Fordwich to Canterbury. I was able to attend both a communion service and the office of morning prayer in Canterbury Cathedral. I also visited the ruins of Augustine's old abbey and St Martin's, the oldest continuously-used church in the English-speaking world, where Christians have been worshipping since c.600 A.D. After that, it was on the train to my conference in Oxford (with just another quick stop along the way at Rochester Cathedral, where another member of Augustine's original mission team also established a church).

A view over St Augustine's Abbey,
with Canterbury Cathedral in the distance (left)

The Lady Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral,
where we said morning prayer

St Martin's 

In a side-chapel of Rochester Cathedral

Days 2 & 3

For days 2 and 3 of my journey (Fri/Sat last week), I undertook a walking pilgrimage across Kent, England's southeastern region. Not only was this area the ancestral homeland of the Burden family, it was also the site of a major event in church history, one that was near and dear to my heart as a student of early Christian missions: the evangelization of the Angles & Saxons, setting England on a remarkable history of Christian faith. This happened near the end of the sixth century, when Pope Gregory deployed Augustine (not the more famous church father) and a band of helpers to bring the gospel to the new pagan settlers of Britain. Augustine landed near what is now Ramsgate, on England's southeastern tip, where he met and preached to the king, then was invited to come and establish a mission at the royal city of Canterbury. My journey, then, would be to walk that ancient mission team's journey, from Ramsgate to Canterbury, where the old abbey of St Augustine of Canterbury still lies. Here are the two main days of that journey, ending at Fordwich, just outside Canterbury. Tomorrow I'll post about my entry into Canterbury on Sunday morning.

Ramsgate harbor

Shrine of St Augustine of Canterbury, Ramsgate 

St Augustine's Cross, marking where
he preached the gospel to the king

St Mary's Church, Fordwich -
a decommissioned medieval church
that now hosts pilgrims -
I stayed one night here

Path through the woods near the River Stour

Catching Up on Day 1 of the Pilgrimage/Conference Adventure

(Sorry it's taken me a bit longer to start posting than I anticipated. The first leg of the adventure was a walking pilgrimage across Kent, so WiFi was understandably hard to come by sometimes. Even here in Oxford it's spotty, so I'll have to post a bit at a time, but I'll try to make it daily.)

Day 1: Stopping in at the village churches of my Burden ancestors!

Borden (likely where the Burdens
lived some 900 years ago)

Interior of the Borden church
(exterior below)

Church of St Peter & St Paul, Borden
(tower goes back to earliest construction)

Now in Headcorn, where the Burdens lived
from about 1300 until emigrating to North America 

The Headcorn church, coincidentally
also named in honor of Peter and Paul

Interior of the Headcorn church 

That's it for now. I'll upload a photo log of my second day tomorrow. I'm posting from a cell phone rather than a computer, so any longform written reflections, which you might justly have expected of me, will have to wait till my return.