Church Society people from the past
What do Winston Churchill's aunt, a Home Secretary from the 1920s, a coal miner's son from Newcastle and Lee Gatiss have in common? This particularly fiendish Only Connect-style question has a wonderful answer: they have all been leaders of Church Society or one of its forebears.
Lady Cornelia Wimborne
This redoubtable Victorian aristocrat was a daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. She married Mr Ivor Guest (later Baron Wimborne), owner of the world's largest iron foundry, in 1868. Encouraged by her husband and her mother-in-law, Lady Wimborne became a great philanthropist, improving tenants' housing, workers' rights, sponsoring new schools and founding churches. She had nine children, and was once said to have excused herself from the dining table after the first course in order to give birth and return for dessert!
In 1899, Lady Wimborne visited one of the charity homes she had agreed to become a patron of, only to discover that the home was overseen by Anglo-catholics, or as they were then known 'Ritualists'. She professed herself horrified to see this distortion of religion under the guise of the Church of England. When she then realised that Ritualism was widespread in England, she was determined to do something about it, and so was born the Ladies League.
Within a year, Lady Wimborne had persuaded around 2000 women to join this league. In her first anniversary address, she describes the work of the League as ‘calling on women in England to exert their influence to check, and if possible to prevent, what we foresaw must lead to disaster in our Church. We felt that on religious questions women are as vitally interested as men, and that in any case they are certain to exercise a predominating influence on them in one direction or another, and in this I do not think we were wrong.’
After just a few years, the Ladies League expanded to allow men to join, and in 1906, joined together with the National Protestant Church Union to form the National Church League.
William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford
The President of the National Church League in the 1920s was William Joynson-Hicks (later Viscount Brentford), who also happened to be the Home Secretary from 1924-1929. It is hard to imagine a contemporary Home Secretary also having time to run any another organisation today!
But in God’s providence, Joynson-Hicks was in office in 1927, when a proposed Revised Prayer Book required parliamentary assent. At the time, the only authorised prayer book for use in the Church of England was the Book of Common Prayer in its 1662 edition. The Oxford Movement and its interpretation of the BCP prompted the need for a review, especially looking at the ‘ornaments rubric’, that is, the instructions for what ministers should wear. This review quickly led to further work on revising the liturgy itself, to make it clear to a modern congregation, but without introducing doctrinal changes. Unfortunately, by the end of the First World War, attitudes had changed and there was a greater focus on allowing Anglo-Catholic changes to be made, such as the introduction of the reserved sacrament (that is, consecrated bread and wine not consumed immediately, but left on display, to be venerated.)
Although this Revised Prayer Book had been agreed by the National Assembly, the fore-runner of General Synod, it had to be legalised in Parliament. William Joynson-Hicks, aware that the book had been approved by the Parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee and passed in the House of Lords, knew that the Commons was the last line of defence. He organised a group of around 100 MPs, across party lines, and when the time came for debate, led the opposition to the book with a stirring speech against this ‘mediaeval’ liturgy and the idolatrous practice of reserving the sacrament. The motion was defeated by 238 votes to 206. An amended version of the book also failed to receive approval a year later.
However, the bishops decided to permit the use of the book anyway, during the General Strike of 1929. Use of the book became widespread and was formally approved by the bishops in 1958, despite lacking authorized status.
A fuller account of these events can be found in Joynson-Hicks’ own book, The Prayer Book Crisis.
Revd Tom Hewitt
Born in a coal-mining community in Newcastle in 1909, Tom Hewitt's family could not have imagined that he would one day hold a position similar to that of a previous Home Secretary, or one of the most well-connected aristocratic women in Victorian society. But the gospel breaks down all those boundaries and when Tom was converted as a teenager, his life changed dramatically. He became an evangelist and was eventually called into ordained ministry on the south coast of England. Less than ten years after he taught himself to read English, he was reading Greek, Hebrew and Latin!
In 1955, Tom became the General Secretary of Church Society (the equivalent of today's Director). His daughter writes, "At this time of working at Church Society, he was constantly seen in his study on the phone, jangling money in his pocket, and discussing who should go where in the next vacant living as vicar!" (Anne Beauchamp, From Pit to Pulpit, p29.) Tom continued in this role into the 1960's and the publication of Honest to God by John Robinson which set the liberal movement alight in the Church of England. As his daughter says, "Tom was once again at the coalface, this time fighting for truth" (ibid. p30).
His seven years with Church Society involved travelling around the country to visit, preach at and encourage Church Society parishes, to write papers, to attend meetings, including Church Society's own conferences, and 'to argue with bishops'. Apparently he was one of only two people ever to be physically removed from Lambeth Palace!
More details of Tom's life and ministry can be found in From Pit to Pulpit, by Anne Beauchamp.
Who's next?
The history of Church Society, like the history of the wider church, is full of unlikely people used by God in extraordinary ways. As we look ahead to the next 75 years and beyond, please pray with us that God will continue to raise up faithful men and women who will contend to reform and renew the Church of England in biblical faith, just as Lady Wimborne, William Joynson-Hicks and Tom Hewitt each did.