In Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, there is scene where Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chancellor and primary advisor on foreign affairs, is forced to yield the insignia of chancellor to a stern Duke of Norfolk. Wolsey has fallen into disfavour because he has failed to obtain an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, thus forcing the king to take extraordinary means to divorce Catherine in order to marry Anne Boleyn.
Wolsey’s failure enraged Henry who stripped Wolsey of his state offices and finally had Wolsey arraigned for treason. On his way to London to answer the charges, Wolsey fell ill and died at Leicester at the end of November 1530. Among his final words are these: “If I had served my God as diligently as I did my king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.”
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| Archbishop Thomas Cranmer |
Thomas Cranmer, another bishop who served Henry VIII and Henry’s son, Edward VI, faithfully, would, as Archbishop of Canterbury, preside over the legal process that pronounced Henry divorced from Catherine, paving the way for Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. But when Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, came to throne after Edward’s death, she had Cranmer arrested and tried for heresy. Twenty-six years after Wolsey’s death, Cranmer was burnt at the stake in Oxford.
Throughout the centuries Christians have struggled with this question: What does it mean to be a good citizen? For those of us in the Anglican tradition, being a good citizen was often synonymous with being a member in good standing of the Church of England. For centuries Anglicans, whether in England or in Canada, enjoyed a privileged position with perquisites denied the adherents of other Christian traditions and other religious faiths.
During the early nineteenth century the English parliament debated whether to extend the right to vote to Roman Catholics and members of the so-called ‘dissenting churches’. The story is told that, during the debates in the House of Lords, a lay lord asked one of the bishops, “My Lord, is there salvation outside the Church of England?” “Yes, there is,” the bishop replied, “but no gentleman would avail himself of it!” It was during this same period that non-Anglicans finally began to win the right to be attorneys at law, to graduate with a degree from Cambridge and Oxford and to be officers in the British army.
Here in Canada Jews were granted political rights in 1832, earlier than elsewhere in the British Empire. But the connection with ‘mother church’ remained strong and it was not until the 1950’s that ‘The Church of England in the Dominion of Canada’ became ‘The Anglican Church of Canada’. Bishop Hill, the first bishop of what was then called ‘Columbia’, assumed that his letters patent from Queen Victoria entitled him to be the bishop of the British colonies on Vancouver Island and the mainland. But Edward Cridge, chaplain to the Hudson Bay Company in Victoria, was reluctant to accept this claim and, when he and Bishop Hill came to ecclesiastical blows in the 1860’s with a trial that went into the civil courts, Cridge pointed out that the Church of England was not established in these colonies and that the Crown had no right to appoint bishops.
Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I welcome the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Canada and I have no desire to change the constitutional monarchy that is the form of government we have here in Canada. I am happy to carry a British passport as well as my Canadian and United States passports. I am very happy that the Duke of Cambridge, as a serving officer in the Royal Air Force, is stationed on Anglesey, the homeland of my Welsh ancestors. The idea I want you to get is that we have a long history as Anglicans as being close to the civil government --- don’t forget the residential schools --- but those days are gone.
Being a good citizen, a good Christian citizen, is far more complex than the old relationship. The character of the Christian citizen will be one that Carl Schürz, the German-American journalist who served as a general of the federal forces during the Civil War, articulated in a toast during that war: “My country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right. When wrong, to be put right.” The Christian citizen is always called to hold the state accountable to the principles of our faith.
These principles are not unknown. They are expressed in two of the readings we have heard this day. First we heard the unknown writer of the letter to the Colossians who says, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. . . . Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.” (Colossians 3.12, 14-15) Then we heard the same principle articulated in the gospel according to John, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15.12-13)
The fundamental principle of Christian citizenship is that the church exists primarily for its non-members and is bound to ensure that the state does not exist for its own self-interest but for the interests of the voiceless, the powerless, the homeless and those whom the majority might consider expendable. When the state proposes policies which benefit the powerful at the expense of the powerless, then it is the obligation of the church, even at the risk of losing its existing privileges, to challenge the state and call it to clothe itself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Despite all the possible deficiencies of a hereditary monarchy, there is one attribute that I admire amidst the present generation of the royal family: Their awareness of privilege has opened the eyes of some to the reality of the underprivileged, the struggling and those to whom society often turns a blind eye. It is interesting to note that aboriginal people in Canada claim the Crown as a non-political ally in their battles with the changing governments since Confederation. The rights of aboriginal peoples were not guaranteed by Parliament but by the Crown, an authority which extends beyond the mandate of any government, whether Liberal, Progressive Conservative or Conservative.
We are right to celebrate the one hundred and forty-four years of Confederation. We have much to be grateful for. We have much still to achieve in order to create a truly just society in which every person, whether citizen or not, can grow into the full stature of Christ, our measure of human maturity. When we give our offering today, let us remember that the funds we collect are not for the continuation of a social institution but for the continuation of a voice that calls upon the state to tear down any barriers to the dignity of every human being. When we share in the bread and wine of the eucharist, let us remember that we eat this bread and drink this cup as a sign of our solidarity with those who have no food nor drink. When we go forth from this assembly into the waning days of a long weekend, let us remember that we go forth to love and serve the Lord, not in the abstract, but in the people among whom we live and work.
Let the Christian citizens who gather here today take as their motto the motto of the Prince of Wales: “Ich dien.” “I serve.” May it be so today and all the tomorrows that follow. Amen.
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