Traveling Along the Canterbury Trail
Exploring ancient paths and timeworn roads
Photo by Nicola Fioravanti on Unsplash
(A ten-minute read.)
Last fall, when I was at Oxford, I had a pretty remarkable experience that left a lasting impression on me. I attended Scriptorium a couple times, organized by the Pusey House, which is an Anglo-Catholic “fraternity” of sorts at Oxford (Anglo-Catholicism is a form of Anglicanism that gives greater emphasis to its connections to Catholicism).
Scriptorium is basically a way for students to pursue their scholarly work together, meeting for much of the day in the Pusey House library for prayer and personal research.
The day starts with a time of corporate prayer and fellowship, followed by personal academic research the rest of day that is intermingled with further prayer and fellowship. I’d imagine it’s a lot like what monks and abbots would have done a thousand years ago in their monasteries and abbeys, as they sought to collectively pursue their ministerial vocation.
I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect when I went the first day. But as I made my way through Pusey House, which I’d been to a time or two before for other events, the incense that spilled out from the chapel and wafted through the hallways took me back to ancient times. I felt this even more as I climbed the winding staircase up to the old library.
When I arrived, there was just a handful of people—maybe a dozen or so—who were huddled around each other at the far end of the library, making small talk and waiting to officially begin. I was handed a sheet, outlining the schedule for the day, noticing that “praying together” was first on the schedule.
My mind started racing, wondering if these “stuffy” Anglicans would have a season of “spontaneous” prayer, which is what I was used to from my “low church” upbringing, figuring this couldn’t be what they meant. Soon enough, my suspicions were confirmed, as the leader announced we’d be reciting a prayer together, which was printed on the back of the schedule.
With little fanfare, we launched into “A Student’s Prayer,” by “St. Thomas Aquinas,” written some 800 years ago, reading these words together:
Come, Holy Spirit, Divine Creator, true source of light and fountain of wisdom! Pour forth thy brilliance upon my dense intellect, dissipate the darkness which covers me, that of sin and of ignorance. Grant me a penetrating mind to understand, a retentive memory, method and ease in learning, the lucidity to comprehend, and abundant grace in expressing myself. Guide the beginning of my work, direct its progress, and bring it to successful completion. This I ask through Jesus Christ, true God and true man, living and reigniting with Thee and the Father, forever and ever. Amen.
It was there, in that moment, that I became overwhelmed with a deep sense of awe and mystery. There was something “magical” about reciting an ancient prayer together in unison, realizing people had probably been praying this exact prayer together for hundreds of years.
Together with the setting—within the walls of the world’s second oldest university, going back nearly a thousand years—I felt deeply rooted and connected to the religious past, participating in something that had withstood the test of time.
This hasn’t been an isolated experience during my time at Oxford of course—though it was perhaps the most arresting. One can’t help but be moved by a sense of reverence and wonder as they move around the hallowed quads of an institution that was turning nearly 600 years old by the time America’s oldest university—Harvard—opened its doors.
I’m not ready to become an Anglican, of course! Not even close.
But what I’ve unexpectedly experienced during my trips to Oxford is just a small slice of what I’ve noticed so many other Christians—especially those with roots in denominations (or especially non-denominations) that began in America—have been experiencing lately. There seems to be a growing attraction to more ancient expressions of Christianity, with people flocking to more historically-rooted denominations—like Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy.
The question is: what gives?
Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail
Nearly forty years ago, theologian Robert Webber, who taught at Wheaton College, wrote a very influential book that detailed his own journey into Anglicanism. Entitled, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, Webber described how he, raised a fundamentalist Baptist, found his way into the Anglican faith.
First published in 1985, a revised version, which included “testimonies” from other evangelicals who’ve subsequently traveled this same trail, was published in 2012—demonstrating how the book is as relevant now, and perhaps even more so, than ever.
Webber offered six reasons for why he became an Anglican, which I think are largely reflective of why many others are similarly gravitating to ancient expressions of Christianity today. According to Webber, he felt Anglicanism gave him a greater sense of mystery, a more robust sense of transcendent worship, a more embodied experience through the sacraments, a deeper historical rootedness, a more ecumenical connection, and a holistic spirituality.
I’ve observed this in the experience of others as well, as they’ve grown disillusioned with the pragmatic, shallow, isolated, transient nature of a typical evangelical church today.
Think about it: the average evangelical in America today probably attends worship in a nondescript and austere building. Some may even meet in a movie theater or a box store, which they may have to vacate each week, since they don’t own the building. They then sing songs that were written a year ago and which will probably be out of style by next year. The sermon they hear will likely demonstrate very little awareness of or connection to the past, focusing mostly on the trendy and the relevant.
Such an experience doesn’t give a sense of transcendence or rootedness. It gives the feeling of transience and impermanence, mirroring too much the common and mundane. It doesn’t instill an impression of awe and wonder, nor leave room for mystery or the unexplainable. Everything is mostly immanent, intentionally created to be easily grasped and understood.
But I think most people who take their faith seriously eventually reach a point where they want to be challenged and stretched, realizing there’s more to faith than simply the relevant and urgent.
I think another big reason for evangelical disillusionment, which Webber may not have anticipated forty years ago, is the deep wounds that have resulted from “celebrity” culture within contemporary evangelicalism. We’ve gone through a huge string of church scandals in recent years, mostly instigated by “celebrity” pastors like Mark Driscoll and Bill Hybels, which has led to much religious “deconstructing” and distancing.
“High church” denominations, by their very nature, are not pastor-centric, mostly because they’re not sermon-centric. Webber points this out when he speaks of the sacramental nature of Anglicanism, for example, which places greater emphasis on the Eucharist—the bread and the wine—than on the sermon.
You thus largely won’t find any “celebrity” pastors in Anglicanism or other “high church” traditions, as these largely place their focus elsewhere.
This is not to say, on the other hand, that these approaches focus less on the Bible. In fact, sometimes they offer more Bible, as their various liturgies often have long stretches of Scripture-reading, without commentary, which places greater focus on the Bible itself, rather than on the one preaching from the Bible (or not preaching from the Bible, as the case may often be).
For my part, all these reasons resonate with me to various degrees. I too have felt a pull to connect with a more historically-rooted faith, looking not only forward, but also grounding myself in the past. As I’ve written before in relation to ancient buildings, I think connecting ourselves to institutions and practices that have withstood the test of time gives us a deeper sense of transcendence and the eternal.
Similarly, I’ve felt myself more attracted to both mystery and embodiment lately, recognizing we’re not simply rational creatures who experience God simply through our minds. We are more than merely “thinking things,” to borrow a phrase from James K. A. Smith that I’ve used many times before, and require whole-bodied experiences in order to fully experience the divine. And sometimes, as suprarational people, we won’t be able to fully explain what we’re experiencing.
At the same time, as I’ve written above, I’m not ready to go “all in” on turning my faith into a “high church” experience.
I say this because I have both theological and experiential concerns.
For one, I’m not ready to fully divorce praxis from theology, as Webber—who leaves me with the impression that choosing a church tradition is simply a matter of personality—seems quick to do.
Thus, if someone likes their worship with a touch of incense on the side, he or she should be an Anglican. If a person likes a strong sermon, he or she should be a Presbyterian. And so forth.
Indeed, according to Webber, everyone really agrees on the basics of the faith, and everything else is merely a “secondary” issue that can be navigated based on preference.
While I’ve written extensively about the importance of not turning non-essential matters into essential matters, I do think there’s probably more theology at stake than Webber acknowledges—as, for example, Eucharistic-centered liturgy often derives from a belief in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine (and thus, the urge to display more “reverence” and sobriety).
I also think that as powerful as liturgical experiences can be, they are still, at the end of the day, quite “dry” for my relational and organic soul. The first time I went to Oxford, I decided I’d try to attend Evensong—which is a formal Anglican worship service every evening—at a different college every night.
After the first one, however, I said to myself, I can’t do that again. It was just too stuffy, too dry, too passive.
I missed the relational and informal worship gathering my congregation holds every week, where we don’t sit as passive spectators but interact and connect and get heart-to-heart with each other (which is also different, by the way, than most “low church” congregations—both within evangelicalism at large and my own faith community specifically).
But this is probably precisely why enjoyed the experience of Scriptorium so much. It was the best of both worlds.
I was in a small community, numbering only a dozen or so people, where we were both intimately connected to one another, being in close physical proximity, and yet reciting ancient prayers together in unison. There was incense wafting through the air as we stood in an old library with high ceilings, and yet we took regular breaks to connect and encourage each other in both our scholarly pursuits and personal faith.
And that is probably, at least for me, the path forward—pursuing a more eclectic approach to corporate worship and church life that takes both a unique theological system seriously (such that my faith community subscribes to), while embracing a more robust view of our connection to the past and the place for mystery.
I think, too, that most Millennial and Gen Z Christians (and those who are Christian-adjacent) are interested in more eclectic approaches to faith as well, being drawn to really intimate and participatory gatherings, while also incorporating practices that give more room for mystery, embodiment, and a connection to the past.
What that exactly looks like is something I’m not clear on at this point. But that’s at least where I am in theory right now.
Of course, with that said, all this is largely a discussion about corporate worship—that is, how we Christians organize ourselves when we gather together to worship God. As important as that is, and as much discussion as it often garners, it’s just a small, small fraction of what we Jesus-followers should concern ourselves with.
But that’s a topic for another day.
Until then, I’m going to continue to bask in the memory of reciting ancient prayers with fellow Jesus-followers who were trying to take seriously both their relation to God and their preparation for service to him in the world.
Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.