The present tumult in the American Episcopal Church
and the global Anglican Communion is of gigantic proportions. We who
are Romans tend to think that we have a monopoly on trials and tribulations
on the ecclesiastical level.
Well, obviously we don’t.
Last week’s meeting of the Primates at Lambeth at the request
of Archbishop Rowan of Canterbury brought no immediate solution to
the impending split. A committee, however, will be formed to study
the issue of homosexuality. Well, there is one approach to problem
solving that is not unknown to the Roman Catholic Church in the United
States!
By coincidence, I’m in the midst of reading God’s Secretaries:
The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicholson. Early seventeenth-century
England was experiencing great conflicts of the two ecclesiologies
of the Anglican/Bishop Church and the Calvinist/Puritan Church.
The two versions of “church” reflected two conflicting
ideologies: the freedom of the individual conscience vs. the need
for order and imposed inheritance. Both seemed irreconcilable. King
James sought some peaceful accord, but the agitation only increased.
Amidst the tumult, the Puritan spokesman, John Reynolds, forwarded
the suggestion of “one, only translation of ye byble to be authenticall
and read in ye churche.”
You need to know that there were other translations of the “byble”
in use at the time, so Reynolds idea was not an innovative one. The
solution of translating the Bible did not occur overnight, but the
process was mobilized quickly.
King James saw the Bible to be an irenikon, a thing of peace, the
promise of concord. Work began on assembling a cadre of scholars and
translators. He could only hope.
Groups of scholars and translators were organized and work began .
. . not without incident. November 5, 1605—Guy Fawkes Day, the
seventeenth-century equivalent to our 9/11. A terrorist attack by
Jacobean Catholics tried to wipe out the royals and parliament. It
didn’t work for the royalists and the parliament escaped.
Even then, terrorists produced more terror in the name of religion—so
much for the new kingdom of peace and concord, which King James desired
so much.
Work continued on the new Bible and it finally appeared in 1611.
THE HOLY BIBLE,
Conteyning the Old Testament,
AND THE NEW:
Newly Translated out of the Originall
tongues: & with the former Translations
diligently compared and revised by his
Maiesties speciall Commandment.
Appointed to be read in Churches.
Imprinted at London by Robert
Barker, Printer to the Kings
most Excellent Maiestie.
Anno Dom. 1611.Perhaps it’s impossible to produce monumental
works without monumental discord and terror, both physical and psychic
terrorizing . . . all in the name of religion.
Some good advice, however, was afforded by the seventeenth-century
historian Thomas Fuller when he urged all to “Fair and softly
goeth far.” Good advice then, and good advice to the churches
today. For that matter, good advice for all of us.
“Fair and softly goeth far.”
