Is Your Vicar a Heretic?

It reads like something out of the Tudor dynasty. According to the BBC, the Church of England is considering re-introducing trials for heresy for vicars who don't believe in the "key doctrines" of the 39 Articles, dating back to 1563.

To be honest, I'm not all that familiar with the Articles themselves, just the history behind them. A lot of my research in my previous life was on the church prior to the Reformation of the early 1500s and the effects that the Reformation had on women within the Church of England after Henry VIII's break with Rome. I never spent much time on the Articles because, much to my own dismay, I never finished my research.

However, some of these ideas do sound familiar to me, and the fact that vicars could be prosecuted for them in the 21st century just seems surreal, though I agree that the Church has to adhere to rules to keep from dissolving into chaos. I thought this was interesting enough to post here.

1. The Virgin Birth - There's a one in four chance that your nearest Rev is a heretic on this score. According to a Christmas 2002 poll, 27% of vicars deny that Jesus was born to a virgin. One Hampshire vicar interviewed at the time said, "This is one of those topics I do not go public on. I need to keep the job I have got."

2. The Resurrection - As many as one in three CofE clergy reject the bodily resurrection of Jesus, according to a Daily Telegraph report in 2002. In reality, the question ministers were asked, by Christian Research, was "Do you accept it without question?" to which 66% answered "Yes". This rather takes the heat off - no-one in the Church will object to someone having questions.

3. Predestination - Less obviously, your person of the cloth might get into hot water for denying that God decided who will be saved and who damned "before the foundations of the world were laid". This is historically the most unpopular of the 39 Articles. For 300 years, the majority of Anglicans have always denied predestination. "It represents the most holy God as worse than the devil" said one 18th Century clergyman - and have had to bend the words of the Article to make them say something else. The Article warns believers not to think about the subject too much.

4. Rebirth Through Baptism - This is one to trip up evangelicals who accept miracles like the Virgin Birth without question. The 39 Articles say that children are cleansed of original sin and born again when they are baptised. Evangelical Anglicans tend to see baptism as symbolic rather than magical. This is the heresy that lost the Reverend George Gorham his job at Brampford Speke in 1847, in what is often said to be the last heresy trial in England. (In fact Charles Voysey was convicted of a whole string of heresies in York in 1871.)

5. Purgatory - On another wing of the church, if your local parson is Anglo-Catholic, he could fall foul of several anti-Catholic clauses in the 39 Articles. The Anglo-Catholic movement reintroduced many traditional Catholic teachings into the Church of England - such as purgatory, where sinful Christians are punished before they can enter heaven. So when Article 22 denounces "the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory" as "a fond thing vainly invented", Anglo-Catholics tend to explain that they believe in purgatory, just not the "Romish" doctrine of purgatory that the Elizabethan writers of the Articles had in mind.

6. Transubstantiation - Another sticky one for Anglo-Catholics, who believe that the bread and wine in the Mass literally change into the body and blood of Christ. Article 28 insists: "Transubstantiation (or the change in the substance of bread and wine)... is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture." In 1841, John Henry Newman, a founder of the Anglo-Catholic movement, explained how you could reinterpret this to allow transubstantiation. One critic said he would no longer trust Newman with his silver.

7. Capital Punishment and war - If you generally see your local vicar with a copy of the Guardian rather than the Daily Mail, the chances are you could get her sacked for denying the 37th of the 39 Articles which sanctions capital punishment: "The laws of the realm may punish Christian men with death." The same Article might also be her downfall if she preaches pacifism, as it tells us that it is quite acceptable "to wear weapons and serve in the wars".

8. Original Sin - The 39 Articles support the traditional teaching that we are all born guilty at birth, inheriting the sin of Adam. There isn't any one branch of the Church that specifically opposes this, it's just generally a rather unpopular idea these days - for obvious reasons.

9. Democracy - Another one to make left-of-centre cassocks tremble, if they are republicans, or even believe that Parliament should have more power than the Queen. "The King's majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England," insists the 39 Articles, adding that the government of Britain belongs above all to him and he should restrain "the stubborn and evildoers" with the sword.

10. God - Not to overlook the obvious, the 39 Articles affirm that God exists. More likely than not, your local vicar does too, but don't take it for granted. The only Anglican minister to be dismissed for heresy in the 20th Century was Anthony Freeman. He lost his post in Chichester - without a trial - as recently as 1994, because he wrote a book arguing that God was not a supernatural being but merely "the sum of all our values and ideals".

Source: BBC News Magazine