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Hallo again to all. We've been thinking lately about the question of Anglicans Behaving Badly — and there are a myriad of examples we could choose from round the communion. In a world of screaming assertiveness, it's not surprising (though it's still sad) to see that Christian men and women can be, from time to time, rude, boorish, and offensive. Perhaps it's time for an 'Anglican Book of Manners'. There is some doubt
as to what can be called the first book of manners. The earliest in England
is thought to be the 13th-century Liber
Urbani, or the The Book of the Civilised Man, by one Daniel
of Beccles. Few now are inclined to plod through a 3000 lines of Latin
verse — which include such gems as 'Don't mount your horse in the hall'
— and Daniel's Civilised Man is little
known outside scholarly circles. The origins of 'how to behave in society' long predate written publications, of course. Ancient Greece had a term for the great and the good — kaloς kἀgάϴoς. Translated literally, it means 'the beautiful and the good'. (Beauty of course referred to a far more complex and elusive idea than our use of the term today.) The KK were examples of how to live a good life*. If there wasn't a written guide, there was Alcibiades. Manners are of course culturally bound, but the marriage of morals and manners became closer, to the extent that Christianity and culture became synonymous. By the early eighteenth century, a Christian gentleman or a Christian lady was both expected to know which fork to use and how to live a life that, say, reflected the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: from charity and faith to fortitude and piety. Parental instruction was the normal channel for moulding Christian children. Whether in the somewhat thinly Christian letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son, the energetically pious letters of William Wilberforce to his children, or in any random selection of family letters written by Victorian bishops or clergymen, the instructing of children not only in morals but in etiquette is common. To be a Christian gentleman was to behave as a Christian gentleman. (If well-mannered blackguards occasionally surfaced, they were the exception that proved the rule. And they probably didn't attend Divine Service, besides.) As Victorian society became increasingly complex, an explosion of books of manners focussed more on the superficialities of etiquette. How to greet someone at a debutante's ball, for example, became more prominent, while the virtue of devoting one's time to the improvement of the poor receded. An occasional reminder that manners and morals were linked almost seemed jarring. Emily Post, perhaps the most well known of American writers on etiquette, in the first publication of Etiquette in 1922 wrote:
We rather like that, although we doubt that multiplication tables are a solution to all the problems at present in the Anglican Communion. But there is much to be said for outward courtesy and good manners, especially at times where deep disagreements provoke strong emotions. As Edward Pusey once wrote about manners 'of the old school': 'Others were preferred to self, pain was given to no one, no one was neglected, deference was show to the weak and the aged, and unconscious courtesy extended to all'. That might be a fine opening to Anglican Etiquette: A Twenty-First Century Guide for the Perplexed. See you next week. |
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Indeed so. And back to the issue of Anglicans Behaving Badly, we're a bit
worried about the coming Lambeth Conference. There will be in one place,
at one time, a great many bishops, many of whom disagree rather violently
with one another. They may find themselves at some dinner or other seated
at the same table.
We're unwilling to imagine that there would be either sullen silence or
raised voices during that dinner. But what are they to do? Imagine our surprise
when we found a possible solution in Emily Post's Etiquette.