Book Group 2023: Austen in Context

Brendan Murphy on January 18, 2023

This year we will be visiting with four novels of Jane Austen as part of our cycle in the CCRP book group. What a joy! The extraordinary writer was the daughter, and sibling, of Anglican clergy, and assumed its norms in both the clerics in the novels, and in the rhythm of life. However it can be worth taking a moment to remember the history, both religious and civic, that surround these novels.

1689 Toleration Act

1704 Isaac Newton publishes Optics

1742 Handel’s Messiah

1773 Pope Clement XIV suppresses Society of Jesus (Jesuits)

1773 Boston Tea Party

1775 Jane Austen born

1781 American colonies win Revolutionary War

1787 William Wilberforce begins agitating against slavery in the British colonies

1788 Charles Wesley dies

1790-1840 Second Great Awakening

1793 Britain goes to war with France

1813 Pride and Prejudice published

1814 Invention of the steam locomotive

1817 Jane Austen dies

Our book group will wonder about the characters and motivations and choices in the books, all the typical things. However, as a church based book group, from the same tradition, one of the wonderings we might have is how does a novel reflect on Christian practice and belief; and how that may be different from the religion we experience today. To learn more about her life overall, follow this link.

Even if you have only seen the movie adaptations, you would likely notice some differences between the clergy then and now. Miss Austen assumed ‘high’ church norms (formal, upper-class, establishment – but not ‘anglo-catholic’), and an incorporation of Evangelical personal faith later in her life. Some of the obvious differences include:

  • The clergy are called clergymen (not priests or pastors). They were ordained as deacons and then priests (a vocational diaconate wasn’t active then), but not spoken of that way. When addressing a cleric, or speaking of them with a title, it was always Mister.
    • Use of common language around the vocation of priesthood revives in the Anglican tradition following the Oxford Movement in the later 19th century.
  • The presiding garments for Sunday are usually very similar to what we would call ‘office’ dress – a black cassock with a white surplice and black item called a tippet that is a preachers stole.
    • This is what our priest wore when we were having Morning Prayer rather than Eucharist during the shutdown of the 2020 Pandemic.
    • In JA’s era, Morning Prayer was the typical Sunday service, with communion occasionally.

There are volumes of other differences, however here are a couple of other points that touch on the activity and assumptions in some of her novels.

  • Ordination required a college degree, and at both Cambridge and Oxford there were colleges which required ordination for admission. Colleges were somewhat like departments or houses of students; and so to be in X College (even if its focuses were not religion) you had to be ordained.
    • Today the norm in the Episcopal Church and in the Church of England is a bachelor’s degree and a masters, or equivalent study.
  • Bishops could ordain anyone they desired, there were no Commissions on Ministry or General Ordination Exams.
    • Some would describe it then as a perfunctory formality.
    • Allegedly more than one aspirant was interviewed while playing darts.
  • To become a clergyman you had to
    • pledge assent to the 39 Articles,
      • examinations regarding them were part of academic work, not likely the ‘ordination process’.
      • An attempt to eliminate the 39 articles requirement failed in this era, but not overwhelmingly.
    • Be willing and able to ‘say the Office’ (preside at worship) and perform rites of passage (baptisms, funerals..) and read sermons (usually written by others).
    Today most Anglican clergy in the US and UK proceed through an extensive process of committees and discernment; and would generally have to give witness to a spiritual journey, and a sense of call rooted in a personal relationship with God and a commitment to a life of servant leadership in Jesus’ name.
  • All parish clergy were part of a (perhaps vicious) system of livings
    • where the local landowner (like Colonel Brandon in S&S or Lady Catherine in P&P) financially supported and ‘sold’ the ability to be the primary income receiver (and cleric) for that parish.
    • Many parishes did not have resident clergy
    • One cleric could have multiple livings in far flung places – being in residence was not the required norm.

There are a multitude of assumptions about what it means to be the church, lay and ordained, in Austen’s novels. Few would describe the Anglican Church of that era as vibrant or enthusiastic. After a century of bloodshed centered on religious differences, stability and lack of zeal may have been a gift of peace.

  • Faith in the Church of England in Austen’s lifetime had a more ethical than spiritual emphasis.
    • Seeking ‘high humanity’ (virtues) and ‘Christian charity’ (today we would say kindness) with a goal of shaping morality and spreading civilization. This is the key to understanding the religious conviction of her novels.
    • Worship was steady, not unworldly or mystical or intense
    • Church design was generally congruent, spacious, dignified, thoughtful, focused on hearing words not sharing of sacrament, evoking strong feelings, or the enactment of ritual (see Christ Church, Old City).
    • There was singing, but it was metrical settings of biblical texts (see Tallis), not the hymns that were common in other’ settings at this time (see Wesley or Watts).
  • The CofE is the established religion and is the official practice of approximately 82% in 1800. However there were only seats for less than ¼ of that number of souls (assuming the norm of one service a Sunday).
    • There were three other Christian religiosities present in the realm.
      • Old Dissenters (Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers – most of whom were by her time as near ‘establishment’ as the CoE)
      • New Nonconformists (Methodists, Unitarians)
      • Jacobians (Roman Catholic)
      All of these others and their differences in doctrine and practice were fiercely resented while parts were adopted, and therefore changing church life. It could be that her dimwit Vicars were a commentary in favor of the currents of change evolving church practice in her time.

All in all, if Jane Austen were to walk into CCRP today she would likely think it was more ‘Non-conformist’ and more Roman Catholic than anything she knew of the Anglican church. The church she knew was a neglected agent of moral education, and calm provider of rites of passage, rather than a deep vocation to be a sacramental presence and Jesus movement coaches.

January 24
Pride & Prejudice
February 28
God is Not One

March 28

April 25

Mary 4