In the church of St Mary and the Virgin in the Saxon village of Saffron Walden in Essex, one small stained-glass window remained after Oliver Cromwell’s men invaded the sanctuary and destroyed all images.
It is a small painted portrait of a local noble lady. The soldiers left it alone, not knowing the secret. It was the lady’s portrait, but it represented St Anne, grandmother of Jesus.
True iconoclasts, Cromwell’s men were determined to destroy all ‘Catholic’ images. This Puritan movement of the 1640s was determined to cleanse and purify the Church and complete the Reformation.
However, the crowning of Charles II reinstated the monarchy, the established Church and the ‘broad-church’ diversity of the Elizabethan settlement for which the Anglican Church has been famous ever since.
According to Muriel Porter’s new book The New Puritans, this slice of history has become very important in understanding the wave of reform thrust upon the Anglican Diocese of Sydney by its archbishop, Peter Jensen.
The genius of Dr Porter’s book is that she is not your typical historian—objective and disinterested. She readily admits that she is highly critical of the Anglicans in Sydney and believes that they are an aberration in church history.
This does not make them inconsequential, for as the largest and wealthiest Anglican diocese in the world, they are seeking to influence Anglican identity and core beliefs. They are also seeking to rebadge Christianity in Australia.
‘Like the Puritans,’ Dr Porter writes, ‘Sydney Anglicans want to remove everything they believe distracts from the pure knowledge of God through God’s Word, whether it is religious ceremonial, liturgical dress, religious images or anything that appeals primarily to the senses.’
She argues that they display the key markers of fundamentalism: a rationalist mindset, a Calvinist zeal to root out error and preserve doctrinal purity, charismatic and authoritarian leadership, behavioural requirements and a tendency to separatism. She adds another identifying marker not usually listed as fundamentalist: a commitment to male headship.
Now some will say that Dr Porter is obsessed with women’s ordination. She has campaigned for this for 30 years within the Anglican Church, right up to the present when she chairs a national Anglican inquiry into women bishops. But she argues her point well, and devotes a whole chapter to what she calls ‘the great cause’ of women’s ordination, tracing the Sydney opposition to it through various legal manoeuvres and synod debates.
Dr