A day to explore Anglican culture … and humour

Patrick Comerford

Next Monday [13 May 2019], as part of the programme for readers and clergy in the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe, we are asking whether there something unique about ‘Anglican culture’?

The day offers an opportunity to ask whether there is particular or peculiar Anglican approach to music, literature, poetry, architecture, and other aspects of culture today.

When it comes to television sit-coms, we all know what is meant in a scene characterised by the question: ‘More tea vicar?’ It is a question that has lost known of its Anglican relevance, despite its hijacking by Mrs Doyle in the Father Ted sketches.

But culture includes humour, of course. Is there a way that Anglican clergy have been portrayed in popular humour that we need to be aware of as priests and readers?

One of my favourite comedy sketches has Marty Feldman and Tim Brook-Taylor on a train. Marty Feldman is fully robed like an Anglican bishop, in a cope and mitre and carrying a crozier. One of the passengers in the carriage, Tim Brooke-Taylor, challenges him, and asks where his diocese is.

An exasperated Marty Feldman eventually claims he is the bishop of this train, a bishop of no fixed abode, the Cheltenham Express, before storming out on his own.

At least Marty Feldman tried to get his passengers to sing a hymn, and took up a collection. But there is no ministry and there is no liturgy without the whole People of God.

Is this how people see us … asking them to stand up, sing out, knell down and pay up?

From the Barchester Chronicles to the novels of Catherine Fox, and the insights found in the poetry of TS Eliot and John Betjeman, there has been a unique contribution to culture on this islands that is inseparable from Anglican identity.

It ranges from the music of Taverner, Tallis and Marbeck and phrases in the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible that have passed into everyday language.

Nor is it just an English experience: TS Eliot had family connections in Dun Laoghaire, John Betjeman worked for many years in Dublin, and the Anglicans among great Irish cultural figures include Jonathan Swift, Sean O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats and Samuel Beckett.

Next Monday’s training day and workshops for clergy and readers take place in Askeaton Rectory [13 May]. This day offers an opportunity to explore and enjoy ‘Anglican culture’ – and to ask whether it has more to offer than another gin and tonic … or more tea, vicar?

The day begins, of course, with tea (and coffee) in the Rectory in Askeaton, at 11 a.m., and a shorter, evening version is offered for those with day-time working commitments, starting at 7 p.m.

TS Eliot … is there an Anglican culture? And is there more to it than poetry and another cup of tea?