aefenglommung (aefenglommung) wrote,
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aefenglommung

United Methodist Doctrinal Standards, Part I

The following are my outline and notes from a six-week course I taught for an adult Sunday School class last fall.

Session One:  The English Church Tradition
               The English Church was thoroughly orthodox, thoroughly catholic;
                However, it had certain characteristics that made it stand out (observed at the time by others)

1.  Christianity had penetrated the English people completely.  They were thoroughly converted and deeply spiritual.

  1. Disappearance of Anglo-Saxon paganism almost without a trace

  2. Monasticism very popular

  3. Mysticism in both lay and clergy     


  •                   The Cloud of Unknowing

  •                   Julian of Norwich             SHOW COPY, Revelations of Divine Love

  •                   Margery Kempe


  1. A tradition of devotional literature


  •                   Sawles Warde, Ancrene Wisse, etc.

  •                   English language prayer books


  1. Carols and Drama

  2. Lay involvement in parish life

2.  At the same time as devotional life had spread both deep and broad, the English Church was immensely sophisticated – from the beginning, almost – and produced many leading thinkers and artists admired across Europe

  1. Bede                            SHOW COPY, History of the English Church and People

  2. Alcuin

  3. Alfred                           SHOW COPY OF BOETHIUS, in Alfred's translation

  4. Anselm (Yeah, I know he’s a Norman)

  5. Early missionary impulse

  6. Narrative poetry (The Dream of the Rood, Piers Plowman, Pearl)      SHOW COPY, Pearl

  7. The question of the virtuous pagan

  8. Oxford University

  9. The music of the Chapel Royal

3.  From the very beginning, the English people were greatly attached to the Bible, and wanted it in their own language.

  1. Lindisfarne Gospels & the work of Alfred     SHOW COPY, Lindisfarne Gospels

  2. Wycliffe’s Bible still circulating in ms form when the first Lutheran sympathizers began work in England

4. Even though the English reverenced the Church, they poured scorn and skepticism on the hypocrisies and greed of prelates (cardinals, bishops, abbots), and showed interest in renewal movements long before the Reformation.

  1. Lollardy

  2. Various peasant revolts (w/ utopian, visionary ideas of the Church)

  3. Chaucer’s portraits of the clergy

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