Wednesday was the feast day in the Anglican Communion for the author Richard Hooker. Not the author of the novel MASH, but of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which (the last time I looked) has not been made into a movie or television series.
But perhaps it should. Richard Hooker the theologian has a good deal to say to us. Hooker lived in a time of great religious controversy, as the Puritans and the Catholics struggled for power. Being on the wrong side of the dispute could get you burned at the stake, depending on the current religious sentiments of the monarch. The “Elizabethan Settlement,” Queen Elizabeth I’s attempt to mediate the conflict, essentially led to Catholic-style worship and church organization under the control of the monarch rather than the Pope. However, the theology of the Church of England, as expressed in the 39 Articles of Religion, was much more Protestant. An attempt to give both sides something, the Elizabethan Settlement initially had the opposite reaction, making both sides mad.
It fell to Hooker, an Anglican priest based in Temple Church and close friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to defend the Elizabethan Settlement. The Laws, his lifework, did that, but it did much more than that. It outlined a theory of church law and organization that went beyond ecclesiology and set out a theology of human life together that was in its way just as complete and complex as Calvin’s The Institutes of Christian Religion. Hooker wrote a theology of not just church law, but all law that has stood the test of time.
Among Hooker’s enduring contributions was the theme of “Scripture, reason, and tradition” that stands as the hallmark, at least aspirationally, of Anglicanism. Among the many battles between Catholics and Puritans was the battle over Scripture versus church tradition as the source of authority. Sola scriptura was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation. Catholics responded that religion based solely on Scripture denied the authority of 1,500 years of faithful reflection on Scripture, going all the way back to the apostles themselves. Both sides, however, were skeptical of reason: Puritans because they thought that human reason was profoundly impaired by the Fall, and Catholics because they claimed that the only persons able to reason about Scripture were clergy. Hooker, disagreeing with both, argued for the ability of learned lay people to reason through questions of faith, but also reaffirmed the validity of historical tradition.
“Scripture, reason, and tradition” may have been Hooker’s formulation, but he would have scoffed at its current version. “You don’t have to check your brain at the door,” was, it is said, originally part of a Robin Williams joke about “ten reasons to be an Episcopalian.” Whatever its comic origin, the phrase has now been adopted by parishes across the country as a serious slogan. Used unironically, it must be one of the most arrogant ones out there. I suppose it’s better than “come on in and join the smart crowd,” but not much. And Hooker would have furrowed his brow at it. For Hooker, “reason” did not mean “cleverness.” Reason was a divine quality; God was and is, in fact, reason. God is the explanation for why the world makes sense. God, as reason, is the foundation for law. Human reason, in Hooker’s sense, is the capacity and opportunity to connect with divine reason. Human law is necessary only because circumstances vary in different places and times, and for different people. Human law, then is a local and contingent reflection of divine law. Human reason succeeds only to the extent it accesses divine reason, and fails to the extent it regards itself as self-sufficient. So, Hooker’s formulation would have been something like “You don’t have to check your brain at the door, but you do need to leave your ego, your prejudices, your preconceptions, and everything you heard on social media or cable TV behind.”
Hooker also had interesting things to say about human organization. Central to Hooker’s theological anthropology was his belief that humans are essentially social, made to live in groups rather than in solitude. The purpose of society, and the obligation of each of its members, is make sure that each of its members has the necessaries for basic human flourishing. Part of God’s gifts to humans is the capacity for form societies and govern themselves for the common good. Natural law is real, but not capable by itself of governing individual societies, because of those differences in time and place.
Hooker distinguished between assemblies, groups that come together for a specific purpose (hearing a sermon, rallying for a political issue, or so forth) — and then disband, and societies, groups of people that have a purpose beyond themselves and that form a new entity distinct from the individual concerns, goals or wishes of any of the members. should be societies, not assemblies. This was Hooker’s vision for the church. Some 200 years later, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America is uniquely a country of societies. In France, he observed, power lies in the state; in England, the nobles. In America, however, citizens form association to tackle every sort of social problem, from disease to road building to poor relief. If Hooker took a look at us today, I suspect he would say that we have too many assemblies, screaming about some problem, and not enough societies, working to fix it.
Hooker was an almost exact contemporary of Shakespeare and for much of modern history was remembered as much for the quality as the content of his prose; C.W. Lewis included him in an Elizabethan literature survey book in the 1940s. He also has been thought significant for the development of the Western legal tradition. His theory of divine natural law clearly influenced John Locke, and he gave a theological basis for the English practice of equity. In fact a wag once said that The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was a law book written by a theologian, whereas The Institutes of Christian Religion was a theology book written by a lawyer (Calvin went to law school.) More than anything, however, Hooker was a Christian humanist, convinced of both the divine source of all goodness and the human capacity to reason about and strive towards it. Humanism in Western Europe was always a Christian movement, but today many, both faithful and skeptical, would have us believe “Christian humanism” an oxymoron. This week, as we observe All Saints, we should fondly remember Richard Hooker as one of the saints that proved that wrong.
justice and mercy 
When I think of religious struggles I think of the crusades. You highlight that other types of struggles have continued even as they are today. Thank you for your thoughts and research.
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