Friday before the Second Sunday after the Epiphany; Antony of Egypt, 356; Charles Gore, 1932

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Today we remember Charles Gore. Charles Gore was a bishop, successively bishop of Worcester, Birmingham and Oxford, and he was a liberal Anglo-Catholic theologian. Born in Wimbledon in 1835, Gore was educated at Harrow School, the school which is at the top of the hill in Harrow. I went to The John Lyon School, which is half way up the hill in Harrow!

It was at Harrow that Gore was exposed to ‘Catholic’ spirituality where he was nurtured by, among others, B. F. Westcott. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, before becoming the vice-principle of Cuddesdon, the liberal anglo-catholic Theological training college in Oxford. He then became the first principle at Pusey House, the anglo-catholic study centre in Oxford. Sound like a good jobs! Whilst at Pusey, he founded the Community of the Resurrection, which in later years settled at Mirfield in Yorkshire and is where Luke, who was on placement with us last term, where he will train for ordination next academic year.

Gore became one of the most influential of Anglican theologians of his time and he sought to somehow bring together the anglo-catholic movement with the critical ways of reading scripture and the Christ event which modernity was engendering in the academy. He helped reconcile the Church to some aspects of this biblical criticism and the ongoing scientific discoveries, yet he was largely Catholic in his interpretation of the faith and sacraments.

He was, however, no narrow-minded academic aristocrat, he was passionately concerned for social justice and for a manifestation of Christian thought and life in the every-day reality of the world. He had a lifelong involvement with the Oxford Mission to Calcutta and the Christian Socialist Union, and was a supporter of the Workers Educational Association when he was Bishop of Birmingham, a diocese which he helped establish.

He was much mourned at his death on this day in 1932.

Charles Gore was a rich young man. Rich in financial terms and rich in intellect and educational oppourtunity. But it seems that he did use that richness for good. Through the richness of his intellect, he helped bring freedom to those within the sometimes totalitarian catholic tradition and he helped those struggling to reconcile modernity with faith. And through his wealth as a bishop, he helped those who were trapped by the economic systems of the world.

It seems to me that this is a good pattern for us to follow. In the action of God, freedom occurs. Freedom from slavery for Israel, freedom for creation to be itself, freedom from empire, freedom from the fear of death. Just so, in our finite attempts to echo the image of God, it is freedom which we need to offer, even at the cost of our own hold on certainty.

As Charles Gore writes in his “Manuel of Membership in the Church of England,” “Freedom should be the spirit of the church and not least intellectual freedom. Freedom means that the churchman who has really assimilated their religion should find, as Saint Paul says, that “all things are theirs”—that they can feel at home in the whole universe, as a son in the Father’s house—and this cannot be without intellectual liberty. They should be unshackled and open-eyed in the whole world of investigation and discovery.”

What unnuanced assumptions have we made about others? About the systems we work in, which mean that we might fail to bring freedom to others? That we are still captive to our fear of the other. Where do we need freedom in our own lives? Are there people we can go to, to their writings they’ve left us where we might find freedom? Can we open ourselves to find freedom in the act of communion?

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.