Geology and Church Visit - St Michael the Archangel, Lyme Regis

Apart from being a great little historic seaside town, one of the big attractions of Lyme Regis on Dorset's Jurassic Coast is its abundance of fossils. It seems that there are more ammonites than anything else, but there have been some other pretty exciting finds here too. (Being an ex-geologist, I maintain a bit of an interest in rocks, minerals, crystals, earth-history, etc. Bragging point: in my third or fourth year at uni I won the prize for best in mineralogy and crystallography! Anyhoo... )

Mary Anning is famous in Lyme Regis' history as one of its paleontological pioneers. And while the town now recognises her in lots of ways - eg. street name, museum in her house - in her day, she struggled to share her scientific work because women were not afforded the same recognition in the sciences as men. Sad as this is, I was encouraged by something else, which is the fact that she's buried along with her brother in the town's churchyard. I don't want to over-interpret this, but it seems to me that this is another good, historical example of a passionate scientist resting peacefully with the faith of the church. (Or maybe even a passionate believer resting peacefully with the scientific enterprise.)

It is so painfully tedious - eye-rollingly, yawn-inducingly boring really - when some people try to force a stark polarisation between those who 'believe science' and those who 'are religious'. Plenty has been written about this clumsy, false dichotomy and I can't be bothered getting into it here. Suffice to say that those who characterise different perspectives on the world that way can only be regarded as having a superficial understanding of both science and Christianity. But for me, seeing Mary Anning's grave, in such a picturesque setting as it is, just nicely illustrated again that there is no jarring contradiction within those who love Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and who also love exploring the natural world that he created.

From page 183 of Browne's commentary on the Anglican Articles of Religion:

"in asserting the sufficiency of Scripture, we assert it for the end to which it was designed. … we do not assert it as fit to teach us arts and sciences … where it does not profess to be a perfect guide, we derogate not from its authority in seeking other help."

Happy 450th Birthday 39 Articles

Last year we celebrated 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, but yesterday marked another significant milestone for the Anglican Church.

While the confirmation of Justin Welby as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury was important and well covered by the press, no one seems to have noticed that it was the 450th anniversary of the bishops' subscription to their newly amended version of Cranmer's doctrinal articles. That is, it was 450 years since they approved the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

There were a few minor tweaks in the years that followed: Article 20 was given a new opening sentence, Article 29 was dropped for around eight years before being re-included in 1571, at which time a couple of extra books were also added to the list of the Apocrypha in Article 6 and all the titles and numbers were standardised... But - what we have now was essentially finalised 450 years and one day ago.

I should have posted this yesterday, but despite the fact that I've been working closely on the history of the Articles for the past few weeks, it didn't click until just now! I guess we could re-mark the occasion in 2021 which will be 450 years since the 1571 Convocation re-subscribed to the very final version. Meantime, praise God for four and a half centuries of solid Anglican doctrine!