This revision of a Cambridge University dissertation offers a clear, comprehensive and rounded treatment of one of the most important influences in the formation of the so-called ‘Lambeth Anglicanism’ of the Anglican Communion. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, including unpublished sermons, Wilson locates Selwyn within the Church of England of his time as well as the missionary and imperial policies of the mid-nineteenth century which played such a significant role in the development of Selwyn’s thought and practical policies in New Zealand. Selwyn is understood as a conservative High Churchman who nevertheless displayed a flexibility which allowed him to create a model for synodical government which was to become so influential throughout the Communion.
After the usual (and eminently dispensable) literature review, an introductory chapter illustrates Selwyn’s theological style which, in the absence of a substantial body of writing, makes frequent reference to sermons preached throughout his career. Shaped in Cambridge before the impact of Tractarianism, Selwyn remained a High Churchman, and close to William Gladstone, although he never became a political liberal. Nevertheless he cannot be regarded as a party man: he was a loyal son of the Reformation and, unlike many of the ‘High and Dry’ Churchmen, he was also concerned with reform of the church both at home and throughout the Empire: Keble found his breadth threatening, remarking that, although he was a great bishop, ‘he makes me shiver now and then with his Protestantisms’, which included sympathy for the CMS and abusing Becket as a ‘haughty prelate’ (cited on p. 57). Most importantly, Selwyn came to value the independence of the Church from the state and was sympathetic to the idea of ‘missionary bishops’ developed in the American Church by George Washington Doane and Jackson Kemper and introduced into England by another High Churchman, Samuel Wilberforce. In many ways these influences provided the foundation for his policy in New Zealand, which also drew on a universalism which regarded even the ‘lowest’ races as having ‘the same capacity for receiving all things necessary to salvation’ (p. 65).
The remainder of the book is both thematic and also loosely chronological. Chapter 2 moves on to discuss missionary policy, where Wilson reveals a detailed knowledge of the ecclesiastical, missionary and parliamentary politics that shaped Selwyn’s development. Crucially Selwyn was prepared to cooperate with the CMS in New Zealand to create a comprehensive settlement and broad support for his episcopal and synodical settlement: practical circumstances led him to adopt what was effectively ‘a free church in a free state’ on the voluntary principle (p. 85). While many in England, including Henry Venn of the CMS, felt that this would threaten the character of the Church of England as a missionary church, Selwyn’s solution of a Church constitution on the American model proved robust. It even offered a way forward for the Church in England as it freed itself from parliamentary control. ‘The principles of Anglicanism would be preserved, without the abuses of the English establishment’ (p. 93). After discussions of the Melanesian mission, which reveal Selwyn’s extraordinary energy and vision, and relations between settlers and the Maori in which Selwyn supported land rights against Earl Grey, Wilson concludes that Selwyn’s strategy proved more effective than Venn’s and provided the model for other colonial churches.
Chapter 3 discusses Selwyn’s formative role in the colonial episcopate and the establishment of synods (p. 137). After a lengthy discussion of earlier work on synods, which outlines the many conflicting opinions on the subject which did not divide easily on party lines, Wilson shows how Selwyn’s pragmatic approach created a lasting settlement in which the laity – as the funders of the church – had an important voice. In turn, as the colonial episcopate expanded it became increasingly evident, as was revealed by the Colenso case, that the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as the English courts was problematic in what were essentially self-governing churches (p. 135). In Chapter 4 Wilson shows the role Selwyn played in addressing these problems as Corresponding Secretary of the Anglican Communion. The background to the first Lambeth Conference reveals the tensions between the English establishment and what Tait called ‘the paltry colonial Church’ (p. 148). Selwyn’s hope – which has proved impossible to realize in the subsequent 140 years – was that there might be some form of central authority which would allow for ‘elastic freedom with efficient control’. This elected body would control ‘inordinate self will, and zeal not tempered by discretion’ (p. 150). Against Selwyn’s wishes, the Lambeth Conference remains a Conference and not a Synod. In a brief final chapter, Wilson discusses Selwyn’s impact on the Church of England after his return as Bishop of Lichfield and the first colonial bishop to take on an English diocese. Again he is shown to be an energetic and reforming bishop who helped in the programme of diocesan revival.
In his very short conclusion Wilson emphasizes Selwyn’s greatness as a pragmatic church builder able to improvise in the colonial context (p. 179): the Church, which the High-Church Selwyn regarded as a Divine Institution, did not need the protection of the State but could even benefit from the voluntary principle which gave it the freedom to be itself. Wilson also stresses Selwyn’s role in the first Lambeth Conference which proved crucial in establishing the regular cycle of meetings. However, Selwyn’s greatest failure – for which he is hardly to blame – was in the failure of Anglicanism to adopt an international synod with jurisdiction: in the end the national and independent model of the English Church replicated across the world proved far too enticing to make any concessions to the global and catholic vision of the most influential colonial bishop of the nineteenth century. Anglicanism lives with the consequences.
