George Grant and the Anglican Church of Canada: A 20th Century Prophet by Ron Dart

"Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the
old established order. Today, it
is the voice of the establishment."     George Grant

Part I 

The inside flap on the recent book about
George Grant, Athens and Jerusalem:
George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics (2006), says this: ‘George Grant (1918-1988) has
been called Canada’s greatest political philosopher. To this day, his work continues to stimulate,
challenge, and inspire Canadians to think more deeply about matters of social
justice and individual responsibility. However, while there has been
considerable discussion of Grant’s political theories, relatively little
attention has been paid to their theological and philosophical underpinnings’.
There is little doubt, in short, that Grant was the most important Christian
public intellectual in Canada
in the later half of the 20^th century, and for those who take their
faith with some intellectual seriousness, much can be learned from George Grant
the prophet, theologian, philosopher and engaged thinker.

Athens
and Jerusalem walks the extra mile to highlight the
deep theological well where Grant turned to slake a thirsty and parched soul.
There is more to Grant, though, than the theological and philosophical underpinnings
for his public vision. George Grant was an Anglican, and, sadly so, his
Anglicanism has often been ignored. In the midst of the culture wars in the
Anglican Church of Canada, Grant can offer us a way through and beyond the
theological and ethical tribalism of left and right, liberal and conservative
that so besets and divides us these days. 

George and Sheila Grant became Anglicans in
1956 while Grant was teaching in the philosophy department at Dalhousie. Bishop
William Davis brought the Grant family into the Anglican Church, and it is
significant that it is Bishop Davis’s son, Arthur Davis, that is editing the 4
Volume Collected Works of George Grant. 

Grant completed his DPhil Thesis at Oxford in 1950 on ‘The Concept of Nature and Supernature
in the Theology of John Oman’, and in 1951, his article in the Massey
Commission, ‘Philosophy’, stirred a hornet’s nest in the philosophic Sanhedrin
in Canada. Grant began the essay with these words: ‘The
study of philosophy is the analysis of the traditions of our society and the
judgment of those traditions against our varying intuition of the Perfection of
God’. He also argued that authentic philosophy was about contemplation of God
rather than an analysis and description of God. Grant was decades ahead of his
time in this suggestion.  Such
challenging words about the ‘Perfection of God’ and contemplative philosophy
and theology did not please those who were neither interested in perfection,
contemplation or God.   

In 1953, Grant delivered a paper, ‘Two
Theological Languages’, to the Presbyterian and United Church
clergy. The original paper and various additions are basic to Grant’s approach
to doing theology in a post-Christian world. There is no doubt, though, that
Grant was very much grappling with the relationship between theology and
philosophy in this timely and telling essay. Grant sought to discern, in ‘Two
Theological Languages’, the differences between the language of revelation and
the language of reason. The language of revelation is appropriate within the
life of the church, but, within the larger public world, it is the language of
reason that dominates.

What is reason, though, and how are
Christians in a post-Christian world to address their culture in a way that
their culture understands? It is of little use, in short, to use the language
of revelation in a culture that does not accept revelation as a form of
authority. Grant was, in short, calling Christians to be fully bilingual; they
had to know how to speak both the language of revelation and the language of
reason if they were ever to communicate meaningfully to the church and the world.
But, much hinged, of course, on what is meant by reason. It is this issue that
led Grant to Plato and Heidegger. 

Grant’s lectures for CBC, Philosophy
in the Mass Age, were published in 1959. It is obvious in these compelling
lectures that Grant is grappling with the tensions between Plato and Hegel.
Plato had argued there is an eternal order that we attune ourselves to, whereas
Hegel argued that history is about the unfolding of our consciousness of
liberty. Hegel is the grandmaster of emerging liberalism, and Plato of the
‘moving image of eternity’. Grant saw where the thinking of Hegel led, and he
came to side with Plato, and the tensions between Plato and Christianity,
Socrates and Christ.

‘Christ, What a Planet’ was delivered in
1959 on CBC, and in this
provocative reflection, Grant ponders the previous year and the future of the
globe. He pulls no punches about the injustices in the world, but Grant’s understanding of the reasons for global
injustice and a healing of such tragedies are quite different than the liberal
tradition.   

Grant was one of the first professors to be
hired at York University, and he was the first to
resign in 1960 for the simple reason that Plato and Christianity could not be
taught in a positive manner. Grant was invited by St.
John’s Anglican College in Winnipeg
to give the Convocation address in November/1960. It is impossible to miss in
the Convocation address Grant’s passion for Christianity and the dark clouds he
sees on the educational and political horizon. Grant saw in the 1950s-1960s
many of the dilemmas Anglicans struggle with today, and he thought through the
issues in a way that can still instruct and teach us.   

After Grant left York,
he was hired at McMaster University. The Grant
family attended the local parish in Dundas near Hamilton, and
George/Sheila were active in parish life. George was fondly called the ‘Bishop’
in the area, and his review of a book on the parish, Fountain Come Forth: The Anglican Church and the Valley Town of Dundas,
speaks much about Grant’s interest and grounding in the Anglican f

Grant addressed the McMaster Divinity
School in October 1961 on Jesus and Pilate, and by the late 1960s, after publishing
his controversial, Lament for a Nation,
he pondered the meaning of the Eucharist in ‘Qui Tollit: Reflections on the Eucharist’. 

Grant began a most engaging correspondence
with Derek Bedson in 1956 (when he became an Anglican), and between 1956-1984,
twenty-eight letters were written by Grant to Bedson. Bedson, like Grant, was
an Anglican, and in these letters, Grant pondered the meaning of Anglicanism in
the Anglican Church of Canada. 

Grant found Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew a shallow and thin
book, and it is significant that Lament
for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (that was dedicated to
Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson) and The
Comfortable Pew: A Critical Look at the Church in the New Age were both
published in 1965. Much hinges on whether Grant or Berton is followed down the
Anglican path after these two missives were published. Grant points the way in Lament to a deeper and older
conservatism, and Berton points the way to a trendy and ideological liberalism.
Much of the Anglican Church of Canada has followed Berton’s lead, and, sadly
so, most conservatives who see themselves as Orthodox, have ignored Grant. 

It is pertinent to note that in June/1966,
Adrienne Clarkson (another Anglican and future Governor General of Canada)
interviewed Grant for the First Person series.
Grant makes it quite clear in this article that he thinks Western Christianity,
for the most part, is near the end. Most forms of schismatic and fragmentary
protestantism have been totally co-opted by modernity, but the ‘Anglican church
has in it some of the ancient truth and therefore I live within it’. Grant saw
in the time tried Anglican way ‘strange remnants’ of an older, deeper way that was
much closer to the heart of Christianity.

When Ted Scott became the tenth Primate of
Canada (1971-1986), Grant saw the writing on the wall. Scott, in many ways,
merely fleshed out Berton’s shallow liberalism. There is no doubt that Scott
was a compassionate man, but the intellectual underpinnings of his thought were
thin and meagre. Scott, in many ways, moved the Anglican Church of Canada
further down the liberal path and trail. Grant was quick to see in Scott and
tribe an uncritical attitude in the Anglican Church towards liberalism, and he
also saw the consequences in the ethical and political realms of this
attitude. Grant not only saw it, but he
analysed the problem at the core and foundation levels: none were doing this at
the time. 

Most conservatives in the reign of Ted
Scott were reacting to issues and symptoms but not probing the deeper
philosophic roots that produced the worrisome fruit on the tree of the church.
Much was masked and hidden, often, by Scott’s seeming compassion and desire for
dialogue. Grant saw through all this, and called it for what it was. Ideas do
have consequences, and Grant perceived, clearer than most, decades ahead of
most, the corrosive nature of liberalism. 

It is not very liberal of a liberal not to
question liberalism, but the ideological liberalism of Grant’s day (and ours) had to
be doubted and interrogated. Grant did this both in the Anglican Church of
Canada and the much broader Canadian culture. He was often a lone voice, but he
was a prophetic voice to both the Anglican Church, Christianity and Canadian
culture.

I will, in the next article, discuss how
liberalism further unfolded in the church and the world, and how Grant dared to
challenge this reigning intellectual monarch that resisted opposition and
dethronement.

Ron Dart