Author: David Langille

By Dave Langille

O God, our heavenly Father, you raised up your faithful servant Charles Inglis to be a bishop and pastor in your Church and to feed your flock: Give abundantly to all pastors the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that they may minister in your household as true servants of Christ and stewards of your divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

As a native Nova Scotian now living and working in Minnesota, I return home at least twice a year. No visit to my old home port of Halifax is complete without a pilgrimage day. I need to pay homage to the Anglican heritage in which I now serve as a priest of the Church. My pilgrimage begins with a visit to St. Paul’s, Canada’s first Anglican Church, then with a visit to the King’s College Chapel, the “Mother Church” of Prayer Book Anglicanism in North America. Without the former we would not have the latter, and we have this all because of the Bishop we honour today, the Rt. Rev. Charles Inglis, first Bishop of the Church of England in British North America.

My pilgrimage is a celebration of Canadian Church history, but it is also a homage to my own spiritual journey. It begins with a walk from my childhood home in Dartmouth to Halifax Harbour where I take the Ferry across the “Big Harbour,” my daily commute while a student at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. It was as a student at NSCAD that I had a crisis of faith, as church-going college students often do. A product of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, I found my childhood faith sadly too thin as I faced the challenges of a radically secular Art School faculty and student body. Punk rock anarchism had exploded on the scene, blowing up everything in its wake, including my faith. I recall walking into a local bookstore, desperate to find something to bolster what was left of it. There I found a book by British broadcaster and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge called Jesus Rediscovered. It contained articles he had written examining his growing attraction to Christ firstly as an atheist but later as an agnostic increasingly more open to Jesus. In that book, I discovered those he described as “God’s spies,” a line from King Lear Muggeridge used to describe those God leaves behind in every generation to point their fellow creatures home to God. From great saints of the 20^th century like Simone Weil and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he traced a lineage of God’s spies back to St Augustine. For the first time, I discovered the Communion of Saints, and a history of the Church that predated the early 20^th century origins of my own Pentecostal denomination. I became curious about historic Christianity, the Saints, and how they worshipped. This is when I discovered St. Paul’s Anglican Church, just two blocks from my Art School studio.

I had walked by St. Paul’s on an almost daily basis during my four years at NSCAD. Finally, inside the Georgian Church built in 1750, it was like entering a time portal to not only Halifax’ past, but—like Muggeridge described it—the Church’s past. Here I discovered ancient worship according to the Prayer Book tradition, liturgy and preaching both Catholic and Reformed, with beauty of architecture and music that transported me upward. Worshipping in this historic space was one of many steps on my own walk down the Canterbury Trail. When one enters St. Paul’s, one also discovers interior walls covered with the memorial plaques of Halifax’s founding generation, with several notables buried beneath the Church in its crypt. Memorialized by a plaque and buried beneath the Church is the first Bishop of Nova Scotia and founder of King’s College, Charles Inglis. A future article in the Red Tory Standard will explore Bishop Inglis at length, but for the purpose of my pilgrimage travelogue, it is sufficient to say that Charles Inglis was one of the essential men who secured a homeland for the High Tory tradition in British North America, shaping it for later generations.

It is shocking that Inglis’s story is not better known in the country whose foundations he helped lay. There are two things I am reminded of on my pilgrimage: the first was Inglis’s own courage and the second is his legacy. Inglis was a courageous man. As the republic to the south celebrates its 250^th Anniversary, the Dominion of the north honours Loyalists like Inglis who offered another vision for the colonies. Inglis’s The True Interest of America Impartially Stated (1776) cast a vision for what could become of British North America. But the violence of the American Revolution birthed, as it were, two nations: one nation seized irregularly through war, and the other over time upholding what George Grant called “the principle of my ancestors.” This is a reminder to us that Tories like Inglis and the Loyalists like him who settled in the 14^th colony of Nova Scotia—the one that did not revolt against the Crown—were the children of the Glorious Revolution and could speak of the great victory of that gloriously bloodless revolution that ended a civil war, restored the monarchy, and reinvigorated the institutions of government. A priest of the Church of Ireland known online as Laudable Practice has highlighted from Inglis’s The True Interest of America Impartially Stated: “The constitution of England, as it now stands, was fixed at the Revolution, in 1688—an era ever memorable in the fair annals of Liberty… the principles on which the glorious Revolution in 1688 was brought about, constitute the articles of my political creed.” This is a reminder that the Canadian High Tory tradition was birthed in liberty and won without bloodshed.

It was against a peaceable and ordered Glorious Revolution that Inglis saw the so-called American “Patriots” revolt violently. One can only imagine the courage it took for Inglis and all loyal priests of the Church of England to pray for the King in the Great Litany as their ordination vows required, but had been demanded stricken by George Washington and these Patriots. Inglis even did so with Washington physically present in the Church! As a missionary priest of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Inglis first served in Delaware and later Manhattan where he served as Rector of Trinity Church. From that base he continued to serve the Church and the loyalist cause courageously in running pamphlet battles with Alexander Hamilton and others, all the while serving his loyalist parishioners in royalist Manhattan.

Then there is Inglis’s legacy. After finally being forced to leave New York, he returned to England first in 1783, and then made his way to Nova Scotia where most of his former Trinity Church parishioners had fled. He was consecrated the first Bishop of British North America, which then included all of Canada and Bermuda. With the Diocesan boundary shrinking to something of the manageable size of the current Maritime provinces, he made St. Paul’s his see, serving as his Cathedral. From there he would go to build over 40 Anglican Churches throughout his Diocese. While in Manhattan, he had also taught at the original King’s College, which would become Columbia University after the British defeat. Once the Loyalists were forced to leave Manhattan in 1779 and made their way to Nova Scotia, Bishop Inglis reestablished King’s College in Windsor, NS, for the formation of future clergy. While a fire would destroy the historic seminary in the 1920’s, it would be rebuilt at its current location on the Dalhousie University campus in Halifax. It is King’s College Chapel that has faithfully upheld the Inglis legacy, providing Canadian Anglicanism robust Prayer Book worship, and giving global Anglicanism one of its great divines in the Rev. Robert Crouse.

My pilgrimage continues. I leave St. Paul’s after kneeling in prayer behind the pew reserved for the Royal Family the next time they are in town. But as I leave, I recall with some amusement how things come full circle in life. While a student at NSCAD, I became friends with a lad from Yarmouth County who would go on become a well-known illustrator. While I was studying theology at Regent College, my friend Kevin Sollows illustrated a stamp designed by graphic designer Stephen Slipp honouring Bishop Inglis. The Stamp fittingly depicts Inglis against a stained-glass window framing a Nova Scotia landscape, a Church and school—his great legacy—for all to see.

By David Langille

Summary: American Roman Catholic scholar Edward Feser tweeted the following regarding the King’s recent speech before the American Congress: “Gravitas, genuine wit, magnanimity, intelligence, reverence for the rule of law, Christian faith that is confident without being performative. The king is the voice from a lost world.” His is not, however, “a voice from a lost world,” but as we take on this High Tory mantle, a voice from the North of North America.

As a Canadian living and serving as clergy in the Episcopal Church south of the 49th parallel, I note with more than passing interest when Canada makes the news here, which was the case when the King of Canada made his state visit to the United States in April. It was HRM’s speech to Congress that drew the most attention. Why this was so illustrates one of the marked contrasts between these two North American ideas: between Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and our High Tory commitment to Peace, Order and Good Government. But even more so, it was the content of the King’s Speech that warmed this Red Tory’s heart.

Time did not permit me to watch the King’s speech live. It was the next day when I read a tweet from American Roman Catholic scholar Edward Feser that I knew the mark the monarch had made: “Gravitas, genuine wit, magnanimity, intelligence, reverence for the rule of law, Christian faith that is confident without being performative. The king is the voice from a lost world.” To which I replied: “Not lost, just north.”

Of course, I know there are republican voices in the North. There are also those Canadians so immersed in American popular culture that they are unaware somehow of the history of British North America, the great inheritance of the Westminster parliamentary system, our constitutional monarchy, and of Canada’s King. As High Tories who happily accept the moniker of Red Tory, this Canadian republicanism and the lack of awareness of our inheritance provide an opportunity to graciously teach and celebrate our distinctly Canadian tradition. In Ron Dart’s The North American High Tory Tradition, the first of his articulated High Tory principles states that Tories “are concerned about the wisdom of tradition.”¹ Canada’s King in his speech to Congress, and the praise of American thinkers like Edward Feser, reminded me of what CS Lewis made clear to be at stake if we ever lose the monarchy:

“Monarchy can easily be ‘debunked’; but watch the faces, mark well the accents, of the debunkers. These are the men whose tap‑root in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach—men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality, they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honour millionaires, athletes, or film‑stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.²

We Canadian Tories we remind ourselves, our fellow Canadians, and our neighbours that new Canadians swear an Oath of Citizenship that begins: “I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty, King Charles the Third King of Canada, his heirs and successors.” The Government of Canada itself explains the oath to the Crown in this way:

In Canada, we profess our loyalty to a person who represents all Canadians and not to a document such as a constitution, a banner such as a flag, or a geopolitical entity such as a country. In our constitutional monarchy, these elements are encompassed by the Sovereign (Queen or King). It is a remarkably simple yet powerful principle: Canada is personified by the Sovereign just as the Sovereign is personified by Canada.

And, as a particularly “red” Red Tory, the King’s speech to the US Congress was also heartening to me in what it contained. As Ron Dart’s articulation of High Tory principles also makes clear: “the Tory tradition has a deep and abiding respect for the land.”³ King Charles’ lifelong commitment to the land was evidenced in his speech:

Even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of nature. We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems, in other words, nature’s own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security.

Speaking in a legislative chamber, HRM offered both a Tory critique and call, a reminder that the institutions of government that have a responsibility to guard the land for the common good of all its citizens. All said, of course, with what Professor Feser underlined: “Gravitas, genuine wit, magnanimity, intelligence, reverence for the rule of law.” His is not, however, “a voice from a lost world”, but as we take on this High Tory mantle, a voice from the North of North America.

Although living in the United States and serving a clergy in the Episcopal Church, I still pray for our King from the Daily Office of the 1962 Canada Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church of Canada:

LORD our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: Most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord, King Charles; and so replenish him with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that he may alway incline to thy will, and walk in thy way: Endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant him in health and wealth long to live; strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies, and finally after this life he may attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer is effectual.

1. Ron Dart, The North American High Tory Tradition (New York: American Anglican Press, 2016). ↩︎
2. C. S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 17–20. ↩︎
3. Dart, North American High Tory Tradition. ↩︎