Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism

PHILIP B. SECOR. Richard Hooker: Prophet of Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Burns & Oates; and Toronto, Ontario: The Anglican Book Centre, 1999. Pp. xxii +362, bibliography, index. $37.95. This is not a critical, scholarly biography of Richard Hooker. What Philip Secor attempts is a general and at breezy and times approach supposedly designed for non-specialist readers. Yet even in this regard, it is flawed. Certainly Secor's subject is a worthy one and a modern biography is long overdue. Richard Hooker (1554-1600), one of the most important figures in Anglican history, was the leading constructive theologian and apologist of what Secor aptly calls emerging Anglicanism. Secor does correct and largely sets aside Izaak Walton's 1665 hagiographic treatment of Hooker. We can be grateful that secor's portrait adds incarnational substance both to a theologian whose sacramental vision was rooted in the doctrine of the Incarnation and to a life that has often been misunderstood or glimpsed only in scanty sources. The spirit of the man presented by secor mirrors the brilliant, widely-informed, tolerant, and persuasive characteristics that mark Hooker's writings. For the general reader, scenes of daily life and religious politics are descriptively well set, replete with the sights, sounds and smells of Hooker's Exeter, Oxford and London (along with maps drawn by the author). Secor seemingly addresses every available detail from Hooker's birth and childhood through his death and the ensuing debacles over his written remains. Those with significant influence on Hooker as well as on the course of the Reformation in England-John Jewel, Bishop Edwin Sandys and his son (also named Edwin), John Rainolds, John Whitgift, and Walter Travers (Hooker's cousin and famous rival at the Temple church)-are introduced. The reputation of Hooker's falsely-maligned wife is restored in a chapter entitled, A Judicious Marriage. Colored and other photographs of leading Elizabethan churchmen and of churches known or served by Hooker are included. Seemingly no expense has been spared in bringing Hooker's to life in this general biography. Any modern biographer of Hooker has the advantage of using the Folger Library modern critical edition of Hooker's Works, whose general editor, W. Speed Hill, contributes a foreword to this biography. Secor keys those texts from Hooker that he does cite directly both to John Keble's nineteenth-century edition and to this critical, more complete, and multi-volume corpus. Secor learns from and usually follows the conclusions and textual histories of the Folger's superb editors. He concurs, for example, with William Haagaard and others that Hooker's motivation for writing his constructive and apologetic theology for the Church of England, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, came first from within himself (p. 233). Secor's discussion of the Laws, as we might expect from a political scientist, highlights the theological treatments of law and society in Book I. He does refer to recent scholarship by John Booty and others in presenting Book V, Hooker's brilliant exposition of faith and practice. On the controversial text of Book VII, where the authority of bishops is addressed, Secor follows recent scholarship pointing toward the influence of Adrian Savaria, a prominent Dutch theologian and Calvinist who was supportive of episcopacy. Hooker's life may have been neglected, but fortunately for those of us who are heirs of the Reformation church in England, Hooker's writings have not been. …

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