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Thornton’s Vision for Spiritual Renewal
- Joel West
- 27 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Thornton (1915-1986), the English priest who sought to restore a Benedictine model of lay spirituality and ascetical practice to Anglicanism. Largely forgotten in England, Thornton’s ideas have had an enduring impact on Anglicanism in America.
A conference last week discussed how Thornton’s vision offers a model for renewal of 21st century American parish. At Nashotah House, the 6th annual Breck Conference was entitled “The Monastic Mountain in the Parish: Investigations in the Theology of Martin Thornton.” As in previous years, the conference was chaired by Fr. Greg Peters, Research Professor of Monastic Studies and Ascetical Theology at Nashotah.
The three days (June 17-19) were split equally between a pre-conference discussion and the four plenary papers presented during the main conference. Of 52 attendees, 11 were from ACC or APA parishes — including three Nashotah alumni and two current students.
Thornton’s Pastoral Theology
Martin Thornton wrote some of the twentieth century’s most distinctive Anglican pastoral theology. Yet today he is largely forgotten, even among the Anglo-Catholics who should be his natural readers. Most attendees at this year’s conference arrived having read only his best-known book, Pastoral Theology, if they had read him at all.
So why spend three days discussing Thornton? The answer is that the insights of Thornton’s key books offer Anglo-Catholic parishes something they rarely hear: a vision in which a faithful handful is not a failure, but a potential nucleus to build spiritual health across a congregation and community.
The conference highlighted three key insights from Thornton’s writings. The first is that the spiritual life is ordinary and learnable. It is not the rare gift of mystics, but a proficiency any parishioner can acquire through patient, repeated practice — the way one learns a craft or an instrument.
The second is that the prayer book itself is a rule of life. Its threefold rhythm of daily Offices, Eucharist, and personal prayer carries the Benedictine pattern into the parish, so that catholicity is not about doctrinal argument but spiritual practice. The third is the central role of Thornton’s parochial Remnant — the few who pray on behalf of the many. Properly applied, this Remnant can form the basis of spiritual renewal for the entire parish — whether the English definition (the local community) or the American one (the local congregation).
Setting the Stage
The pre-conference both situated Thornton within the various influences in his thinking, and provided an overview of his books on pastoral ministry and spiritual formation. It was led by Fr. Matthew Dallman, with help from Peters.
Dallman is founder of the Akenside Institute and its Akenside Press imprint, which has acquired rights by Thornton’s family to republish all his works, and has begun to do so. Dallman used these rights to prepare a 252-page reader excerpting from all of Thornton’s 13 books, which was received and (in varying degrees) read by the 28 pre-conference participants.
The speakers traced Thornton’s life from an East London childhood and years as a wartime farmhand, through a mid-life call to the priesthood, to his productive years of writing and spiritual direction, and finally a late marriage and his death from cancer.
They also traced his sources: the medieval English mystics and the seventeenth-century Caroline divines he wanted to combine, the Victorine vision of creation as the arena of the spiritual life, and the Benedictine pattern he saw behind the Book of Common Prayer. His immediate influences included Evelyn Underhill, Baron von Hügel, Charles Gore, William Temple, Michael Ramsey, and Eric Mascall.
The Plenary Talks
The plenary speakers presented four key books contain Thornton’s model for spiritual formation — split equally between Thursday afternoon and Friday sessions.
Fr. Dallman (St. Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, FL) summarized English Spirituality (1962) and argued that it is not, as many assume, a work of history or a piece of Anglo-Catholic apologetics. Thornton wrote it for a working purpose: to form “a reasonably competent spiritual guide,” a manual that forms the kind of priest a renewing parish needs.
Having spent fifteen years with Thornton’s writings and personal papers, Dallman traced the book’s central claims. The Book of Common Prayer functions for Anglicans the way the Rule of St. Benedict functions for Benedictines, giving ordinary parish life a structure: a threefold regula of daily office, Eucharist, and personal prayer.
Thornton set out to join two divergent strands of English devotion: the dutiful, moral “Caroline method” of Jeremy Taylor and the affective prayer of the fourteenth-century mystics. Taylor’s model was not the cloistered contemplative but the ordinary churchgoer. Meanwhile, Margery Kempe was “a poor mystic but a first-rate parishioner.” The point for renewal is plain: holiness is the normal business of the pew, not a specialty reserved for the few.
Fr. Thomas Buchan (Nashotah House) turned to The Purple Headed Mountain (1962), the short book that was Archbishop Michal Ramsey’s recommended Lenten devotional for 1963. Using the metaphor of his own mountaineering experiences, Buchan called it deceptively modest. It is brief and accessible, yet harder to climb than it looks: a “quick start” for the spiritual life rather than a full manual, organized around prayer, penitence, and creation.
Buchan valued the book most for its defense of ordinary proficiency over the rare heights of mysticism. Real mystics exist, as Thornton put it, “but it’s probably not you” — a liberating insight for the average parishioner. At the same time, he offered gentle criticisms: Thornton’s history is idiosyncratic, he flattens Puritanism into Manichaeism, and he leans heavily on the high Middle Ages at the expense of the early church. Buchan also rejected Thornton’s willingness to drop the lectionary readings, insisting that an Office without lessons is no longer an Office. Still, as a handbook a priest could put in a newcomer’s hands, he found it hard to beat.
Fr. Cole Hartin (Christ Church, Tyler, TX) presented Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation (1956) through exactly the situation Thornton aimed to address. When struggling to minister to a small Canadian parish during the pandemic, Hartin found answers in a discarded copy of Pastoral Theologies he found on a giveaway pile.
Thornton advocates reorienting parish ministry through pastoral theology (applied dogmatic or ascetical theology) that uses growth in charity as its one test. At its heart is the Remnant: the parish is an organic body, not a numbers game, and the faithful few pray on behalf of the whole, just as Christ entrusted his mission to twelve. Hartin was the most critical of the four speakers, critical of its treatment of Anglican history, its Methodist and Presbyterian influences, and its role in English colonialism. He also questioned the relevance of a such a strict approach under modern conditions, and whether there was any whether way to measure whether any of it works.
Bp. Scarlett: Putting Thornton to Work
The final plenary was given by Bishop Stephen Scarlett (St. Matthew’s, Newport Beach, CA), presenting Christian Proficiency (1959) as Thornton’s book for the laity, the counterpart to Pastoral Theology. (The text of his plenary is available online). Thornton’s work is central to his Remnant Mission framework, the subject of his previously reported 2024 and 2022 mission retreats.
Scarlett has spent the past 11 years applying Thornton’s Remnant and threefold Rule as key building blocks for his three-year program of lay spiritual formation. His experience during this period confirmed his reading of Thornton: nobody in a church changes unless they commit to a life of prayer over time. And — as Thornton controversially predicted — Scarlett found concentrating his efforts on forming the Remnant improved parish health far more than any effort to market his parish to new members.
He created a lay spiritual training program by pairing Thornton’s focus on the committed few with Bowen Family Systems Theory, arguing that one healthy, differentiated member can have a leavening effect on the whole congregation, much as the Remnant’s spiritual maturity benefits the entire parish. Formation must come before liturgy — while real devotion, like skill in any craft, is rooted in the will and built through repeated practice rather than feeling.
Scarlett found that people who are asked to commit, rather than sold a product, tend to respond — on the principle that Jesus did not recruit volunteers but simply said “follow me.” Today, the program takes up most of his time and is the most life-giving part of his ministry, precisely because he spends it with people who want to be there. Originating in his home parish, he expanded the program to include online sessions for participants from the rest of his diocese and Continuing parishes across the country.
In this model, spiritual direction is a standing monthly conversation about prayer and life rather than crisis management. Confession tends to follow on its own as trust deepens, and so do harder subjects like generosity, which he warned priests against pushing too directly. Online offices and remote classes have worked better than he expected, though he insisted there is no real substitute for being together in one place.
The Closing Panel
The conference concluded with all four speakers engaging in a panel discussion, moderated by Peters.
The panelists returned to Thornton’s own life, including his membership in the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, with its vows, chapter meetings, common rule, and mutual confession — and the open question of whether he ever actually visited a monastic community. They discussed which of his books to read first, and stressed how central spiritual direction is to the whole system. They also noted where his account of spiritual direction now falls short, such on on boundaries, referral to professional mental health services, mental-health referral, and wealth.
Much of the conversation was practical. Who really belongs to the Remnant, and do parishioners judge themselves accurately? Can the concept be applied to a vestry? Is there value, or risk, in group spiritual direction as opposed to one-on-one? Those with the most experience applying Thornton agreed that practical benefits depended on employing what Thornton terms “devout experimentation.”
The session closed on broader notes: the monastic roots of praying on behalf of others, a Christian view of time set against the pull of phones and distraction, and the conviction of Evelyn Underhill and Basil the Great that learning to concentrate during silence is essential to spiritual progress.
Conclusion
Although he’s been gone for four decades, Thornton leaves behind a compelling vision of spiritual health and renewal through formation of the laity, one being implemented in several dioceses across the G-2.
This month’s conference also provided an example of Nashotah’s ongoing role facilitating conversations among Anglo-Catholics across the country. While The House primarily graduates new priests into the ACNA, its various degree and certificate programs also serve Continuing clergy, postulants and laity, and its governing board and board of visitors also include Continuing representatives.