The Blogging of Richard Hooker: The Idea

I recently came in possession of the Folger Library edition of Richard Hooker's Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. As I stood in my office hefting volume one in my hands, I thought, "When on earth will I actually read this?" In Anglican circles Hooker's work is like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time -- often referenced and rarely read. I have read my share of Hooker as a historian of Christianity and professor of church history at an Episcopal seminary. But I knew very few people who had ever read the whole thing.

So I stood in my office and thought, "I am only going to read this if I do it with someone." I thought of offering an elective course, but I doubted either that many students would register or that we could finish the entire work in a semester. An informal reading group seemed like the right vehicle for a project as daunting as reading all of Richard Hooker's Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity.

So this is the project that has been undertaken at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific this fall semester. We will gather as a group of faculty, staff, and students to read Richard Hooker from beginning to end. We will read him aloud, deciphering his Elizabethan prose and spelling one sentence at a time. We will begin with the preface and work our way through all eight books talking about his argument as a group. I have no idea when this project will end; it may take years. But it seems like a project worth doing.