The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Brief history of universlaism in the C of E

Theology Ecclesiology
#80

Now that’s a difficult question Dave :smiley: Socratic method Philosophy is about questioning or assumptions about everything under the sub n – what is truth? What is honour? How can we know anything etc (the unexamined life is not worth living). And academic history is about questioning our assumptions about the past. The past is to the community what memory is to the individual. But much of what we receive as certain knowledge about the past is encased in myth. ‘Myth’ in its technical historical sense is a version of the past the may well contain a kernel of truth but is encased in the chaff of error and distortion – some of it made originally for propaganda reason – a version of the past that serves the interest of power The historian challenges myth by going back to the primary sources – the evidence/echoes left from the time of study – and proving a valid interpretation ( reconstruction plus assessment of causes of and interconnections between events) based upon this. Na historian’s interpretation is not scientific – you cannot study the past under laboratory conditions – but its is still a valid quest for truth based on a careful distinction from the evidence between what is impossible to assert about the past, what is possible, what is probable and what is certain.  History in one sense is a conversion without end – but there are good reason and bad reasons with which to assert ‘weak’ truths about the past.

Had a lovely chat, drink and pizza and olives with Chris tonight btw :slight_smile:

Caleb - I have no idea about ‘y’all’ - but it sounds like a levelling address to me :smiley:

#81

Sounds like a well-nigh impossible task Dick, for those who are asking for an unbiased report of ‘what happened’. Now I understand better why so many history majors also majored in Philosophy - not so much the history of philosophy, but epistemology and hermeneutics especially. Very interesting.

#82

It’s not impossible - historians worth their mettle of every shade can still agree upon what is impossible, what is possible, what is or probable and what is certain to say about the past. This is where holocaust deniers like David Irving come unstuck when they talk nonsense, The methods of source criticism are well tested and well established. When it comes to interpreting of evidence - looking for causes and connections between events etc. - there will be disagreements. But there is a genuine quest for truth going on - its not the same as scientific empirical truth - a theory in history does not have the same ‘truth status’ as a theory in science. But her is still a real quest for truth going on a quest of critical realism going on in the historian’s ‘language game’ - mid way between subjectivity and objectivity, mid way between sconce and art. And that’s the way it is and that’s the way it always will be :slight_smile:

Likewise - and I’m not sure how it works in the USA - law is no the same as empirical science - although the forensic evidence produced may be assessed according to the methodologies of empirical science - but it still has truth claims. In criminal law in the UK a case must be proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ if the defendant is to be found guilty - and this may mean their imprisonment (and there is always the right to appeal); however in civil law - where a fine is the severest penalty - cases need only be proved ‘beyond the balance of probabilities’. This we find victims of rape and murder who cannot get justice in a criminal court sometimes getting compensation in a civil court here.

#83

Y’all is definitely a leveling address. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, in Northern Virginia, NOVA, where there is no southern accent or y’all’s to be heard. But I married a Tennessee bride and now live in Southwestern Virginia and say y’all all the time! :laughing:

#84

Well ya’ll :laughing: briefly, regarding the Gunpowder plot etc, and its message for multi cultural Britain today:

Well Elizabeth did her best to be very tolerant towards Catholics. I remember reading a not very good article( in fact a very poor article) by a journalist in the UK liberal Guardian newspaper which stated that Bloody Mary her Catholic sister burnt above and beyond 300 Protestants and Elizabeth killed the same number of Catholics and dissenters – so let’s not get too glowing about Elisabeth. This is true – but it is a completely false comparison – risible in its retrospective self righteousness. Mary ruled for three years only – Elizabeth for over forty years. Mary came to power determined to cleanse England of the Protestant Heresy and re-establish the Old Catholic faith with instant fire and menaces. When Elizabeth the Protestant queen came to power she carried out no retaliations for the persecutions under Mary and for fifteen years no one died for their faith . The persecutions - when they began in 1580’s - were actually concerned with a concern to root out religious terrorism rather than a concern to force people’s consciences; at this time a fatwa had been proclaimed against Elizabeth by the Pope which made her assassination the duty of all Catholics at least in theory - there had been serious Catholic uprisings in the North of England, there had been terrible massacres of Protestants in Catholic France with huge loss of life, and a number of attempts son the Queen’s life; and there was the constant threat of Mary Queen of Scot’s becoming a rallying flag for Catholic terrorism, and the threat of invasion from mighty Spain. And in the English Jesuits colleges in Italy – which were a bit like the Islamic fundamentalist Madrassas of today – Englishmen were being trained to foment revolt against the Protestant Queen and they were landing in England to do this.

But the majority of English Catholics - in the light of all the evidence that is available - seem to have remained loyal to Elizabeth and many were wrongly persecuted during these terrible times

The situation today may seem bad – but nowhere near as bad as this. And long may it remain nowhere near as bad as this. That’s my Intro to multiculturalism in the UK in historical perspective – will post again later in the week.

#85

Regarding multiculturalism - I’m falling into old habits so I’d better change the subject (but suffice to say that I have the greatest sympathy with the post of my old friend [tag]corpselight[/tag] on that thread. There’s bits in it I’d like to unpack – because I know that multiculturalism as an ideology has sometimes had some very bad unintended consequences, very bad indeed – and I know this from first hand professional experience as well as thought reading the academic data and scrutinising the media debates from several angles)) But multiculturalism meaning people from different cultures living together in amity is strongly to be desired - and it sometimes happens well in London these days, the neighbour love across divides and difference as opposed to distrust and fear sometimes leading to blind hatred or even charitable hatred – and it sometimes happens very well. We’ve come a long way since the 1970s when fascist marched openly and unchallenged in English streets and vicious attacks upon ‘Pakis’ by skinheads were epidemic. But it doesn’t happen at all well in France these days or in some other European countries – and sometimes it is those countries that see immigrants as a threat to their ‘liberalism’ where the most hatred is being stirred up.

Regarding Elizabeth and what happened with the Catholics in her reign and in James’s reign – well the Catholics were from a different culture – an older culture that was passing away. It is instructive to look at their fate and the wise and unwise ways in which the real and terrible general Catholic threat was dealt with by Elizabeth and James. Culture can also mean power blocks with different ideologies. Power block culture is mixed up with cultures in the softer sense of the word but not identical with it. Cultures in terms of– cooking, language, contributions to human knowledge etc tend to enrich each other; whereas power blocks seek to annihilate each other.

[tag]Caleb Fogg[/tag], [tag]DaveB[/tag], and [tag]ChrisB[/tag] – you who are my current regulars for chats here  If you want to think a bit more about how historians go about their work – so that you questions me more closely for one thing and pin me down to details of evidence more… Well I posted my old lecture notes on Source Criticism at EU some time ago here –

Look at the OP and the notes on source criticism (if you want to). They are pretty accessible and are actually the skills that any participant in a democracy with a free press needs to be trained in – and I wish some here had more knowledge of these skills :wink: After the OP I did start to range more widely in a few posts about the nature of History as a field of research – but there was too much else going on

If you are really, really, really interested in this – an excellent short book available in the USA is -

amazon.com/Pursuit-History-J … sh+History

A slightly longer book by my old and now dead Professor of History where I used to work is this one

amazon.com/Nature-History-Ar … ur+marwick

And an excellent essay on Church History and the reasons why it is important to us is this one

amazon.com/Why-Study-Past-Hi … n+Williams

#86

Dick,

Read your class notes on Source Criticism. I do appreciating you thinking about history rigorously, b/c at times, when you’ve shared your historical knowledge, I’m thinking, “how does he know this stuff”? Often times you do share your sources, however.

I enjoyed reading the stories from WWII. I actually went on Google maps/Earth to see where Guernsey is. It was pretty amazing to see some of the panoramic views right there on my screen!

Caleb

#87

That’s great Caleb Fogg – that’s so good that you’ve taken a look at that stuff :smiley: . I there are people highly trained in some branch of philosophy here as it relates to theology – metaphysics is a hot one, ethics less so. But it’s so nice to have others interested in history too. And good research about Guernsey using Google maps to check out Amy’s story - the Nazi’s got a lot closer to the UK than some people realise :astonished:

Yes regarding sources – I do sometimes give them when it’s appropriate; but not always. A lot of the time – as here – I don’t; bother because… well if I always gave sources in detail and gave you my proper source criticism I’d be giving away what i hep to write in my book. It’s the nature of the beast when you post on a website that you don’t; give everything away – and most people won’t; read the stuff anyway.

If you look at the original C of E Universalism thread that Rev Drew started you will see me thinking through specific sources and making conjectures from these and then realising that my conjectures and /or the conjectures of other posters are improbable and coming up with better ones to test against the evidence. Three examples – and note that I couldn’t get to a library when I was first doing that research and so had to depend on Internet primary sources and check that the sources were presented in the same way in at least three independent academic websites –
First it took me a time before I could find the full text of the 42nd article and find any text for the 41st article and 40th article (all were abrogated by Elizabeth’s convocation). When I found all three a lot of things fell into place that were up in the air for me until then; and when I compared the 42nd article closely with the sources it was based on some other surprising/unexpected conclusions occurred to me.

Second, Drew found a passage from Martin Bucer showing what a tolerant man he was which lead heand I to think Bucer had something to do with the abrogation of the 42nd article in terms of his posthumous influence. And this seemed an excellent hypotheses since Bucer had been Matthew Parker’s colleague – the Archbishop of Canterbury who chaired the convocation where it was suppressed. However, I still had to keep an open mind; and it was an unexpected find when I was reading a scholarly article by Morwena Ludlow about whether the Anabaptists Hans Denck was a universalist that started to make me sceptical and check out Martin Bucer more closely– so I now am certain that Bucer would not have advocated the tolerance of universalism - although he would not have approved of the execution or imprisonment of universalists.

Third and final, I was persuaded for a very short time that Elizabeth could not have inclined towards tolerance of universalism – because the Marxist historian Christopher Hill had cited a speech by her made to Parliament in the early 1580s in which she seemed to approve strongly of hellfire and damnation (and Hill of course decided that this was to be expected of manipulative Queen who wanted to keep her people in their place). However, when I checked the source and the context of this speech it is very clear that Elizabeth is actually chiding her Calvinist Parliament over two issue close to her heart at the time – there are very strong reasons indeed for thinking her words are said sarcastically/ironically).

#88

[tag]DaveB[/tag] I’m very happy to have a chat sometimes about where the academic discipline of history fits into the ‘objective truth language game’ - if you’d like that :slight_smile:

#89

Thanks, Dick, I may take you up on that at some point. :smiley:

I’m pretty much in the ‘critical-realism’ camp and I think you are as well? You could probably explain it much better than I, and perhaps some people here would like to hear that explanation?

#90

Will have a ponder there Dave :slight_smile: - but first I’ve done a post on cultural diversity relevant dialogue between present and past :slight_smile:

Regarding cultural diversity -

OK I remember fascism and bigotry and bombs and the whole kit and caboodle in the seventies in Britain – and how much that violence was part of my life too and even touched my life on a number of occasions; the National Front, the Troubles in Northern Ireland that spilled over to the mainland, the race riots etc – they were all part of the same package.

Today – no matter how it may seem to someone on the outside reading reports in the media – Britain is a nicer place on the whole (and like [tag]corspelight[/tag] I speak as someone who lives in the cosmopolitan capital which is most affected by people of different cultures living together cheek by jowl; we are not strangers to this stuff we love with it day by day). We did something right in the 1980s and 1990s and the first decade of 2000 which the French neglected to do. Because today we have people her who almost see themselves as refugees from France – I’ve met French Jews and Africans from the Ivory Coast (the old French Colony) who see themselves in this way.

Of course any human effort at putting things right is always going to get unbalanced in some respect - which is why we constantly need to evaluate the best of intentions for unintended consequences. The initiatives to foster racial and religious harmony come broadly under the banner of the term multiculturalism.

Why did so many immigrants come to the UK in the first place. Well the simple answer is that successive governments invited them here. One condition for American financial help for the UK in the Second World War for Britain is that after the war was over Britain should dissolve its Empire – which it did. This was no bad thing but obviously it was in America’s self interests too that Britain should do this so that the markets of the British Empire were opened up to American companies (countries do business on this basis – it’s called realpolitick – the British did the same when they were very powerful and the French have always been past masters at it and so it’s nothing to get worked up about). And as in ancient Rome many of the children of the Empire returned to the mother land – many had fought in the war against Hitler for Britain. AND also because of the death rate of young men during the war Britani needed the immigrants – it still does today because it has an ageing population because of improvements in medicine etc, and not enough young people to look after them who are home born).

At first there was a lot of racism from certain sections of the white population and the immigrant communities tended to congregate in ghettos. I was born and spent the first nine years of my life in a place that was considered a ghetto – it’s; called Brixton and there were serious race riots there at one point.

So come the late seventies when things were getting nasty something had to be done – and it’s largely succeeded. Today we also have the influx of immigrants from the European union – but lots of young Brits go and live on the Contient so its par for the course.
But thins have improved because of initiatives to do with multiculturalism. But the element that became unbalanced about multiculturalism as a policy was that it eventually encouraged separate development. Some of the thinking was informed by post colonial Marxists who had a low view of the West and of democratic pluralism and saws all non Western cultures as oppressed an therefore ‘good’. So Marxist and some progressive liberals too encouraged people from different cultures to remain in those cultures rather than saying anything positive about the benefits of democratic pluralism and the strength of British traditions of liberty.

So certainly with the communities that were most different from the host – many of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities spring to mind – it was seen as racist to criticise them or to interfere in any way (by key academics and people involved in social services, education etc).
I remember in the 1990s a group of incredibly brave Muslim Women – Southall Black Sisters against Fundamentalism – pointing out that some liberals and Marxists were actually funding and unwittingly encouraging and silencing criticism of the most patriarchal, the most repressive towards women, the most open to radicalisation elements within their communities (again i have personal experience of this). The Black Sisters were right – and we have a problem today because of this and we are becoming aware of the limits of one form of multiculturalism. Diversity can only be negotiated within a shared identity. All people in our country must be educated to share our core values – and we have been neglectful of this.

Does this echo with Elizabeth?

#91

Well I think in a illiberal age Elizabeth’s settlement -which meant people needed to show outward conformity and loyalty to the National Church but their inward consciences were their own affairs (and the doctrinal and liturgical apparatus of the National Church were ‘open’ enough to accommodate a variety of beliefs and practices) - was very liberal indeed. Obviously at this date the ideas of actual democratic pluralism, separation of powers, and the right to differ publicly as long as this was done loyally and constructively, were at least sixty years in the future – but Elizabeth’s settlement was even cited by the radicals during Cromwell’s time as a precedent against the more tyrannous behaviour of the incompetent and needlessly antagonistic Stuart Kings who succeeded her.

Until very recently it was hard for us in the West to imagine how much religion and power politics were intertwined in Tudor England – perhaps not so much now.

But yes I think what Elizabeth was trying to do was to shape a sense of identity that transcended many differences- and in this she largely succeeded. Today in multicultural Britain – and indeed in a shrinking and interconnected world – we have a different task but one which has instructive analogies.

But did Elizabeth and her ministers and her soldiers make mistakes and overreact sometimes?– sure they did; and tragically so.

For example the Massacre of Protestants on Bartholomew’s Eve in Catholic France was a terrible, terrible thing. Estimates for how many were butchered in the streets in a single day vary, but a conservative estimate puts the toll at 60,000 – which is horrific. When news reached England Elizabeth summoned the French Ambassador to express her displeasure and dismiss him. Her entire court was dressed in black and as the ambassador walked past one by one turned their backs on him. One witness to these massacres – a young gallant courtier to Elizabeth who was in France at the time– was Sir Walter Raleigh (he who allegedly put his cloak over a puddle so the Queen could walk over it dry). Later Sir Walter Raleigh was sent to Catholic Ireland with his brother to quell a rebellion there. Now the English were rightly fearful that the Spanish could use Catholic Ireland to launch an invasion against England. But Sir Walter and his brother with their well equipped army fighting against tribesmen – committed terrible atrocities there, slaughtering man, woman, child and livestock. These slaughters, repeated by Cromwell, laid the basis for centuries of bloodshed in Ireland. So today when we hear about Isis the Islamic nihilists and their butchery we must be cautious that we don’t repeat the mistake of Walter Raleigh - for blood will have blood.

The ‘disabilities’ suffered by Catholic’s towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign were great – priests administering the Eucharist faced death while those who received it faced bankruptcy. Given the circumstances these harsh measures are understandable but not condonable. The Calvinists clergy of those time were the greatest roarers up for persecution of Catholics in ‘charitable hatred’. But within local communities there is much evidence of neighbour love protection – of Protestants protecting their Catholic neighbours and kinsmen from the persecutors. Elizabeth within her own court protected her Catholic friends and neighbours as best she could as she did the Family of Love - she even had an Anabaptist singer at court (although they were publicly hated with a vehemence - despite there being only a few in England at the time - and the ones who died during Elizabeth’s time were all hated as foreigners too).

Well when we read all of these terrible stories about religious strife today we should also look for stories of neighbour love across divides – of Muslims protecting Christians, of Christians protecting Muslims, of Jews protecting Muslims, and Muslims protecting Jews etc. There are plenty of these about if we look hard enough. They are our signs of hope I think.
I can think of some other examples but will save these for another day 

#92

Since I have been speaking of neighbour love in the post above - here is a brief conversation I had recently in a FB page with a friend mine who does not post here (well I think it’s relevant to post at the is point :confused: )

My friend suggested ‘’1 Corinthians 13 v.4ff’’ as an appropriate reading

I reply: ‘’Yes 'my friend - that’s the passage that in a secular age people still have read at weddings and funerals (although I think sometimes in these contexts today the words are mere honeyed words - but not always. I don’t know it off by heart but the gist of it is that Love is patient, love is kind, love is never proud nor boastful, love never puffs itself up, love never keeps account of wrongs. Faith hope and love are all great virtues - but the greatest of these is Love; and Love will continue when the other two have served their purpose and no longer exist. These words were written by a man who was sometimes both proud and boastful and sometimes took easy offence and cooked rough with his wit. So his exhortation here must also have been to himself. And I remember you were saying ‘friend’ that love in his passage does not refer to a feeling or something very simple that can be gotten and held. It’s a bundle of complex qualities that need to be balanced against each other and worked at - no matter how many times we may fail; and we all fail’’

And my friend in turn replied – ‘’True, Dick Whittington. So glad you mentioned about the balance element. Maybe Paul should have added ‘Love is not gooey’!!! I too think Paul is exhorting himself as well as others here. Maybe he should have added ‘Love is sooo difficult’ because - yes - we all fail - all the time! But it’s so worth picking yourself up and starting all over again because we must love one another or…!’’ (‘die’ I think is the missing word – and I think it’s a quotation from a poem by W,H, Auden) :slight_smile:

#93

I find it’s much more interesting, instructive, and entertaining, to let Sobor’s threads just run wherever he wishes on a daily basis. :laughing: :smiley:

(Was catching up here this morning after several weeks absence – I have a habit of catching up on Sobor’s threads in blocs, too, which is an unfortunate quirk I ought to work on, though I mean it as a compliment: I feel like I’m reading a book when I do, which is why I have that preference! :ugeek: )

#94

And so my education continues :wink:. Never heard of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, or the French Wars of Religion, for that matter. Wikipedia puts the death toll between 2 and 4 million between 1562 and 1598: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion.

They do list quite different numbers than you did for the Massacre over a longer time frame:

-source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre

and

No wonder church attendance in France today is so small.

-about-france.com/religion.htm

#95

I ran across a couple of interesting pop-culture references to the Massacre last year. One was part of a giant silent film, the last large-scale film written and directed by D. W. Griffith called Intolerance. (Yes, the same guy who set up and directed the KKK origin film Birth of a Nation. And yes part of his rationale for doing the Intolerance film was to show that he really wasn’t intolerant to black people despite Good Lord that other film… :unamused: I own both by the way.) Griff stitched together a modern-day gangland story, the fall of Babylon by the Persians, the life of Christ, and the Massacre. The most expensive film in history up to that time (1916).

The other was a four-part Doctor Who story from the first Doctor, which gins along with increasing foreboding (despite the crazy coincidence of a chief architect of the massacre looking just like the Doctor), until the Doctor flees the time period as the Massacre begins resulting in a super-grim recreation of it by means of art paintings – after which he and his current companion have a heated argument about how the Doctor has no problem interfering in some incipient tragedies but somehow wants to avoid doing so in other cases, for which the upset Doctor has no coherent explanation.

Intolerance can be found in various flavors of DVD and Blu, including free public domain online both at its Wiki entry and on YT. I don’t know of any YT posting which excerpts all the Massacre portions, but the film is designed so that all the pieces are meant to complement one another so excerpting them (especially the two shorter sections including the Massacre) loses some punch anyway. (The two longer ‘movies’, about modern crime and the fall of Babylon, were originally intended to be separate films to begin with and were later released that way to try to recoup some of the enormous financial losses.)

The longest version of Intolerance can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=eo66cJqEl4A

(Playback offsite has been disabled by the user, so one has to go to YT to see it.)

The Massacre is one of the missing 1st Doctor stories, but BBC granted a reconstruction project called Loose Cannon the unofficial permission to make reconstructed videos from various visual documentation and public recordings of the original audio. So, ironically, it’s one of the full stories which are currently completely free to watch on the net! (As the BBC slowly recovers and does its own reconstructions of early eps, LC pulls its corresponding eps out of circulation.)

The eight half-eps in order:








Or if those don’t show up in the browser, you can find the playlist for the story starting here: youtube.com/watch?v=w13Ahpl … 81Fez4ynug

#96

Wow boys - this is a fun break… William Hartnell!!! I’m busy tonight but will take a good look tomorrow and get back to you :smiley: How very interesting [tag]Caleb Fogg[/tag]and [tag]Jason Pratt[/tag] :smiley: Remind me to post something about the licensed foreigner churches in Elizabethan London.

#97

Yes Jason too much fun to be had so no yanking on the lead and collar is required. Not sure dear Dick that I can help much with this stuff. I was privileged to go to Reigate Priory for my secondary education such as it was. Thus I benifited from the dissolution of the monistaries by default in some way. History was after geography my favourite subject though in practice I did better at science. Anyway, those who fail to learn from the failures of history, we are told, are likely to repeat them so the value of historians is not to be minimised. Perspective is such an important aspect of sight. As I get older it’s value seems to grow if for no other reason that it stops me tripping over! :laughing: :laughing: Oh! and Jason what a link to Dr Who :open_mouth: I must find time to view.

#98

Thus I remind you. :mrgreen:

While the DW eps won’t take 90 minutes to get through, the key ep (from a somewhat theological / moral dilemma perspective) is obviously part 2 of the last one.

I’ll be curious what anyone thinks of Intolerance, too, if anyone feels like daring to plow through a 3+ hour silent film.

(A surprising number of the silents were massively long; and no copy of Intolerance so far includes all the material originally released.)

#99

Hi Jason - well I’m looking forward to watching Dr Who tomorrow!!! And any Brits here may notice that one of the actors in the second still is Peter Purvis who went on to become a very annoying children’s TV presenter in ‘Blue Peter’ - he was the big girls’ blouse who was always making raffia interesting gifts for mum and Da out of plastic detergent bottles and sticky back plastic in the studio while the other male presenter John Noakes was diving from aeroplanes in parachute drops :smiley: His catchphrase was - I seem to remember - ‘I think that’s absolutely super’ :smiley: Will get back after I’ve had a look - and I’ve already seen quite a bit of intolerance and know something of its history as a film (it didn’t; go down well at the time because it did not reflect the public mood).

Ok I think its; good to have a wee break - but I’ve plenty more to say talking around this subject (which is not identical to the stuff I’m researching for the book). One offer I can make is that at some point if anyone is interested - just like we did the picture analysis here - I could run a group historical source criticism workshop. Easy enough - and I’d chose a simple document source with a background many will have some knowledge of. And that way I can show y’all that ‘scholarly’ history is not the domain of highly educated people like I am not - well at least I had an odd and fragmented education - but is indeed for everyone :slight_smile: Well it’s a thought - and it’s a genuine offer :slight_smile: