Thanks Dick for another helpful and fascinating post. Looking forward to the next instalment.
And thanks Drew - who drew it out of me in the first place!!! Will proceed very soon. The conversation on Christian anarchism in Occupy Wall Street at Politics -is interesting, and I may pursue this for a day or so because there is some stuff I was going to eventually put in this thread that seems very appropriate to included there, at least for the moment. And it is good to touch base with the younglings of the field and tell them that they have a host of brothers and sisters who have been there in the past and resonate with their concerns and their passion.
Well done for mentioning Christian anarchists – which gave me the opportunity to clarify!
All the best
Dick
Thanks again for all your efforts. I’m enjoying this thread enormously.
Some great typos add to the fun. 
“so marring to Sir Thomas must have been smoothing…”
Hi Allan
My Typos!!! 
I completely agree with you - they do add to the fun (and we need some fun in dark times!!). That’s a great one I made about Sir Thomas – purely unintentional and reveals my prejudice in favour of Dame Alice! I’d not notices that one – but I have noticed another howler; namely I referred to Bloody Mary’s Prelate ‘Cardinal Reginald Pole’ as ‘Cardinal Poke’ in a previous email (I couldn’t believe my own unconscious audacity there! ).
I find it very difficult to proof read on screen – even with the wiggly lines (and these don’t come up on site and I’m always adding stuff after I’ve cut and pasted from a Word document anyway).I’m fine if I print the stuff out and read it properly flat – but I’m a wee bit lazy. Six years ago when I retrained to be a Community and Post-16 teacher after leaving Higher Education, I had to do a test about my ‘learning style (yawn! 
) and was actually diagnosed as being a dyslexic who had developed effective coping strategies by myself when young. And I thank God that I wasn’t diagnosed when young – because it was never a serious problem and I’ve known people with quite mild dyslexia who have been diagnosed when young by over pushy middle class parents and have ended up limiting their own self expectations from their anxious diagnosis.
Anyway – when I worked in Higher Education I spent a lot of time doing exam anxiety and study skills counselling, dyslexia workshops, support for deaf and blind students etc. The perfectionists were the most maimed category of people who formed part of my pastoral care case load. And I used to have written in bold print on the wall of my little room for their encouragement –
THE TOO PERFECT CEASE TO CREATE
And that’s a quotation from our dear Christian Universalist brother Nicholas Berdyaev – so Universalism has multiple applications – even Study Skills !!!
All the best old chum – and will get going with this again next week; I’ve planned the next stage over on the Athanasian thread, and I just need a couple of days doing something else to settle my brain.
Blessings and laughter
Dick
Beginning to catch up on this and related threads. (I’m not much farther on than your mention of John Dee, which amuses me greatly, in a good way, for reasons that would only be important to me but which I can’t talk about. Although I very much want to. Maybe someday…)
I will note in passing (since I caught up to there, too) that the reference to St. Paul being led to Christ by corporeal punishment is almost certainly intended to be based on the words of Christ to Saul: “Saul, Saul, how hard it is for you to kick at the goads!” The goad would be the corporeal punishment which Paul was resisting while Saul.
It’s still a perversion of the intention, as there is no evidence at all that Christ was physically punishing Saul of Tarsus to lead him up to that point–thus the goads against which he was kicking must have been mental distress. Then again, Christ does blind him in the same scene and direct him to a Christian for healing.
OK Jason - that’s really great to know. And always, always clarify and correct any points of biblical scholarship or non scholarship of mine – wherever I scatter my bonnet full of wild bees. I really did have to give up on really detailed knowledge of the Bible earlier in life because I’d just had too much of the proof texting stuff. I’ve linked arms in ecstasy with people swaying together and singing – ‘We are one in the Spirit, we are one the Lord’, - after being fired up by guest speakers with warm feelings of exclusive neighbour love at being special to the Lord and not like those outsiders intent on persecuting us and whom the Lord would soon destroy. Ecstatic utterance might break out here and there, we’d thrust our fingers in the air with the ‘One way with Jesus’ salute, we’d join in the high cringe factor Arthur Blessit cheer – ‘Give me a J’, ’Give me an E’, ‘Give me an S’, ‘Give me a U’, ‘Give me an S’, ‘And what have you got’ – ‘JESUS’, JESUS’ – ‘And what you gonna do about it’ – ‘LOVE, LOVE’; and we’d embrace with tears of joy in our eyes. However, latter in the bar - which served soft drinks only - acrimonious bickering would break out about whether adult baptism was necessary for salvation, whether spirit Baptism made a believer superior to those who lacked this experience, whether the rapture was pre-tribulation or post tribulation, whether vicars should be allowed to wear ‘angel suits’ etc, etc, etc… And in a more violent age with a more theocratic state the angry words would have turned to blows and then to sword thrusts etc, etc, etc. Och well, we all know this so I don’t have to preach to the converted – and we are all young and impressionable at some stage
I am convinced that John Dee was a very bright man who turned into a just a very, very silly sausage – and hold on to it that he was just ‘a very silly sausage’ - so I’m so glad my take on him amuses you and hope your secret isn’t a painful one (if you ever want to tell, so tell; but hey, there’s no cause for alarm!) People who are really obsessed with this stuff often use it as a power trip on others; hence my use of ‘funky’. These people also often prey on us when we are young and impressionable and going through a nerdy stage. ‘May they know the error of their perishing ways’ I say
There is a character in George Elliot’s Mill on the Floss,’ Edward Casaubon, who reminds me of Dee. He’s the bloke who drives himself crazy trying to find the key to all of the world mythologies. OF course, the wonderful and humane Mary Anne Evans/George Elliott came from an Evangelical background. She wrote with loving insight, without a hint of bitter rancour, about the varieties of religious enthusiasm. And I guess the template for Casaubon was not so mush your Dr Dee type but rather your dispensational millenarian type. All of this weird stuff about slicing up the Bible into three ages, getting hung up on the measurements of the Jerusalem Temple, and getting fascinated by numerology is – well, kind of ‘occult’. And these people are the ones that shout loudest about the pervasive influence of the occult – curious? Something about the speck and the log occurs to me here.
Funnily enough the ‘occult art’ that Dee and chums were so fascinated by was not really occult at all. They were engaged in tying to invent and refine good systems of visualisation for people who need to remember lots of things like actors and politicians when making speeches. For example, Robert Fludd wrote a treatise on the ‘Theatre of Memory where people were encourage to visualise the Globe Theatre – used by Shakespeare’s company – and place different parts of a speech in different parts of the visualised theatre while associating each part with an object left at each location. Then when delivering the speech they would go around the theatre in their mind’s eye picking up the objects and associated ideas one by one and in sequence. It’s called the ‘method of location’ and entertainers still use it today. Probably the original actors at the Globe used it to remember their lines (they didn’t yet have prompters). It’s almost touching that this method came again into fashion and that many fine minds put so much effort into refining it at precisely the time when the printing press was making it obsolescent.
I found it enormously amusing when I heard that the latest codex of ST John’s Apocalypse found to date had thenumber of the beast in not as 666 but as 616– as you’ll almost certainly know (but I say it to edify other readers). I’m a naughty and uncharitable soul – but I did imagine Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all meeting down cast for an anxious Budweiser in a bar with old man Hal Lyndsey– he never apologised for his wrong predictions in ‘The Late Great Planet Earth, and he should have done for shame because he made such a lot of money from it. I imagined Hal trying to put a good face on things with, ‘Well bys, it’s back to the drawing board!’
All the best, and rest you merry about Dr Dee and chums-
Dick
Dick,
It wasn’t your take on him that amused me, so much as that I was wondering the last time I caught up whether you would mention him (for reasons I can’t talk about publicly), and just about the first entry I read when starting to catch up again–there he was!
Let us say that there is a well-reviewed book in print where (thanks to the author) John Dee resembles me in some important ways when, strictly speaking, he could just as easily have been very different. (I regard Dee’s representation there as being at least partially a compliment to me by the author.)
Bless you Jason -
I am such a mother hen (it’s the teacher/nurturer in me)- and sometimes I’m like the boy scout who helps the old lady across the road when she doesn’t want to be helped because she’s already on the side of the road she wants to be on. But I am so glad that the reasons are professional rather than about your having come into contact with some creeps at a young age!
All the best
Dick
Jason – I’m still intrigued to know what this other John Dee looks like! But I won’t push this in case you suspect me of not being a gentleman (and you may well be right).
Actually my post about the ‘occult’ was one of those where I was mindful of the wider audience reading here. A lot of site members are former fundamentalists’ – they may have made the shift to Universalism but often can still be fixated on other issues of fear that fundamentalist of ECT colours fixate upon too (and I think they can relax about these other issues too, I pray that they will, and I really rejoice when they do). Hence my use of ‘funky’ and a rather long explanation of the Art of Memory in the last post (but I still do think Dr Dee was a marginal figure who took a wrong turn with his obsessions).
OK -now I speak to a general audience
I feel especially mindful of being sensitive about these matters because I have taught several bright Afro Caribbean Pentecostal girls – who needed to get their GCSE English Literature badly to serve the Lord in their chosen vocations, but had problems with one of the set texts which was Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I needed to explain to them that actually Macbeth is not about the occult at all. The King of Scotland/Thane of Fife/Thane of Cawdor is clearly responsible for his own actions and is not compelled by witchcraft or by his ambitious wife to murder. He’s a good man gone to seed when the temptation of power presents itself (he is the one who isfirst described as ‘too full of the milk of human kindness’ and whose wife saysof him that she always knows what he is thinking because his face betrays it (so he is not an unsmiling machiavell wearing the glory of office with ease through instinctive control of his face (of these characters who I too have come across in the modern world as middle managers, Shakespeare wrote in a sonnet –‘ Be not deceived/For lilies fester worse than stinking weeds)). The temptation of power is Macbeth’s ‘hamartia. And Macbeth’s awful self awareness that in choosing the road of murder and mayhem he is actually perishing in his violence fill us with pity because even in him the image of God in his conscience is never completely obscured. Shakespeare only included the witchcraft theme in ‘The Scottish Play’ because – well, he needed to earn his crust and to do so he had to provide a play of interest for James I, his new Royal patron after Elizabeth’s death – and James was obsessed with witchcraft and the persecution of witches. Put in this context I managed to calm my Pentecostal students’ fears – and I could only do this because I had been a fundamentalist myself - (although I had a less sensitive colleague, a rather angry secularist, who had a Pentecostal student withdrawn from his class by their Mum over the same issue).
I’ve also stuck up for the dear old Pentecostals by raising awareness of the fact that there are far too many people in mental health institutions in the UK from a Black Pentecostal background (something militant secularists sometimes gloat over) because their mental state has often been misunderstood – for example people from this background/tradition often engage in very public displays of inconsolable grieving because this is their way of dealing with grief, and this gets misinterpreted by the dominant professional culture in my country that is still rather ‘stiff upper lip’.
But it works the other way too. In the early 1990’s there was an influx of fundamentalist speakers from America giving lectures on Satanism and Child Abuse to secular social workers (who didn’t have the sense to sift the information). And due to the influence of these speakers there were some tragic miscarriages of justice. Notable amongst these was the Satanic Panic case in the Orkney Islands off of Scotland where a number of families, who proved to b e totally innocent, had their children taken away from them by social services because it was alleged they were involved in Satanic cultist sexual abuse. Jean De La Fonteyne, an academic at the London School of Economics, wrote a fine and measured Government report on this. Interview transcripts showed that the social workers had been leading the children on during interviews using stories heard from American fundamentalists as their interpretive key.
Now I was no longer a Quaker when all of this happened but it was most upsetting for me because I had been one and still felt great affection for them. You see, the report told of how a secular social worker had interviewed some parents who were Quakers. Ignorant of Quaker faith and practice the social worker had inquired ‘Do you think it is normal to sit in a circle in silence?’) implying that they were participating in a witches coven) and had used this as evidence to take their children into care. Well this was actually religious persecution of a far more serious kind than Gorge Carey has been thundering about recently when conservative Christian have been treated insensitively. I understand that the Society of Friends held a ‘Meeting for Suffering’ about this – which is symbolic because Meetings for Suffering were originally convened in the seventeenth century to co-ordinate strategy to assist friends undergoing persecution. But they did not seek a high media profile and conducted themselves with dignity and without paranoia. I was proud of them.
As things turned out, the Orkney children were eventually returned to their parents – but a lot of damage had been done to families by this which will have taken time to heal (and I’ll bet some scars still remain. (On the level f one individual there are echoes of this in the Amana Knox case – I’m sure she was innocent but I’ll bet the dirt will stick to her with some people, poor kid, because of the prosecutor’s zealous obsession with ritualistic killing)
The Evangelical Alliance eventually had to admit some blame in all of this and issued a statement repudiating the satanic panic and at the same time repudiating ‘recovered memory syndrome’ (quite rightly). This seemed to mark the point at which the New Churches in the UK got less triumphalist in their mass marches for Jesus. IT was also about this time that new thinking began to emerge from the house church movement in the shape of the post-evangelicals (and I went to Holy Joes, the post evangelical pub church twice, and enjoyed the conversation there – this site actually reminds me a bit of Holy Joes in cyberspace - without the beer). Also at this time the peace process in Northern Ireland really got going and it was great to see some hard bitten sectarian Protestant killers opening up to a vision of a better non-sectarian future for their people (I’m thinking of the impressive David Irving here). There seemed to be a sympathetic link in all of this - and certainly the peace talks in Northern Ireland were popular topic at Holy Joes.
Also at this time we had the Sheffield Nine O’clock service scandal. There were a group of young charismatic Christians in Sheffield – headed by one Chris Brain – who had developed a multi media rave type Eucharist (not my cup of tea but it had its appeal at the time allegedly). The Nine O’clock service was initially inspired by the Charismatic ‘Latter Day Rain’ movement which, I understand is associated with one Ken Wimber – who was once a drummer in the Four Seasons – and his ‘Kansas City Prophets. They were strong on word of knowledge. /word of wisdom power pneumatology – the idea is that someone filled with the spirit can tell another person what the Lord wants for them or wants them to do. Unfortunately Chris Brain was a talented and charming charismatic sociopath who controlled his followers whit his utterances and abused countless women in his flock. This was all kept under wraps and Mr Brain seemed dot be a rising star in the Evangelical network. Sheffield Cathedral gave the Nine O’clock service hospitality, and in a tragic drive to seem relevant and trendy, the Anglican hierarchy fast tracked Brain to the priesthood. At this point the Nine O’clock Service evolved away from Pentecostalism and embraced Matthew Fox’s Creation Centred Theology (I’ve written about Matthew Fox critically but sympathetically on the ‘Original Sin’ thread).
Then the scandal broke and Brain had to make him scarce and a group of idealistic young people - who had tithed and in some case ‘double tithed’ their incomes to support the service - were left battered and disillusioned. At first the fundamentalists tried to put all the blame on Matthew Fox and made much of the fact that Fox had said that his dog is his spiritual director (by which he meant that his dog is a spontaneous humble creature - but the fundamentalists tried to suggest it was his familiar spirit). I was alarmed by the connection with Creation Centred Spirituality. However the unanimous testimony of Nine O’clock rave members suggested a very different story. The abuse had predated the involvement of CCS and had been facilitated by the exalted power given to Brian through 'word of widsom’ pneumatology. In addition, several of the women came forward and said that CCS which has a strong Christian Feminist agenda had actually empowered them to speak out against Brain.
The last I heard of the Nine O’clock service people was that they were still meeting, but not in the context of a rave service but, rather, in silence – just as the Anabaptist Spirituals had done in acts of inaugurated mourning for a purer understanding of faith.
So none of the issues I have been discussing here in theri Elizabethan context have gone away. And I note the appalling story of the massacre in a Jewish School in France last week by a deranged extremist. It’s too early to make a sober judgment about causes – but we are hearing that Marie Le Pen of the French National Front had been mouthing off about how French Christian culture is being polluted by the purveyors of kosher and halal food– and this may have contributed to this appalling hate crime.
Sober blessings
Dick
I’m going to finish off this part of my ‘informal history of Universalism in the UK’ project during Holy Week – because this will concentrate my attention on the final summing up.
Obviously I made some serious points about contemporary Christianity in my last email and I would like to corroborate them (in case you thought my bonnet full of wild bees was getting the better of me – as can happen)
Actually the events of which I spoke of were spaced out fairly evenly over the nineteen nineties and were probably part of millennial expectation fever. As the horror stories began to emerge, since I know quite a lot about religious history I was always mindful of and concerned about the example of the first millennium. This passed without the widely expected Second Coming and the disappointment at frustrated hopes and expectations was one of the main impulses that launched the murderous First Crusade in the Christian West to recapture Jerusalem (with its terrible and indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims, Eastern Christians and Jews).
However, the real millennium – and not the High Tech Horror movie millennium of the ‘Left Behind’ genre – did bear some fruit over here. I’m thinking of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland –achieved not without great pain and sacrifice – but it looks really optimistic (and a lot of positive input came from the humiliated American President Bill Clinton – he may have had an irregular personal life, and was his own worst enemy, but the man was not all bad by a long stretch). One of the key movers in the early Peace Process whose name I mentioned by misspelt in my last post, was that fine man with a twinkle in his eye David Ervine. HE had been a terrorist but had grown tired of killing and was a key conciliatory figure; and was instrumental in taking the risk of making the first gesture for peace when Loyalist/Protestant paramilitaries announced an unconditional ceasefire in 1994. You can find details about him at -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ervine
The research paper – ‘The extent and nature of organised and ritual abuse – research findings’ by Professor J.S. La Fontaine was published by the UK Department of Health in 1994 and printed by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office). So I guess the Satanic Abuse scandal must have peaked in about 1993.
Dave Tomlinson – the granddad of the Post-Evangelical Movement in the UK (a bit like the Emergent Church movement in America – but different, and not as grand in scale) published his influential book ‘The Post Evangelical’ in 1995 (I think I went to his pub Church ‘Holy Joes’ in 1997 three times and also participated in another post-evangelical discussion in a South London pub that he chaired a year earlier). Nice guy Dave, with a twinkle in his eye (which, as Drew has reminded us is a desirable characteristic from middle age onwards.
There are two excellent books that sum up and analyse what went wrong in Charismatic Christianity in the UK in the1990s -
The Rise and Fall of the Nine o’Clock Service: A Cult within the Church? by Roland Howard (12 Sep 1996)
Charismania: When Christian Fundamentalism Goes Wrong by Roland Howard (21 Aug 1997)
Roland Howard’s books take a long and serious look at abuses of power within the Charismatic scene in the UK during this period – and they really were rather serious (although it’s hard to say how widespread – but the triumphalism of the Marches for Jesus tended to cover up the excesses for a while – and it is always triumphalism that puts up a propaganda front to disallow self critical reflection).
I see from Amazon that some reviewers of ‘The Rise and Fall’ book are annoyed that Howard concentrates so much on Chris Brain’s sociopathic role in the Nine O’clock service to the detriment of the overall cultural significance of ‘NOS’ (the rather trendy acronym for The Nine O’clock Service) on the Sheffield Club Scene, and on the Emergent Church (to which I can only say , rather patronisingly– ‘bless,’ and doubt that these reviewers were among those who met in dignified and silent mourning).
‘Charismania’ has some disturbing case studies – but the book is not intended to be destructive of the Charismatic movement as a whole. It is simply a prophetic attempt to awaken Charismatic Christians to the dangers of abuse of power – and as such is wholly constructive in intention. The book actually ends with a consideration of the writings of the Christian martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer and his salutary advice that we find God most directly in the current times in powerless vulnerability and the in powerless that we meet in or lives.
I know that a number Charismatic Christians are members of this site – and have been here a lot longer than I have - and peace and blessing to you if you read my stuff. I had some experience of charismatic worship when young – but it wasn’t for me (I think perhaps because I am a rather excitable and noisy person I am naturally drawn to forms of worship that contain lots of peace and quiet to balance me up). I must say that my contact with Charismatic Christianity did no real damage to me – although it was a bit confusing. Also I’ve met, and worked with, lots of lovely Charismatic Christians – full of openness and love. As for my Charismatic students – I had four or five of them over a two year period. They were all female and came from a second generation English Caribbean background. I hope I’ve made it clear that I really liked these girls, and wanted to get the through their exams so that they could follow their vocations/the Lord by entering the caring professions (which all of them intended to do). Obviously I have been alarmed by some of the excesses of the Charismatic movement in the UK that surfaced in the 1990’s. I will add that these excesses invariably seem to have happened in white middle class Charismatic Churches – and I’ve observed elsewhere that I think stuffy white middle class people are particularly vulnerable to going over the top with cathartic emotional release – because they are often rather alienated from their bodies and their emotions to start with though upbringing (I contrast this with something I once read by an American black girl Charismatic to the tune of– ‘ Everything that is in me dances when I praise the Lord with my body, the temple of His spirit!’). Actually the only case of sexual abuse by a Charismatic pastor I have come across personally took place in the context of a white Charismatic Church – and the life of the victim who I knew for a time, had been devastated by this betrayal of trust.
I hope that I am being fairly even handed on this thread when talking about the good and the bad in the Church of England. I could also, I hope, be even handed about the good and the bad in the Quakers who I know well – and hope to do so here one day. (And, of course, abuse of power including sexual abuse goes on in all Churches from time to time – and it is my personal view that the Catholic Church particularly needs to have a long hard look at its celibate priesthood because of all of the temptations this throws up for attracting the wrong sorts of people for the wrong reasons. And the potential for priestly abuse of power that we see tragically detailed in the media at the moment far too often. It is tragic that the current Pope thinks that what is needed is for priests to be more assiduous in mortifying their bodies as a remedy for this. I know kind and good simple Catholics who want their priests to be heroes of purity. But I don’t think we should expect this sort of heroism of our Christian leaders – especially if it lead to the suffering of innocents which it obviously does. I also know free thinking Catholics who want a married priesthood – with celibacy just as an option - and female priests as well as soon as possible. God’s speed to them I say)
We should never identify any visible church - whatever denomination or tendency this is from, with its particular forms of worship and organisation - with the invisible Universal Church. The latter is God’s gracious work in us all – whatever our particular modes of worship and confessional emphases; and God’ work is working towards the Universal Reconciliation of All in Christ. I can only add that if you are a Charismatic and reading this post – please be joyful, and be exuberant before the Lord as a witness to your stuffier and more reserved brothers and sisters; but never emphasise signs and wonders and acts of Power at the expense of the real fruits of the Spirit – Love, Joy, Peace.
A final book that looks at issues raised in this post is
Ungodly Fear: Fundamentalist Christianity and the Abuse of Power by Stephen Parsons (20 Apr 2001)
And at this point I want to turn away from Charismatic Christianity to more general temptations within organised Christianity.
Parsons book is, to my mind, excellent and the best pastoral book written for recovering fundamentalists that I know of. It is about extreme fundamentalism in all of its forms – both charismatic and non-charismatic (and I am aware that charismatic Christianity and fundamentalism are not necessarily linked – although in the UK they often are). All the other books I’ve read on Fundamentalism tend to simply concentrate on the intellectual matter of biblical scholarship to free the mind from the tyranny of manipulative and selective literalism (which only has a very recent history despite its claims to be true Christianity). In my experience this is only part of the battle – and a very small part at that. This book concentrates on the more pressing issue of how to understand the manipulative dynamics of power that are so often part and parcel of fundamentalism. Parsons is a Church of England priest, but his critique of fundamentalism is very much grounded in the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church which he loves (he spent a lot of time in Greece when it was under military dictatorship and likens extreme fundamentalism to his experience of a quasi fascist aberration within Orthodoxy with its own power based Christology that supported the ‘Colonels’ in the 1970’s. He makes some good point about Hell in his book – that Jesus threats of hell or ‘perishing were always aimed at the powerful and never at h vulnerable 9especially not the children; and I think that’s an excellent observation.
I think it is also from Parsons that I gleaned an observation that I made on the Original Sin Thread that the picture of God found in strong ECT traditions – a God who is uncontrollably powerful but who we have to trust as being ‘just’ despite our intuition that he acts without justice in damming so many and saving so few – has its roots in extreme puritan child rearing practices. There is a terrible tradition within extreme Puritanism and other authoritarian forms of Christianity of beating children severely and even savagely from a tender age, not because they have done anything wrong but simply to thrash the original sin out of them. And children subjected to this abuse will have a real existential experience of being powerless and vulnerable and subjected to abuse from a source that is overwhelmingly powerful but that is also the source of their security – that is their Parent.
A friend of mine tells me that she once went to a youth meeting at her Conservative Evangelical Church here in the UK in the early 1970s. The vicar had just purchased a tape of David Wilkerson – of ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’ fame – giving an address. David Wilkerson was a bit of a cult hero at the time an d his story of evangelising New York Gangs was the sort of fantasy that all young evangelicals over here wanted to place themselves in. Such was the fame and the esteem of Pastor Wilkerson that the vicar hadn’t even bothered to listen to the tape before playing it. He simply thought it would ‘go down well with the young people’. Anyway Wilkerson began speaking with ‘I beat my children, yes I beat my children - even sometimes when they’ve done nothing wrong. And I beat my children because I love them’ – and his voice apparently sounded really creepy. There was a lot of nervous throat clearing in the Church Hall and the vicar looked very embarrassed (and was probably worried about angry parents if this got out).
I understand that Wilkerson did go on to have big problems in his marriage – for which I wish him well if he is still alive. I don’t remember much in detail about ‘The Cross and the Switch Blade’ – but I think its miracles and wonders were probably over egged. However, I do remember one piece of very unhelpful advice he gave in it when holding up a group of young women of radiant faith who ‘just wanted to burn themselves for the Lord’ as an example for us to imitate. I also remember reading a book by Ken Leech- an Anglican priest who was vicar of St Anne’s in London’s seedy area of Soho at this time. Leech complained that all of the patient work he had been doing during the week with drug addicts, pimps and prostitutes was often undone by young Evangelicals descending upon Soho in the weekend brandishing their copies of the ‘Cross and the Switch blade’, getting up people’s noses, and then returning home to the leafy suburbs after their bit of excitement.
And I also do remember, in this connection, that in the late 1990’s there was a media story about a couple of American Fundamentalists who planned to tour the UK to give lecture on beating children – the woman in the duo thought that it was even correct and godly to chastise babies by hitting them with a large plastic spoon. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who is a Christian counsellor and an Anglican – just because I was perplexed; but she immediately got on to her networks of protest and it seems that after protests fomr her lot and others the couple were refused entry to the UK (so that’s a good turn I did once without even knowing what the outcome would be – so never be afraid to mentions things that disturb you to your mates if you feel that your faith is being dishonoured, especially if they have influence; who knows my friends ability to rally significant numbers of protestors to swell the ranks may have had an effect).
The whole tradition of child abuse in Christianity is a disgrace– and I do want to distinguish this very clearly from begin strict with kids from time to time to give them appropriate protective guidelines. Certainly the stuff I’ve uncovered about Calvin’s Geneva when researching this thread is horrifying – and I understand it even sent shock waves through Elizabethan England and was never part of Lutheranism, for example( one of the most moving things I’ve ever read is Luther’s tender lament for his little daughter who died young). The beheading of a child for striking its parents in a temper tantrum, the condemning of naughty children to death and then the reprieving them only after the hangman’s noose had been placed around their necks – all of this is depravity. I guess some may feel consoled that these stories don’t entail sexual abuse, but just extreme emotional and physical abuse (that’s small comfort and special pleading in my view). And, who is to say that those perpetrating these atrocities no children did not get a sexual thrill from them? The sex drive is perfectly innocent and good but like the rest of our humanity it is corrupted by the rivalrous drive for power – and power and the abuse of power is the root of the issue. ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.
Sober blessings
Dick
Hello everyone -
Apologies for being tardy with bringing this thread to a close – a bit of a cliff hanger eh? Well I’ve had a lot on recently of a taxing personal nature and I thought I needed a rest from writing too much about religious persecution (getting a bit bogged down I reckon). So I’ll just leave this one in the air for a little longer (although I think you can guess where it’s heading – and its almost cooked).
Note that I’m actually doing something very relevant to this discussion on another thread at the moment - namely the new thread on the Quakers which is in the ‘Church’ section. I’ve mostly held my peace about the Quakers until now, although I have seen a couple of threads in which questions about them were asked. However, I feel my knowledge - for what it’s worth - is needed to clear up a few of the myths and misperceptions that I’ve seen written about the Quakers on this site, all good errors made in good faith and without partisan malice I might add. I think we have much to learn from historic Quakerism – and so when invited I had to pile in.
Also the thread is helping me clear my mind of other issues that I was going to put on a supplementary thread here -which would have meant that they would probably would not have been looked at by many - namely the dialectic between Christian Radical Universalism and Establishment universalism in the History of the English and America Churches (and yes that is a bit of a pompous mouthful that I’ve just given voice to; sorry Friends!). This topic has already come up here regarding ‘The Family of Love’. It would come up again on the Athanasian Creed thread – but I think it’s best for me to deal with it separately given the current interest (and this will make the Athanasian thread a lot simpler and more focussed. The topics I hope to look at on the Quaker thread of relevance to the Ecclesiology thread will emerge -
When I look at of the history of the later radical English Universalist sects - the Levellers, the Diggers, and the Quakers, and of the slightly barmy Philadelphians,
When I look at the lone passionate voice of the heterodox - but still well worth listening to - English visionary William Blake who is part of the radical Universalist tradition.
When I look at the influence of the Wesleyan Holiness movement on later English Universalism. This is rooted in Wesley’s theology of ‘sanctification in which he drew upon the Universalist Greek fathers – Clement Origen and Gregory Nyssa – for inspiration. In America the Wesleyan Holiness movement gave birth to Pentecostalism and a revisit of Wesley’s Holiness theology may be of interest to Charismatic’s who are also universalists (I’m thinking of Sherman here if he reads this – and I’ve already written the post if you want a sneak preview) IN Britain when allied with some of the English Evangelical Quakers who still revered some of the older Quaker traditions (and they were only a minority at the time) the Wesleyan Holiness movement inspired the pre-Keswick Broadlands Universalist conferences which included George MacDonald, Andrew Jukes and Hannah Whitall Smith as participants.
When I look at the High Tory Anglican Universalist William Law – a High Tory Non-Juror not normally associated with Universalism - whose influence was immense across boundaries; his Universalist writings were treasured by the eighteenth century Quakers, by William Bake, and by the Broadlands Conference. The Tentmakers site makes much of his influence on the Wesley brothers and on Henry Venn of the Clapham sect. However this is only a partial truth (which wrongly implies that Universalism inspired all three). William Law wrote a book early in his career entitled ‘A Serious Call to the Devout Life’ – that certainly did inspire the fathers of the Evangelical Revival. However, this is not a Universalist text and was written before Law read Jacob Boehme and was persuaded, like others before him had been, to take Boehme’s thinking in a Universalist direction (although Boehme himself was not a Universalist). The Serious Call is beautifully written –as is everything that Law wrote because he was a great English stylist. It also has some memorable and witty caricatures like that of ‘Mr Mundanus’ the worldly fuss body. But it is a bleak book that focuses on rejecting all worldliness and all fun and merriment, applying oneself solely to the seriousness of duty. Indeed reading it seems to have increased poor Dr Johnsons’ melancholy tenfold. However, of course it appealed to the Wesley brothers and to Henry Venn. And for a time William Law acted as a sort of soul friend to the young and anxious Wesley brothers. However, in the end young John Wesley broke off with old William acrimoniously for he thought him to be not sound on justification through faith alone. In later life Wesley as a mellowed old man who had begun to believe in a wider hope – set very wide actually – if not in universalism per se, expressed the view that even though William Law was not ‘sound’ on justification doctine as a formula he was none the less justified through Christ. But the books that influenced the universalists were actually Law’s later Boehme inspired writings ‘The Spirit of Prayer’, ‘The Spirit of Love’, and the ‘Address to the Anglican Clergy’ written when he was close to death and was no longer afraid of coming out explicitly as a Universalist.
Thanks for your patience and do catch up with me on the Quaker thread if you have time and inclination.
All the best
Dick
Thanks Dick. I had not spotted the influence of Gregory and Origen on Wesleyan Holiness thinking, but now you mention it I will also be looking up some of William Law’s books when I get time. Thanks again for all your informative and enjoyable posts.
OK Drew old chum - I’m in for a penny and in or a pound so I’ll plonk the post on the holiness Movement down here first (I wrote it originally for Sherman’s attention)
I quote from the very fascinating book, ‘One with God: Salvation as Deification (Theosis) and Justification’ by the Lutheran Ecumenist Veli-Matti Karkkainen (pages 74-77)
‘Wesley drew from the well of Eastern spirituality in his readings of the Eastern father’s spiritual texts; in fact he preferred the Eastern teachers over the Westerners. These included Athanasius [and not the bloke or committee of blokes who wrote the Creed], Basil, Jon Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome, Dionysus the Areopagite, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephraem Syrus [that is ‘the Syrian’], Origen, and others…
…[But] like any Western revivalist of [his] time [Wesley] was very critical of several features of the Eastern Church and abhorred, for example, its rigid liturgy, as he saw it.
However, Wesley learned s many spiritual lessons from the Eastern fathers, for example from Clement of Alexandria that there are three kinds of persons; the unconverted, the converted but immature, and the mature or perfect Christian…In John and Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), a poem is titled ‘On Clement of Alexandrians’ description of a Perfect Christian’…
…This kind of taxonomy, of course, sets his theology in tension with the standard Protestant view of justification. Wesley, of course, knew the category of ‘justification’ and… gave due attention to it. Even though his own spiritual journey was not marked by anything desperate like that of Luther’s – for Wesley the agony was over the ‘deeper life’ rather than guilt as such – [his] emphasis on entire sanctification and perfection led him to highlight the importance of pardoning and being justified too. But, together with his experiential emphasis, Wesley preferred to centre the Christian life around sanctification rather than justification. IN this insistence on the need for a real transformation of the believer’s life, Wesley not only approaches the ethos of the Eastern Orthodoxy tradition but also the part of Western spirituality that has marked by Roman Catholic theology…
…It is interesting to note how Wesley as the leading champion of modern Protestant revivalist traditions ended up cherishing the kind of spiritual exercises that have always been treasured dearly in both Eastern and Western mystical and spiritualistic traditions…’Like the ancient Greek Christian ascetics, Wesley believed that the soul’s therapy could be facilitated through ascetic cures…
…Jurgen Moltmann correctly notes that for Wesley sin is a sickness that requires healing rather than a breach of the law requiring atonement. Therefore, Wesley is less interested than Reformation theology in the permanent justification of the sinner and more interested in the process of moral renewal. Ted Campbell has argued that Wesley regarded the Gospel as a ‘medicine’, a cure. The result was that Wesley ‘developed something like a scientific taxonomy of spiritual problems with which his ministers could diagnose and cure.
…By participating in the life of grace, a life given by the Holy Spirit, the Christian is enabled to love God, other people, and the whole of creation with perfect love. It is noteworthy that for Wesley this vision of the transformation of life not only encompassed individual life but also the whole creation – another indication of similar orientations between the East and Wesley. In fact, for Wesley the category of ‘new creation’ combined in a critical way both individual and cosmic aspects of salvation. His was a vision of the very real transformation in the creature and the world that salvation brings about. The note of hope and expected transformation virtually sings its way through any f the sermons produced by Wesley in the final years of his long life. The following passage from his 1783 sermon ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’ echoes this hope in a most beautiful way:
‘God is already renewing the face of the earth: And we have strong reason to hope that the work he hath begun, he will carry on unto the day of the Lord Jesus; that he will never intermit this blessed work of his Spirit, until he has fulfilled all his promises; until he hath put a period too sin, and misery, and infirmity, and death; and re-established universal holiness ad happiness, and caused all the inhabitants of the earth to sing together, ‘’Hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!’’
As is clear in this passage, the new creation is cosmic in its overall dimensions and implications, but is focussed for Wesley in the renewal of persons. “Ye know that the great end of religion is to renew our heart in the image of God,” he proclaimed. The renewing of the face of the earth begins, therefore, with the renewing of its inhabitants. This is the pattern followed by the Eastern fathers, linking cosmic redemption to human salvation’
Now I quote from me: ‘Wesley was not a Universalist – but certainly his hell fire and damnation stage belonged to his youth; and as he matured he believed in the wider hope, a fully inclusive vision of who God might save. He had a truly Ecumenical vision and a heart filled with truly ecumenical charity. After he died the Methodist movement split in Britain into factions nobly the establishment and socially conservative Wesleyan Methodists and the more radical and working class Primitive Methodists (which later gave birth to the Salvation Army). Certainly the worldwide Methodist traditions today – particularly those that stress Wesley’s teachings on holiness/sanctification/theosis (and this would include parts of the Charismatic movement) – have rich resources to draw on in Wesley for a faith that can include Universalism and, indeed, concern for the environment. Indeed the pre-Keswick Broadlands conferences of Christian Universalists owed much to Wesley as well as to William Law and to Quaker spirituality’.
Wonderful Thread Rev.Drew. As someone with an Anglican Background I really appreciate this. By the way, can you send me the PP presentation you did sometime ago about UR? I would like to ask if you may allow me to translate it into Spanish and share it with some people. Thannks
Hi Ricky,
Thanks! I’m glad you found the thread interesting. I think our in-house historian Dick (Sobornost) still has a bit more evidence to bring to the table, so it may yet come to life again. 
I’m attaching the powerpoint and handout I used at the ICS Conference earlier this year and you are welcome to translate it into Spanish and use it however you wish. Only one condition - can you please let me have a copy of your spanish version? I may have opportunities to use it here in Barcelona or elsewhere in Spain.
God bless you,
Drew
Evangelical Universalism C.ppt (1.09 MB)
AN INTRODUCTION TO EVANGELICAL UNIVERSALISM handout.doc (403 KB)
space saving
Claro que si, Rev. Drew!!! Pronto voy a traducir tu trabajo!!!
Now in Dual Language:
Sure thing, rev. Drew! I will translate your work pretty soon!!!
Ricky
muchas gracias Ricky!
Somewhere here I was hoping to make a joke about Elizabeth’s; insistence that Calvinist Preachers should wear Anglican vestments rather than the black Geneva gown – but I’ve been beaten to it!!! Theo Hobson – in his recent book on Milton – has compared this to making rugby players dress up in pink tutus and sashay around. So thanks Theo for stealing my best joke 
!!!