The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Hallowe'en

Evangelical Universalism
#1

On this, the Eve of All Hallows, i propose we recognise this as a Sacred Day for Universalists. All shall one day without exception and with great rejoicing be Hallowed :smiley:

No tricks, but a lot of treats! Tonight can be a night where we look forward in hope to that glorious day.

In that spirit, i wish you all a happy Hallowe’en!

#2

HOORAY! Y a tu tambien!

#3

For All Hallows

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
we feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
the saints triumphant rise in bright array;
the King of glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
and singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

#4

If you haven’t already seen this post by Robin:
theologicalscribbles.blogspot.com/2013/09/wonderful-halloween-poem.html

#5

Amen and Amen!

#6

Love that video, Caleb! (And great poem, Dick!)

And now, to finish my zombie make-up as we prepare for onslaught of small witches, ghouls and goblins. Our street is Halloween Central in our small city with probably 3-4 thousand kids coming by (I kid you not!) :smiley:

All the best,
Steve

#7

Happy All Hallows Eve, everyone! :slight_smile: And perhaps we can extend the celebration to tomorrow, too. After all, don’t we universalists put the* all *in ‘All Saints Day?’ :mrgreen:

#8

Ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night - tra la

#9

Happy Halloween, everyone :slight_smile:

To go along with what Kate said, just ran across this on Wikipedia:

Here’s the full link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallowmas

I would simply expand the last day, All Souls Day, to everybody, as people who aren’t Christian are souls too :wink:

Check this out, an excerpt from Andrew Jukes’ The Restitution Of All Things:

Good stuff :slight_smile:

#10

Guy Fawkes went to the Houses of Parliament
Gunpowder, Treason for it was his intent
To blow up the Houses, the Houses of Parliament;
Bow wow wow
Fa la la dow a dicky
Bow wow wow

They don’t write them like that anymore :laughing: . I know it’s a bit previous – but in this season of cultural sensitivities – don’t forget to wish us a happy and safe Guy Fawkes night on November 5th :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: . Remember, remember the fifth of November with gunpowder treason and plot tra la

#11

well i have plenty of long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night :smiley:

#12

There is a great difference between hoping in this possibility [universal reconciliation] and taking it for granted. It seems to me that this is the deep sense of one of the Church’s most beautiful feasts, All Souls … if it is understood as the day on which we pray especially for those with no one to pray for them … those who everyone would like to see burn eternally.’ (James Alison Living in the End Times Raising Abel p.177).

#13
#14

I think it’s actually my fault that the praise for the insight about All Saints didn’t get shared around properly :blush: (because I posted simultaneously with Matt’s post about Andrew Jukes here and so accidentally closed off the discussion). So here are Dick’s gongs –

Warmest congratulations to James for the initial insight that All Hallows is a special feast for us Universalists. Without that flash of inspiration the conversation would never have happened. Have a free voucher to Biff me when you next see me (and Kate – its’ OK, you can let him biff me – I deserve it :laughing: )

Warm congratulations to Caleb for the link to the poem. The poem majors on the fact that in the medieval Church laughter and buffoonery on the Eve of All Hallows was celebrated in carnival to affirm that the powers of darkness do not have the last say in the Christian drama (and to remind us of this specially as the dark nights draw in). This is also good to reaffirm when Halloween is such an issue for fundamentalist scaremongers who have too much belief in the powers of darkness. (The other festival s of laughter/feasts of fools in the medieval Church were Twelfth Night when all hierarchies were laughed at – including Church hierarchy – in anticipation of the mighty being put down from their seats (in the words of the Magnificat); and Shrovetide/Mardi Grass – which I know less about but understand carnival prankstering loomed large in the celebrations as a sort of catharsis before the Lenten fast so that Easter Joy would be dignified and quietly assured.

And warm congratulations to Matt for making the link - via Jukes – between the Festival of All Saints (those who died in Christ) and of All Souls (everyone who has died and is being incorporated into the company of Saints in a process of glacial slowness – but a process in which we can be confident of the outcome)

Here’s an English prayer for All Souls from 1590 -

‘Be merciful, Lord, through Thy glorious resurrection to the souls of all the faithful departed; and be merciful to those souls who have none to intercede for them, for whom there is no consolation or hope in their torment, save that they were made in Thine image. Spare them, Lord spare them, and defend Thy work in them, and give not the honour of Thy name, we pray Thee, to another. Despise not the work of Thy hands in them, but put forth Thy right hand, and free them from the intolerable pains and anguish of hell, and lead them to the fellowship of the citizens on high, for Thy holy Name’s sake’

Love

Dick

#15

Thanks to all :slight_smile:

I’m posting that prayer on my facebook page – thanks for sharing it, Dick!

Sonia

#16

Glad you like it Sonia :slight_smile:

I was gobsmacked when I found it.

#17

Well, personally I have nothing to do with the evil night—Wiccan’s “holiest” night—a night inspired by demonic forces.

As I see it, the whole thing is a celebration of ugliness and fear, along with witches, black cats (“bad luck”), etc. etc.
Property is damaged, and those who do it think they have a “right” to do so just because it’s October 31.
Little children are trained to get as many free goodies from people as they can. On what other night would one allow his children to go from door to door asking for handouts? Are children being trained to get something for nothing?

My wife and I stay in our remote country home during the evil night, and the night passes by for us like any other night, and without our having any contact with either the mischief makers or the little beggars.

Don’t ever wish me a “happy hallowe’en”. There’s no happiness in it—only horror. It saddens me that there are Christians who take some sort of pleasure from the celebration of such anti-Christian values.

#18

Piaidion - you were being wished a Happy All Hallows - the festival was being reclaimed

‘Wicca’ is an invented religion dreamed up in the 20th century. It has no historical basis - it is squirreled together from the writings of a twentieth century anthropologist with some pagan Neo-Platonism thrown in

I agree trick or treating can be a pain. We didn’t have it in England when I was a kid. We still had Haloween with the Jack O’ Lanterns and we played bob apple and other parlour games (like the one where you feed someone trifle while you have a blindfold on. But trick or treating comes from the USA. I understand from Kate that as it has become exported from America it has become a bit degenerated. Kids in America don’t expect money (at least in Kate’s’ part of Ohio). And kid’s need to be taught good manners with Trick or treat. With all these things the idea is that you are mean tot visit your neighbours - people known to you, and people who love you.

But All Hallows is not a demonic festival - it is a Christian one that has been misappropriated. I guess it was originally a pagan festival that became Christianised. I think there was certainly an ancient Celtic festival at this time of year ( but not a Wiccan one) because it was thought that at this time the veil between this world and the other world grows thin. But Christmas and Easter were also taken over from pagan festivals and Christianised - as if to draw paganism into the fullness of Truth rather than to supress paganism as demonic in itself.

But I will remember not to wish you a Happy one because this would be cause of offence. I think the main thrust of this thread is that All Saints and All Souls are festivals which we can celebrate in terms of remembering those who have died in good hope and full courage. The traditional All Souls service of remembrance is very beautiful and can be a source of great comfort to people grieving for loved one.

Blessings

Dick

#19

I’ve just been thinking deeper about this –

The issues of the celebration of All Saints and All Souls as Universalist f and the felicity of trick or treat are separate IMHO (in a way I agree that trick or treat surely must be demonic because it didn’t happen when I was a kid, and only started in the UK about twenty years ago though kids imitating American movies :laughing: . But if trick or treat is demonic – the other addition to UK culture from the USA absent in my sunny youth – The High School Prom!!! – must be ultra demonic :laughing: .

Well the celebration of All Hallows by universalists is something i don’t see as controversial – and perhaps a universalist liturgy will emerge one day rooted in ancient tradition and ancient prayer but also with modern input (I went to a lovely All Souls service once where we were invited to get up and light a candle for each person we were personally remembering and say their names out loud to the congregation; it was so peaceful). I think the old pre-Reformation Catholic idea of purgatory – that somehow we can bribe God with our prayers to lessen the punishment of sinners who are dear to us in memory– is superstitious and a perfect alibi for abuse of Church powers for financial gain. However, I find the Eastern Orthodox idea that while the Saints support us from the other side, souls still in anguish derive comfort from our prayers of solidarity and empathy with them perfectly appropriate .

Trick or treat!! Well that’s a controversial matter and a separate one. For Christian kids whose parents are not scandalised by it (and Robin Parry would appear to be one given the video he has posted) it should have proper context – we are laughing at the forces of darkness and the power of death (because they’ve already lost in a sense) and not joining them – and should be engaged with in a sense of community fun and with good manners (socially to older people – it could be a perfect time for teaching lessons in the proper limits of ‘fun’). For Christians who disagree with trick or treat type celebrations on principle I believe there are alternatives that evangelicals have pioneered.

Also since children often dress up as witches at Halloween it is perhaps a time for us adults to reflect. The society of witches never existed and Walpurgis Eve was never a real celebration when the accusations flew. Over a period of three hundred years 90,000 people – one third men two thirds women – died horribly because of the witch hunt scares that gripped certain populations in Christian Europe and America periodically. Most of the dead were simple people who were actually Christina ‘heretics’ – too simple to know the correct theological definitions when questioned under torture by the learned. Some were people with knowledge of natural remedies. Today’s Wiccan’s wrongly identify with the innocents of the witch hunts and refer to these as ‘The Burning Times’ claiming that nine million perished (which all reputable historians know this is a grossly inflated figure based on false use of historical statistics). However, the witch hunts were terrible and I’ve seen one moving liturgy commemorating some of the victims’ written by a Christian.

Margaret Jones midwife hanged 1648
Joan Petterson veterinarian hanged 1652
Isobel Insch Taylor, herbalist, burned 1618
Anna Rausch, burned 1628, 12 years old
Sybille Lutz burend 1628, 11 years old
Emerzianne Pilchler, tortured and burned together with her two children 1679
Agnes Wobster drowned while her young son was forced to watch her trial by water 1567
Veronica Zerritsch, compelled to dance in the warm ashes of her mother and then burned alive herself 1754, 13 years old etc.

It think we should all remember the victims of our own Christian violence at All Souls too.

I note that in the midst of false reports from all sides – some literature produced by American fundamentalists today decrying Halloween, Harry Potter and whatever (probably C.S. Lewis and GMD too) has found its way to Africa and lead to the horrible phenomena of the persecution of so called ‘child witches’ in the Niger region which is taking up huge energies of mainstream charities many of them mainstream Christian charities to combat.

So its’ a tricky one

Love Dick

#20

Yes, perhaps Halloween has a much different feel around my neck of the woods. I was very surprised when Dick told me that British treaters expect money. Some American kids trick-or-treat for UNICEF, carrying around the classic little orange boxes for donations (pictured below), and others ask for canned goods for a charity. However, most request sweets – and they are happy with a piece or two of chocolate or a small pack of gummies.


Perhaps trick-or-treat seems more innocent here, because its partakers are usually below the age of thirteen and are travelling around to nearby houses with their parents. For us, the night is mostly filled with teeny-sized Disney characters. :laughing:

Halloween is actually not allowed to be celebrated within the American public school system, as it is a charged topic for some conservative Christian families. Oddly enough, I went to a Catholic school, where Halloween was celebrated with a gusto second only to Christmas! So it seems that in America, Halloween transforms into an entirely different holiday based upon one’s interpretation and religious background. For some, it is an evil day that has no place in a Christian lifestyle, and I understand this interpretation. For others, one could just as easily have a “Hobbit Day” or a an “Alien Day,” because Halloween largely emphasizes fictional beings. (That is, the green witches of Halloween strike Christians as much different than those real innocents prosecuted in the historical Witch Trials.) I understand this interpretation, too.

One more interesting note: When I was in Catholic school, we celebrated Halloween with gusto, but the next two days we set aside for remembering departed souls. We held Mass, and we did class projects like making “saint crowns” and parading around the school. I think most students understood that our Halloween celebration was in fictional fun, while the next two days held deep religious significance.

Just thought I’d give my two cents since Dick mentioned me. So that, my dear British brothers, is Halloween through American eyes.:slight_smile: I completely understand and respect your opinions toward Halloween, Paidon, as many also chose not to celebrate Halloween here. I just thought you might like to hear a bit about the American Halloween which Dick mentioned.

With love from the States,

Kate