The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Brief history of universlaism in the C of E

[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:

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?

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?

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 

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:

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: )

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

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

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.

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.

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.)

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:

What format would that take, Dick? Posting a document and we read it and then…how would we proceed? :sunglasses:

Thinking ahead Dave - yes I’d post an historical source, a document (perhaps dealing with a broadly religious issue). And then I’d ask however was game to go awash and consider it using the questions of internal coerce criticism that I’ve posted here at Articles (I’d post a genuine source so the questions of external verification would not be relevant and would be impossible to do in discussion anyway). And then we could all get back and discuss our conclusions together question by question, answer by answer - and I’d facilitate as the person ‘one step ahead’ at the current time at least. If this works OK we could do a couple more sources of other/different types of texts. And then perhaps we could look at a couple contemporary source from a new sites (one with a left wing or liberal bias, another with a right wing or a libertarian bias?) and ask the same questions of this information (well we don’t have the benefit of hindsight, but most of the questions will also be relevant to sift contemporary evidence I think) :sunglasses: And we could polish it all off with a flagon of ale :smiley: and a discussion about critical realism - because participants should and I hope would have begun to grasp this in a sense that is not too abstract. How does that sound?

The source criticism project sounds interesting. :slight_smile:

Btw, I’m currently watching (off and on) one of the main film competitors to Intol, Civilization, where a scientist for pseudo-Russia has invented submarines (actually used by Russia in WW1 though no one knows much about them anymore) and gets drawn into pseudo-WW1 to be captain of one of his subs, then gets killed by a crew in a mutiny when he refuses to fire on a civilian ship, then goes to heaven and meets Jesus Christ, then COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD POSSESSED BY JESUS CHRIST!! Um, spoiler.

(I own a lot of silent films, generally of the military or sci-fi/fantasy sort.)

Back to the Doctor: yes, a lot of the Who crew worked on Blue Peter, too. Typing that sentence tickled me more than it ought to… :laughing:

Peter played the second male companion on the series, Steven Taylor (and a hillbilly tourist to New York in the same story where his companion character was introduced… :open_mouth: it was a comedy Dalek story.) By the time of the Massacre, he is the last companion remaining, and has just witnessed no less than two other companions being killed off in the mostly non-comic epic Dalek Masterplan story (intended to be their final appearance, but that didn’t hold. :wink: ) He has a much happier ending four stories later.

Oh CRAP - I just read this headline re: Doctor Who:

“Doctor Who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia”!! How did that happen? What do we tell his fans???

Selective editing from: doctor who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia is sick, but in stable condition at the Nebraska Medical Center, officials said … :laughing:

If I was somewhat geekier, I’m sure I could come up with a reason why the Doctor would recover from or be immune to Ebola. :slight_smile:

(I’m right this moment watching ep 3 of the 2nd Doctor story “The Macra Terror” (Story 34). About giant lobsters, not Ebola.)

Jason have you thought of going on Mastermind I’m sure they would be happy for you to list Dr Who and the Blue Peter connection as your specialist subject. Of such connections is history composed! Have you heard of Mastermind? You seem to be well versed in UK TV series? Being a poor relation from the other side of the world I am only fed selective bits and pieces on the whim of ABC (the A stands of Australian not American in this case naturally). Poor me :cry:

Sadly, no – and my Whovian trivia is very moderate: it only seems extensive because a little bit of a whole lot can still be a lot. :slight_smile:

Hi All –

Long time no see :smiley: Well Jason I have now watched all six of the Dr Who Massacre story set. At first it seemed weird with just the soundtrack and promotional stills (because the film has been shredded by the nefarious BBC archives department) – but once i got used to that I really enjoyed it. Och I can see why it frightened me as a kid (along with Adam Adamant for example) – and why Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds were more my cup of tea :smiley: (Fireball XL5 also had a great theme song and the avant-garde Dr Who music – both the theme tune and the rather abstract jazzy percussive stuff that comprises the soundtrack here and other abstract jazz in later episodes and series before its reinvention – used to puzzle me). And I can see why I didn’t fully understand it – but as a middle age geezer I enjoyed it very much.

Funnily enough the Dr Who story is based largely on what we already know about the Massacre and it’s causes -

I haven’t’ looked up the alchemist/ apothecary who the Doctor has come to see but I am sure he actually existed too. Fill me in please all you Whovians :smiley:

I was rather taken by the little Huguenot waif Anne Chaplet – because she certainly looks like a fashionable 1960s waif model rather than a girl out of the sixteenth century (and surely the Dr’s top hat was anachronistic and would have raised eyebrows). It was a nice detail with the girl running into the tardis named ‘Dodo Chaplet’ who is a descendant of Anne so reassures Master Peter of Purvis that she has survived. But ‘Dodo’ – as in ‘dead as a Dodo’ – was perhaps a less reassuring choice of name for an English audience; even if it is an actual girls name in French:-D
And I always empathise with the Time Lord’s weariness at his after – he can visit the past but cannot change it (a bit like us mortals in our book of memory)

The opening scene in the tavern with Huguenots drinking a toast rings true. Huguenots were Calvinists and despite later Puritan objections to alcohol everyone drank it in those times. Clean water was hard to come by. Even in Geneva the taverns were thriving. Calvin tired to introduce godly tavern in which moral improving songs were sung rather than bawdy catches – but I’m not sure even he succeeded.

I understand that after the massacre many Huguenots fled to England. For three years I once lived in the country town of Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire where a community of them had fled and ‘Hughes’ is a common name locally. And I haven’t forgotten about London’s foreigner Churches which I will post on this week 