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Jessica’s hymn of praise to her homeland resonated. I spent many a late summer in parts of North Wales, going from chapel to chapel. There was a quiet, ordered dignity which chimed with my Yorkshire experiences. In both places, what we used to call Nonconformity was the dominant religious style; small stone chapels, quite plain, where men in suits and women in suits and hats met to hear the word of the Lord preached, and where there was considerable, but silent, disapproval if the sermon came in under the hour. We were thirsty, and that thirst could never be wholly slaked, but a good meaty sermon with the word explicated well would keep us going during the week – and we’d have the evening one to digest too.
I recognised in that Welsh experience, my own at home. Here were men and women whose tradition went back centuries. They were outside the confines of the Established Church, and even the less established purlieus of Wesleyanism, which was mainly for the better sort of shop-keeper; even in our religious affiliations, the class system played a role: the manual workers would be Primitive Methodists or a certain type of Baptist; small shop keepers, engineers (such as my father) would be a different type of Baptist, or a Methodist without the prefix. These things you knew from the inwardness of things – we never went to the Bethel at the bottom of the valley because it wasn’t where the likes of my mother went. That implied a class judgment which you felt rather than explained. I’d suppose any outsider would have found it very odd – but then outsiders did not come to these places – if you were there you knew why; if you didn’t know we were there, you just didn’t go. The very respectable went to the Anglican Church, and it was a sign of respectability and entry into the security of the middle classes to change from chapel to Church. Catholics? except in Liverpool and Belfast, I never heard of any, nor saw a church of that designation. There was something very Welsh or very Yorkshire about chapel.
Words, learning, listening, these were the active components of our Christian faith. We didn’t go in for symbolism – unless it was Biblical typology – and we didn’t go in for fancy clothing (couldn’t have afforded it)- we went in for moral seriousness which regarded money as something to be spent on those who needed it; we didn’t think God would mind us worshipping him plainly if the widow and the orphan were looked after. I recall as instance where an elder wanted to leave us money in his will to buy new hymn books, but we persuaded him the existing ones would do, and he left the money to the foreign missionary society we support instead.
In all of this there was, and remains, an ethos of independence. Jesus died to save us, we go direct to him, and we work to him; we need elders to be the servants of the servants of God, and we need a pastor to help explicate the word of God and all of us work with the body of the congregation to do what we can to spread the good news. We’re not big on aesthetics, we’re very much not given to clericalism – and we really don’t hold that there is some magical connection going back to old St Pete which makes a fellow special – enough of those who have claimed that have shown it to be nonsense. Faith is a living thing, the Spirit moves among us and we go with Him. Our tradition is one that rejected patronage, whether by clericalism or the gentry or the employers – we are responsible before God for what we do, and we can; blame no one but ourselves if our mission falters. In His grace it has survived in these dales for many centuries, and prospers still. But when I go for my walks, I too, see those disused chapels and churches, and those signs of the ebbing of the presence of the faith in these lands. But by grace we persevere – and when He comes again, He will find us – in all our unaesthetic piety – doing what we can.
Geoffrey – thanks for this. A word in support of the ‘non-conformist’ style of worship.
‘There is always a tendency in the church to trust to methods which appeal to the senses rather than to the soul, or which are meant to be reaching the soul, although they never get past the sense. They may be cruder, or more refined, sensational, or connected with the symbolic side of worship, but the common character of all is that they fall short of being rational and spiritual, How tempting it is to trust to such impressions, as though the coming of the kingdom were secured by them. No doubt such things make an impression and have an influence, but they are not the influence and the impression for which that kingdom of God can come for which Jesus lived and died.
How little he had of all that churches are tempted to trust now. How little there is in the gospel about methods and apparatus. Jesus had no church or hall, he spoke in the synagogues when he had the opportunity, but as willingly as prevailingly in the fields, or by the seashore, or in a boat or in a private house. He had no choir, no vestments, no sacraments and we may well believe that he would look with more than amazement at the importance that many of his disciples nowadays attach to such things.
He spoke a word unto them. That was all. The trust of the church in other things is really a distrust of the truth, an unwillingness to believe that truth’s power lies within itself; a desire to have something more irresistible than truth to plead truth’s cause – and all these are modes of atheism.’
The quote from James Denny.
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Nice one, Jock – many thanks
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Thanks – I spelt the name wrong; it’s James Denney.
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Interesting cultural piece here, Geoffrey. It brings to my mind the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia where the fertile bottom-land farmers and the infertile top-land farmers had class distinction based on their wealth, or longevity of ancestry in the area. Of course, those who held farms in the valley could sell their farms to merchants or become merchants themselves and take advantage of the roads that winded their way between the hills. It was a closed-off society both culturally and religiously.
But as to nonconformity it was a myth unless one saw themselves in the midst of a predominant counter culture from their own. But being closed off from wider society, these folk were conformists to their own smaller culture and woe be to anyone who didn’t conform to it. And that is the way of conformity isn’t it? We are nonconformists only for a moment when we decide to buck the conformity of what we held previously. Then we conform to a new cultural or spiritual conformity.
There are a lot of drummers out there that we can follow and some like to march to the beat of another drum and still other’s like to beat their own drum . . . but all, in the end, are marching in conformity to somebody’s drum. So it isn’t a badge of courage or of purity of teaching; it is a badge that tells you what you have decided to conform yourself to. Nothing more . . . nothing less.
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…. well, I march in conformity to the drum of Jesus.
From your piece, I’d say that these ‘non-conformists’ were badly named. They wanted to march in conformity to the drum of Jesus, to use your language and analogy, but discovered that if they joined the ‘national’ church, they would be ‘exchanging the truth for a lie’ and their non-conformity came from a desire to please God rather than men.
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Jock – . . . and what makes you think that the others do not think they are marching in conformity to the drum of Jesus?
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Dave – I’m amazed that you infer from what I wrote that I think the others do not think that they are marching in conformity to Jesus. I did not state this and it is not my view.
The current C. of E., for example, does an excellent job of providing intellectual scholars who can argue that Jesus just loved promiscuous homosexuality and there are many taken in by this, who want to be taken in by this.
The non-conformists were hoping to ‘conform’, but believed that conforming (belonging to the state church) was incompatible with their faith.
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Jock, I fear we are speaking past one another here because you have taken what I was speaking of on the level of individual persons to a state level. That was not my intent. I am simply speaking of people such as Newman. He was an insider and believer one day and the next he was an outsider. He became an insider of the Catholic Church (though viewed suspiciously by his fellow Catholics) and conformed to the thinking of the Catholics. This is pretty much the whole of it along with the observation that when you are born and raised in a small community that you are likely to conform to whatever is believed in that community.
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Dave – yes, I missed the point.
For the ‘non-conformists’ that Geoffrey is speaking about, they probably took the view that Newman left one fancy dress party and joined another almost identical fancy dress party instead.
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I’m sure they did, Jock, as they are informed by their own cultural values.
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In the English context it is quite different. There is an Established Church which had a lot of legal privileges, including collecting tithes from everyone, and the right to bury and marry. Gradually there things have been eroded, but only because so many of us stood out against it. Without the concessions made in 1828 to us, there would have been no Catholv Emancipation in 1829/
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I may not understand your historical context my friend but isn’t the human element always that we conform to that which appeals or that which we find to be Truth even if doesn’t appeal? We seek and we find . . . we start as outsiders and end up as insiders and vice versa.
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I don’t think you do, Dave. In our context it is this, they were persecuted enough (or felt they were, and I incline to the former) to foment a revolution twice against church and state, first in the English Civil war and second in our revolution. The nonconformists they are speaking of are our Pilgrim fathers. One of the drivers of the Revolution was the episcopacy and the Quebec Act, recognizing Catholicism in Canada.
They are the ones persecuted and burned (well, mostly hanged) by both Rome and Canterbury. Yes, our churches are segregated (or were) by birth and family, and origins but these guys were where they were because of their faith.
In addition, Wesleyism grew largely because the Established church would not, or could, not serve them in the new industrial cities, especially in Wales.
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That still does not change a basic human truth. We are likely to conform to that which we are accustomed to (whether we are persecuted or not) and do not change unless we are moved to by conversion or because of desire (perhaps not to be persecuted anymore). Faith was not left out of my thinking here, NEO. For it is faith that allows people to stick together through persecutions or make a mass exit as they did to the New World. That is still a type of conformity to culture . . . it doesn’t change simply because one is acceptable and another is unacceptable.
The sooner we recognize this the sooner we will understand that most of Islam is not willing to give up the parts of their culture in a way that will allow them to conform to our Western culture without either our being persecuted or them being persecuted. We are at odds on just too many issues . . . and Sharia is probably more so than the religion itself; unless it is lived in some kind of fundamentalist way like the terrorists. They will not conform and we will not conform unless we are drawn to one another or see a Truth that is more important than our desires to stay where we are culturally. Shared values are necessary for cultures and within faith groups it is the shared faith and teachings. So denominational unity need not abide but the freedom of plurality should be tolerated or ignored as long as the cultural values (which make us desire to be law-abiding citizens) remain. In this country it is the Constitution that is sacrosanct, not a state run Church. If a culture cannot abide by the Constitution then it should not be tolerated . . . even if it has a religious component. It is a recipe for constant conflict and an endless battle for supremacy.
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That’s all true, but it is rather beside the point that Geoffrey was making, I think.
And the melting pot, is slow cooker. My people, who came in the 1880s-1890s were mostly still speaking Norwegian until the First World War, there’s no way that the Moslems, who are much more different from Americans than Norwegians are going to assimilate quickly. The best that we can hope for, is that we can make them realize that in America, you must obey American law, just as in Saudi, you must (even if you’re an American, mostly) must obey Saudi law.
It all goes back to, if you want to join the club, with all its benefits, you must obey the club’s rules.
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A nice thought, NEO, but with 45% of birthed Americans taking their neighbors money and not paying taxes, it is something more attractive to these ‘refugees’ than they have ever seen or known. They can have all the babies they want, not work, vote for the president, get free healthcare, food and spending money and defy the law and claim religious freedoms etc. etc. and they will not be assimilated at all by this means. They will eventually out-birth us and become the majority rule. Culturally speaking, they are conformists to their own culture and are not going to be won-over like the non-Muslim immigrants were over time. Without cultural or religious conversions they are unsuitable. And to conform to the culture of our Constitution is to cease to be Muslim except in name only.
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Something occurred to me today while going through population statistics, rehearsing a Geography student for his A-level summer exams. The population of Nigeria will overtake that of Russia within the next few years. It is a fraction of the geographical space of Russia and has few resources to support such a population. We were looking at these various figures, population pyramids, etc. and connecting with the vast migration stream heading from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe (where fertility rates are becoming lower – beyond replacement level 2.1 children per thousand), and we just stopped and had the same thought.
In two generations nobody will be worried by this. The old idea that European countries had a religion and a culture and a distinct racial identity will have disappeared, and few people will even notice that Europe has become Muslim. It won’t really matter as an issue. The secularists have nearly finished demolishing Christianity, the only force that could oppose the Muslim take-over. Then the secularists will be wiped out by the Muslim imposition of their own harsh rules. There’s a kind of inevitability about this.
Just saying…
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Cultural suicide by attrition.
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That seems to be where the demographics are leading us.
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Not to worry folks, our economies will go belly up long before they take over, install sharia, and behead the one’s that won’t convert. Civil war and a various other possibilites will confront us before that happens. So, stiff upper lip lads. Let’s put on a happy face, shall we? 🙂
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Yep, Gareth, that’s what I’ve ben saying for a couple years now, and part of the reason I don’t write much about continental Europe: it’s gone irretrievably. The UK is in better shape, but not much, and we’re only slightly better, one of the reasons for the end of western civilization. Mostly thanks to birth control.
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