Tag Archives: UK

Remembrance Sunday

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Church/State

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I wrote about Remembrance Sunday here on 13 November 2013, this is part of that article.

Poppy_wreath_stockwell

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

 

A WOMAN’S TRIBUTE

The Message of the Double Line of Khaki; From the London Times, October 18, 1921

In Westminster Abbey, yesterday, General Pershing laid the American Medal of Honour upon the grave of the Unknown Soldier of Britain. The bright sunlight streamed through the high stained-glass windows in long shafts of light that fell warm upon the grey stone of the Gothic arches, upon the quiet people in the Nave, and around the flower-strewn tomb, and that lay in a cloth of scarlet on the flag above the body of the Unknown Dead.

A thousand years of great history stood silent within those old walls. Close by are the tombs of Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart Kings and Queens, of the priests, and soldiers and the sailors, of the poets and statesmen that have made England great.

As the organ filled the sunlit spaces of the ancient church with its deep volume of sound, there marched up the aisle, with bared heads, a detachment of British soldiers from the Guard’s regiments. As they formed a line facing the centre, an equal number of American soldiers, bare-headed, marched up the other side, and turning, stood facing the British soldiers across the narrow aisle.

Both lines of khaki, both lines of straight and young and clear-eyed boys, both lines of men of Anglo-Saxon blood, of the same standards and of the same ideals they stood there in the sunlight in that shrine of a thousand years of memory, looking straight into each other’s eyes.

Between them, up the aisle, marched the choir in their scarlet vestments with their bright cross on high, the generals, the admirals, and the Ministers of the Empire, and the Ambassador and the Commanding General of the Great Republic but in all that they represented, and in all that was said in the ceremonies that followed, there was no such potent symbol as those two lines of khaki- clad boys, with the sun shining on their bared heads, their brave young faces, and their strong young bodies, looking each other straight in the face.Between them lay, not the narrow aisle, but a thousand leagues of sea, the building of a new world, the birth of a new destiny for man. But as they stood there where they could have touched hands in the old Abbey which was a shrine for their common ancestors, they were so amazingly alike in bearing and appearance that they ceased to be a detachment of soldiers from two different countries, and they became a symbol of the illimitable potentiality of a common heritage that heritage of which the ancient Abbey was a shrine the heritage of the ideals of freedom, of order, of self-discipline, of self-respect.

If any words spoken in the Abbey could have conveyed a hundredth part of what that double line of clear- eyed boys said in utter silence the world would have been a happier place to-day. The old strength and the new force of a common heritage stood in khaki in the aisle of Westminster Abbey bare-headed, to honour the symbol of supreme sacrifice to those ideals in the Cross of Christ and in the body of an Unknown Soldier.

The service included this.

Kind of the cousins, who have always been so gracious. I wonder if they also sang this, which was new that year.

It has been a very long century since that last quiet August weekend of the Edwardian Age. It has been filled far too often with the roar of the guns, and the rattle of musketry followed by the sounding of the Last Post. But the mission has been maintained, it will never be won, although we can and should pray that it will be less horrific going forward. But all around the world, freedom-loving people have learned of the steadfast valor even unto death of English-speaking soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. We are proud of our part, yes. But we are equally proud to be your allies and friends.

Has it been worth it? The citizen of Ypres, Belgium seem to think so. Every night at 8:00pm since 2 July 1928, except during the German occupation in World War II, they have executed this ceremony, and when the Polish forces liberated them in 1944, they resumed, while heavy fighting was still going on in the city. While under occupation in World War II the ceremony took place at Brookwood Military Cemetery, in Surrey, England.

Just this week, our President presented postumously to Colonel Rick Rescorla’s, the Great Anglo-American hero of 9/11, responsible for saving at least 2700 people that day, widow Susan, the Presidential Citizens Medal. Col Rescorla was a veteran of the British Army, a paratrooper who fought on Cypress and in Rhodesia, then emigrated to the US and led a platoon at the First Battle of Ia Drang, in Vietnam, in 1965. You will find his picture on the cover of We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. . To quote Nina Bookout of Victory Girls Blog,

 Mostly he sang dirty songs that would make a sailor blush. Interspersed with the lyrics was the voice of command: ‘Fix bayonets…on liiiiine…reaaaa-dy…forward.’ It was a voice straight from Waterloo, from the Somme, implacable, impeccable, impossible to disobey. His men forgot their fear, concentrated on his orders and marched forward as he led them straight into the pages of history: 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry…’Hard Corps.’”

I would ad that voice was also heard at Roark’s Drift, for both at the Ia Drang Valley in 1965, and in the stairway of WTC 2 on September 11, 2001 he was heard singing this:

“”Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming
Can’t you see their spear points gleaming?
See their warriors’ pennants streaming
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready.
STAND AND NEVER YIELD!“
– “Men of Harlech”

He was last seen heading back up the stairs of the tower. More, including the president’s remarks, here.

EVERY NIGHT

For The Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Saturday Jess: Joan of Arc

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Faith, Politics

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20121115-180317.jpgI’ll admit to feeling more than slightly foolish writing this a couple of days after Jess’ wonderful Thanksgiving Day post, still I’ll likely make it through it.

Other than the wonderfully kind things she said about us all, one of her points stuck with me. speaking of America, she said

It’s so easy, looking and admiring that great nation, to forget how precarious were its origins, and now, with so much political correctness, almost to have to apologise for them.

She’s right, of course, we Americans, and the rest of Western civilization have very little to apologize for. Unless you consider multiples of the world population living longer and better than they ever have, something to apologize for. I don’t. And that’s why I agreed so heartily with Sam Leith in The Spectator when he said this.

It’s perhaps symptomatic of a culture where name-calling is policed with a vigour once reserved for incitement to violence that the reaction to an act of real violence is to think of how we might retaliate by hurting someone’s feelings.

Strikes me as silly, and not worthy of our heritage. A heritage Jessica has had something to say about as well, here.

Joan of Arc

Rouen was the place where Joan of Arc was burnt in 1431 and on the site of that act is one of the ugliest churches I have ever seen. But even it cannot eradicate the memory of the saint after whom it is named – even if one wonders whether its architect would not have been a better candidate for burning?

Joan of Arc is one of those rare female saints who did not just seem to hang around being ‘all pious and nice’ as one of my teachers put it. She inspired the French to rise against the English invaders and to drive them out of much of the land they had seized in the previous century. However, when she was handed over to the English, the Church swiftly found her an heretic, and there is no doubt that her visions disturbed many in the hierarchy. Her burning was a vile act, and not the last such; but it sealed her legend. As in so many cases persecution simply discredited the persecutors and helped the persecuted in the long run.

The tourist industry in Rouen makes much of Joan, and she has long been coopted to the cause of French nationalism. That is an easier way of conscripting her than to try to deal with her visions and her Christianity. I had a sense talking to some of the locals that they, like the church in her own time, found the former difficult to take. Yet, equally, so compelling was she, that at the age of 17 she was able to command French armies and persuade the French dauphin to follow her lead. Her faith gave her courage and that in turn, gave it to others.

In a sense that is what we should all aspire to – no not to lead armies (we can’t all be leaders) but rather to inspire others by our example. One of the many sadnesses of my own life as a Christian is that I am not sure anyone would even notice I was one, and my failure to inspire anyone else; but then I have always aspired to follow rather than to lead.

How remarkable Joan must have been, not least in that age, to have been able to inspire battle-hardened man to go to war at her behest. How much she gave up for her visions. For her there would be no man, no family, no wedding dress – and her ardour would meet its end in the flames. But all of that she gave up willingly for the vision that was within her.

Although coopted to modern and secular causes, Joan was, indeed, a saint of the traditional kind. She did that thing which moderns fail to understand – she sacrificed all this world finds worthy for the sake of a cause committed to her by God. Historians argue whether she actually ever fought, whether she was in some way mad, and over her real influence. That is their way – as it is to miss the real message she gives to all Christians. Have the courage to die for your beliefs.

Conversionary Protestantism: PRINTING, NEWSPAPERS, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in Bible, Church/State, Faith

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decree-ad-gentes-on-the-missionary-activity-of-the-church-10-638There are many claims by scholars that printing and capitalism created the public sphere and that the public sphere enabled democracy. I don’t think that wrong, but they didn’t spring full blown from Pallas Athena’s brow either, they came from somewhere. So where did they come from?

One way in which CPs dispersed power was by a massive expansion of access to printed material. There are several reasons for this.

  1. CPs changed the idea of whom books were for. The CPs believed (and still do) that everyone needed access to God’s Word, not just elites. That meant that universal literacy was required, including the poor and women. Books also had to be inexpensive and available in languages that all the people could read. In the vernacular, not in a foreign language or in a classical language no longer in everyday use.
  2. CPs expected people to make their own choices in religion because they believed that people were saved by true faith in God, not by membership in a group or by sacraments, important though both are. Therefore, each individual had to decide which faith to follow for himself.

Printed materials were used extensively in this work, which forced other, competing groups to also use printed materials. This competition is one of the reasons for the rise in mass printing. That this had a catalytic effect may be shown by the movement of Europe’s printing centers. Before the Reformation, most printing was done in Italy, obviously Protestantism made little headway there, neither did mass literacy nor did an early public sphere arise. In England, however, before the Reformation, there was little printing, but CPs used printing to mobilize ordinary people, and the elites responded in kind. Thus came newspapers, printed debates, and an early public sphere.  Also rooted in that is the modern world’s adoption of English as our lingua franca, I think, with all the advantages that gives to those of us for whom it is our native language. Even in continental Europe with all the damage from the religious wars, Protestant areas produce more books and export more printed material, both per capita.

And this:

In the West, the development of CP movements also predicted many of the major advancements in the quantity and techniques of printing. For example, CP Bible and tract societies helped spark a nineteenth century printing explosion. Their drive to print mass quantities of inexpensive texts preceded major technological innovations and helped spur technological and organizational transformations in printing, binding, and distribution that created markets and facilitated later adoption by commercial printers. Before this printing explosion, commercial publishers generally fought mass printing to keep prices high, even in Great Britain. Thus although markets and technology are important, they are not sufficient to explain the timing or locations of major increases in printing.

This becomes even clearer outside Europe.

First, religion influenced whether elites valued printing. Christians, Jews, and Mahayana Buddhists adopted printing without CP competition (none were primarily monastic, and all had long, nonpoetic religious texts that are difficult to memorize). However, Muslim, Hindu, Theravada Buddhist, and other societies in Asia and North Africa were exposed to printed books and printing presses by Chinese, Mongols, Jews, Asian Christians, Catholic missionaries, and European trading companies for hundreds of years before they printed any books.

By 1700, Europeans had created fonts for most major Asian languages, and in fact, the Portuguese had even given the Moghul Emperor a press and fonts in the early 1600s. It went unused. Although the major Asian economies were as big, or bigger than the European ones. We can see from this that there were no intrinsic factors holding them back, it was purely a choice they made.

To most elites, printing seemed ugly, it spread books to those “not qualified to interpret them,” and it undermined elite status/control. Jews, Eastern Christians, and trade companies only printed materials for their own consumption (mostly in “foreign” languages), and Catholics printed few texts (not mass propaganda). This limited printing activity did not threaten local elites’ ability to control public discourse or overwhelm their ability to respond orally or with manuscripts. Thus, Muslim, Hindu, and Theravada Buddhist elites resisted change.

[…] CPs printed so many vernacular texts that it forced elite response. For example, within 32 years of importing a press to India in 1800, three British missionaries printed more than 212,000 copies of books in 40 languages and, along with other missionaries, created the fonts and paper that dominated South Asian printing for much of the nineteenth century.

Conversionary Protestants also had much to do with the consequences of printing. If the availability of printing was enough to cause mass literacy, newspapers, and the public sphere, they should have developed in Asia as much as 600 years before they did in Europe. However, they didn’t, they remained dormant until the CPs arrived in the nineteenth century.

It’s important, I think, to note that CPs are not necessary to sustain a print revolution. That is a function of a market. But they were a crucial catalyst in developing that market.

Next: Education

Source: The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy

Conversionary Protestantism and Democracy: Overview

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences

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CPsThis is based on a paper by Robert D. Woodberry of the National University of Singapore. It is available here. What I say here will seem quite abrupt to some. That is a function of reducing about thirty pages to a few blog posts. I have also removed all notes, footnotes, and references, and while I have quoted the author extensively, mostly I have restated his conclusions in my words.

He writes about five contexts: Context 1: Western Europe; Context 2: European Settler-based colonies; Context 3 and 4: Eastern Europe; and Context 5: Everywhere else. I have chosen to write about mainly Contexts 1, 2, and some on 5. All are interesting, but I think these more so.

He also has divided his theory into historical and statistical parts. While I’ve read through the statistical part of the study several times and closely, and it makes sense to me. I am not all that good with statistics, if anyone else is, I’d be interested in your conclusions. I’ve pretty much limited myself to the historical section of his study, which is more in my field of competence. All quotes are from the paper. You will, of course, find the link to the full paper, including references, footnotes, and far from least, the statistical work that supports this historical narrative.

Also, Greg Scandlen at ‘The Federalist’ wrote on this as well, his very superficial (although accurate) overview is here.

Religious actors played a huge role in post-Enlightenment modernization–although secular social scientists almost unanimously deny it. How do we know this? Partly because history tells us so, and partly because the historical study of statistical variables tell us so, and partly because we have eyes to see, and some measure of common sense. The author says this:

I argue that Western modernity, in its current form, is profoundly shaped by religious factors, and although many aspects of this “modernity” have been replicated in countries around the world, religion shaped what spread, where it spread, how it spread, and how it adapted to new contexts

In particular, conversionary Protestants (CPs) were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, most major colonial reforms, and the codification of legal protections for nonwhites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These innovations fostered conditions that made stable representative democracy more likely—regardless of whether many people converted to Protestantism. Moreover, religious beliefs motivated most of these transformations. In this blunt form, without evidence or nuance, these claims may sound overstated and offensive. Yet the historical and statistical evidence of CPs’ influence is strong, and the cost of ignoring CPs in our models is demonstrably high. […]

For example, stable democracy first emerged in Protestant Europe and British-settler colonies, and by World War I every independent, predominantly Protestant country was a stable democracy—with the possible exception of Germany. Less stable versions of democracy developed in Catholic areas with large Protestant and Jansenist minorities, such as France. However, democracy lagged in Catholic and Orthodox parts of Southern and Eastern Europe where Protestants had little influence. A similar pattern existed outside Europe.

In European settler based colonies, Protestant based ones (United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) are far more democratic than the otherwise similar, but Catholic based ones such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. You will note that this also weakens the theory that secularization tends to promote democracy, as the author says, the United States is far more religious than Uruguay. It is also worth noting that one set are all former British colonies and the other all-former Spanish colonies. What that seems to tell us is that, whichever colonial regime we choose (and these were the main two on offer) they seemed to export quite well.

I start with Western Europe and North America because that is where representative democracy was first developed. In this, I follow the author, and for the same reason. This is the baseline, if we can’t find links here, they are unlikely. If we can, and then we also find them in the other contexts we make our case stronger, possibly much stronger.

I too think the classical origin of democracy may well be overemphasized. Sure, Athenian, Enlightenment, and Deist roots exist, and were known, and important, but much of this is also paralleled by earlier specifically religious terms, especially arguments for political pluralism, electoral reform, and limitations of state power.

For example, Calvinists tried to reconstruct states along “godly” lines and limit sinful human institutions. Perhaps as a result, most Enlightenment democratic theorists came from Calvinist families or had a Calvinist education, even if they were either not theologically orthodox or personally religious (e.g., John Locke, Rousseau, Hugo Grotius, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton), and they secularized ideas previously articulated by Calvinist theologians and jurists. For example, Hobbes’ and Locke’s social contracts are secular versions of Puritan and Nonconformist covenants, and Locke’s ideas about the equality of all people are explicitly religious.

I would add that the perhaps most famous definition of representational democracy, Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people” was not original but an almost direct quote of John Wycliffe. Whose influence echoes down to us through not only his Bible, which strongly influenced Tyndale’s, but he also influenced Martin Luther, Jan Huss, and I think, John Calvin as well. Here is perhaps the first expression of what would be the major strains of the Reformation.

Moreover, the religious context influenced whether Enlightenment-linked revolutions gave birth to stable democracy. The Protestant English and Scottish Enlightenments were not anti-Christian, and where they spread, democracy flourished. The “Catholic” French Enlightenment was virulently anti-Christian (particularly anti-Catholic), and where it spread, stable democracy did not. The French Revolution devolved into violence and inspired both totalitarianism and democracy. Similarly, anticlerical Enlightenment governments formed in virtually every independent Catholic country in Europe and Latin America, but did not lead to stable democracy. […]

For example, even in nineteenth-century Great Britain, expansions of suffrage and reforms of the electoral system were directly tied to pressure by Evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists—in this case, including nonstate Catholics.

Ideas are powerful things, but if those who hold them are crushed and killed, they don’t become the conventional wisdom. So, if power wasn’t dispersed enough, or secular and religious forces came to blows too much, democracy often did not last. In the next sections, we’ll look at how CPs fostered greater separation of church and state, helped to disperse power and, create the conditions which helped form stable democracies.

Next: PRINTING, NEWSPAPERS, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Source: The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy

Building Men Fit for Use

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Faith, Prayers

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looking-at-the-path-of-a-christian_tA bit over a year ago, Jessica took this blog private to help protect her contributors professionally. It was a dark day and a frantic one for most of us. And, I think that worry (and others) contributed to her illness. Evil has effects that we don’t expect.

Then in the few weeks, she was diagnosed with cancer, and the blog, and so very much more was dumped in Chalcedon’s lap to deal with. As most here know, Jess and I had become extraordinarily close friends, and keeping me in the loop also became his lot. Through that ordeal, we have become very close ourselves, which Jess foresaw, long ago she told me that she thought we were the same man, we always had the same answers, and while not completely so, in many ways it is true. We tend to react the same way. In many ways, one wouldn’t expect a British professor, and an American electrician to do so, but the answer is that as men we were formed in much the same way, although with considerably different means.

Much of that is, I think, we are sons of what has come to be called “The Greatest Generation” in both our countries. John Kennedy spoke for them back in 1961, when he said:

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

That defines those men and women as well as they ever have been, both politically, and personally. They weren’t the easiest people to live with, they knew right from wrong, and they meant to make sure you did too. The other thing that I really remember about them is: how often they looked to our past, and our God, although often not the church, for guidance, and that they never, ever gave, or accepted excuses.

By all accounts, Jessica’s parent’s were very much like that as well, and it shines brightly in her, and in this, the blog that she created. At some point last September, Chalcedon asked me for my thoughts on the blog’s future, as we started to face the horrid reality, that we might lose Jess forever. My quick and unconsidered answer was that while I had no real vision for the future, we must continue to protect and disseminate Jessica’s extraordinary work here. He, of course, readily agreed, and for the time being we tabled it until the future became clearer.

When the Lord cured her, and there is no other possible answer, something very strange happened. As she waited for her ride to the convent, she and I exchanged some emails, as was our wont, at any stray minute. She sounded incredibly good, completely normal, in fact, better than she did the week before she went to the doctor. And from what he told me, Chalcedon also found her completely normal in hospital those few days, although weak. But this is the strange thing, Jess remembers almost none of this, it is like someone took over to reassure us, if so, perhaps they did too good a job, because she was far from well, it would be Easter before she approximated the Jess we know and love.

Sometime last fall, Chalcedon asked me what I thought of the idea of AATW as a form of lay apostolate. I googled the term, it’s a Catholic (and primarily Victorian) one designating something that could be very roughly compared with what in my church we call the brotherhood. A volunteer grouping of men to help each other however they can (obviously in this case it would not be restricted, nor would we want it to be, to men). I thought and prayed about it and said that I thought that would be an excellent use of what Jessica had created here for us. For she had collected a diverse group of men, although not enough women, many of us older, and with experience across a range of churches, and no church. We had all learned for ourselves that Kipling was no fool when he wrote

It is rather strange, really, that so many of us love Kipling so, he has gotten a bad press over the years. Many have claimed he is racist or jingoistic or other things, I don’t see it that way. I fully agree with G.K. Chesterton that Kipling’s subject is not valour but interdependence. In Heretics, Chesterton writes:

It is that interdepedence and efficiency that belong quite as much to engineers, or sailors, or mules, or railway engines.. […] The real poetry, the “true romance” which Mr. Kipling taught, is the division of labor and the discipline of all the trades. […]

Everywhere men have made way for us with sweat and submission.

Above all, he celebrates the “Marthas” of the world. And that is the title that we universally crave, isn’t it? To put our mark upon the world. Kipling is, above all, I think, the bard of ‘Doing our duty’ And in many ways, that is what the contributors here do. We try to help our younger members (and each other as well) learn from our experience. For, above all, we have learned, often the hard way:

Good judgement comes from experience

Experience come from bad judgement

If one is lucky, someone else’s

And so, we have taken it as one of our underlying missions since we came back from the catacombs, to function as guides along what could properly be called, The Pilgrim’s route, and to help others with their progress.

I can hear you now, some of you, “What do you old men know about my life, it’s all different now.” Well, actually no, it isn’t, we all wanted pretty much the same things you do, some we got, and some we didn’t and perhaps never will, and it’s likely a good thing we didn’t. But like Mr. Kipling, we will continue in our duty. You know, back when the world was young, in 1968 or so, we thought Mary Hopkins had a cute song, but we were different, it didn’t apply to us. Well, guys, we were wrong, it’s all true, and much, much sooner than you think.