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On the First Sunday of Advent a fortnight ago, our vicar (Anglican) urged us to use the four Sundays of Advent wisely.
This is the first time I have personally heard a Protestant clergyman exhort his congregation to examine their consciences before Christmas.
The Gospel reading was Matthew 24:36-44, wherein Jesus described His Second Coming (emphases mine):
24:36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
24:37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark,
24:39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
24:43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
24:44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Our vicar advised us to consider the state of our souls with regard to death. We do not know when we will depart this mortal coil, therefore, we should take every care to make sure we are spiritually prepared.
He said that we put so much time and effort into preparing materially for Christmas — sending cards, wrapping presents and preparing meals — that we forget the deeper meaning of the season.
Just as John the Baptist called upon his followers to repent of their sins in preparation for Christ’s ministry, we, too, would do well to consider if our souls are in an appropriate state.
I wrote about this in 2012: ‘Advent: John the Baptist’s message of Good News — and repentance‘. I cited a sermon from a Reformed clergyman, the Revd Scott E Hoezee, ‘When Advent Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas’ (Reformed Worship, September 1997). In that article, he says of these weeks prior to Christmas:
… if you are to meet and greet this Messiah correctly, you must admit that you need him in the first place. If you don’t, then you’ll have no use for Jesus once he’s born …
Only those willing to turn their lives over to God are ready for the Christ. The rest, John says, are fuel for the fire. None of that is very Christmaslike. Or is it?
His sermon cites Luke 3. Last Sunday’s Gospel reading was from Matthew 3, which was a similar account about John the Baptist’s ministry, also mentioning ‘chaff’ and ‘fire’.
By all means, let’s enjoy the festive season within reason, but let us also remember Whose season it is — and why.
Theodore Roosevelt served as president of the United States between 1901 and 1909.
He had the misfortune of succeeding William McKinley, who had been assassinated in 1901, by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, New York, on September 6 that year.
When Roosevelt, as the vice president, took presidential office upon that great tragedy, he said:
I will take the oath. And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue, absolutely without variance, the policy of President McKinley, for the peace and honor of our beloved country.
He kept the succession as smooth as possible, so as to avoid any further unrest or disquiet.
He also accomplished many other things, besides being the man for whom the Teddy bear is so named. Theodore Roosevelt loved nature and was the first president to set aside land for national parks for the preservation of American flora and fauna.
He was considered so great a president that his image features on Mount Rushmore.
His presidency is a lesson to those who would espouse the Left and the Democratic Party. Although Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, he pioneered the working man, the forgotten majority.
Trust busting
Almost as soon as he was sworn in, he began working against large corporate monopolies which operated under notional trusts, such as Standard Oil. They worked against the average American. Roosevelt targeted corporations with what he called ‘bad trusts’, including railroads, and sought to rid them of monopolistic practices.
Included in this were large meat packing firms, which he sought to regulate through his second term in office. Americans were outraged by what they had read in Upton Sinclair’s account of Chicago’s meat packing plants in The Jungle. If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth your time. Never mind that Sinclair was a Leftist. He spoke the truth.
He was also the first president who sought food safety regulations for the American consumer. Thanks to his efforts, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act.
My late grandmother, who was born in the late 1890s, was very conscious of contamination in foodstuffs. Interestingly, although she was a Democrat through and through, she never spoke a bad word against the Republican who was president during her formative years when she learned to cook at home and at school.
Press corps room
He was also the first president to give the press corps their own location inside the White House, having had empathy for them standing outside on a rainy day. As such, he invented the presidential press briefing, providing the first American sound bites. It should be noted that he expelled those members of the media whose coverage he felt was adversarial.
Progressivism
The notion of progressivism came from Republican Theodore Roosevelt — NOT the Democratic Party.
This is something I also learned in US History class in secondary school.
I was most bemused when, many years ago, I heard the Democrats adopt the word ‘progressive’. It has nothing to do with them! Nor do the principles, if we can call them that, which they espouse.
Civil rights
Six weeks after his inauguration, Roosevelt invited one of my favourite Americans, Booker T Washington, to dinner at the White House. If he were alive today, Booker T Washington would give a tongue lashing to anyone in minority neighbourhoods who favoured gangs and celebrity culture over an educated life. He was the black leader of his day, and it would be useful to all Americans if the US education system spent more time on Booker T Washington than on radicals and identity culture, both of which he would have abhorred. Washington was a man of education who advocated pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, something every American of every creed and colour would do well to heed.
Big stick diplomacy
President Trump has revived Theodore Roosevelt’s policy of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. The policy involved one of never bluffing, to strike hard when necessary and to allow the adversary to save face in defeat.
Too much to enumerate
There are too many of Theodore Roosevelt’s winning policies to include here. You can read more of them at Wikipedia.
Ancestry
Before we get to Theodore Roosevelt’s thoughts on the Bible, it should be known that his Dutch ancestor, Claes (Nicholas) Martenszen van Rosenvelt, arrived in New Amsterdam — the original name for New York City — between 1638 and 1649.
We cannot be certain whether Nicolas was of noble blood as his name would indicate or if he took the name of his local landlord in the Netherlands, as was common practice at the time.
In any event, Claes’s son — also named Nicholas — became a New York City alderman. He was the first to change the spelling of the family name to Roosevelt.
From there, the rest was history. His sons Johannes and Jacobus were the progenitors of the Hyde Park (Dutchess County) and Oyster Bay (Long Island) branches of the family.
The Hyde Park branch of the family were Democrat and those from Oyster Bay were Republican. Each branch married into other respected families of the early American period, including the Beekmans, the Latbrobes and the Schuylers.
The gist of the matter
Despite his privileged upbringing, Theodore Roosevelt never forgot the supreme importance of the Bible, which comes to us courtesy of Brainy Quote:
This reminds me of Paul’s time in Athens, when the Apostle debated among the intellectually curious during his time in Athens (Acts 17, here and here). Some were entertained, some interested. Few absorbed his message.
May we never trifle with God’s Holy Scripture, nor with His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.
We might have material knowledge today, but will such knowledge save us for eternity?
Theodore Roosevelt, a great president and a member of the Reformed Church in America, warned us to reconsider what we know and whether it will bring us to eternal life.
Even after he had a serious operation during the time of the Great War, he continued to walk three miles to church.
Roosevelt died in 1919.
In 1922, his biographer, Christian F Reisner, wrote:
Religion was as natural to Mr. Roosevelt as breathing.
Years earlier, the president’s sister attested to her brother’s affirmation of Christianity, saying that the Bible was the first of the books chosen for his Smithsonian-sponsored trip to Africa.
Roosevelt, a member of the Oyster Bay branch of the family, spoke to the Long Island Bible Society in 1901. He said (emphases mine):
Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes what a very large number of people tend to forget, that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally—impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less of resolution, strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man who has by his lifework added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, has based his lifework largely upon the teachings of the Bible … Among the greatest men a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand.[305]
Truer words have not been spoken for some time.
May we heed that lesson, which is 118 years old.
Times change. Divine lessons do not.
This year, I was pleased to have been able to attend two Sunday services at the Reformed Church in Cannes, 7 rue Notre-Dame.
The name in French is no longer ‘Reformed’ because, those churches unified some time ago with the Lutheran churches in France to create L’Eglise Protestante Unie.
That said, L’Eglise Protestante Unie in Cannes offers a Reformed service rather than a Lutheran one.
2017
Although I went there in 2017, I did not document it. I previously posted on the church in 2015, in the final weeks of Pastor Paolo Morlacchetti’s tenure there. He went to Nice to serve at l’Eglise St Esprit that summer.
I appreciated my visit in 2017. At that time, they had a newish pastor, the Revd Philippe Fromont, who is still there today, I am happy to say. His sermons are very good.
Their organist that year was excellent. I could have listened to him play for hours.
2019
I attended Exaudi and Pentecost Sunday services, both of which were very good.
Pastor Fromont has cut back on the liturgy somewhat. We had only one reading each Sunday and no Psalm. By contrast, in 2015, there were two readings and a Psalm.
Both were Communion services.
When entering the church proper, congregants take a hymnal, a Bible and the liturgical booklet, all of which are neatly stacked in the back pew. The liturgical booklet is colour coded for the Church year.
Exaudi Sunday
Exaudi Sunday is the one between Ascension Day and Pentecost.
The reading was from Acts 1:
4 And while staying[a] with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The Ascension
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Pastor Fromont’s sermon followed the traditional, bittersweet Exaudi Sunday themes: the feeling of sadness that the disciples had following our Lord’s Ascension and the anticipation of a new beginning.
He said that they had no idea what would happen when the Holy Spirit came and asked how often we feel that when an abrupt change comes into our own lives: a severe loss, followed by a new beginning. While the new beginning is not what we had expected, it is often better than we had feared. His sermon was far superior to my summary, by the way. It was actually comforting and inspiring.
After the service, on the way out, he wished me a pleasant stay in Cannes.
Pentecost Sunday and Confirmation
This service was exceptional, as it included a Confirmation service.
Fromont said that it was the first he had performed thus far during his three years in Cannes. He confirmed two boys, Alexei and Dmitri, both of whom are probably 16 years old. If I remember rightly, both have French fathers and Russian mothers.
I spotted Dmitri straightaway as soon as I entered the nave. He was dressed in a suit, white shirt and bow tie. He was talking with family and friends, bussing them, shaking hands and so on. His comportment was very advanced for his age. He was intriguing to watch, because he was very much at ease with young and old alike.
The reading
The reading was from Acts 2:
The Coming of the Holy Spirit
2 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested[a] on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Fromont’s sermon expanded on the Exaudi Sunday one, which was a good segue, especially to get us into the mindset of the disciples.
He continued to explore the idea of an end and a beginning. One stage of the disciples’ lives had ended and another began at that first Pentecost. They entered into a powerful new phase not only of their lives but that of the Church. Again, my summary doesn’t do it justice, but I could have readily listened to more.
The sermon ‘joke’
Fromont then turned his attention to the two confirmands.
They, too, he said, were ending one phase of their lives and entering into a new one through Confirmation.
He told an all too real ‘joke’. (By way of explanation, many families stop going to church once their children are confirmed.) A Catholic priest had problems with pigeons in his church’s belfry. He’d tried everything, but they would not leave. So, he decided to consult the other clergy in his small town. He enquired of the rabbi, who offered his commiserations but had no solution. He then asked the Protestant pastor for his advice. The pastor said, ‘Baptise them, confirm them and you’ll never see them again’.
Fromont said he hoped that would not be the case with the two boys he was about to confirm. Each is going to study abroad during the next school year. He said, ‘We won’t be seeing you for a while, but we hope that you will not forget your church family. We look forward to seeing you again upon your return.’
Confirmation, he said, was a beginning of a new life with the Triune God, not the end of attending church. (How true.) He said he hoped that they would continue to grow spiritually and manifest their faith to others, including in the countries where they were going to study.
I pray that they do, too.
Confirmation
I was encouraged when Fromont invited both sets of parents and both boys’ godfathers to speak individually to the congregation. Both sets of parents said that their sons had begged them for Confirmation classes. Fromont catechised the boys in meetings and discussions over a period of months.
Dmitri’s father gave a sermon, giving his son — and us — his favourite Bible verses ‘to live by’. The man, who is an instructor at the Conservatory in Cannes, is a powerful speaker. I can see where his son gets his self confidence.
I should say that both boys spoke before their parents and godfathers did. Both thanked their pastor for the catechism instruction and thanked their parents for allowing them to be confirmed. Dmitri is incredibly comfortable speaking in public. He spoke at length, only glancing at his tablet now and then. He will go far in life, I’m sure.
After the speeches, Fromont prayed over both boys and blessed them. There was no anointing with chrism (blessed oil), but I did not expect that.
Music
There was no organ music that day. Dmitri’s father played guitar, accompanying another Conservatory instructor who played the piano. The two were so good that I felt we were listening to recorded music.
Students from the Conservatory also made their contributions, as Dmitri’s friends. The first group were three little boys who played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ on violins. The lady playing the piano conducted them. She also conducted one of the violinists and played a sombre duet with him.
A teenage boy played a Glenn Miller number on his saxophone. He was very good, too.
So, although these students’ contributions were not religious, they were, in a sense, offerings to God of the talents He had given them.
Communion
There is a certain etiquette to receiving Communion there, which is why I prefer the services without the Sacrament.
Everyone gathers around the altar. The bread is cubed brioche. Some people offer a cube to the person next to them. I did that years ago and the woman to whom I presented it gave me the side eye, so I never did it again. This year, I took mine and passed the plate to the man next to me. He side-eyed me, probably because I didn’t put the bread in his hand. I don’t know.
The cup is then passed in two forms: the chalice and little plastic cups. Whether one drinks from the chalice or the plastic cup, it’s grape juice, not wine.
Fromont gave us his views on Communion on one of those Sundays in his sermon. He adopts the Zwinglian approach, that both the bread and the ‘wine’ are symbolic of the Last Supper. He does not believe in a sense of Real Presence. However, he did say the Sacrament was a means of grace, which was why we needed to partake of it.
On Pentecost Sunday, the confirmands came by with the bread and the wine, which was really nice to see. This was their first Communion, too.
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I hope to report on church again when I next visit Cannes, God willing.
The content of Advent sermons can be difficult for today’s pewsitter to accept — provided the clergyman (or woman) giving the sermon is true to the Bible.
For example, this year — Year C — the First Sunday of Advent gives us Luke’s account of Jesus’s words on His Second Coming. I was really looking forward to going to Sunday worship to hear about that.
But, no. Instead, we heard about the Creation Story in Genesis juxtaposed with John 1, the arrival of the Light of the World — the usual Christmas Day reading. The young ordained Anglican priest told us — a group of oldsters — that God really loves humanity, and we have nothing to worry about from Him. As we are all long in the tooth, we remember fire and brimstone sermons.
My takeaways from the old days were, ‘God loves humanity — His creation, made in His image — but He hates sin’. The Bible is all about this message, from cover to cover.
Advent readings follow a sequence for a reason. The sermons are supposed to match each Sunday’s theme, intended to get us to repent — ‘turn around’ — from our worldly ways before Christmas.
Therefore, it was a relief to read two reflections for Gaudete Sunday, the Third Week of Advent, from fellow Anglicans: an Episcopalian and an Anglican priest.
My reader undergroundpewster, the author of Not Another Episcopal Church Blog, wrote his reflections of John the Baptist’s message to his numerous and diverse followers (Luke 3:7-18). Although Gaudete Sunday is one of joy, John the Baptist called his followers ‘you brood of vipers’, warning them of ‘the wrath to come’ if they did not repent. And, he said of Jesus:
His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Undergroundpewster wrote (emphasis in the original):
Good news like, “but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Hmm…
With good news like that, who needs bad news?
Then he directed us to an excellent sermon at Crossway by Pastor Paul David Tripp, which explains why Jesus is the Good News (an excerpt follows, emphases mine).
It is all about humanity’s sins (bad news) for which Jesus sacrificed Himself in a once and perfect oblation on the Cross (Good News). Emphases mine below:
Sure, you can run from a bad relationship, you can quit a bad job, you can move from a dangerous neighborhood, and you can leave a dysfunctional church, but you have no ability whatsoever to escape yourself. You and I simply have no ability to rescue ourselves from the greatest danger in our lives. This means that without the birth of Jesus, we are doomed to be destroyed by the danger that lurks inside us from the moment of our first breath.
You don’t need to look far in the Bible to know what this danger is. Its stain is on every page of Scripture. Romans 3:23 exposes this danger with a few simple words: ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Sin is the bad news of the Christmas story. Jesus didn’t come to earth to do a preaching tour or to hang out with us for a while; he came on a radical mission of moral rescue.
He came to rescue us because he knew that we couldn’t rescue ourselves. He knew that sin separates us from God and leaves us guilty before him. He knew that sin makes us active enemies against God, and what he says is good, right, and true. He knew that sin blinds us to the gravity of our condition and our dire need for help. He knew that sin causes us to replace worship of God with an unending catalog of created things that capture the deepest allegiances of our hearts. He knew that sin renders all of us unable to live as we were designed to live. And he knew that sin was the final terminal disease that, without help, would kill us all.
The Revd Paul David Tripp holds a DMin from the well regarded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Sermons from Reformed — Calvinist — pastors are always useful in reminding us why we need to repent: so that we might share eternal life with God and His Son Jesus Christ.
So, going back to the sermon at my church, yes, God loves humanity, but God really hates the sins that humans commit because of Original Sin. We cannot help ourselves, as the Bible tells us. Therefore, it is misleading for a young cleric to say, ‘God loves humans — nothing to worry about, folks’.
The second helpful sermon comes from an Anglican vicar in England, The Revd Vic Van Den Bergh, author of Vic the Vicar! Vic also had a post on the meaning of Luke 3:7-18, which puts repentance into perspective. Vic addresses his thoughts to present-day Christians, who are, after all, supposed to walking in Christ’s ways.
Excerpts follow:
Are we producing fruit ‘in keeping with our repentance’? Does the gratitude for our salvation have any substance in the way we live or do we think that attending church, wearing a cross (fish), and dropping money in the offering makes us fit for heaven?
Do you think the crowds were asking themselves how much bad stuff they were laying up alongside, or instead of, the treasures they should have been storing up in heaven? Yet this is what John was calling them to focus on. John was calling them (and us) to look at the ways they (we) can raise their game and live differently …
He didn’t tell anyone that God wanted them to be happy doing what they saw as fit and right to do (regardless of what the Bible might teach). He didn’t tell them to give more money – because God doesn’t want your money, He wants your hearts and lives filled with love and generosity in things, actions, and in spirit.
He told the people before him to live a godly and righteous life in the things and the places they were returning to after the show – and that is exactly what the prophecy of Malachi some four hundred years before called the people to do. And they didn’t and so, with the arrival about to be made public, John is trying to get the people to get their lives in order so they look at least a little bit presentable. This is not a harsh rebuttal but an act of generosity for it’s giving those hearing his words the chance to turn around (that’s a clever use of ‘repent’ innit?) – and this is what we are also doing when we encourage people to change their lives before it’s too late.
Living our lives well, looking and sounding and acting like Jesus, in the world is one of the most important witnesses we can make to our being people of faith. You don’t need a dog collar or a title or a medal – you need to exhibit the generous heart of God and that needs a cross – and gratitude, rejoicing in the freedom from sin and reconciliation with the godhead that that brings. Here we find the fruits of gladness become made real in our generous and right living. It’s so simple really, isn’t it?
He explains why even such a harsh message should bring us joy on Gaudete Sunday (December 16):
… rejoicing is the natural response to the fact that God has taken away the punishment of his people and has ‘turned back’ their enemy. The reality in the words of Zephaniah given some time around 620 BC is the same reality that Jesus’ death on the cross brings for the Christian too. Jesus’ death brings defeat for our enemy (satan) and he (Jesus) bears in His body the punishment for us. He takes our place. What love. What generosity to pay a bill that wasn’t His to be paying! Jesus is the mighty warrior who saves; them one who no longer rebukes but rejoices over us with songs of deliverance.
And the Apostle Paul gets into the act with his letter to the church in Phillipi, a communication which I think affirms all we have here, for when he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice,” he is nodding towards the fact that to rejoice is a choice of attitude. It is the expression of our gratitude for all God has given and done for us …
Let us bear this message in mind as we celebrate Christmas with friends and family.
Regardless of desirable gifts and sumptuous feasts coming up on Tuesday, one thing should stay in our minds as we contemplate the Christ Child in the crib: Jesus is our eternal Lord and Saviour, who paid the bill ‘that wasn’t His to be paying!’ Rejoice!
Yesterday’s post discussed Billy Graham’s lying in state and his funeral.
Today’s looks at aspects of his life some of us might not know about.
Church upbringing
Billy Graham’s parents, Morrow (née Coffey) and William Franklin Graham Sr., were members of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. The ARPC still exists today but is a tiny denomination affiliated with the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council as well as the World Reformed Fellowship. The denomination was founded in 1803 in Winnsboro, South Carolina. It emerged from a Scottish Covenanter/Seceder tradition. Theologically, it is Evangelical Calvinist.
Early life
William Franklin Graham Sr was a dairy farmer. The family farm is just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Billy was the eldest of four children. He had two sisters — Catherine Morrow and Jean — and a brother, Melvin Thomas.
Billy enjoyed reading, especially boys’ adventure books. He liked Tarzan so much that when he climbed trees and gave out the famous Tarzan yell, he scared horses and drivers. His father later said imitating Tarzan led him to the ministry.
When Prohibition ended in December 1933, Billy was 15. Graham Sr made all his children drink beer until they were physically ill. None ever touched a drop of alcohol after that.
Despite church and abstinence from drink, Billy was considered ‘too worldly’ for membership in a local youth group. One of the Graham farmhands, Albert McMakin, encouraged Billy to attend a revival given by Mordecai Ham, a Baptist evangelist. Billy duly attended and was born again in 1934.
Further education
Billy graduated from Sharon High School in 1936. He enrolled at Bob Jones College which, at the time, was located in Cleveland, Tennessee.
After his first semester, he found it too legalistic and rule-driven. Although he was advised by Pastor Charley Young from Eastport Bible Church, he was almost expelled. Bob Jones Sr told him:
At best, all you could amount to would be a poor country Baptist preacher somewhere out in the sticks … You have a voice that pulls. God can use that voice of yours. He can use it mightily. [23]
In 1937, Graham transferred to the Florida Bible Institute in Temple Terrace, Florida, near Tampa. That year, he preached his first sermon at Bostwick Baptist Church in Palatka, Florida. While at the Florida Bible Institute, the Temple Terrace Golf and Country Club played a significant role. He later wrote, he got his call to ministry on the 18th green.
Graham practiced preaching to the birds, alligators and cypress stumps across the Hillsborough River directly across from that 18th green. Later, this area was transformed into the Reverend Billy Graham Memorial Park, which still exists today.
In 1939, he was ordained in Palatka, Florida, at the Peniel Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation.
The Revd Graham then moved to northern Illinois to attend Wheaton College. He graduated with a degree in anthropology in 1943.
During his time at Wheaton College, Graham accepted the Bible as the infallible word of God. However, this decision took place in California. He attended Forest Home Christian Camp (now called Forest Home Ministries) in the southern part of the state. Henrietta Mears, an evangelist and Director of Christian Education at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood (yes, that Hollywood), helped him arrive at that decision. A memorial at the ministry camp marks the spot.
Love, marriage and family
Wheaton College can take credit for Graham’s love story with a fellow student, Ruth Bell, a surgeon’s daughter.
The two married in 1943. Their devotion for each other lasted until Ruth’s death in 2007. Interestingly, Ruth remained a Presbyterian her entire life. She never became a Baptist, Graham’s denomination after ordination.
Ruth gave birth to five children:
Virginia Leftwich (Gigi) Graham (b. 1945), an inspirational speaker and author; Anne Graham Lotz (b. 1948), runs AnGeL ministries; Ruth Graham (b. 1950), founder and president of Ruth Graham & Friends, leads conferences throughout the US and Canada; Franklin Graham (b. 1952), serves as president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and as president and CEO of international relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse;[34] and Nelson Edman Graham (b. 1958), a pastor who runs East Gates Ministries International,[35] which distributes Christian literature in China.
The Graham children, in turn, had their own families:
At the time of his death, Graham had 19 grandchildren, including former pastor Tullian Tchividjian, and 41 great-grandchildren.[36]
Notable events in early and middle ministry
Before Graham graduated from Wheaton, he became pastor of the United Gospel Tabernacle. He also took on various speaking engagements.
From 1943 to 1944, he was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Western Springs, in the Chicago suburbs. He left to take over a Christian programme on radio, Songs in the Night, which was about to be cancelled because of lack of money. The church in Western Springs financed the programme. Although Graham left the programme in 1945, it continued for many years afterwards.
In 1947, the first Billy Graham Crusade was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the city’s civic auditorium. Six thousand people attended.
In 1948, at the age of 29, Graham became president of Northwestern Bible College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was the youngest president of any higher education institution in the United States. Despite this privileged position, Graham wanted to be a military chaplain. Instead, he came down with the mumps and went to Florida to recuperate.
Whilst in Florida, Graham joined a new ministry, Youth for Christ (YFC), which his friend Torrey Johnson co-founded with a Canadian evangelist, Charles Templeton.
Graham somehow managed to continue as president of Northwestern Bible College and tour the US as well as Europe with YFC.
Graham also held his own revival during this time. In 1949, he held a long-running revival in Los Angeles in a car park equipped with circus tents. The revival was supposed to last three weeks. Instead, it lasted for eight.
In 1950, he founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), which will continue to exist. Initially, it was based in Minneapolis, as that was where Graham worked. Later, it moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, his home city.
Graham resigned from in Northwestern Bible College in 1952.
In 1953, he came out openly against segregation at his own rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee:
Graham tore down the ropes that organizers had erected in order to segregate the audience into racial sections. In his memoirs, he recounted that he told two ushers to leave the barriers down “or you can go on and have the revival without me.”[49] He warned a white audience, “we have been proud and thought we were better than any other race, any other people. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to stumble into hell because of our pride.”[49]
In 1957, he made friends with black clergymen:
Graham’s stance towards integration became more publicly shown when he allowed black ministers Thomas Kilgore and Gardner C. Taylor to serve as members of his New York Crusade’s executive committee[50] and invited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he first met during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955,[50] to join him in the pulpit at his 16-week revival in New York City, where 2.3 million gathered at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, and Times Square to hear them.[10] Graham recalled in his autobiography that during this time, he and King developed a close friendship and that he was eventually one of the few people who referred to King as “Mike,” a nickname which King asked only his closest friends to call him.[51] Following King’s assassination in 1968, Graham mourned that the US had lost “a social leader and a prophet”.[50] In private, Graham advised King and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).[52]
In 1974, he co-founded the Lausanne Movement with two Britons, Graham and John Stott. The first meeting was held in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 16–25 that year.
Videos
As we know, Billy Graham made countless public appearances, not all of which were in a religious setting.
In 1969, he gave an interview to William F Buckley Jr, who was a devout Roman Catholic. At the time, young people were wondering if God was dead. Buckley’s interview on Firing Line centred on the decline of Christianity.
Here is a short clip, which everyone should watch if only to hear Buckley speak. I’ve never heard better American English, both in vocabulary and tone:
The full interview is here.
Graham told Buckley that 75% of scientists believe in God, a higher percentage, he said, than when he was growing up. He also said that he thinks there is life on other planets (!!), but only on Earth does God face rebellion. He said there has to be a theocracy during Christ’s 1,000 year reign. He said that a theocracy is in the Apostle’s Creed. Buckley, who knew his prayers, said that was a reference to the next life. Yes, indeed!
Graham thought that being born again had to be a deep ‘personal experience’. He thinks that churches intellectualise receiving the Holy Spirit. That was, no doubt, a polite reference to Confirmation classes.
Graham also said that people should go to church as Jesus attended synagogue. He also foresaw that, by 2000, there would be home churches just as there were in the days of the early Church.
People on other websites have found the following Billy Graham videos memorable.
This is his address in the National Cathedral in Washington DC after 9/11. He tells the audience that they mustn’t give up hope or faith:
In the next video, from 2014, Graham discusses death and Heaven:
The last video celebrated his 99th birthday. Those who knew and worked with Graham discuss him and his astounding ministry:
Billy Graham and Steve McQueen
In closing — and saving the most intriguing fact for last — Billy Graham helped the famous actor Steve McQueen to embrace Christianity:
The Charlotte Observer has the story:
Actor Steve McQueen, who personified cool during his nearly two decades as a Hollywood superstar, retreated from the glamor and excesses of the movie scene late in his short life and embraced Christianity.
When he died at age 50, McQueen was clutching a Bible – one given to him by Billy Graham.
In fact, it was Graham’s personal Bible, the one he preached from at crusades. The Charlotte-born evangelist had handed it to the actor, then gravely ill with cancer, during a private meeting Nov. 3, 1980 – just four days before McQueen died after surgery in Mexico …
And though Billy Graham, now 98 and living in his mountain-top Montreat home, doesn’t speak or appear in person in “Steve McQueen: American Icon,” the preacher and his Bible play a major role in its final minutes …
Viewers are told that McQueen took along the Graham Bible – with a prayerful note from the evangelist on an inside page – when he traveled to Juarez, Mexico, for the operation to remove a tumor.
The actor died of a heart attack shortly afterward, on Nov. 7, 1980. And when Grady Ragsdale, the manager of McQueen’s ranch in California, went to retrieve the body, he pulled the sheet back and found that McQueen had died clutching the Bible to his chest.
Laurie puts it this way in the film: “He was holding on to the Bible of Billy Graham as he entered eternity.”
How cool is that?
Before exploring the first feast day of the year, I would like to wish all my readers a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2018!
Traditionally, January 1 was a Holy Day of Obligation in the Church and, until recently, that continued in the Roman Catholic Church.
In following from the birth of Christ on Christmas Day, January 1 would have been — in Church calendar terms — the day He was circumcised according to Jewish law, Luke 2:21:
21 And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
Over the years, where circumcision was considered taboo, other commemorations have replaced it, such as Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God.
However, a case can certainly be made for retaining a commemoration of the Circumcision, as it was the first time Jesus shed His precious blood, a foretelling of the Crucifixion. These posts explain more. The second one gives evidence that this feast day was also commemorated in the oldest Protestant denominations:
January 1 – Feast of the Circumcision of Christ
New Year’s Day: the Circumcision — and Naming — of Christ Jesus
As for the stained glass depiction, I am most grateful to my reader undergroundpewster who sent me two links about it last year:
The Circumcision window is currently in the Cloisters Museum in Manhattan. Originally made in Cologne, Germany ca. 1460–70 for the Kreuzbrüder (“Crutched Friars”). The Cloisters (http://www.metmuseum.org/visit/met-cloisters) is a way for us in the States to view a bit of old Europe without having to get a passport.
Window details at (http://www.ipernity.com/doc/laurieannie/35821507)
The ipernity.com link is a copy of the Cloisters’ description, where you can also see a full view of the stained glass window. What I have posted above — the mohel and the Christ Child — is a detail of a larger scene:
A mitred high priest sitting on a throne supports the Christ child on his lap with a draped hand. Two male figures kneel before him. The elder — bald, bearded and dressed in rich robes — holds a knife in his right hand as he initiates the circumcision. His young assistant, graced with golden curls but more modestly attired, holds a broad metalwork charger. The glance and gesture of the Christ child identifies the standing female in a white wimple and robes of blue as his mother, the Virgin, who witnesses the event. The cool palette underscores the solemnity of the rite.
Hmm. I thought that the mohel‘s assistant was Joseph. Joseph went with Mary to present the Christ Child in the Temple a few weeks later. But who am I to argue with art experts?
The Cloisters acquired the window in 2003. It is likely to be the only one depicting this event.
In closing, I wish you all the very best for the year ahead. May God bless you abundantly.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer on historical background to the Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
In that last post about the tumultuous events leading to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Percy Dearmer emphasised the joy that Anglicans felt on being able to use their once-forbidden Prayer Book again. In fact, demand was so great that it was reprinted five times that year.
Consensus was that a new Prayer Book was needed. The one in use dated from 1604.
Atmosphere during the Restoration
Even after the Restoration, memories of Charles I’s beheading and the oppressive Puritan Interregnum were still fresh in the minds of the English people.
The new Parliament passed laws ensuring that Puritans and other non-Conformists — called Dissenters during that new era — and Catholics were prohibited from holding public office and more.
In Chapter 10, Dearmer explains (emphases mine):
their worship forbidden by the Conventicle Act of 1664 under a final penalty of transportation, their extremer ministers refused permission to come within five miles of a town by the Five Mile Act of 1665, and their conscientious members debarred, in common with Papists, from all civil, military and naval office by the Test Act of 1673.
This was because many new Parliamentarians had returned:
to their native villages at the Restoration, to find the church smashed, the trees felled, and the home of their ancestors destroyed.
Although Dearmer, who wrote in 1912, was appalled by these draconian laws, he did acknowledge that:
The Puritan ministers also, who were ejected, were, after all, themselves intruders; for there had been a worse ejectment of Anglicans before. Above all this, there loomed in men’s minds the indelible memory of the martyrdom of King Charles.
Continued Puritan interference
The Puritans were not going to give up easily, however.
Before Charles II set sail for England in May 1660 — he had been in exile in the Spanish Netherlands — a delegation of Presbyterian divines (learned and pious theologians) went to meet with him at The Hague:
and asked that, as the Prayer Book had long been discontinued, the King should not use it when he landed. They also asked that his chaplains should give up using the surplice.
The new king replied:
with his usual keenness of wit, that he would not be restrained himself when others had so much indulgence.
Once Charles II was in England, the Puritans continued putting pressure on him and Anglican bishops, asking:
that the Prayer Book might be made like the liturgies of the Reformed Churches.
The nine surviving Anglican bishops replied that maintaining the status quo — holding on to existing elements of ancient Greek and Latin Liturgy — would give the Catholics less cause for complaint. (The Puritans had moved far away from ancient liturgy, parts of which were in the Anglican Prayer Book.)
In October 1660, King Charles declared that a conference would take place the following year to discuss a new Prayer Book.
The Savoy Conference
The Savoy Conference convened on April 15, 1661. It lasted over two months.
It was so called because the Bishop of London, Gilbert Sheldon, lived at the Savoy Hospital and held the conference in his lodgings there. (Today, the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Theatre stand on the site.)
In attendance were 12 Anglican bishops and 12 Presbyterian divines. Each side also had nine assistants, called coadjutors.
The Puritans expressed their usual complaints about the use of the word ‘priest’, the frequent participation of the congregation in prayers, kneeling for Communion, the use of wedding bands in the marriage ceremony, commemorating saints’ feast days, the Catholic nature of vestments and even the use of the word ‘Sunday’.
The Anglicans were not having any of it:
The Bishops replied to such criticisms as these by referring to Catholic usage, and to a Custom of the Churches of God, agreeable to the Scripture and ancient, and to the Catholic Consent of antiquity.
Dearmer gives us summary statements from both sides.
The Puritans said:
To load our public forms with the private fancies upon which we differ, is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism to the world’s end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading of the Scriptures, and administration of the Sacraments in the plainest, and simplest manner, were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient Liturgy, though nothing either of private opinion, or of church pomp, of garments, or prescribed gestures, of imagery, of musick, of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities which creep into the Church under the name of order and decency, did interpose itself. To charge Churches and Liturgies with things unnecessary, was the first beginning of all superstition.
If the special guides and fathers of the Church would be a little sparing of encumbering churches with superfluities, or not over-rigid, either in reviving obsolete customs, or imposing new, there would be far less cause of schism, or superstition.
The Anglicans said:
It was the wisdom of our Reformers to draw up such a Liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could justly except against. For preserving of the Churches’ peace we know no better nor more efficacious way than our set Liturgy; there being no such way to keep us from schism, as to speak all the same thing, according to the Apostle. This experience of former and latter times hath taught us; when the Liturgy was duly observed we lived in peace; since that was laid aside there bath been as many modes and fashions of public worship as fancies.
If we do not observe that golden rule of the venerable Council of Nice, ‘Let ancient customs prevail,’ till reason plainly requires the contrary, we shall give offence to sober Christians by a causeless departure from Catholic usage, and a greater advantage to enemies of our Church, than our brethren, I hope, would willingly grant.
The Anglicans won.
The one thing both sides did agree on was including Scripture readings from the Authorised — King James — Version of the Bible.
The Savoy Conference ended on July 24, 1661.
Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
On November 20, 1661, a committee of Anglican bishops was appointed to revise the Prayer Book.
They completed their work on December 20. The Convocations of the Archbishops of York and Canterbury approved the Fifth Prayer Book.
On February 25, 1662, the new Prayer Book was annexed to the Bill of Uniformity.
After passing both Houses of Parliament, the Bill of Uniformity received royal assent on May 19.
The legislation then became the Act of Uniformity, and the Fifth Prayer Book — the Book of Common Prayer — was made mandatory for public worship in the Church of England. And so it remained until 1984.
Dearmer concludes:
It is sometimes said as a jibe against the Prayer Book that it is part of an Act of Parliament.
Yet:
our present Prayer Book was not one whit less the work of the Church, whose rights and liberties were most carefully safeguarded at every stage. The troublous century which we call the Reformation Period began with tyranny and oppression, but it ended with the establishment of constitutionalism in 1662; and the royalist Parliament which enforced the settlement, did at least represent the people.
The next entry will concern the 1662 Book of Common Prayer itself.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer wisely skipped over the turmoil that was going on not only in England but in Europe during King James I’s (James VI of Scotland) and Charles I’s respective reigns.
However, some historical notes need to be added to understand the civil and religious strife during this time. The two intermingled, causing much violence and uncertainty.
Before getting to Chapter 10 of Dearmer’s book, I shall try to sum this up as briefly as possible.
James I was Charles I’s father. When the latter was of marriageable age, the Continent was experiencing political struggles between Catholic and Protestant royal houses and emperors. Spain was a powerful player at this time. People today would find it amazing to know that Spain ruled the Low Countries, but the Spanish Netherlands did indeed exist between 1581 to 1714.
James hoped to broker peace with Spain by marrying Charles off to Princess Maria Anna. However, as the Wikipedia account of Charles I‘s life and death tells us (emphases mine):
Unfortunately for James, negotiation with Spain proved generally unpopular, both with the public and with James’s court.[19] The English Parliament was actively hostile towards Spain and Catholicism, and thus, when called by James in 1621, the members hoped for an enforcement of recusancy laws, a naval campaign against Spain, and a Protestant marriage for the Prince of Wales.[20]
The Spanish Court — including Princess Maria Anna — opposed the match, and it never took place.
However, Charles did marry a Catholic, France’s Princess Henrietta Maria, in 1625, which did not stand him in good stead in England. He had succeeded his father as king in 1624 and was crowned formally on February 2, 1626. Tensions ran high:
Many members of the Commons were opposed to the king’s marriage to a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Catholic recusants and undermine the official establishment of the reformed Church of England. Although he told Parliament that he would not relax religious restrictions, he promised to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with his brother-in-law Louis XIII of France.[41]
Things were not well in the royal household at that time:
Disputes over her jointure, appointments to her household, and the practice of her religion culminated in the king expelling the vast majority of her French attendants in August 1626.[58]
However, not long afterwards, diplomacy with Spain ensued and his marital problems were resolved. In fact, Charles and his Queen consort:
embodied an image of virtue and family life, and their court became a model of formality and morality.[73]
That said, the religious issue of Henrietta Maria’s Catholicism did not disappear.
Taxes were high so that Charles could finance war. He also granted monopolies, which companies paid for. One of them was for soap:
pejoratively referred to as “popish soap” because some of its backers were Catholics.[108]
Another religious issue was the determination of Calvinists — Puritans — to become the dominant religious force. Yet another — on the opposite side of the aisle — was the popularity of Arminianism, which posits that man can accept or reject salvation. In addition, Charles’s diplomacy with Spain was viewed with suspicion, as a way of bringing in Catholicism via the back door.
Charles was concerned about the direction the Reformation was taking in England. The action he took proved to be unpopular:
In 1633, Charles appointed William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury.[118] Together, they began a series of anti-Calvinist reforms that attempted to ensure religious uniformity by restricting non-conformist preachers, insisting that the liturgy be celebrated as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, organising the internal architecture of English churches so as to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, and re-issuing King James’s Declaration of Sports, which permitted secular activities on the sabbath.[119] The Feoffees for Impropriations, an organisation that bought benefices and advowsons so that Puritans could be appointed to them, was dissolved.[120] To prosecute those who opposed his reforms, Laud used the two most powerful courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber.[121] The courts became feared for their censorship of opposing religious views, and became unpopular among the propertied classes for inflicting degrading punishments on gentlemen.[122]
Conflicts arose in Scotland and Ireland. Parliamentarians in England were also furious with Charles. They impeached Archbishop Laud in 1640 and accused the king of tyranny.
On January 3, 1642, Charles entered the House of Commons to have five members of Parliament arrested on charges of treason. (Word had reached the men, who escaped by boat.) When Charles made his demand, Parliament refused to comply.
It should be noted that the monarch never enters the House of Commons. That Charles did so sealed his fate.
The result was the English Civil War which lasted from 1642 to 1651. It was fought between the Roundheads (Parliamentarians) and Cavaliers (Royalists):
The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then the Protectorate under the personal rules of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658) and his son Richard (1658–1659). The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors’ consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament‘s consent, although the idea of Parliament as the ruling power of England was only legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.[2]
The period between Charles I’s death and Charles II’s accession to the throne is called the Interregnum, which had strong religious overtones:
The Interregnum was a relatively short but important period in the history of the British Isles. It saw a number of political experiments without any stable form of government emerging, largely due to the wide diversity in religious and political groups that had been allowed to flourish after the regicide of Charles I.
The Puritan movement had evolved as a rejection of both real and perceived “Catholicisation” of the Church of England. When the Church of England was quickly disestablished by the Commonwealth Government, the question of what church to establish became a hotly debated subject. In the end, it was impossible to make all the political factions happy. During the Interregnum, Oliver Cromwell lost much of the support he had gained during the Civil War.
Puritans dominated the landscape:
After the Parliamentarian victory in the Civil War, the Puritan views of the majority of Parliament and its supporters began to be imposed on the rest of the country. The Puritans advocated an austere lifestyle and restricted what they saw as the excesses of the previous regime. Most prominently, holidays such as Christmas and Easter were suppressed.[2] Pastimes such as the theatre and gambling were also banned. However, some forms of art that were thought to be “virtuous”, such as opera, were encouraged. These changes are often credited to Oliver Cromwell, though they were introduced by the Commonwealth Parliament; and Cromwell, when he came to power, was a liberalising influence.[3]
Interestingly, independent Protestant churches flourished during this time:
The breakdown of religious uniformity and incomplete Presbyterian Settlement of 1646 enabled independent churches to flourish. The main sects (see also English Dissenters) were Baptists, who advocated adult rebaptism; Ranters, who claimed that sin did not exist for the “chosen ones”; and Fifth Monarchy Men, who opposed all “earthly” governments, believing they must prepare for God’s kingdom on earth by establishing a “government of saints”.
Despite greater toleration, extreme sects were opposed by the upper classes as they were seen as a threat to social order and property rights. Catholics were also excluded from the toleration applied to the other groups.
When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard succeeded him. However, Richard lacked authority and his rule was brief, 264 days:
The Protectorate came to an end in May 1659 when the Grandees recalled the Rump Parliament, which authorised a Committee of Safety to replace Richard’s Council of State. This ushered in a period of unstable government, which did not come to an end until February 1660 when General George Monck, the English military governor of Scotland, marched to London at the head of his troops, and oversaw the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
Understandably, no one in Britain wants a repeat of this, including the religious restrictions that took place during these years.
History lesson concluded, let us turn to Percy Dearmer.
He informs us that the Book of Common Prayer was abolished in 1645:
and its use made penal.
With Charles II’s accession to the throne, there was much rejoicing:
ENGLAND turned with shouts of joy from the rancour and violence of the Commonwealth, from the spiritual despotism of the Presbyterians and of the Independents who ousted them, and from the resulting distraction and impiety, to the Restoration of Church and King, and of free Parliamentary institutions …
However, the mood turned against non-Conformists, who were persecuted.
With the Church of England re-established, there was great hunger for the previously banned Prayer Book:
So great was the demand for Prayer Books that, before 1660 had reached its close, five editions of the old Book were printed.
But the Prayer Book had not been revised since 1604, and many agreed at least in this — that a new revision was needed.
This brings us to the theological background of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the subject of the next post in this series.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Last week’s post about Calvinists is recommended reading for today’s entry.
The theological conflict between Calvinists and traditional Anglicans continued long after Elizabeth I’s reign.
Elizabeth I was not a Calvinist, nor was her successor, James I (James VI of Scotland). However, a Calvinist — Puritan — faction was strong and still wanted to leave its stamp on the Church of England.
This conflict continued throughout most of the 17th century, as Dearmer explains in Chapter 9 of his book.
Fortunately, even during the tumultuous atmosphere of the early 1600s, lasting good was to emerge in England via the Authorised — King James — Version of the Bible.
Percy Dearmer researched the history of that era and found documentation by a prominent German historian, Dr Dollinger, regarding this new edition of the Bible (emphases mine below):
I believe we may credit one great superiority in England over other countries to the circumstance that there the Holy Scripture is found in every house, as is the case nowhere else in the world. It is, so to speak, the good genius of the place, the protecting spirit of the domestic hearth and family.
Would that this were the case today. Believers would do well to pray that this becomes so once more. I have never seen such a group of atheists as I have in England — and Great Britain as a whole.
Dearmer, while condemning Edward VI’s advisors and the subsequent Puritans, asks us to be philosophical about good coming from bad:
Those who come after — some time after — are able to separate the good from the evil, and to possess all that is worthy, not from one side only, but from both. Thus the world does slowly grow in wisdom, learning to eschew what is evil and to hold fast what is good … that freedom to-day which is the main hope of Christendom — the freedom to go back behind the traditions of men to the plain words and pure example of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Before I get to the Authorised Version — the KJV — there were other ecclesiastically historical events which preceded it.
The Hampton Court Conference, 1604
In January 1604, when James I succeeded Elizabeth I, the Puritans pressed for what they called a Millenary Petition. The objective was for more reform in the national Church.
The King, who was no Puritan but who — according to Dearmer — loved a good argument, responded with the Hampton Court Conference.
The Puritans, predictably, laid out their objections to the Third Prayer Book of Elizabeth’s reign. As notionally ‘Romish’ elements of the First Prayer Book had been restored, they wanted to see these eliminated once and for all.
The Puritans’ objections were much the same as before: vestments and the Sign of the Cross made during Baptism.
They had others:
the wedding ring, the word “priest,” bowing at the name of Jesus; the Puritans also disliked the Thirty-nine Articles as not sanctioning Calvinism; they desired that Baptism should never be ministered by women, that Confirmation should be taken away, and also the Churching of Women, that “examination” should go before Communion, that “the longsomeness of service” should be “abridged” and “Church songs and music moderated,” that the Lord’s Day should not be “profaned” (by the playing of games), that an uniformity of doctrine should be prescribed, and a few other things.
The wedding ring is interesting. I used to run across committed Christian men in the United States who refused to wear one. They never explained exactly why, but, presumably, this objection to wedding bands as being unbiblical must have persisted through the centuries.
As for the Thirty-nine Articles espousing Calvinism, that was never going to happen as the previous posts in this series explain. The Church of England was always intended to be a middle way. It had — and has — its own identity.
Unfortunately, that sound set of Thirty-nine Articles was discarded as being of historical interest only at the end of the 20th century not only in England but elsewhere in the West, including — perhaps, especially — in the Episcopal Church in the United States. It is no surprise, therefore, to find clergy becoming agnostic or atheist and turning to New Age rituals. Biblical preaching and practice is largely gone. But I digress.
Dearmer explains that dictating to the letter what churchgoers should believe in what was a somewhat pluralistic church community would have been a dangerous move. So was dictating what people could do on Sundays. That came during Cromwell’s Interregnum, but that is the subject of another entry.
Dearmer also points out that the Puritans’ desire for fewer hymns resulted in an equally ‘longsomeness of service’ as clergy preached ever-longer sermons and introduced lengthy extemporaneous prayers.
King James wrote his impressions of the Hampton Court Conference afterwards, documenting his delight at verbally opposing the Puritans:
We have kept such a revel with the Puritans here these two days as was never heard the like … I have peppered them as soundly . . . They fled me so from argument to argument without ever answering me directly …
Today’s Puritan sympathisers do the same thing. Answer comes none.
The Fourth Prayer Book, 1604
The Puritans were determined, as are their present-day Anglican equivalents, most of whom reside in the United States.
They wanted a new prayer book and they got one.
It was not a total win for the Puritans, but they won certain battles over verbiage and ceremony (see sections in bold):
– A new section was added to the Catechism which explains the Sacraments. Dearmer credits this to a prominent theologian of the day, Dr Overall.
– A prayer for the Royal Family was added to the end of the litany.
– Prayers of thanksgiving for weather (e.g. needed rain) and health (e.g. against the Plague) were added.
– A ‘lawful Minister’ — not ‘priest’ — had to administer Baptism, although this did not exclude a layperson doing so in an emergency.
– A subtitle to the rite of Confirmation — ‘the laying on of hands’ — was duly added.
– A subtitle to the Absolution — ‘the remission of sins’ — was added.
– Existing lessons (readings) from the Apocrypha, still in use in Roman Catholic liturgy, were omitted:
the quaint history of Bel and the Dragon, and the much-loved romance of Tobit were given up.
The Canons of 1604
The King had approved the Canons of 1604 which prescribed elements of worship in England, including use of the Prayer Book.
Some of these please neither ‘Romanists’ nor Puritans as they specified a middle way. They reinstituted the reverence for the name of Jesus — probably by the bowing of the head each time His name was mentioned — and enforced a minimum of altar linen and clerical vestments in worship.
The Authorised Version of the Bible
The Fourth Prayer Book was eventually replaced by that of King Charles II in 1662.
The more lasting contribution of this era was the Authorised Version of the Bible, so called because King James granted his approval, hence ‘authorised’. Today, most of us call it the King James Version, the KJV.
I wrote about the KJV in 2011:
The King James Version celebrates its 400th anniversary this year
BBC shows on the King James Version
BBC’s Story of the King James Bible — The Commission
BBC’s Story of the King James Bible — The Translation
BBC’s Story of the King James Bible — The Legacy
The timeline of a Bible for the British Isles
Now on to Dearmer’s history of it. During the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, one of the Puritans, Dr Reynolds, proposed a new edition of the Bible.
At that time, the Geneva Bible of 1560 — inspired by John Calvin’s teachings in that city — was the pre-eminent version used in England by the people. It seems odd then, that a Puritan would want a revision of it and that the mainstream Anglicans present opposed the idea. The clergy used the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, which was never popular amongst churchgoers.
However, King James voiced his support. He never liked the Geneva Bible because its Calvinist footnotes, in his words, were:
very partial, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits.
This is because the footnotes implied that only God, not governors, kings or princes, was the true authority. Whilst that is scripturally accurate, our governors are there to maintain godly order. However, the Geneva Bible does not mention this. Consequently, James thought that zealous people could take against the Crown, citing the Bible.
When the conference ended, James drew up a list of 54 divines, irreprochable and highly learned theologians. Interestingly, none were bishops, although some did become bishops later. Dearmer observes:
the Authorized Version, in fact, owes its excellence to the common sense of the King in choosing his men for their learning and capacity, and not for their official position. This may seem a very obvious piece of wisdom: but it is to be noted that it has been forgotten in our hitherto unsuccessful twentieth century attempts at Prayer Book revision.
I couldn’t agree more.
The King reduced the number of divines to 47. They were the ones who came up with the new Bible:
King James’s fifty-four divines were afterwards reduced to the “prodigiously learned and earnest persons, forty-seven in number,” who, Carlyle says, gave us our version of that Book of Books, “which possesses this property, inclusive of all, add we, That it is written under the eye of the Eternal; that it is of a sincerity like very Death, the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the Soul of Man.”
The history of English versions of the Bible was accompanied by bloodshed and martyrdom, and this particular era would see the same in the English Civil War, which was to come.
However, as Dearmer rightly says, Scripture united the divines, some of whom were mainstream Anglicans and others Puritan:
Puritans and High Churchmen had the Scriptures in common, and did alike fervently believe in them: outside the rooms in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, where the forty-seven divines met, religious folk were maligning each other in brilliant, bitter, and abusive pamphlets; but within those learned conferences all hostilities were silenced, all differences ignored: men like Overall and the saintly Andrewes, on the one side, joined with Reynolds and Abbott on the other; and the forty-seven worked in such singular harmony that it is impossible even to distinguish between the three companies which worked in three different places: the Authorized Version of the Bible reads like the work of one great man.
The Holy Spirit was truly working through them to write one great Bible which has withstood time. Dearmer explains that the genres of various books were preserved, some poetic and others, such as the Gospels, simplistic so as to be understood by the greatest number of people.
It is a theological and literary masterpiece — for everyone:
The divines — who might have wrought a literary gem for the bookshelves of the learned, after the manner of the age that produced Donne and Milton, Burton and Sir Thomas Browne — threw aside the pedantries and preciosities which were in fashion, and sat humbly at the feet of those predecessors who in peril of death had hewn out the words of life with such strength of simplicity; and they produced a book which has been at once the comfort of the peasant and the model and inspiration of our greatest writers.
Dearmer rightly adds that, although this was the era of literary masterpieces (e.g. Shakespeare), scholarly wisdom does not often equate with absorbing prose:
Now scholars are not generally masters of prose, and the combination of the critical and the constructive gift — of science and art — is almost unknown to-day, when learned translations and exact commentaries are common enough, but the majority of ancient books have still not been turned into English classics. The English Bible is an exception. We do not think of it as a translation at all: we think of it as the greatest of English classics, which, among other things, it is.
Many unbelievers in Britain have read it for its literary merit. I can only pray that the Holy Spirit works through them and ends their stubborn blindness to our Redeemer and only Advocate.
Dearmer says that, although King James appointed the divines in 1604, they did not begin work until 1607. It took them only four years to write this beautiful and enduring Bible, which first appeared in print in 1611.
Dearmer concludes:
And what is true of the English Bible is true also of the English Prayer Book. Scholars who won the consecration of martyrdom gave to it a like power of inspired translation, and endowed it with the magic of their prose. Thus it is that the one book worthy to be set side by side with the English Bible is that Book of Common Prayer, which has won a place in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon race second only to the Bible, and which day by day issues it forth in psalter and lectionary to the people.
I wish that were still the case. Fortunately, I am able to attend a 1662 Book of Common Prayer service once a month.
Next time we look at Dearmer’s history of that prayer book, written after the Restoration. With the end of the English Civil War and the Interregnum came the return of monarchy and a new king, Charles II, my favourite.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
One of the themes that Percy Dearmer returns to in his history of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is the fact that early English Protestants enjoyed many of the aspects of liturgy, church adornments and vestments that Calvinist reformers — Puritans — wanted to dispense with.
These fell under the category of adiaphora and the question arose whether they should be allowed because they are not mentioned in Scripture.
A number of fundamentalist denominations and independent churches today believe that if Scripture does not mention an aspect of adiaphora, believers should not be using those liturgies, adornments and vestments.
The Puritans wanted to get rid of everything that even suggested the Catholic Church. Yet, many English Protestants enjoyed attending church services for those very reasons. In their opinion, there was no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Dearmer agreed with the lowly pewsitters. So do I.
In the second half of Chapter 8 he takes issue with the Puritans, some of whom were unduly influential in the Anglican Church during the reign of Elizabeth I. Excerpts and a summary follow, emphases mine.
The Third Prayer Book restored some of the adiaphora of the first book. Some clergy refused to use it for that reason. ‘Convocation’ below refers to the Convocation of the Church of England:
… efforts were made, in Convocation and in Parliament, to abolish those beautiful and helpful ceremonies which stirred some men to a strangeness of opposition in this era of religious reaction. The sign of the cross in Baptism, kneeling at communion, the wedding-ring, every sort of vestment, including the black gown and college cap as well as the cope and surplice, were bitterly attacked.
In 1562, the lower house of the Convocation put a proposal to the vote which would have abolished all these things, including the church organ. Elizabeth I was strongly opposed to such reform. Fortunately, in the end, it lost by only one vote: hers.
Dearmer wrote his book in 1912. In his view, the anti-adiaphora movement was dying in England. Yet, it persists elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
Dearmer strongly objected to what he saw as:
this madness which fastened upon England — a madness which is only becoming extinct in the 20th century. It was the insanity of a wild reaction, a kind of Romanism turned inside out.
Dearmer wrote that by abolishing the adiaphora, the Puritans rid the English Church of her beauty. I couldn’t agree more with his analysis. Plainness can drive people away from church. Furthermore, in their zeal, the Puritans made a false connection between the papacy and beauty. Therefore, they went out of their way to make English churches ugly, a trend that was reversed only centuries later:
Because the Roman Catholic Church (in common with the whole of Christendom up to the 16th century) acted on the obvious truth that beauty is a good thing, the majority of Englishmen paid Rome the compliment of embracing ugliness for her sake. They magnified Rome so much that they shaped their conduct by running into opposites. They threw away the wealth of popular devotion, which made her churches living houses of prayer with open doors and thronged altars, and which is still her real strength to-day; they did not know that such devotion had always been the note of all Christendom, and was (as it still is) even more marked in the Eastern Churches than in those in communion with the Pope. They thus set themselves against the mind of Christendom, as well as against one of the profoundest truths of God’s universe — the inspiring virtue of beauty. They invented the notion that the devotional ways of fifteen hundred years and the use of any loveliness of symbolism in the service of God were connected with the autocracy of the Pope — a notion which would have been impossible even to their narrow minds, had not the Eastern Churches been in their time both weak and remote (for Moscow itself was in the hands of the Romanist Poles in 1610). They thus in their blindness presented to the Papacy an enormous reserve fund of power, which has served it ever after for whatever recoveries the Papacy has made since have been due not to the peculiar doctrines of Romanism, not to the autocracy of the Pope, but to the fact that, in Western Christendom as a whole, men have believed that Catholic devotion and beauty in worship are a prerogative of the Papacy. As if the beauty of garments, or organs, or altars, or prayerful cathedrals, made by man, was more Popish than the beauty of the humblest flower which God has made!
Dearmer reminds us that the Puritans gained not only theological but also political strength for the next century, which culminated in the English Civil War in the 17th century:
… it was the power of Calvinism that was to bring King Charles I and Archbishop Laud to the block. Yet with Calvinism there were identified many great and noble things, and the struggle of Puritanism against royal absolutism was in its measure a struggle for human freedom.
For these reasons, no one in England wants another civil war — or Calvinism.
Dearmer has an interesting breakdown of who was and was not a Puritan during the Elizabethan era:
The greatest men — Shakespeare, for instance — stood contemptuously aside from the “precisians,” and the great Elizabethan era went its own way, worshipped its Queen, and admired its Prayer Book. But the middle class, brought up on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Geneva Bible (p. 103), was largely Puritan; many of the bishops withstood the Queen in its interests as much as they dared — they had long since pulled down the altars.
Therefore:
The most the Church could do was to fight hard for the very idea of liturgical worship, and for a few things that preserved the principle of ceremonial, modest as they were — such as the surplice, the cope in great churches, the cross in baptism, kneeling for communion, the organ, the vested altar, and the wedding ring.
Fortunately, in the 19th century, beauty returned to the Church of England:
At the present day the Anglican Church is the great standing witness in the West and in the new countries against the notion we have described — that devotion and beauty are a monopoly of the Churches in communion with Rome. It is for this reason that she is still so strenuously opposed from both sides. But her witness is to-day so evident because during the last two generations a movement, now practically universal in all parties, has been at work to revive the spirituality and beauty of worship, by restoring in some measure the orders and ornaments of the Prayer Book — such orders, for instance, as those requiring daily services and frequent catechizing …
Now that the civilized world has at least come to see the inward power and outward beauty of catholic worship, she is able to set her churches in order again; and this is being done, not slowly.
In between these two historical periods, the Puritans wrought more change.
The next entry in this series will look at the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible.
Churchmouse Campanologist 