Christianity - The First Three Thousand Years Part 15

So with Smith's inspiration, the Mormons took shape: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, regarding itself as a restoration of an authentic Christianity otherwise lost. It moved en bloc, as so many utopian groups then did, to found a new ideal community on the frontier. The first stop in Ohio proved only one in a series of moves, because Smith and his leadership were p.r.o.ne to involve themselves deeply in state politics and risky business ventures, and their ambitions for power frightened and infuriated their neighbours. Finally Smith, now in charge of his own private army in Illinois, was fortified by fresh revelations to declare his candidacy in the 1844 presidential election. After further confrontations with the forces of unbelief, vigilantes shot him and his brother dead in an Illinois jail, while he was awaiting trial on charges of intimidating a hostile local newspaper out of existence. Yet this was not the end for the Mormons. One of Smith's long-standing lieutenants, Brigham Young, Hong Rengan to Smith's Hong Xiuquan, seized the initiative and led the battered faithful on the final journey which would save their movement, at a cost of a hundred days' westwards travel by wagon to Utah. Young would have liked a territory to rival the Taiping conquest in scale, but he had to settle for the wilderness that the United States government allowed him. There was a long and stormy path to wary acceptance by wider American society, not least because of one of Smith's later revelations, posthumously released to the public in 1852, which had interesting resonances with the battles then going on in Protestant missions in Africa. He had been told that he must authorize polygamy.

Brigham Young reminisced in later life that he 'desired the grave' when first informed of this in 1843, but he later implemented it thoroughly in his own life, with as much public decorum as the nineteenth century would wish. As one of his less reverential biographers observed, Young's home in Salt Lake City 'resembled a New England household on a larger scale. Instead of one superficially forbidding lady in blacks or grays, there were nineteen of them'. The widowed Mrs Emma Smith, previously much tried by Prophet Smith's own clandestine acc.u.mulation of wives, married again; but not to a Mormon.106 It was 1890 before the mainstream of the Church laid polygamy aside, and plenty of Mormons did not acknowledge that decision (some still do not, in carefully maintained seclusion in Utah and Arizona), but Utah still became a full state in 1896. It was 1890 before the mainstream of the Church laid polygamy aside, and plenty of Mormons did not acknowledge that decision (some still do not, in carefully maintained seclusion in Utah and Arizona), but Utah still became a full state in 1896.107 If polygamy proved a casualty of external nineteenth-century social a.s.sumptions, the end of the twentieth century saw another incursion of external liberal values when, in 1978, a revelation allowed men of Negro descent to take their place among whites in the universal priesthood allotted to all adult Mormon men - the original ban is of contested origin.108 Wholesome prosperity such as the youthful Smith might have envied has become a worldwide Mormon speciality, together with a systematic approach to spreading the message which has hardly been equalled in the Christianity which reserves itself the description Evangelical. The Mormons' doctrinal interest in genealogy, motivated by their belief in posthumous baptism of ancestors, has exercised a powerful appeal on those whose history is based on migration from another country. In the United States, its growth has been such that it has a good claim to be America's fourth-largest Christian denomination. Wholesome prosperity such as the youthful Smith might have envied has become a worldwide Mormon speciality, together with a systematic approach to spreading the message which has hardly been equalled in the Christianity which reserves itself the description Evangelical. The Mormons' doctrinal interest in genealogy, motivated by their belief in posthumous baptism of ancestors, has exercised a powerful appeal on those whose history is based on migration from another country. In the United States, its growth has been such that it has a good claim to be America's fourth-largest Christian denomination.109 Behind all this nationwide outburst of energetic service of a Protestant G.o.d, a shadow lay across the expanding Republic. The British Parliament resolved the question of slavery in 1833; it took a civil war to do so in America. Before that, the Evangelical nation which shared the same rhetoric of redemption and sang the same hymns was split three ways: a white grouping (with its strength in the Northern States) repeated the arguments of eighteenth-century abolitionists with increasing anger; an equally angry defence of white Southerners' slaveholding recycled all the arguments that the Bible and the Enlightenment had provided; and lastly African-American Churches, which served both the enfranchised and the enslaved, made common cause with white Northern abolitionists. Among Southern whites, the defence of slavery slid into a defence of white supremacy, since that was a useful way to unite the white population behind a coherent ideology; most Southerners did not actually own slaves, and had no necessary interest in defending that inst.i.tution alone.110 Some American Churches split over the issue, including the largest, the Methodists and the Baptists, in the 1840s.111 The border was very clearly marked out by state boundaries, with the Quaker fountainhead of abolitionism, Pennsylvania, next to slaveholding Maryland. The tensions exploded into fighting between the Federal government and the Confederate Southern States in 1861, ostensibly not about slavery but about individual states' rights to make decisions on slavery for themselves. The Republican president who led the Federal war effort, Abraham Lincoln, was a rationalist Unitarian who had left behind his childhood strict Calvinist Baptist faith for something more like the cool creeds of the most prominent Founding Fathers, but that did not lessen his commitment to the war as a profoundly Christian moral cause. The border was very clearly marked out by state boundaries, with the Quaker fountainhead of abolitionism, Pennsylvania, next to slaveholding Maryland. The tensions exploded into fighting between the Federal government and the Confederate Southern States in 1861, ostensibly not about slavery but about individual states' rights to make decisions on slavery for themselves. The Republican president who led the Federal war effort, Abraham Lincoln, was a rationalist Unitarian who had left behind his childhood strict Calvinist Baptist faith for something more like the cool creeds of the most prominent Founding Fathers, but that did not lessen his commitment to the war as a profoundly Christian moral cause.112 Already the rhetoric of the struggle had been cast in terms of Christian moral crusade, thanks to the barely sane actions of a fervent Calvinist from a family long committed to the abolitionist cause, John Brown. Already the rhetoric of the struggle had been cast in terms of Christian moral crusade, thanks to the barely sane actions of a fervent Calvinist from a family long committed to the abolitionist cause, John Brown.

Brown came from the same generation as Joseph Smith, and he remains just as controversial a figure, though nature endowed him with more potential than Smith for looking like an Old Testament prophet (see Plate 64). Proud of a New England Puritan heritage but unusual among abolitionists in embracing violence for the cause amid the rising tide of violence in the Midwest, he reversed the dictum of the High Priest Caiaphas on the death of Jesus, proclaiming that 'it was better that a score of bad men should die than that one man who came here to make Kansas a Free State should be driven out'. Accordingly in 1856 he was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of five pro-slavery activists, but despite that hardly defensible crime, his Northern canonization as an abolitionist martyr came as a result of his seizure of an undefended Federal a.r.s.enal at Harpers Ferry three years later.113 When the raid failed to arouse a black insurrection, Brown sat tight in the a.r.s.enal and waited to be martyred, which the Commonwealth of Virginia duly did, for the moment casting oblivion over the crazy character of his campaign. A Ma.s.sachusetts newspaper editorial picked up the mood: 'no event . . . could so deepen the moral hostility of the people of the free states to slavery as this execution'. When the raid failed to arouse a black insurrection, Brown sat tight in the a.r.s.enal and waited to be martyred, which the Commonwealth of Virginia duly did, for the moment casting oblivion over the crazy character of his campaign. A Ma.s.sachusetts newspaper editorial picked up the mood: 'no event . . . could so deepen the moral hostility of the people of the free states to slavery as this execution'.114 The Northern soldiers' spontaneously composed verses about John Brown's body, with their unforgettably jaunty camp meeting tune, were turned during the course of the war towards the Boston abolitionist Julia Ward Howe's more decorous but still stirring 'Battle Hymn of the Republic', in which her words about Christ might be reapplied to Brown: 'As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.' The Northern soldiers' spontaneously composed verses about John Brown's body, with their unforgettably jaunty camp meeting tune, were turned during the course of the war towards the Boston abolitionist Julia Ward Howe's more decorous but still stirring 'Battle Hymn of the Republic', in which her words about Christ might be reapplied to Brown: 'As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.'115 During the course of the war, a presidential proclamation declared slavery abolished (though only in the Confederate States fighting the Northerners), a move ratified and extended throughout the Union by Congress after the final defeat of the South, in the Thirteenth Amendment to the American Const.i.tution. The suddenness of the change in Southern society, the freeing of four million human beings, was a deep trauma to add to the sheer destructiveness and death of the war itself: the end of an inst.i.tution which in 1861 had seemed to be flourishing and even expanding. After the Confederate surrender, many angry defeated Southerners took revenge on black Christians, even though they shared their Evangelical faith. They still saw them as inferior beings to whites, and still used the old biblical and Enlightenment arguments to justify themselves. They also viewed their own plight as that of an endangered victim culture. For the prominent Southern Baptist pastor in South Carolina and Alabama E. T. Winkler, that sense justified his defence of the Ku Klux Klan to Northern Baptists in 1872 as an example of necessary 'temporary organizations for the redress of intolerable grievances'. It was unlikely that he would apply the same argument to any temporary organizations which threatened blacks might form.116 White control of the South and the allotting of second-cla.s.s status to African-Americans were not effectively challenged until the 1950s, and much of the challenge arose from the black Churches, which now remained the only inst.i.tution through which African-Americans could have any effect on politics. The scars persist in American society to this day. White control of the South and the allotting of second-cla.s.s status to African-Americans were not effectively challenged until the 1950s, and much of the challenge arose from the black Churches, which now remained the only inst.i.tution through which African-Americans could have any effect on politics. The scars persist in American society to this day.

Yet in the decades after the Civil War, movements arose which eventually gathered together all the varied strands of American religion and culture into a new force: Pentecostalism. Pentecostals take their name from the incident described in the Book of Acts when, at the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and they 'began to speak in other tongues', so that the huge variety of pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem could all hear them speaking in every language represented in the crowds. 117 117 Their roots are in the extraordinary variety of American Protestant religion and they have no single origin. Echoing in Pentecostalism are the jerking, barking, running 'exercises' of the Kentucky camp meeting, which had their precedent in the extrovert emotion of the Moravians, but there is much more. Their roots are in the extraordinary variety of American Protestant religion and they have no single origin. Echoing in Pentecostalism are the jerking, barking, running 'exercises' of the Kentucky camp meeting, which had their precedent in the extrovert emotion of the Moravians, but there is much more.

Besides the revivals of the years around 1800, a 'Holiness' movement sprang out of the teaching of the early Methodists, proclaiming that the Holy Spirit could bring an intense experience of holiness or sanctification into the everyday life of any believing Christian. While John Wesley had preached a doctrine of Christian perfection, it seems to have been John Fletcher, an Anglican priest of Swiss origins whom Wesley would have liked to have made his successor in leading the English Methodist Connexion, who first popularized a view of sanctification in the Christian life as being effected by a 'baptism with the Holy Ghost'. In the next century, the much-travelling American revivalist Mrs Phoebe Palmer developed these themes into a doctrine expressed in dramatic language of 'entire' or instant sanctification. Mainstream American Methodism did not find it easy to contain the Holiness Movement, which created yet more inst.i.tutions in order to express itself.118 Reformed Christians, heirs of Jonathan Edwards, were also fascinated by the idea of this 'Baptism of the Holy Spirit' or 'Second Blessing', but their Reformed tradition made them wary of Wesleyan Holiness teaching about the possibility of instant perfection in the Christian life. They made a different contribution. Many continued to proclaim, like Edwards, that Christ would be returning soon in a.s.sociation with a thousand-year rule of perfection. However, they significantly modified his views on the millennium, developing a set of ideas generated by that strange Reformed byway which we have already encountered in British Evangelicalism: the self-styled 'Catholic Apostolic Church' inspired by Edward Irving (see p. 829). In its conferences at Albury the CAC had evolved a tidy scheme of a series of 'dispensations' structuring world history, a scheme just as comprehensive as the p.r.o.nouncements of Joachim of Fiore; the dispensations would culminate (and that quite soon) in Christ's Second Coming before the millennium. Deeply interested in this dispensationalist scheme was a former Irish Anglican priest, John Nelson Darby, who left his Church for a loose grouping called the Brethren, among whom he became the most prominent leader.

Disillusioned with Anglicanism, Darby saw the future pattern of history in terms of apocalyptic and imminent struggle. He made two crucial a.s.sertions about millenarianism. First, in a notable innovation, he looked at Matthew 24.36-44 and saw there Jesus's prophecy of a 'Rapture' in which one man would be taken and one man left.119 Second, completing the 'dispensations', he a.s.serted that Christ would return to reveal the final mystery in this Rapture and lead the saints in the last thousand years, just as the Albury conferences had envisaged. So, to uncover a further specimen of theological in-talk, Darby's picture of Christ's coming was 'premillennial' and not post-millennial like Edwards's (see p. 759), and it did not encourage any sunny Enlightenment optimism about human prospects: only Christ could effectively change the world, not human effort. Premillennialism stressed division and separation within society, to gather in the elect, and its frostiness to Enlightenment projects of social reform contributed to that peculiar process by which 'liberal' has become a word of abuse in the United States, in sharp contrast to its esteem in European society. From the 1870s, this theology was promoted through the series of semi-inst.i.tutional conferences held at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada and Keswick in northern England, and other gatherings connected with them (or often deliberately not connected - premillennialists have a habit of falling out with each other). Second, completing the 'dispensations', he a.s.serted that Christ would return to reveal the final mystery in this Rapture and lead the saints in the last thousand years, just as the Albury conferences had envisaged. So, to uncover a further specimen of theological in-talk, Darby's picture of Christ's coming was 'premillennial' and not post-millennial like Edwards's (see p. 759), and it did not encourage any sunny Enlightenment optimism about human prospects: only Christ could effectively change the world, not human effort. Premillennialism stressed division and separation within society, to gather in the elect, and its frostiness to Enlightenment projects of social reform contributed to that peculiar process by which 'liberal' has become a word of abuse in the United States, in sharp contrast to its esteem in European society. From the 1870s, this theology was promoted through the series of semi-inst.i.tutional conferences held at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada and Keswick in northern England, and other gatherings connected with them (or often deliberately not connected - premillennialists have a habit of falling out with each other).120 This was the milieu which also bred the defensive proclamations of the Fundamentalist movement (see pp. 862-3). This was the milieu which also bred the defensive proclamations of the Fundamentalist movement (see pp. 862-3).

Amid this clash of Evangelicalisms, there remained the longing of Protestant blacks for full acceptance in American society, a widespread weariness at denominational barriers amid so much shared Evangelical rhetoric and an equally widespread instinct that Protestant emphasis on sermons and the intellectual understanding of the word of G.o.d did not give enough room for human emotion. Around 1900, speaking in 'tongues' began playing a major role: in a new enactment of the first Christian Pentecost described in Acts 2, 'tongues' created messages unrecognizable to the uninitiated, and expressing praise or worship to those within the community. The precedent was once more Irving's Catholic Apostolic Church, because it had first emerged from the excitement generated by the 'tongues' exhibited by the Scottish sisters Isabella and Mary Campbell (see p. 829). When Irving broke with the Church of Scotland, his newly founded Church continued the practice of speaking in tongues until the end of the 1870s, although it began fencing the practice around in 1847. The free expression of tongues had been effectively frozen out by an unpredictable development in the Catholic Apostolics' Church life, their penchant for some of the most elaborate liturgical ritual ever invented by a Western Church.121 The Catholic Apostolic Church itself was gradually killed off by its apocalyptic refusal to provide for ordination of subsequent generations of clergy after the first.122 Yet the Catholic Apostolic example was not forgotten and splinter groups from it carried on the tradition of tongues. There were other remarkable outbreaks of the same phenomenon around the world - for instance, in the Russian Empire in the 1850s during the Crimean War - a reflection of Christianity's growing globalization and the effects of sudden change in previously stable religious landscapes. Yet the Catholic Apostolic example was not forgotten and splinter groups from it carried on the tradition of tongues. There were other remarkable outbreaks of the same phenomenon around the world - for instance, in the Russian Empire in the 1850s during the Crimean War - a reflection of Christianity's growing globalization and the effects of sudden change in previously stable religious landscapes.123 Here was an unstable balance of incompatible forces (who could be more incompatible than Arminians and Reformed?). What the Pentecostals did was to kidnap the concept of Spirit Baptism from other Evangelicals in the Holiness Movement and the Keswick Conference tradition. They then made it not a Second Blessing but a Here was an unstable balance of incompatible forces (who could be more incompatible than Arminians and Reformed?). What the Pentecostals did was to kidnap the concept of Spirit Baptism from other Evangelicals in the Holiness Movement and the Keswick Conference tradition. They then made it not a Second Blessing but a third third, beyond conversion and sanctification. This Third Blessing would invariably be signalled by the sign of speaking in tongues. A favourite image of Pentecostals was to see the gift of tongues as the royal flag which flew whenever the king was in residence.124 Merely cataloguing various early emergences of Pentecostal spirit in the US around 1900 would do little to explain what happened. We can pick out particular moments, like the mixed-race congregation with its opportunities for black and female leadership, meeting in a rented former African Methodist church in Azusa Street in Los Angeles from 1906, which has become something of a founding myth to equal the first Pentecost in much writing of Pentecostal history. To give a fuller picture, it would be sensible to enrich the Azusa Street story with an account of the founding role of Charles Parham, the first Church leader to emphasize the central role of the gift of tongues in 'the Third Blessing' in 1901. His work has understandably been left in the shadows by later Pentecostals, considering his overt white racism, his eventual hostility to the Azusa Street events and his last decades of embittered obscurity after accusations of h.o.m.os.e.xuality were made against him.125 We could perhaps point to coincidental circ.u.mstances: for instance, the trauma of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire in one of America's fastest-growing and most excitable states, although the first speaking in tongues in Azusa Street actually came twelve days before the earthquake struck in 1906. More generally, the spread around the world of news about what was happening would hardly have been possible in any previous age before the telegraph, telephone and steamship. It was indeed only two decades since a great event had first been reported all round the world almost immediately: the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883 was a story in American newspapers only a few hours later. We could perhaps point to coincidental circ.u.mstances: for instance, the trauma of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire in one of America's fastest-growing and most excitable states, although the first speaking in tongues in Azusa Street actually came twelve days before the earthquake struck in 1906. More generally, the spread around the world of news about what was happening would hardly have been possible in any previous age before the telegraph, telephone and steamship. It was indeed only two decades since a great event had first been reported all round the world almost immediately: the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883 was a story in American newspapers only a few hours later.126 Eventually Pentecostalism affected the older Churches too, as some of those drawn to the movement did not leave their existing Churches and formed 'charismatic' groups within them. 'Charisma' means a gift of grace - in this case, a gift of the Holy Spirit. The distinctive feature of Pentecostalism is its emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Historically the Spirit has been the Cinderella of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity: bone of contention between Orthodox and Latin West, and frequently representing unpredictability and ecstasy within Christianity. So often the inst.i.tutional Church has sought to domesticate the Holy Spirit and make it intelligible: the Spirit frees the emotions, goes beyond words. Pentecostalism sets the Spirit free - often with disastrous results, as fallible human beings decide for themselves that they best speak for the Spirit, or fall in love with the power of the Spirit and apply it to their own purposes. But the rise of Pentecostalism and its Charismatic offshoots was one of the greatest surprises of twentieth-century Christianity - in a century when most of the other surprises turned out to be unpleasant.

24.

Not Peace but a Sword (1914-60)

A WAR THAT KILLED CHRISTENDOM (1914-18).

The most prominent pieces of furniture added during the twentieth century to the fine medieval church where my father was rector were a new pipe organ and a tall sideboard-like structure bearing a list of sixteen male names in alphabetical order. Both are Wetherden's memorials to its dead in the First World War, and it is significant that in this little Suffolk village, the parish church was then felt to be the right setting for community commemoration. So it was in my father's neighbouring parish of Haughley, where a stone churchyard cross with figures of Christ crucified, Mary and John tops another list (alphabetical by regiment) of twenty-nine dead men: a crushingly large number from a small place. Not all such memorials take Christian forms, but virtually every community or old-established company, school or college in the United Kingdom has one, almost always still carefully tended and once a year the focus for one of the last national rituals widely observed in Britain, the Service of Remembrance. They were overwhelmingly paid for by public subscription: 'the biggest communal arts project ever attempted'.1 Their presence through the rest of Europe is likewise all-pervasive, although in many places they have fared less well than in Britain, because the political inst.i.tutions whose soldiers fell have long disappeared, caught up and often discredited by the long-term effects of the war itself. Their presence through the rest of Europe is likewise all-pervasive, although in many places they have fared less well than in Britain, because the political inst.i.tutions whose soldiers fell have long disappeared, caught up and often discredited by the long-term effects of the war itself.2 The greatest casualty commemorated in this mult.i.tude of crosses and symbols of war is the union between Christianity and secular power: Christendom itself. By the end of the 1960s, the alliance between emperors and bishops which Constantine had first generated was a ghost; a fifteen-hundred-year-old adventure was at an end. The greatest casualty commemorated in this mult.i.tude of crosses and symbols of war is the union between Christianity and secular power: Christendom itself. By the end of the 1960s, the alliance between emperors and bishops which Constantine had first generated was a ghost; a fifteen-hundred-year-old adventure was at an end.

The war which began in August 1914, triggered by complex diplomacy and a tangle of fears and aspirations, did not seem likely to set any such new patterns. It involved four Christian emperors - German and Austrian Kaisers, the Russian Tsar and the British King-Emperor3 - but such rulers had habitually ignored their common faith to fight each other. They went to war over a long-standing cause of instability for Christendom: the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, or, more precisely, the compet.i.tion to dominate its former Balkan conquests. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, a devout Catholic keenly interested in the restoration of historic church buildings, was gunned down with his wife in Sarajevo, capital of the Habsburgs' most recently acquired province, Bosnia-Herzegovina. His murderers were part of an Orthodox-inspired movement to create a Greater Serbia which would include this religiously pluralistic territory. Beyond religion were power politics, ranging the Orthodox Tsar Nicholas II alongside the Protestant (and ethnically German) King-Emperor George V, in uncomfortable entente with an anticlerical Third French Republic. They acted in defensive nervousness, hoping to quell the expansionist ambitions of the new imperial Germany, which had encouraged its Habsburg ally to pressure Serbia, in order to confront Serbia's protector Russia. Religion lurked in unpredictable ways. When the German Kaiser's armies invaded Belgium to strike at the Franco-Russian alliance, they were violating the neutrality of a state formed in the 1830s specifically to accommodate the Roman Catholic faith of its inhabitants. Britain fought ostensibly to enforce that neutrality under guarantees that it had made to Belgium in 1839. - but such rulers had habitually ignored their common faith to fight each other. They went to war over a long-standing cause of instability for Christendom: the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, or, more precisely, the compet.i.tion to dominate its former Balkan conquests. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, a devout Catholic keenly interested in the restoration of historic church buildings, was gunned down with his wife in Sarajevo, capital of the Habsburgs' most recently acquired province, Bosnia-Herzegovina. His murderers were part of an Orthodox-inspired movement to create a Greater Serbia which would include this religiously pluralistic territory. Beyond religion were power politics, ranging the Orthodox Tsar Nicholas II alongside the Protestant (and ethnically German) King-Emperor George V, in uncomfortable entente with an anticlerical Third French Republic. They acted in defensive nervousness, hoping to quell the expansionist ambitions of the new imperial Germany, which had encouraged its Habsburg ally to pressure Serbia, in order to confront Serbia's protector Russia. Religion lurked in unpredictable ways. When the German Kaiser's armies invaded Belgium to strike at the Franco-Russian alliance, they were violating the neutrality of a state formed in the 1830s specifically to accommodate the Roman Catholic faith of its inhabitants. Britain fought ostensibly to enforce that neutrality under guarantees that it had made to Belgium in 1839.

In summer 1914 the Second Socialist International tried in vain to summon up a cross-border solidarity of workers against the growing crisis; it found that far more were swayed by the rhetoric of nationalism backed up by the inst.i.tutions of Christianity, which caused a continent-wide outpouring of popular enthusiasm for war. All sides excitedly coupled the theme of Christian faith with national unity as they launched their armies, none more so than the government of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was also supreme Bishop of the Prussian Evangelical Church (see Plate 47). 'No l.u.s.t for conquest prompts us - unshakeable determination inspires us to guard the place in which G.o.d has set us and all generations to come,' he proclaimed. 'You have read, Gentlemen, what I have said to my People from the Castle balcony. Here I say again: I know parties no more, I know nothing but a German!' The Kaiser's speech from the throne of August 1914 to the leaders of the Reichstag parties echoed the public proclamation drafted for the Emperor by the Imperial Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, aided by the great liberal Protestant historian Adolf von Harnack, Rector of Berlin University, now Royal Librarian, and enn.o.bled only six months before. German Protestant theologians and academics, Harnack's colleagues, had internalized the new imperial ideal with remarkable and unedifying speed after the Hohenzollern triumph of 1870-71. At no time did they trumpet that more than in 1914 - very specifically, in a Proclamation of Ninety-three German Professors to the Cultural World. It says a good deal about the legacy of Wilhelm von Humboldt (see pp. 830-31) that German professors could take themselves that seriously.4 Some Anglican bishops could be heard making equally remarkable statements. The Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, in one sermon in Advent 1915 called on the British Army 'to kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young men as well as the old'. At least Herbert Asquith, British Prime Minister, did not share the Kaiser's enthusiasm for bellicose sentiments from scholars and clerics, and styled Winnington-Ingram with elegant distaste 'an intensely silly bishop'. But the killing on all sides was as thorough as the Bishop of London had prescribed.5 The four years of slaughter revealed where the power lay between nationalism and religion. When Pope Benedict XV used his studied neutrality to seek a negotiated peace in 1917, both sides ignored him, despite his outstanding record as a diplomat. The four years of slaughter revealed where the power lay between nationalism and religion. When Pope Benedict XV used his studied neutrality to seek a negotiated peace in 1917, both sides ignored him, despite his outstanding record as a diplomat.6 Just as symbolic were the desperate demands by the increasingly beleaguered German government to churches to sacrifice treasured items for the war effort. German parishioners watched in misery as their bells were carried away after being rung for the last time - the very bells which had rung out so cheerfully for the outbreak of war. Just as symbolic were the desperate demands by the increasingly beleaguered German government to churches to sacrifice treasured items for the war effort. German parishioners watched in misery as their bells were carried away after being rung for the last time - the very bells which had rung out so cheerfully for the outbreak of war.7 Then in 1917 came the first fall of a Christian empire, the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church which had so long styled itself the Third Rome. Tsar Nicholas II was amiable, pious and well intentioned, but dull-wittedly autocratic - James Joyce neatly described Nicholas even before his downfall as having 'the face of a besotted Christ'.8 The Tsar made the mistake of appointing himself as commander-in-chief in a war which he increasingly mismanaged, thus a.s.sociating the Romanov dynasty intimately with the catastrophe into which Russia descended. At the centre of the empire, the Tsarina Alexandra was prominent in home government, to equally disastrous effect. Public outrage at the sense of drift focused on the faith-healing holy man Grigorii Rasputin, who had gained a hold over the Tsar and Tsarina because of his apparent ability to control the haemophilia of the heir to the imperial throne. Rasputin has been an object of much sensationalist fascination, not least because of the Grand Guignol ghastliness of his a.s.sa.s.sination by furious aristocrats in 1916, but it is as well to appreciate his ambiguity: pilgrim on foot from Siberia to Mount Athos, contemptuous of social hierarchy, treated with sympathy and respect by some senior churchmen (others loathed him). Even in his drunkenness and promiscuity, Rasputin looks remarkably like the Holy Fools whom we have met repeatedly in their long journey from the eastern Mediterranean - and so his many admirers saw him. Russian folk religion was returning to take its revenge on the autocracy which had shackled its Church in Peter the Great's Holy Synod. The Tsar made the mistake of appointing himself as commander-in-chief in a war which he increasingly mismanaged, thus a.s.sociating the Romanov dynasty intimately with the catastrophe into which Russia descended. At the centre of the empire, the Tsarina Alexandra was prominent in home government, to equally disastrous effect. Public outrage at the sense of drift focused on the faith-healing holy man Grigorii Rasputin, who had gained a hold over the Tsar and Tsarina because of his apparent ability to control the haemophilia of the heir to the imperial throne. Rasputin has been an object of much sensationalist fascination, not least because of the Grand Guignol ghastliness of his a.s.sa.s.sination by furious aristocrats in 1916, but it is as well to appreciate his ambiguity: pilgrim on foot from Siberia to Mount Athos, contemptuous of social hierarchy, treated with sympathy and respect by some senior churchmen (others loathed him). Even in his drunkenness and promiscuity, Rasputin looks remarkably like the Holy Fools whom we have met repeatedly in their long journey from the eastern Mediterranean - and so his many admirers saw him. Russian folk religion was returning to take its revenge on the autocracy which had shackled its Church in Peter the Great's Holy Synod.9 Rasputin's murder did not remedy the dire situation. 'Parastatal' organizations - local councils, representatives of business, the Red Cross - had been increasingly filling the gap left by the government's maladministration, and it was a combination of their leadership and the terrible toll of death in the war which finally forced abdication on the Tsar in March 1917; a Provisional Government followed.10 For the Orthodox Church, it was a moment of opportunity. It is a tribute to the renewal and reflection that had been going on in the Church over the previous decades, as part of Russia's development of gra.s.s-roots representative inst.i.tutions, that Church leaders now acted so swiftly and with such vision. By August a council of bishops, clergy and laypeople had gathered in Moscow to make decisions for the whole Church, something unprecedented in Russia's history. They elected the first patriarch for two centuries, since Peter the Great had brought an end to the patriarchate. Tikhon Bellavin was a bishop who had spent nine years in the United States, where he had been responsible for the setting up of inst.i.tutional structures for the Orthodox Church; many of his proposals might now be brought back to this newly representative Church in Russia. A swathe of reforming measures was agreed: laywomen were accorded unprecedented opportunities in the Church's activity and administration, and the council even gave time to sending messages of friendship to the Church of England. For the Orthodox Church, it was a moment of opportunity. It is a tribute to the renewal and reflection that had been going on in the Church over the previous decades, as part of Russia's development of gra.s.s-roots representative inst.i.tutions, that Church leaders now acted so swiftly and with such vision. By August a council of bishops, clergy and laypeople had gathered in Moscow to make decisions for the whole Church, something unprecedented in Russia's history. They elected the first patriarch for two centuries, since Peter the Great had brought an end to the patriarchate. Tikhon Bellavin was a bishop who had spent nine years in the United States, where he had been responsible for the setting up of inst.i.tutional structures for the Orthodox Church; many of his proposals might now be brought back to this newly representative Church in Russia. A swathe of reforming measures was agreed: laywomen were accorded unprecedented opportunities in the Church's activity and administration, and the council even gave time to sending messages of friendship to the Church of England.11 Yet as Patriarch Tikhon was elected, in the background was the sound of gunfire and bombardment: the Kremlin was under attack from Bolshevik socialists. The Provisional Government in St Petersburg (now Russified as Petrograd) had made no great effort to end the war, and popular disillusion with its rule gave the Bolsheviks their chance to seize power in October. They made peace with the central European emperors to consolidate their own power against a broad coalition of opposition. The Bolsheviks were not fighting tsarist autocracy: that had already been dismantled. They saw themselves as inst.i.tuting a new world order, and such visions are rarely conducive to tolerance of the past, or indeed of any contrary opinion. Their att.i.tude was summed up in the words of Boris Pilnyak, a Russian novelist who, like so many other idealists of the Bolshevik Revolution, was eventually executed by those who turned the revolution into Stalin's Russia: Our Revolution is a rebellion in the name of the conscious, rational, purposeful and dynamic principle of life, against the elemental, senseless biological automism of life: that is, against the peasant roots of our old Russian history, against its aimlessness, its non-technological character, against the holy and idiotic philosophy of Tolstoy's Karataev in War and Peace War and Peace.12 For the Bolsheviks, the Church was the embodiment of the society which they were trying to destroy. Their detestation of Christianity was as extreme as that of the Jacobins in the French Revolution; the formal separation of Church and State in January 1918 was just one first step towards death and destruction, the Romanov family's murder being symbolic of so many others. The civil war which was already raging by then, and which ended in 1922 with Bolshevik victory, marked the beginning of seventy years for the Russian Orthodox Church which represent one of the worst betrayals of hope in the history of Christianity. During those terrible decades, the destruction of life and of the material beauty of church buildings and art outdid anything in Orthodox experience since the Mongol invasions; the Orthodox faithful were made strangers amid the culture which they had shaped over centuries. Patriarch Tikhon, desperately trying to protect his Church with no real a.s.sets at his disposal apart from the ability to forgive his enemies, eventually died under house arrest in 1925. It is likely that he was murdered by thugs commanded by a Bolshevik leader who was possibly the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a priest and in early life was one of the most unpromising of seminarians. Long before Tikhon's death, this Georgian gangster, who never fulfilled his mother's hopes that he might become a bishop, had adopted the pseudonym Josef Stalin.13 The Bolsheviks' hatred of religious practice extended far beyond the official Church. Of all the stories of Christian suffering in Russia after 1917, that of the Mennonites can stand for others because of the peculiar moral dilemma it presented for this sect, which since the Reformation had itself rejected the ideal of Christendom now in collapse. First gathered in the Netherlands in the 1530s by Menno Simons, a Frisian former priest sickened by the blood-soaked end to the siege of Munster (see pp. 623-4), Mennonites expressed their difference from the world around them by renouncing all forms of coercion or public violence, soldiering of course included. Their hard work and orderly peaceableness made them attractive colonists for the tsars, and by the time of the revolution hundreds of thousands lived in Mennonite communities, mostly in the Volga region. Their prosperity attracted Bolshevik and anarchist raids, both out of ideological hatred of 'bourgeois' farmers, and from simple greed or necessity - but there was another intoxicating element for bullies: the Mennonites would not fight back when attacked. Men were murdered, women raped, everything was stolen. For many of them, it was too much. They fought back and sent perpetrators of the outrages packing - but now they had to face the wrath of brethren and sisters who said that they were betraying Mennonite principles. When Russian Mennonites finally had the chance, most made new lives in communities in North America; but they did not forget the controversy. Bad feeling and arguments about the Russian civil war still beset quiet places in the prairies of Canada.14 The end of the war on Europe's other frontiers in late 1918 brought the collapse of three more empires. The twin Protestant and Catholic heirs of the Holy Roman Empire now quit their thrones, as the pressure of central European nationalisms led to the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the shock of Germany's sudden capitulation in the West precipitated the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm. An array of impressively bewhiskered German princelings followed in their wake. The third to fall was the Ottoman Sultan, who had entered the war on the side of Germany and Austria, and who was ejected from his palaces in 1922; the caliphate was formally abolished two years later. Of all the European imperial crowned heads, only the British King-Emperor remained.15 The death throes of the Ottoman Empire led to further disasters for Orthodoxy and the ancient Miaphysite and Dyophysite Churches of the East. Nineteenth-century ma.s.sacres caused by the new self-consciousness of Ottoman Islam were outcla.s.sed by what now happened in Anatolia and the Caucasus. From the beginning of the war, the reformist 'Young Turk' regime in Constantinople saw the Christians of the region as fifth columnists for Russia (with some justification) and was determined to neutralize them. The measures it authorized were increasingly extreme, to the point that it is difficult to find historians outside Turkey who are not prepared to use the word genocide to describe the deaths of more than a million Armenian Christians between 1915 and 1916. One city, Van, largely Armenian in 1914, simply does not exist on the site that it then occupied.16 Britain, Russia and France appealed to the Turks during the war to end these atrocities, threatening post-war retribution to those involved and denouncing these 'new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization'. The word 'humanity' had significantly replaced 'Christianity' in an earlier draft of the statement, and there was little comfort for Christian victims in the peace settlements which followed. Britain, Russia and France appealed to the Turks during the war to end these atrocities, threatening post-war retribution to those involved and denouncing these 'new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization'. The word 'humanity' had significantly replaced 'Christianity' in an earlier draft of the statement, and there was little comfort for Christian victims in the peace settlements which followed.17 No official statement was made about the Armenian holocaust. No official statement was made about the Armenian holocaust.

23. Europe in 1914

24. Europe in 1922

Besides this catastrophe was that of the Dyophysites in Mesopotamia and the mountains of eastern Turkey who, since the mid-nineteenth century, had exploited the findings of Western archaeology in the Middle East and rebranded themselves as 'a.s.syrian Christians'. While general war raged, they sought to carve out a national homeland to embody their new ident.i.ty, in the face of ma.s.sacres by Turks and Kurds. They were fortified by military victories against the Turks led by the brilliant a.s.syrian military leader Agha Petros, but after the war the British reneged on previous promises. Instead a.s.syrians found themselves part of a newly constructed multi-ethnic British puppet kingdom, Iraq, dominated by Muslims, where they fared increasingly badly at the hands of the Hashemite monarchy and its Republican successors. The two Gulf Wars at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries brought them fresh miseries, especially the second, which has sent new streams of scapegoated refugees out of Iraqi territory.18 The reason why the victorious Allies fell silent on the Armenians and betrayed the a.s.syrians had to do with a sudden post-war series of victories by Turkey. These brought further disaster for Eastern Christianity, in this case Greek Orthodoxy. With the Ottoman Empire prostrate, Greek armies occupied much of western Anatolia (Asia Minor), continuing various Balkan land-grabs from the Ottomans which they had carried out in the years immediately before 1914. They exultantly sought to enforce the terms of the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 with the defeated empire; this allotted them substantial parts of Anatolia's west coast as part of a Greater Greece. Turkish armies then rallied under Mustapha Kemal, who would soon restyle himself as Kemal 'Ataturk', and in September 1922, as the routed Greeks fled, Smyrna, one of the greatest cities in the Greek-speaking world, was near-obliterated by fire (see Plate 51). In the flames perished Asia Minor's nineteen centuries of Christian culture, and ten earlier centuries of Greek civilization. A Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 overturned the agreements of Sevres, and the flood of refugees in both directions across the Aegean Sea was formalized into population exchanges on the basis of religion, not language. The effect was that religious ident.i.ty trans.m.u.ted into national ident.i.ty: Christians became Greeks regardless of what language they then spoke, and Muslims became Turks. Within a few years, virtually all the mosques of Athens had been levelled to the ground, while the toll of church ruination in Asia Minor is still all too obvious. It was a trauma so deep that in neither country has it been possible to talk freely about refugee ancestry until very recent years.19 The only significant exception to the general exchange, and that tragically short-lived, was Istanbul, as the wider world learned to call Constantinople in the 1930s. The Greek and Orthodox population of the city was exempted from exile, and in a commendable and surprising display of swift reconciliation, Ataturk, now leader of a Turkish Republic, and the veteran Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos sealed this agreement in 1930. Alas, the one continuing major territorial dispute between Greece and Turkey, over the future of ethnically divided Cyprus, poisoned the deal in little more than two decades. As the British sought unhappily to scramble out of colonial rule in Cyprus in the 1950s, and Greeks demanded the island's union with the kingdom of Greece, Turkish anger mounted. In 1955 the Turkish government of Adnan Menderes, on the most charitable interpretation, did nothing to stop two days of vicious and well-organized pogroms against Greeks in Istanbul; the flashpoint was the false rumour that Ataturk's birthplace in Thessaloniki (the ancient Thessalonica) had been burned down by the Greeks. There were death and rape throughout the city, and the wrecking of most of what survived of Istanbul's heritage of Greek Orthodox churches. In their wake, a Greek citizen population of some 300,000 in 1924 and 111,200 in 1934 has now been reduced to a probable figure of two thousand or less. The present Oec.u.menical Patriarch is a lonely figure in his palace in the Phanar. He is an international ecclesiastical statesman rightly much respected, but like his predecessors and presumably successors, he was chosen from the now tiny native Orthodox Turkish citizen population, and he does not even possess a working seminary for the training of his clergy. This near-death of Orthodox Christianity in the Second Rome is a direct result of the First World War, just as was the martyrdom of the Third Rome.20 The only substantial Christian refuge to be created in the 1923 peace settlements at Lausanne owed its existence to the Third French Republic, which might seem a paradox until one remembers the Republicans' instrumental att.i.tude to the Church in French colonies as an agent of French cultural hegemony.21 France was anxious to maintain its traditional strong influence in the Middle East, which dated back to the seventeenth century, when the French Crown arrogated to itself the role of protector of Levantine Christians. Accordingly it secured the creation of a French mandate over a coastal and mountainous region described as the Lebanon, whose boundaries closely followed the strength of the population of Maronite Christians - an indigenous Church of the area, originally Monothelete in its views on the nature of Christ (see pp. 441-2), but in union with Roman Catholicism since the twelfth century. When the Lebanon later gained its independence in 1943, seizing on a moment of French disarray in the Second World War, the new republic formulated a const.i.tution carefully designed to balance the interests of Christians against other confessional groups. It succeeded for some three decades, before unravelling in civil war; the consequences of that breakdown are still unfolding. France was anxious to maintain its traditional strong influence in the Middle East, which dated back to the seventeenth century, when the French Crown arrogated to itself the role of protector of Levantine Christians. Accordingly it secured the creation of a French mandate over a coastal and mountainous region described as the Lebanon, whose boundaries closely followed the strength of the population of Maronite Christians - an indigenous Church of the area, originally Monothelete in its views on the nature of Christ (see pp. 441-2), but in union with Roman Catholicism since the twelfth century. When the Lebanon later gained its independence in 1943, seizing on a moment of French disarray in the Second World War, the new republic formulated a const.i.tution carefully designed to balance the interests of Christians against other confessional groups. It succeeded for some three decades, before unravelling in civil war; the consequences of that breakdown are still unfolding.22

25. The Middle East and Turkey after 1923 On the eastern frontier of the new Turkish Republic, the shattered remnants of Christianity were also wretchedly caught up in international politics. Virtually all remaining Armenians fled, leaving eloquent ruins of Christian churches behind them, and the Dyophysites of the Church of the East were soon mostly in Iraq. In 1924 the Miaphysite or Syriac Orthodox people of Urfa (Edessa) faced the consequences of a successful Turkish counter-attack against French invading armies. Some stayed within the new Turkish Republic, around the holy mountains of Tur 'Abdin, where their monasteries still do their best to guard the life of prayer dating back more than fifteen centuries. Urfa itself, cradle of Christianity's alliance with monarchy, now has virtually no Christians left. Most Urfalese Syriac Orthodox fled over the new border into what was now the French mandated territory of Syria, and there in the city of Aleppo they painfully constructed a new life and preserved as much as they could from the past, including their ancient and unique musical tradition, probably the oldest in the Christian world.

The proudly maintained Syriac Orthodox church of St George in Aleppo boasts a pastiche-a.s.syrian bas-relief of King Abgar receiving the Mandylion Mandylion (see pp. 180-81), as well a reproduction of the version of the (see pp. 180-81), as well a reproduction of the version of the Mandylion Mandylion in Rome, presented to the congregation by the Pope himself. There are also two touching and unexpected relics of old Edessa: the church bell and a ma.s.sive crystal chandelier, both given to the Edessan Christians by Queen-Empress Victoria of the United Kingdom. What trouble it must have taken to transport these unwieldy objects over the border amid the chaos and terror of 1924! Yet one can understand why. The British Empire then seemed a possible protector for an eventual return to the homeland and these would be useful symbols for an appeal to the British. The Urfalese Christians were not to know all was not what it seemed with that great imperial power. in Rome, presented to the congregation by the Pope himself. There are also two touching and unexpected relics of old Edessa: the church bell and a ma.s.sive crystal chandelier, both given to the Edessan Christians by Queen-Empress Victoria of the United Kingdom. What trouble it must have taken to transport these unwieldy objects over the border amid the chaos and terror of 1924! Yet one can understand why. The British Empire then seemed a possible protector for an eventual return to the homeland and these would be useful symbols for an appeal to the British. The Urfalese Christians were not to know all was not what it seemed with that great imperial power.

GREAT BRITAIN: THE LAST YEARS OF CHRISTIAN EMPIRE.

It was not yet publicly apparent that victorious Great Britain had been seriously undermined by the conflict of 1914-18. Its empire was augmented by virtually all of Germany's colonial possessions, together with large sections of the Ottoman Empire, mostly in the guise of 'mandates' from the newly established League of Nations, plus some client kingdoms. Alone among the major combatants in the European war, Britain retained its pre-war combination of monarchy and distinct national established Churches - Anglican in England, Presbyterian in Scotland - so its Christianity, lacking the shock of defeat or regime change, had a greater inclination to enjoy the luxury of moderation than elsewhere. Yet Britain could not escape the general trauma of the war. Sensible British politicians saw that British power was not what it had been, particularly in relation to their belated war ally, the United States. As the world's largest imperial power, Britain was bound to be affected by the general perception among colonized peoples that they had been dragged into a conflict which was not their concern. Whatever moral authority their colonial masters possessed was severely tarnished, and that did not bode well for Britain's comparatively recent worldwide imperial project. Moreover, the British Isles themselves were poisoned by a civil war which the general war had only postponed, and whose origins were religious, in Ireland. The Protestants, predominant in the north-eastern Irish counties of Ulster, refused to accept any deal for Home Rule across the island which would leave them in the hands of a Roman Catholic majority, and open violence broke out only a few months after the worldwide Armistice of November 1918.

Protestant Unionists were an unstable coalition, particularly in north-eastern Ireland. Here the traditional 'Anglo-Irish' elite of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland had to make common cause with a truculently independent Ulster-Scots Presbyterianism, which shaded into a revivalism strongly linked to the fervour of the American Awakenings. Nevertheless, shared Protestant anger at British government concessions on Home Rule led significant numbers in 1914 to threaten to defend themselves by force, and when thousands of Protestant Ulstermen subsequently joined up for the British Army, their eyes were on the defence of Ulster as much as of the empire. Their slaughter in horrific numbers in the trench warfare of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, a particular holocaust of Irish regiments, only strengthened the determination of Ulster Protestants to give no ground.

As Irish nationalist support grew and shouldered aside earlier more moderate Home Rule politicians, island-wide violence mounted. Part.i.tion became inevitable, though the decision led to a further vicious civil war in the south between nationalists who accepted and those who rejected the part.i.tion deal on offer from the British government. The British Isles ceased to be a United Kingdom in 1922, although southern Ireland ungraciously accepted an increasingly threadbare figleaf of monarchical authority until 1949. Northern Ireland consolidated itself into a state where majority Protestant rule would be entrenched - not least because both Catholics and Protestants resisted the attempt of the Westminster government to create truly non-sectarian education at primary school level; thanks to the Catholic Church's firm instructions, Catholic parents overwhelmingly boycotted state secondary schools, leaving them to Protestants.23 Amid the crisis of Northern Ireland's birth in 1920-23, Presbyterian society was electrified by a series of revivals conducted by a cla.s.sic representative of extrovert Ulster-American fundamentalism, William P. Nicholson: hardbitten, ebullient, contemptuous of nuance - full of Gospel fire, others might say. Nicholson is a problematic figure. He has been credited with saving Ulster from all-out war by turning 'born-again' gunmen away from violence, but equally, as with previous Ulster revivalists, he could be seen as confirming the siege mentality of working-cla.s.s Ulster Protestantism. In later life, he gave his blessing to one in a new generation of populist Presbyterians who was destined to spend much of a long and politically charged ministry amid a further Ulster civil war. Ian Paisley, founder of a self-styled Free Presbyterian Church, reminisced that Nicholson prayed that Paisley might be given a tongue as sharp as a cow's in the service of the Gospel. Paisley if not G.o.d hearkened to that prayer, and despite the remarkable turnaround which crowned and then swiftly ended his political career in old age, he can shoulder much of the responsibility for the immobilisme immobilisme of Ulster politics through three decades of violence at the end of the twentieth century. of Ulster politics through three decades of violence at the end of the twentieth century.24 The virulent anti-Catholicism of interwar Northern Ireland was echoed elsewhere in the Atlantic Isles, especially in Wales and Scotland. Welsh Nonconformist Protestants were proud of their hegemony in Welsh life, but also conscious of their congregations ebbing, despite a nationwide burst of Pentecostal-related revival in 1904-5. That heightened their alarm at a growing Catholic presence in Wales, swollen by Irish and other immigrants. The Wesleyan minister Lewis Edwards in 1931 was not exceptional in his ready public affirmation, 'There is no disguising the fact that Roman Catholics are opposed to everything the Welsh people hold dear in their national life.'25 Similar circ.u.mstances led a committee of the General a.s.sembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland in 1923 to express fears for Scottish culture under the onslaught of Irish immigrants. They stated, with an open racism coming strangely from ethnically hybrid Scotland, 'The nations that are h.o.m.ogeneous in Faith and ideas, that have maintained unity of race, have ever been the most prosperous, and to them the Almighty had committed the highest tasks, and has granted the largest measure of success in achieving them.' A search for solidarity against Catholicism was an important element in a successful Reunion of 1929 between the two halves of the Church of Scotland riven in the Disruption of 1843 (see p. 844), and Reunion was combined with calls to the government to legislate to reduce Scotland's Irish immigrant community. As late as 1935 there were anti-Catholic riots in Edinburgh. Similar circ.u.mstances led a committee of the General a.s.sembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland in 1923 to express fears for Scottish culture under the onslaught of Irish immigrants. They stated, with an open racism coming strangely from ethnically hybrid Scotland, 'The nations that are h.o.m.ogeneous in Faith and ideas, that have maintained unity of race, have ever been the most prosperous, and to them the Almighty had committed the highest tasks, and has granted the largest measure of success in achieving them.' A search for solidarity against Catholicism was an important element in a successful Reunion of 1929 between the two halves of the Church of Scotland riven in the Disruption of 1843 (see p. 844), and Reunion was combined with calls to the government to legislate to reduce Scotland's Irish immigrant community. As late as 1935 there were anti-Catholic riots in Edinburgh.26 Nor was England exempt from this mood, smarting as it was from the humiliating loss of one of its subordinate partners in the Atlantic archipelago. When the Church of England's bishops tried to end Anglican contention about the liturgy between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals by producing a new Prayer Book, their carefully calibrated efforts twenty years in preparation were twice defeated in Parliament in 1927-8, amid much talk of popery.27 Admittedly, MPs from beyond England (and one Communist Pa.r.s.ee representing Battersea North) were crucial in the vote which produced this defeat on a matter which strictly speaking concerned only the English, but popular anti-Catholicism ran deep in English consciousness. Admittedly, MPs from beyond England (and one Communist Pa.r.s.ee representing Battersea North) were crucial in the vote which produced this defeat on a matter which strictly speaking concerned only the English, but popular anti-Catholicism ran deep in English consciousness.28 Respectable England was 'Church', or it was 'Chapel', and both were Protestant - with the uncomfortable complication of Anglo-Catholicism, making its own way in the Church of England (see Plate 49). Respectable England was 'Church', or it was 'Chapel', and both were Protestant - with the uncomfortable complication of Anglo-Catholicism, making its own way in the Church of England (see Plate 49).

For all these groups, Rome was an alien world, liable to pollute the English way of life - although, curiously, even the most self-consciously Protestant army officer found no difficulty in calling army chaplains 'padre', since the British In