Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Guy, “Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel”

The author John Guy (whose prior work includes biographies of Thomas More and Mary Queen of Scots) recently published Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel (Random House 2012).  You can click on the link for the publisher’s description, but here’s a useful review of the book by Samuel Gregg, and a bit from the review’s conclusion:

In his public life after death, Becket has assumed an iconic status for those seeking to defend religious liberty per se. Becket himself (like Thomas More) would have found that a rather strange notion. Becket’s concern was with the church’s freedom from undue temporal interference, rather than a more general conception of religious toleration. That development had to await, among other things, the wars of religion and what none other than Benedict XVI has described as one of the American Revolution’s many positive results. In the Catholic Church’s case, it also required careful rereading of scriptural, patristic and scholastic sources in order to recover Christianity’s original affirmation of religious liberty in the sense of immunity from coercion and as a necessary precondition for freely embracing religious truth.

And yet as Islam’s present traumas should remind us, a religion’s capacity to make distinctions between the spiritual and temporal realms makes a difference to the more general growth of freedom. As Guy points out, Henry VIII’s looting and destruction of the sanctuary of St Thomas Becket in September 1538, his burning of Becket’s remains, and the king’s posthumous designation of Becket as a “rebel and traitor to his prince” had a clear political purpose. “Only a monarch not unlike the earlier Henry,” Guy writes, “set on building a regional church under tight royal control, ring-fenced by the coast, as an integral part of a centralized state controlled by himself, could have spoken that way” (348).

It was of course the voice of tyranny, for which libertas ecclesiae and the life of Thomas Becket never cease to serve as constant reproaches.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bernard, “The Late Medieval English Church”

A very interesting historical work by G.W. Bernard (University of Southampton) discussing the pre-Reformation Catholic Church in England: The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability Before the Break With Rome (YUP 2012).  The publisher’s description follows.

The later medieval English church is invariably viewed through the lens of the Reformation that transformed it. But in this bold and provocative book historian George Bernard examines it on its own terms, revealing a church with vibrant faith and great energy, but also with weaknesses that reforming bishops worked to overcome.

Bernard emphasizes royal control over the church. He examines the challenges facing bishops and clergy, and assesses the depth of lay knowledge and understanding of the teachings of the church, highlighting the practice of pilgrimage. He reconsiders anti-clerical sentiment and the extent and significance of heresy. He shows that the Reformation was not inevitable: the late medieval church was much too full of vitality. But Bernard also argues that alongside that vitality, and often closely linked to it, were vulnerabilities that made the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries possible. The result is a thought-provoking study of a church and society in transformation.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bebbington, “Victorian Religious Revivals”

Another terrific looking book about religious history in Great Britain which also delves into some sociology of the religious “awakening” —  this one by David Bebbington (Stirling), Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts (OUP 2012).  An especially interesting feature of this book looks to be the study of the structure or organization of the revival, which is perhaps in some cases less spontaneous than one might believe.  The publisher’s description follows.

Revivals are outbursts of religious enthusiasm in which there are numerous conversions. In this book the phenomenon of revival is set in its broad historical and historiographical context. David Bebbington provides detailed case-studies of awakenings that took place between 1841 and 1880 in Britain, North America and Australia, showing that the distinctive features of particular revivals were the result less of national differences than of denominational variations. These revivals occurred in many places across the globe, but revealed the shared characteristics of evangelical Protestantism. Bebbington explores the preconditions of revival, giving attention to the cultural setting of each episode as well as the form of piety displayed by the participants.

No single cause can be assigned to the awakenings, but one of the chief factors behind them was occupational structure and striking instances of death were often a precipitant. Ideas were far more involved in these events than historians have normally supposed, so that the case-studies demonstrate some of the main patterns in religious thought at a popular level during the Victorian period. Laymen and women played a disproportionate part in their promotion and converts were usually drawn in large numbers from the young. There was a trend over time away from traditional spontaneity towards more organised methods sometimes entailing interdenominational co-operation.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Worden, “God’s Instruments”

Very interesting book about the religious dimensions of Puritan politics in 17th century England by Blair Worden (Royal Holloway College London), God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (OUP 2012).  The publisher’s description follows.

The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years later: the trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the creation of the only republic in English history. There were startling and unexpected developments, too, in religion and ideas: the spread of unorthodox doctrines; the attainment of a wide measure of liberty of conscience; new thinking about the moral and intellectual bases of politics and society. God’s Instruments centres on the principal instrument of radical change, Oliver Cromwell, and on the unfamiliar landscape of the decade he dominated, from the abolition of the monarchy in 1649 to the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660.

Its theme is the relationship between the beliefs or convictions of politicians and their decisions and actions. Blair Worden explores the biblical dimension of Puritan politics; the ways that a belief in the workings of divine providence affected political conduct; Cromwell’s commitment to liberty of conscience and his search for godly reformation through educational reform; the constitutional premises of his rule and those of his opponents in the struggle for supremacy between parliamentary and military rule; the relationship between conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The conflicts Worden reconstructs are placed in the perspective of long-term developments, of which historians have lost sight, in ideas about parliament and about freedom. The final chapters turn to the guiding convictions of two writers at the heart of politics, John Milton and the royalist Edward Hyde, the future Earl of Clarendon. Material from previously published essays, much of it expanded and extensively revised, comes together with freshly written chapters.  

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Sandberg on Whether Judges Understand Religion

Russell Sandberg (Cardiff U. Law School) has posted The Adventures of Religious Freedom: Do Judges Understand Religion? The abstract follows.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, something rather unexpected happened: religion became significant again. Since the time of the Enlightenment, great thinkers had been quick to predict that religion would vanish in modern rational society and throughout the twentieth century this broadly became the case. However, the events of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries have questioned these long held expectations about the decline of religion. One of the most noteworthy, but often overlooked, changes relates to law. Religious freedom is now recognised as a human right and discrimination on grounds of religion or belief has become explicitly prohibited. These new laws have led to a significant increase in litigation and discussion of ‘religious rights’ (a process which may be referred to as the ‘juridification of religion’) and long-standing assumptions and values have become questioned. The relationship between law and religion has become increasingly important and increasing controversial. This paper looks at several recent high profile effects in order to determine the effect of this ‘juridification of religion’. Cases concerning prayers said at Council meetings, refusals to give urine samples and protests outside St. Pauls Cathedral will be amongst those examined to determine whether judges truly understand religion and the extent to which the new legal framework is working.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Government of Great Britain: No Right to Wear a Cross at Work

An extraordinary position for, of all countries, Great Britain to take before the European Court of Human Rights.  Here’s a bit from the story:

In a highly significant move, ministers will fight a case at the European Court of Human Rights in which two British women will seek to establish their right to display the cross.

It is the first time that the Government has been forced to state whether it backs the right of Christians to wear the symbol at work.

A document seen by The Sunday Telegraph discloses that ministers will argue that because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

“The Noblest of All Sublunary Beings”

Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England are available in full here.  And here is a lovely passage from the very beginning of the Commentaries:

This, then, is the general signification of law, a rule of action dictated by some superior being; and, in those creatures that have neither the power to think, nor to will, such laws must be invariably obeyed, so long as the creature itself subsists, for its existence depends on that obedience. But laws, in their more confined sense, and in which it is our present business to consider them, denote the rules, not of action in general, but of human action or conduct; that is, the precepts by which man, the noblest of all sublunary beings, a creature endowed with both reason and free-will, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of his behaviour.

Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. A being, independent of any other, has no rule to pursue, but such as he prescribes to himself; but a state of dependence will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him on whom he depends as the rule of his conduct; not, indeed, in every particular, but in all those points wherein his dependence consists. This principle, therefore, has more or less extent and effect, in proportion as the superiority of the one and the dependence of the other is greater or less, absolute or limited. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker’s will.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

Prest, “William Blackstone”

Wilfrid Prest’s biography, William Blackstone: Law and Letters in the Eighteenth Century, was published back in 2008, but it has just been released in paperback.  The book is an absolutely wonderful treatment of this deeply important figure in English and American law, and I note it here because it discusses some of Blackstone’s religious commitments and views.  The publisher’s description follows.

Lawyer, judge, politician, poet, teacher, and architect, William Blackstone was a major figure in eighteenth century public life. Over his varied and brilliant career he made profound contributions to English politics, law, education, and culture through involvements in legal practice, Parliament, and the University of Oxford. Throughout he also remained engaged in his society’s literary and spiritual life. Despite the breadth and influence of his work, Blackstone the man remains little known and poorly understood, the lack of engagement with his public and private life standing in stark contrast to the scale of his influence, particularly on the development and teaching of the law.

Blackstone’s ‘Commentaries on the Laws of England’ remains the most celebrated and influential text in the Anglo-American common-law tradition. This great book has inevitably overshadowed its author, while the dispersal of his personal and professional papers further complicates the task of understanding the man behind the work. The lack of a thorough account of Blackstone’s life has fuelled controversy surrounding his intellectual background and political views. Was he the deeply reactionary conservative painted by Bentham, or rather a committed reformer and early champion of human rights?

The present biography makes full use of a considerable body of new evidence that has emerged in recent years to shed light on the life, work, and times of this neglected figure in English and American history. Exploring Blackstone’s family upbringing and private life, his political activities and ideology, his religious outlook, and championing of the enlightenment, this book weaves together the threads of an extraordinary mind and career.  

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Rascoff on the “Counter-Radicalization Strategy”

I want to highlight a very interesting looking article by Samuel Rascoff (NYU) just out in the Stanford Law Review, Establishing Official Islam?  The Law and Strategy of Counter-Radicalization.  The abstract follows.

In the name of national security, federal and local governments have begun to intervene domestically in the religious lives of Muslims and into Islam itself. Taken together, these interventions form part of the emerging strategy of counter-radicalization, by which officials aim to diminish the pull of radical Islamic ideology in part by promoting more “mainstream” theological alternatives. Both the official opposition to radical Islam (as opposed to the violence that it is thought to generate) and the support for more palatable (to the state, that is) religious alternatives generate friction with the Establishment Clause and the values that it enshrines. But the prospect of establishing “Official Islam” is not the only worry surrounding counter-radicalization. Counter-radicalization also suffers from a number of strategic flaws that have become apparent in the context of British counter-radicalization efforts undertaken over the last five years. Most fundamentally, Western governments, including our own, are unlikely to succeed in tackling the risk of future terrorism by attempting to shape religious ideology. In fact, this strategy is likely to backfire by stoking animosities and fear. This Article describes the emergence of American counter-radicalization and its roots in the British example, highlights the tension between this area of official endeavor and the Establishment Clause, and reveals the tight connection between the legal and strategic challenges with which American counter-radicalization must contend.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Muslim Peer Calls for Christian Europe

Sayeeda Warsi sits in the House of Lords and serves as minister without portfolio in Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet. This week, she will lead a British delegation to meet with Pope Benedict at the Vatican. In advance of her meeting, she has written a piece in today’s Telegraph that is bound to get attention.

Baroness Warsi writes that secular Europe should be more comfortable with religion. In fact, she argues that Europe should recover its Christianity. When she meets the Pope, she writes:

I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity. The point is this: the societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity.

These values shine through our politics, our public life, our culture, our economics, our language and our architecture. And, as I will say today, you cannot and should not extract these Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes. . . .

Of course there is a crucial caveat to all of this. I am not calling for some kind of 21st century theocracy. Religious faith and its followers do not have the only answer. There will be times when politicians and faith leaders will disagree. What is more, secularism is not intrinsically damaging. My concern is when secularisation is pushed to an extreme, when it requires the complete removal of faith from the public sphere. So I am calling for a more open confidence in faith, where faith has a place at the table, though not an exclusive position.

What makes these sentiments somewhat surprising is that Baroness Warsi is a Muslim. In fact, she is the first Muslim woman to serve in a British cabinet. Her remarks are similar to those of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who last fall wrote nostalgically about his memories of growing up in the Christian Britain of the 1950s. At least for some members of minority faiths in Britain, it seems, a faith-based culture — even if the faith is not one’s own — is preferable to a militantly secular culture in which all faith is deprecated.