Continuing my ruminations on the connections between the English Civil War and the political concerns of the founding generation of Americans. The issue of state religion seems especially timely due to the recurrent themes of the "War on Christmas" and efforts of conservatives to push their brand of Protestant Christianity back into public schools (cue Mike Huckabee here).
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Religious
conformity in early modern England was as much about loyalty to the crown as
acceptance of a particular theological doctrine. Attendance at Sunday services was compulsory, so refusal to
attend became both a secular and temporal crime, particularly in the face of
conflicts with Catholic France and Spain.
However, both Jesuit missionaries and puritan dissenters fought against
conformity as dangerous to their faiths. As the seventeenth century progressed
toward the English Civil War the penalties for religious non-conformance
increased, ensuring that more and more dissenters of both Catholic and
Protestant stripes. The primary
theme is the question of whether church attendance was a solely religious issue,
or one of loyalty to the English crown.
The
most visible religious dissenters were Catholics, called recusants, who refused
to attend the Church of England’s services in accordance with dictates of the
Pope. Recusants faced
imprisonment, fines, and loss of lands if prosecuted for non-attendance. As a result, most Catholics, called
conformists or church papists, chose to attend Anglican services. For some Catholics church attendance
provided a visible declaration of loyalty to the crown in addition to avoidance
of civil or criminal penalties.
While attending church preserved the lives, freedom, and property of
conformists, Papal decrees stated that attendance at Anglican services was a
mortal sin. Catholics that
repeatedly attended Protestant services were ineligible for absolution from the
sin of attendance.
Jesuit
missionaries sought to discourage conformity by Catholics with a propaganda
campaign. Priests used hidden
presses to publish and distribute tracts denouncing conformity in part because
they lacked the traditional parish structure to distribute their message. Missionaries secretly distributed
manuals to teach Catholics the best way to respond to queries about their
refusal to attend church. In this
way, the act of refusal became a positive assertion of their beliefs, not a
negative reaction to authority.
Not only did the missionaries
struggle to bring lapsed Catholics back to the faith, but they worked to
prevent conformists from accepting Protestantism through osmosis. Jesuits worried that long-term exposure
to proselytizing from the pulpit would win Protestantism new converts from
conforming Catholics attending services.
Missionaries also warned Catholics against falling into the error that
they could be responsible for their own spiritual health.
A
key Jesuit tactic in their battle against conformity was to exalt the suffering
of the heroic martyrs punished by the government for their dedication to their
faith. Catholics in England were
enjoined to accept penalties for recusance as God’s gift to the faithful. Loss of property and relationships were
akin to the vows of cloistered monks and nuns. Recusants could thus expect heavenly rewards for their suffering
in England. Missionary tracts urged recusants to reject personal associations
with conformists, arguing that conscientious Catholics should pursue total
separation from Protestants and conforming Catholics in order to maintain their
own spiritual purity.
Being
a recusant was not the only form of dissent open to Catholics. Some Catholics expressed their dissent
by refusing to participate in Protestant communion rituals. Conformists could also remain silent
during responsorial liturgies, or could make a public declaration of dissent
before their congregation rather than remaining absent from church services. Finally, some Catholic families chose
to have husbands attend services while wives became recusants. Wives then became responsible for
raising children in religion. Some
Catholic theologians argued that these lesser forms of dissent were acceptable
for normal people, particularly landed gentry. Extreme measures like recusancy were necessary only for
clergy and magistrates, because it represented the perfection of the Catholic
faith in England. Only those
mentally and spiritually prepared for the great sacrifice of matyrdom should
embark on this course. Those
needing to demonstrate political loyalty could attend church services as long
as they did not partake of the sacraments. Conformists had this leeway for two reasons: persecution of
recusants, and the facts that laws requiring church attendance were solely
designed as tests of loyalty to the state.
Catholics
were not the only religious dissenters in sixteenth and seventeenth century
England. Puritans also either
refused to attend services conducted in an overly ceremonial manner or still
dependent on some religious iconography.
When puritans did attend services, they were frequently disruptive,
denouncing “false doctrine”. The
presence of conforming Catholics was also offensive to puritans. Anglicans sometimes viewed puritan
non-conformity the same way they viewed Catholic recusants: as a plot to damage
the church. Lancelot Andrewes went
further to describe puritan focus on inward religion and the gospels as a form
of idolatry, and an act of denial of the totality of God’s creation.
Andrewes
also argued that Puritan non-conformity could lead to rebellion against secular
authority. If anything, since
puritans were Protestants, their non-conformity was more dangerous than that of
recusants because it had the force of popular piety behind it. Unlike Catholics who must wait for an
invasion to free them, puritans could create an English army of rebellion.
Anglicans also detected a dangerous disrespect for authority inherent in the
doctrine of predestination. If the
elect were saved regardless of their actions on earth, they were free to ignore
secular authorities. Thus, like
recusants who were due to perceived links to potential invaders, puritan
non-conformists were suspect due to their perceived ability to rise in
rebellion against the crown.
Walsham
identifies several historiographical issues to contend with in examining the
issue of church papists and recusants.
The first question is whether Jesuits in England acted as evangelists or
acted more to restore parochial life and maintain England’s Catholics against
the eventuality that Catholicism returned to England. The evidence seems to indicate that Jesuits and other
missionaries spent more time working to protect Catholics from the Protestant
majority, as seen in their constant harping on the dangers of conformity. Preaching against conformity in person
or print was the Jesuits primary activity in England.
The
dichotomy created by historians between lay and clerical responses to the issue
of conformity is another challenging issue. While the traditional interpretation is that conformity is
the response of a leaderless laity, with the clergy arguing for
non-conformance, Walsham argues that this is overly simplistic. As penalties for recusance grew, the
clergy were force to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward conformance, as did
missionaries who understood that diatribes against lay people were likely to
have an adverse affect.
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