The title refers to a football manager, who is quoted as saying about the game that ‘it is not just a matter of life or death, it is…’ Well, perhaps football is not quite that important, and certainly, it does seem that the sport is less important these days than the money, which is a pity. But that is not what I want to talk about.
In today’s liberal, secularised democratic western world, religion is is viewed pretty well as a bolt-on option. I can be ‘religious’ so long as I do not disturb anyone else. I can ‘do good’ – run food banks, feed the poor, offer debt counseling, and so on, as long as I do not really proclaim that I do it for any particular reason. Feeding the poor is one thing; asking why they are poor is entirely another and not permitted by the niceties of society.
In previous eras, the distinction between politics and religion was not anywhere near as clear-cut. In the age of the English Civil Wars, of course, religion was politics and vice versa. There is a school of thought that the wars were, in part, caused by Charles I’s religious policies, and this theory hold at least some water. The precise form of religion the country opted for was contested and thought worth fighting and dying for. I read a comment somewhere that the English parts, at least, of the English Civil War were a civil war between different visions of Protestantism. Again, this holds some water; perhaps the visions could be broadly characterised as ‘Arminian’ and ‘Calvinist’. I doubt, however, if those categories really capture either the issues at stake or the outcomes.
What is not in doubt however is the seriousness with which the issues were debated and, literally, fought over. A godly society was the aim, whether that was the Laudian reverence and formality in approaching God and worship, or in the more Puritan preaching of the word. Of course, there were plenty of other currents around. Firstly, and perhaps equally contested, was the presence of Roman Catholics in England, along with threats from the Irish Catholics (which were perceived as threats to England, Protestantism, and the godly cause, even though they were not really so). Secondly, within the more extreme end of Protestantism, there were currents that were more radical, leading to the Quakers, the re-emergence of the Baptists, and the whole gamut of other sects and ideas, such as Diggers, Levellers and Ranters.
Part of the basis behind these emerging camps was the availability of the Bible in English. This, along perhaps with Foxes Book of Martyrs, formed much of the background to a lot of the ferment. Anyone could, and many did, read the Bible and, in the intellectual and social ferment of the times, they come to their own conclusions. Much of the reading was of the Old Testament, of course, and hence there were assorted prophetic acts, such as riding on a donkey in Bristol or pronouncing a curse on the city of Litchfield (why Litchfield was singled out I have no idea).
The point is that in these disputes knowledge of the Biblical text was assumed. In our debates today, religious illiteracy has to be assumed. Even among churchgoers, the distinction between the Old and New Testaments can be vague, and the idea that the Bible contains different sorts of literature is even less present. Even among those who do know their Bibles, there can be as little sensitivity to the historical context of the texts as some of the more radical (and indeed, less radical) Seventeenth-Century theologians and pamphleteers showed. Historical criticism did not start until at least the Eighteenth Century, so it would be a little unfair to expect George Fox of John Lilburne to be able to discuss the nuances of the representation of the Roman Empire in Acts.
It is then impossible to understand the English Civil Wars without some understanding of the role religion played in them. Of course, it was not the only factor. Various causes of the wars have been pointed to: the rise of the gentry, the fall of the gentry, the financial problems of the crown, the spread of warfare (of a partially confessional form) on the Continent, the character of the king and so on. But religion, the arguments within Reformed Christianity, was a key factor.
What is true of the currents of Seventeenth-Century Britain is also true of much of history, of course. An awful lot of history makes little sense to a fully secular, atheistic mind. The way people behaved, their map of the world, and how to operate in it, was heavily influenced by religion, specifically Christianity, until the Twentieth Century. It is thus more or less impossible to understand anything more than just the outlines of history, a bunch of facts, a succession of events. The way people thought about things, such as the Divine Right of Kings or which sports were permissible to play on a Sunday is bound up in the Christian worldview of the society and the individuals which constitute it.
A failure to understand the religious point of view, therefore, points to an impoverished picture of the past. Of course, not everyone in the past was a religious fanatic of the nature of Lilburne (and even Freeborn John eventually became a Quaker), but most people had an idea of their faith (there were few other options, after all) and, if they could read, read the Bible and if they could not (I am not sure of literacy levels) would certainly have heard it read. Further, in a less literate society, what was read to them (or spoken in sermons) would have probably stuck more than it does today.
Is this a cry of despair as to the religious illiteracy of our day? I hope not, but it is an argument that knowledge of the Bible and of the broader spectrum of theological debate and the issues at stake are an important part of our understanding of the past. If we do not have that, then we will never grasp why cathedrals were built, for example, of why British people fought and killed each other three hundred and fifty years ago.
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