Tom Schwanda of Wheaton College, Illinois, was in Durham this week past, in part to discuss the volume of essays on Puritanism and the emotions which he and I are incubating, but also to deliver a paper on eighteenth-century evangelical spirituality to Durham's Ecclesiastical History seminar.
Much of the paper was about hymnody, which he argued came, in the 18th century, to replace the vast Puritan manuals of pious practice that had dominated the 17th: which does a lot to explain how Protestantism broke out from its literate ghetto in that period. Some of the hymns were familiar; others not so. In particular, he introduced us to the work of the Welsh poet and hymn-writer Ann Griffiths (1776-1805), whose works were only translated into English in the 20th century and remain obscure. Undeservedly. Consider this, from her hymn XIV (in the translation of H. A. Hodges):
Earth cannot, with all its trinkets,
Slake my longings at this hour;
They were captured, they were widened,
When my Jesus showed his power.
None but he can now content me,
He, the Incomprehensible;
O to gaze upon his Person,
God in man made visible.
I am not sure I have ever seen so moving or economical a description of one of the core evangelical experiences: that submitting your desires to Christ not only satisfies them, but also intensifies them. A project at Cardiff is now making Griffiths' work more widely available and encouraging study of her as an important figure in the history of evangelicalism: more power to them.
Sunday, 20 October 2013
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
The Uncurated
A family day out at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland on Sunday was, I think, one of the most enjoyable visits to a historic building I have ever made. The reason? It was almost entirely unlike a National Trust or English Heritage property, buildings which are carefully restored and preserved, and curated so as to give the visitor a series of passably accurate impressions of what different parts of the building might have looked like in different eras.
By contrast, Chillingham, in places, gives the impression of having had eight hundred years' worth of junk strewn around it. Not quite indiscriminately: most of the Arctic and Himalayan equipment is in one room, most of the Indian booty in another, the Georgian stuff in a third. But everywhere there are dead things - skins, horns (endless horns), the largest pair of moose antlers I have ever seen anywhere; and everywhere there are weapons, from the Gatling guns standing unremarked in two different rooms, to enough halberds and billhooks to restage the battle of Flodden. But then, there are prodigious quantities of everything. Each room is heaving with ancient tat, higgledy-piggledy. I don't recall ever seeing elephant armour before. And in one room, stuffed in the corner, was a wooden claw-footed bath that apparently once belonged to Marie Antoinette, and is now, naturally, used as a drinks cabinet ('Let them drink Coke!').
And I don't believe they violated any health-and-safety regulations, but in an NT property you never have a chance to trip on ragged carpets or stumble on a three-inch dip in a dungeon floor.
What is so refreshing is to visit a place which doesn't treat the past with exaggerated reverence. You're not protected from it, and it's not protected from you. You are allowed to touch things. The place felt alive in a way that properties owned by public bodies rarely do.
Of course, there are disadvantages. The house and the family's history was obscure (you would scarcely guess that it belonged to a prominent regicide); the objects were left to speak for themselves, virtually unlabelled. It could only be done like this because visitor numbers are relatively low.
But still, I could wish other curators would take something from a place like this. We want junk: we want rooms jumbled with surprises. And while ancient and precious things certainly need to be protected, they can be protected too much. Things don't last forever, any more than people do; and while most of us like long lives, we also like to live them.
By contrast, Chillingham, in places, gives the impression of having had eight hundred years' worth of junk strewn around it. Not quite indiscriminately: most of the Arctic and Himalayan equipment is in one room, most of the Indian booty in another, the Georgian stuff in a third. But everywhere there are dead things - skins, horns (endless horns), the largest pair of moose antlers I have ever seen anywhere; and everywhere there are weapons, from the Gatling guns standing unremarked in two different rooms, to enough halberds and billhooks to restage the battle of Flodden. But then, there are prodigious quantities of everything. Each room is heaving with ancient tat, higgledy-piggledy. I don't recall ever seeing elephant armour before. And in one room, stuffed in the corner, was a wooden claw-footed bath that apparently once belonged to Marie Antoinette, and is now, naturally, used as a drinks cabinet ('Let them drink Coke!').
And I don't believe they violated any health-and-safety regulations, but in an NT property you never have a chance to trip on ragged carpets or stumble on a three-inch dip in a dungeon floor.
What is so refreshing is to visit a place which doesn't treat the past with exaggerated reverence. You're not protected from it, and it's not protected from you. You are allowed to touch things. The place felt alive in a way that properties owned by public bodies rarely do.
Of course, there are disadvantages. The house and the family's history was obscure (you would scarcely guess that it belonged to a prominent regicide); the objects were left to speak for themselves, virtually unlabelled. It could only be done like this because visitor numbers are relatively low.
But still, I could wish other curators would take something from a place like this. We want junk: we want rooms jumbled with surprises. And while ancient and precious things certainly need to be protected, they can be protected too much. Things don't last forever, any more than people do; and while most of us like long lives, we also like to live them.
Saturday, 5 October 2013
The sect called Anglicanism
When
was the Church of England founded? This was a dangerously divisive question
back in the 1630s, with daring Laudians favouring the year 597 (Augustine’s mission
to Kent, sponsored by the Pope) and stout Puritans insisting on 1559 (the
Elizabethan legislation which repudiated the Pope). A case could even be made,
sentimentally if not legally, for Henry VIII’s earlier antipapal legislation of
1534. The reason the question mattered, of course, was not chronology but
identity: was this a Reformed Protestant church built de novo on the ashes of papistical abominations, or was it the
ancient Church of the English, ecclesia
Anglicana, whose Reformation was not a clean break with the past?
Both
positions remain defensible, but my recent spell working on the mid-17th
century has persuaded me of another view. In the modern Church of England, ‘Anglican’
has become a denominational identity, not a geographical description. (Personally,
I deplore this, and I am deeply uncomfortable with ‘Anglicanism’ as such; but I
am ploughing a lonely furrow on that one.) This is, at the earliest, a 17th-century
phenomenon, now entrenched by such deeply sectarian documents as the
Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, which effectively turns episcopacy into a
shibboleth for true Christianity.
So
I’d argue that the real foundation date is 1662, when the Restoration regime
decisively turned its back on the idea of a Church of England – that is, of a national
Church, designed to comprehend all those English Christians willing to belong
to such a body as best it could. ‘The Church of England’ was set on its route
to what it is now, an organisational identity and even a brand name, rather
than a simple descriptive term. It celebrated this turn by expelling some 2000
ministers who wished to remain within it.
And
again, the point is identity, not dates. If the Anglican Church was founded in
1662, what is it? Neither the historic English Church nor the standard-bearer
of the Reformation. Instead, it is a sibling of the dozens of other churches
rooted in the same period: English Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, many
Baptist groups, the Quakers, and other more obscure or shortlived sects.
Of
course, that’s not quite the truth. The older roots are still there. So are the
wider horizons which the residual aspiration to be (and legal obligation to be)
a national Church impose. But I see this struggle underneath most of the CofE’s
current squabbles. What will it be? The Church of England? Or the Anglican
church, the largest of the Civil-War era sects?
Thursday, 26 September 2013
The interview game
After
having sat on twelve academic appointments panels at all levels in just over a
year – the deluge is now slowing, following our most recent and particularly pleasing appointment
– I have seen lots of very talented people looking for jobs, and I have also
seen some of them needlessly and spectacularly self-destruct during the
process. Here follow a few hints on how to blow an academic job interview.
1.
Fail to recognise the question with only one right answer. If you are asked,
for example, if your approach to teaching is basically a passive one, do not
say ‘yes’. Questions like that are not tricks: they are offered to candidates
as a way out of a hole. If you have been describing an approach to teaching
which sounds passive, that question is your chance to correct the impression. You
need to take it.
2.
Overdo self-deprecation and modesty. A little humility is becoming and
charming. But do not give the impression that your language skills, or IT
skills, or knowledge of the wider research field, is patchy. This is
particularly unfair, since it rewards bravado and blarney, and penalises the
conscientious. It can also be gender-skewed. But it’s true. You are there to
sell yourself: don’t sell yourself short.
3.
Pick risky referees. A good reference rarely makes much difference in an
interview. A bad reference can sink you. And of course a ‘bad reference’ is a
reference which contains one sentence expressing some reservations. If you
suspect your referee may do this, either straighten him/her out or choose
another referee.
4.
Think small. Even with a junior post, we are looking for ambition, academic
leadership, someone who will grow up to be a giant in the field and who will
always remember this institution fondly for having given them that crucial
first step. You need concrete plans for your research, of course, but have a
big vision too. If you can convince a panel that your ideas are more exciting
and more important than the competition, you’re three-quarters of the way
there.
5.
Use the phrase ‘fill a gap in the scholarship’. See under ‘Think small’. We don’t
want a bricklayer, we want an architect.
6.
Choose examples which don’t reflect the status you’re aspiring to. Often in
interview you will be asked to cite specific examples of something you’ve done
that demonstrates the qualities required for the post. Now if it’s your first
job, or first senior job, you’ve not necessarily had the chance to do that, so
you scrabble around for something else. Better to be tangential and impressive
than on-point and underwhelming. If you are asked about your experience in
academic administration, don’t talk about how you made sure all the speakers at
a conference had fresh water glasses. I know you did it, I know it’s important
and does show some skill. But again, see under ‘Think small’.
7.
Don’t read the job description and further particulars. That way, when you are
asked something about a particular facet of this job, you will not understand
what’s being got at, you won’t have any ideas ready, and you will demonstrate
to the panel both (a) that you are short of ideas and (b) that you are not
someone who prepares carefully for an important event.
8.
Don’t do any research on the institution or the panel. Panels like the sense
that an outsider has made an effort to find out about their institution. More
to the point, you can spot the agendas underlying certain questions. And it is
always legitimate to ask in advance who will be on the panel. If they won’t
tell you, they won’t tell you, but they won’t take offence at your having
asked. A candidate who shows a keen interest in the process in advance shows
him/herself to be an organised and capable person.
9.
Blag something you clearly know nothing about. Yes, I know this is a core
academic skill. But the panellists themselves have all been doing it for years
and can spot the signs.
10.
Ask too many questions. You will be given a chance to ask questions at the end,
but in practice most of your substantive questions should have been resolved by
that point. Some people use questions to try to show off (‘do you care as much
about the welfare of undergraduates as I do?’), which is harmless if done
subtly. But really, panels don’t pay much attention to questions unless (a) you
ask something manifestly stupid or (b) you have too many. No questions is fine.
One or two is fine. More than two and you begin to seem tedious.
All
this aside from the numerous ways to self-destruct during the formal
presentation … but that’s for another time.
UPDATE: If you found this useful, see also my notes on how to get shortlisted and how to survive the job presentation.
UPDATE: If you found this useful, see also my notes on how to get shortlisted and how to survive the job presentation.
Monday, 2 September 2013
Flodden a dead horse-lasagne
In a lovely acted political metaphor, a cross-border group is celebrating the impending referendum on Scottish independence (and, incidentally, the battle's quincentenary next week) by unearthing the dead of the Battle of Flodden. It remains the eeriest and best-preserved battlefield in Britain that I know: the landscape is sufficiently unchanged that it is all too easy to visualise where and how James IV and his men were cut to pieces.
Whether recalling this particular slaughter now is helpful or not is hardly the point. I do wince at some of the BBC coverage: it was a nasty battle, but 'every bit as awful as the Somme' seems a bit steep, and while I know I should expect comments like 'the outcome of the battle led to the union of England and Scotland 90 years later', I still can't get used to them. For the record: it didn't. Indeed, apart from the deaths themselves, the award of a dukedom to the English commander, and giving the Scots nobility a settled aversion to invading England, the battle had remarkably few direct consequences. If Henry VIII had been a sharper political strategist and had been less obsessed with trying to restart the Hundred Years' War, he might have exploited it.
Still, the battle's context - a sideshow in a French war - is a reminder that Anglo-Scottish relations have always had a European dimension. As they do now. The two forthcoming big political battles - the Scottish independence referendum and the UK European referendum - are also intertwined. If (as seems unlikely) Scotland votes to leave the UK, the balance may well be tipped decisively against the rump UK staying the EU. If (as seems more plausible) a UK which still includes Scotland votes to leave, then I can see a second Scottish referendum being demanded very fast, and securing a different outcome. England may well want to leave Europe: Scotland, I think, doesn't.
The complexity of how these issues may interact is almost enough to make you wish for the days when these issues could be resolved with billhooks in a couple of hours. But if, like me, you want to preserve the UK whole and in the EU, the sequencing of the two referenda is a mercy. My hope is that the Scots will resist the siren lure of independence for long enough to thwart those in England who are enchanted by the same impossible vision.
Whether recalling this particular slaughter now is helpful or not is hardly the point. I do wince at some of the BBC coverage: it was a nasty battle, but 'every bit as awful as the Somme' seems a bit steep, and while I know I should expect comments like 'the outcome of the battle led to the union of England and Scotland 90 years later', I still can't get used to them. For the record: it didn't. Indeed, apart from the deaths themselves, the award of a dukedom to the English commander, and giving the Scots nobility a settled aversion to invading England, the battle had remarkably few direct consequences. If Henry VIII had been a sharper political strategist and had been less obsessed with trying to restart the Hundred Years' War, he might have exploited it.
Still, the battle's context - a sideshow in a French war - is a reminder that Anglo-Scottish relations have always had a European dimension. As they do now. The two forthcoming big political battles - the Scottish independence referendum and the UK European referendum - are also intertwined. If (as seems unlikely) Scotland votes to leave the UK, the balance may well be tipped decisively against the rump UK staying the EU. If (as seems more plausible) a UK which still includes Scotland votes to leave, then I can see a second Scottish referendum being demanded very fast, and securing a different outcome. England may well want to leave Europe: Scotland, I think, doesn't.
The complexity of how these issues may interact is almost enough to make you wish for the days when these issues could be resolved with billhooks in a couple of hours. But if, like me, you want to preserve the UK whole and in the EU, the sequencing of the two referenda is a mercy. My hope is that the Scots will resist the siren lure of independence for long enough to thwart those in England who are enchanted by the same impossible vision.
Wednesday, 21 August 2013
The White Queen
Having now watched the final episode of this BBC adaptation, I have a new standard for bad historical fiction.
It is hard to know what kept me with this one to the end: the first half of the series was less bad than the second half, and some of the performances - especially James Frain as the earl of Warwick, and Rupert Graves as Stanley - did keep your attention. And the basic story of the wars of the Roses is one that's well worth telling, and too little known: again, especially the first part, up to 1471, where frankly this one should have ended. At least we now know, mercifully, there will be no second series. When it became clear that we were being told that the younger of the princes in the Tower had in fact survived, I started getting hot flushes and fearing a storyline in which Perkin Warbeck was not an imposter.
But the real question: what was it that made this particular series so bad? I haven't read the novels, so I don't know if this was a lousy book which screenwriters couldn't rescue, or a good book wrecked by a crass adaptation. For what it is, I'd pick out a couple of key flaws.
Naturally, I'm going to complain about the portrayal of religious life, which rang utterly false - the only pious character, Margaret Beaufort, was depicted as almost wholly deranged, and nobody else seemed to have any functioning Christianity at all. The magic made no sense at all. Still, getting religion right is really hard. Even the sainted Hilary Mantel, who sets the gold standard of historical writing, seems to me to fall short on that one (though there is falling short, and there is blowing up on the launchpad).
More strikingly: there was not a single character of any significance, and indeed scarcely a speaking part, who was not a member of the high nobility. We saw nothing of any real people (it didn't help that the battles seemed to have about ten people on each side). It made Downton Abbey look like gritty realism.
But did I say 'character'? Those nobles weren't really characters, just chess pieces who moved around doing what the historical outline said they did, with simple motivations inserted to get them from A to B. And when the facts didn't quite fit the rationalised motivations given, well, too bad, you just worked around it.
And that I think is the real problem: a chronic lack of inventiveness and imagination. What we had was a 21st-century soap draped over some 15th-century characters. None of the blanks in the story were filled in with anything that rang true.
Historians usually complain that historical fictions get things wrong, which does seem to me to miss the point a bit: they are fictions. This one had a much, much graver fault: it failed to make anything up.
It is hard to know what kept me with this one to the end: the first half of the series was less bad than the second half, and some of the performances - especially James Frain as the earl of Warwick, and Rupert Graves as Stanley - did keep your attention. And the basic story of the wars of the Roses is one that's well worth telling, and too little known: again, especially the first part, up to 1471, where frankly this one should have ended. At least we now know, mercifully, there will be no second series. When it became clear that we were being told that the younger of the princes in the Tower had in fact survived, I started getting hot flushes and fearing a storyline in which Perkin Warbeck was not an imposter.
But the real question: what was it that made this particular series so bad? I haven't read the novels, so I don't know if this was a lousy book which screenwriters couldn't rescue, or a good book wrecked by a crass adaptation. For what it is, I'd pick out a couple of key flaws.
Naturally, I'm going to complain about the portrayal of religious life, which rang utterly false - the only pious character, Margaret Beaufort, was depicted as almost wholly deranged, and nobody else seemed to have any functioning Christianity at all. The magic made no sense at all. Still, getting religion right is really hard. Even the sainted Hilary Mantel, who sets the gold standard of historical writing, seems to me to fall short on that one (though there is falling short, and there is blowing up on the launchpad).
More strikingly: there was not a single character of any significance, and indeed scarcely a speaking part, who was not a member of the high nobility. We saw nothing of any real people (it didn't help that the battles seemed to have about ten people on each side). It made Downton Abbey look like gritty realism.
But did I say 'character'? Those nobles weren't really characters, just chess pieces who moved around doing what the historical outline said they did, with simple motivations inserted to get them from A to B. And when the facts didn't quite fit the rationalised motivations given, well, too bad, you just worked around it.
And that I think is the real problem: a chronic lack of inventiveness and imagination. What we had was a 21st-century soap draped over some 15th-century characters. None of the blanks in the story were filled in with anything that rang true.
Historians usually complain that historical fictions get things wrong, which does seem to me to miss the point a bit: they are fictions. This one had a much, much graver fault: it failed to make anything up.
Friday, 16 August 2013
The servingmaid and the sultan
I'm now leaving the mid-seventeenth century behind me, for the time being at least, but time to share a favourite Quaker story. As regular readers will know, one of my recent preoccupations has been early Protestant missionary efforts, or rather the lack thereof. But the early Quakers broke that rule as well as all the others.
It is very hard not to be impressed by the story of Mary Fisher. She and a friend were the first Quakers in the New World, going to Barbados and Massachusetts in 1655-6, where they were arrested, had their books burned, were accused of witchcraft and had the good fortune to be shipped home alive. For most of us, that would be enough, but Fisher and her friends were still warming up. In 1657 (all this from a terrific article* on her travels) she and five other Quakers, men and women, set out to preach in Jerusalem. This rather idealistic plan soon gave way to a marginally more practical, equally apocalyptic, and considerably more dangerous one: they would split up, with some going to Rome to convert the Pope, and others to Istanbul to convert the Ottoman Sultan. By no coincidence, these were the two individuals Protestants had traditionally labelled as the two great Antichrists. After all, why waste time with small fry?
We don't know (at least, I don't know) what happened to the Roman party. One hopes they never got there: it would not have ended well for them. Fisher, however, struck out for the east. And she did it. Despite a horrified English diplomat who tried to intercept her, in 1658 she reached Sultan Mehmet IV encamped with his army at Adrianople, and managed to wangle her way into an interview with him, at which she laid out ‘my testimony for the Lord’. The Sultan seemed to her to be a perfect gentleman (not that a Quaker would have used such a word):
He pressed her to stay, and when she would not offered her a formal escort to Constantinople. What he actually thought of this Englishwoman is another matter. Perhaps he and his courtiers simply appreciated a little comic relief. But equally, he was certainly not used to Christians telling him that he had the divine light within him. And perhaps he, like us, could not help being impressed by her drive and her courage.
*Sylvia Brown, ‘The Radical Travels of Mary Fisher: Walking and Writing in the Universal Light’, in her Women, Gender and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 38-64.
It is very hard not to be impressed by the story of Mary Fisher. She and a friend were the first Quakers in the New World, going to Barbados and Massachusetts in 1655-6, where they were arrested, had their books burned, were accused of witchcraft and had the good fortune to be shipped home alive. For most of us, that would be enough, but Fisher and her friends were still warming up. In 1657 (all this from a terrific article* on her travels) she and five other Quakers, men and women, set out to preach in Jerusalem. This rather idealistic plan soon gave way to a marginally more practical, equally apocalyptic, and considerably more dangerous one: they would split up, with some going to Rome to convert the Pope, and others to Istanbul to convert the Ottoman Sultan. By no coincidence, these were the two individuals Protestants had traditionally labelled as the two great Antichrists. After all, why waste time with small fry?
We don't know (at least, I don't know) what happened to the Roman party. One hopes they never got there: it would not have ended well for them. Fisher, however, struck out for the east. And she did it. Despite a horrified English diplomat who tried to intercept her, in 1658 she reached Sultan Mehmet IV encamped with his army at Adrianople, and managed to wangle her way into an interview with him, at which she laid out ‘my testimony for the Lord’. The Sultan seemed to her to be a perfect gentleman (not that a Quaker would have used such a word):
He was very noble unto me, and so were all that were about him, he and all that were about him received the words of truth without contradiction, they do dread the name of God many of them … there is a royall seed amongst them, which in time God will raise.
He pressed her to stay, and when she would not offered her a formal escort to Constantinople. What he actually thought of this Englishwoman is another matter. Perhaps he and his courtiers simply appreciated a little comic relief. But equally, he was certainly not used to Christians telling him that he had the divine light within him. And perhaps he, like us, could not help being impressed by her drive and her courage.
*Sylvia Brown, ‘The Radical Travels of Mary Fisher: Walking and Writing in the Universal Light’, in her Women, Gender and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 38-64.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)