On being called bad names

ARCHBISHOP WRITES
with PETER JENSEN

I see that the Diocese is being labelled again, this time by being called ‘Puritan’. We are already the recipients of a number of insulting names and descriptions, including ‘fundamentalist’, ‘right-wing’, ‘conservative’, ‘evangelical’, ‘anti-women’ and ‘anti-gay’.

This name-calling is unpleasant and unfair. It is often meant to cut off argument and to create disdain or even disgust. It is not a new phenomenon, of course, and it is important not to be too upset by it. In fact, one useful antidote is to be well-informed on the issues and historically well informed as well.

Take the word ‘puritan’ for example. Do I object to being called a puritan? It all depends. In modern speech the word has much the same sort of sense as that contained in the old Australian abusive term ‘wowser’.  It conjures up the picture of a legalistic killjoy, one who, as a 19th- century historian said, was against bear-baiting, not because it pained the bear, but because people actually enjoyed it. In this sense, I object to being called a ‘puritan’.

But that sense of the word is a slur on the original ‘puritans’. In the early days of the protestant Church of England (in the reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603), many strong Protestants in the church were dissatisfied with the progress of the Reformation in England and wanted the church to continue to be reformed. Some of these were Presbyterian by choice, others were happy to retain bishops but looked for an improvement in such things as Bible knowledge and preaching.  Amongst their opponents such people were often called ‘Puritans’.

The Puritan ‘movement’ contained many of the leaders of the church (including bishops and at least one archbishop), and many who were regarded simply as loyal Church of England people. It had a ‘Reformed’ theology (like the Articles of the Church of England) and was noted for the theological excellence of some of its leaders, the vigour of its evangelism, the depth of its piety, the quality of its lay people, its interest in practical ethics and the seriousness with which it took Christianity. It was serious but not joyless or unloving. And, on the whole, it was an element within the Church of England.

It is sometimes suggested that the great Richard Hooker, who wrote a critique of the Puritan movement in the 1590s, successfully demolished their theology and especially their approach to the Bible. This would have been news to the contemporaries of Hooker, and much as we may admire his work, it is not the last word on interpretation. On the contrary, a case can certainly been made that amongst the Puritan scholars there was an appreciation of biblical theology which was deeper and truer than that of Hooker. They were assuredly not mindless proto-fundamentalists.

Some ‘Puritans’ (the term was always rather loose) left the Church of England over issues such as baptism and church government, and, finding themselves persecuted, either set up their own churches or left the country. It was such Puritans whose voyage to the Americas had such important consequences for the shaping of American civilisation. In fact, the Protestant Puritans and their allies in Holland, America, Switzerland and France played a highly significant role in creating the modern world.

In the middle of the 17th century there erupted in England a bloody civil war between the King and the Parliament. On the whole, the Puritans took the side of the Parliament. Although there were important religious elements to this war, it would be wrong to see it as primarily a religious conflict. It would be just as wrong to see it as a struggle between the Church of England and the Puritans, for many of the Puritans regarded themselves as Church of England men and women who were being persecuted by bishops who did not adhere to the original Reformation.

Many awful things were done by both sides in this war. Oliver Cromwell’s reputation is an interesting indication of how people view Puritans in general. There is no doubt that he acted in ways which were unjust; but there is much also that was attractive and good about Cromwell, and that should not be ignored and neglected either. After all, it was Cromwell who said to the man who did his portrait, ‘paint me warts and all’ – but then some people would be shocked to hear that Cromwell had his portrait painted, because they are convinced that he was opposed to the arts.

Cromwell’s name is still used as a means of attacking or defending positions in contemporary church and politics.

By the time we get to Cromwell, we are verging on the point where it becomes a little meaningless to describe people as ‘Puritans’, since there were by this stage many varieties of Protestant. But we may perhaps allow in Richard Baxter and John Bunyan as two of the greatest of the later Puritans. Unfortunately, the Church of England lost both of them, and Bunyan was persecuted harshly for his faith.

Many people continue to judge the word ‘Puritan’ by a half-remembered version of the reign of Cromwell, in which it is alleged that all joy and merriment was banished and dour moralism became the order of the day.

Even if this were true of the Cromwellian period, it is an ignorant slur on the Puritan movement as a whole.  The Puritans had the misfortune to be on the eventual losing side of the great conflict which rent 17th-century England. When the monarchy was restored in 1661, and the episcopal Church of England with it, the victors wrote the history and the Puritan movement was consigned to the basket labelled ‘a very bad thing’. 

Those with an understanding of church history and a first-hand acquaintance with great Puritan writers such as William Perkins and Richard Sibbes have always cherished the example and the teaching of these men, and the story of their suffering on behalf of the truth.

Am I a Puritan? Well, not quite. My own theological instincts go back to the earlier period of the English Reformation, to Cranmer. But I see in the Puritans a legitimate next stage of the Reformation and a great deal for which we should be very grateful. To describe the main theological position of our Diocese by a term such as ‘Puritan’ is not wrong, if it is intended as a compliment.

It is simply saying that the Diocesan theology draws on much the same biblical and Protestant sources that the Reformation itself did, and puts us into an honoured continuum of serious theology and a serious approach to living out the Christian life.

If it is intended as a slur – well, the word was probably invented to defame a group of biblical Christians to start with ­– then perhaps we should be content to be counted amongst them.

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