Preliminary Programme

Tue 26 February
    14.15
    16.30

Wed 27 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Thu 28 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Fri 29 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 1 March
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

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Tuesday 26 February 2008 16.30
S-2 REL02 Confessional Identities
Instituto de Arte
Network: Religion Chair: Bruno Boute
Organizers: - Discussant: Bruno Boute
Geoff Baker : Reading the Confessional Divide in Early Modern England.
Through an examination of the commonplace books of William Blundell, a seventeenth century English Catholic, this paper will bring new light on religious identities in the early modern period. Blundell’s notes on his reading show that historians have been overly keen to accept his professions of loyalty and unquestioning Catholicism ... (Show more)
Through an examination of the commonplace books of William Blundell, a seventeenth century English Catholic, this paper will bring new light on religious identities in the early modern period. Blundell’s notes on his reading show that historians have been overly keen to accept his professions of loyalty and unquestioning Catholicism at face value. Far from accepting every aspect of Catholic belief without qualms, Blundell’s commonplaces suggest that certain areas of Catholicism caused him particular problems. Amongst other issues, he did not believe many claims made in the Saint’s lives, thought that a number of miracles contradicted all reason and had serious issues with original sin. Nonetheless, when engaging with work on Catholic history he rose to the defence of his co-religionists, including a passionate argument that maintained that the Irish Rebellions of the 1640s had little to do with the Irish Catholics, but were instead the result of decades of brutal Protestant repression. This study will provide a unique window into early modern English Catholicism, as well as an insight into the way that a unique individual navigated the various demands that were placed on him by different aspects of his belief system. (Show less)

Larry Harwood : Motivation for the Military and Money in the cause of Religion: English Soldiers in the Netherlands and America, 1585-1640
This paper will contend that English soldiers of this period, and particularly those of Calvinist conviction, though of the category of mercenaries, were as motivated by their theology as their monetary rewards. This is nowhere more evident than in those English soldiers in the Netherlands made suspect to the English ... (Show more)
This paper will contend that English soldiers of this period, and particularly those of Calvinist conviction, though of the category of mercenaries, were as motivated by their theology as their monetary rewards. This is nowhere more evident than in those English soldiers in the Netherlands made suspect to the English Church and Archbishop Laud for their generous support of Puritan clergy serving English soldiers in the Netherlands and also in England. At the same time, it is undeniable that senior English soldiers aiding the Dutch, often also doubled as investors and indeed sometimes as later governing officials in the English colonies in America. This is nowhere more evident than in the particulars of several such soldiers, such as Sir GeorgeYeardley and Sir Edward Harwood. I will argue, however, that their money does not run their religion, but rather that their religion prompts their monies. That such people were made materially well to do by such ventures in the new world is undeniable, but at the same time their religious successes and their setbacks profoundly affected their lives in a way that sole worship of mammon would not. In this paper I will therefore argue that the susceptibility of modern secular historians to seek out the secular reason amongst the religious fact is to read contemporary secular motivation— and particularly so for Marxists—anachronistically into ages more religious than our own. Furthermore, for modern historians who are apt to regard the thought of money or the military in the service of religion as unconscionable, this anachronism can be an even greater temptation. (Show less)

Jewel Spangler : The Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811: A Case Study of American Disaster as Evangelical Opportunity
In December of 1811 the southern U.S. city of Richmond, Virginia, was briefly catapulted into the national (and international) spotlight when seventy-two of its leading citizens, including the governor of the state and a former U.S. Senator, were killed in a fire. The conflagration, which engulfed a packed public theatre ... (Show more)
In December of 1811 the southern U.S. city of Richmond, Virginia, was briefly catapulted into the national (and international) spotlight when seventy-two of its leading citizens, including the governor of the state and a former U.S. Senator, were killed in a fire. The conflagration, which engulfed a packed public theatre midway through a performance, was one of the worst urban disasters in North American history to that point. The drama and the tragedy of the event captured the national imagination immediately, and the fire remains a defining event for Virginia’s capitol city to this day. The site of the destroyed theatre—where Monumental Church was quickly built to commemorate the victims and mark their collective grave—remains a major venue for tourists to this day.

The fire offers an opportunity to consider the rise of evangelicalism in the American South from a fresh perspective. In 1811, this region was just in the process of becoming the “bible belt” of the United States, and Virginia, the largest state in the Union, was doing far more than any other to populate that region. Through the public discussions of the fire, Richmonders, and Virginians, debated what they believed to hold their community together and what they thought their city should aspire to. Evangelicals, particularly Baptists and Methodists, commented very pointedly on the fire and significantly expanded their hold on Richmonders and Virginians in its wake. This paper is a study of their rhetoric and its impact on southern institutions and culture.

Prior to the fire, Richmond had sought to cast itself as an international and cosmopolitan enclave in a rural and agricultural state that was in danger of being entirely cut off from the intellectual and cultural currents of the Atlantic World. Virginians went to Richmond not just for trade or politicking, but also to make themselves culturally literate, which is to say schooled in the popular diversions of Europe (even the playbill on the night of the fire was of European origin). Evangelical ministers used the fire as a jumping off point to attack the theatre and other secular amusements and to refocus people’s attention on the church, a mission at which they were astoundingly successful. They and city fathers alike, in the aftermath of the fire, took steps to sever Richmonders’ (and Virginians’) ties to an Atlantic culture and to turn their gaze inward, upon their region and their communities, as well as their churches. In sermons and publications, religious leaders made sense of the disaster as God’s punishment for the city’s sins and called upon Virginians to turn their backs on superfluous entertainments and interests and fix their sights very narrowly on the Lord. Popular amusements took on a very different character in this new environment that was distinctly southern, distinctly American, and distinctly evangelical. (Show less)



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