Wednesday, April 26, 2023

It is the 26th of April, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

From the dissenting church at the Restoration of the English crown to the Enlightenment to Lost in Space and Gilligan’s Island, I present to you today someone I was surprised had to wait this long for a CHA treatment: he was the incomparable Daniel Defoe.

Part of why he may have slipped through the cracks here is that we do not know when he was born. Likely in 1660 or perhaps 1661, part of the story of the man named Daniel Foe is that his parents (and later he) would be dissenting (whether Baptist or Presbyterian, there seems to be some controversy). Nevertheless, as a dissenter, he wouldn’t be granted a baptism in the church nor be on the official state rolls. Nonetheless, there are few characters whose life and works give you an insight into the cultural and religious world of a specific era.

Born in the year (or thereabout) of the English Restoration, the dissenting Foes would reject the Catholic sympathies of the new king Charles II and certainly the Catholic King James II. Daniel, who added the “De” to “Foe” for a bit of aristocratic flare, became a merchant around his 20th birthday. He would be enamored with the new commercial revolution- borrowing on credit, chasing commercial prospects, and also landing multiple times in debtors' prison. He would write:

No man has tasted differing fortunes more,

And thirteen times I have been rich and poor.

He took to political writing - predating Jonathan Swift with a satirical answer for how high church folk might treat low churchmen like himself- hang them. The satire, however, was lost on the Anglicans. He was arrested and put in the pillory (that’s the old-timey wooden gadget for your head and hands to stick out of). He appealed his case to Robert Harley- the first Earl of Oxford, who would have him released only to work for him as a pamphleteer and spy in Scotland on the eve of the Act of Union in 1707 (that’s the birth of the United Kingdom).

But it was his later days when he would find literary immortality along with the faith of his youth. After his profligate ways, he would turn to quasi-autobiography to tell his story and that of a star-crossed but ultimately blessed English adventurer by the name of Robinson Crusoe.

The book about the businessman who went to Brazil only to be shipwrecked on a (perceived) deserted island was initially taken as an actual travelogue. Written in the first person, the subtitle of this 1719 book was “ The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner . . . . Written by Himself.” 

Along with Cervantes’ Don Quixote, this would usher in the age of novels. Defoe could philosophize and do theology in this context without fear of reprisal. Crusoe’s life and works on that deserted Island foreshadowed much of the Enlightenment’s obsession with what someone would do left to their own devices in nature. Jean Jacques Rousseau, of “noble savage” fame, believed that Robinson Crusoe should be the only novel to be used in the education of a young person. The didactic novel set on a remote island or place would become a cottage industry- from the “Swiss Family Robinson” (a direct nod to Defoe) to the Robinsons of “Lost in Space” to stories like that of Gilligan’s Island and Castaway.

And it was the religious awakening of Crusoe which mirrored Defoe’s own return to the church of his youth. He had Crusoe write:

“But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts. I daily read the Word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, “I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man?”

Despite literary success later in life, his relationship with money would never be good- Daniel DeFoe, whose birthday is unknown, would suffer the same fate with his death- he died on the run from creditors sometime around this day- late April in 1731. He was 70 years old.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary- a post-resurrection siting of Jesus by the disciples: 

9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of April 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite savages include Rousseau’s “Noble,” Randy Macho Man Savage, and 90s adult contemporary duo Savage Garden- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man refraining from quoting a Savage Garden song in the voice of the Macho Man- but I could… I’m Dan van Voorhis

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.