Wednesday, March 6, 2024

It is the 6th of March 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Today we remember Francis Atterbury, a priest in the Church of England and a political firebrand who was born on this, the 6th of March in 1663. You will be forgiven if you ask, “Who?” As he is not a character remembered in popular histories of the Long Eighteenth Century (that is, the period between 1688 and 1815 a momentous time period in English, World, and American history).

To students of church history in general and American church history in particular there is an often forgotten link in the chain between the English Reformation and the American founding with its peculiar approach to the state and religion. Understanding Francis Atterbury bridges this gap and helps us to see his tumultuous era and take the story of church and state from England into America.

The first bridge to make is from the rule of Henry VIII and the Tutors and then from Queen Elizabeth I to the Scottish Stuarts. By the time of King James II of the Stuart line, the English began to worry that his secret loyalty to the Catholic Church would subvert English independence. Any student of the American Revolution needs to see as its important antecedent the Glorious Revolution in England brought about by King James II and his Catholicism.

The King’s Bishops invited James half sister, Mary and her husband William of Orange of the Netherlands to take the crown instead of James’ heirs. This is the famed “William and Mary,” whose reign in England led to the rise in power of a bicameral parliament ruling in conjunction with the crown (see here seeds of the American government).

By the time of this revolution Francis Atterbury was a popular preacher, defender of the Reformation and in general, conservative Tory politics. He was not in favor of the revolution but believed resistance was improper. For his acquiescence he continued to rise in the ranks and became chaplain to William and Mary.

When William and Mary didn’t produce an heir, the Act of Succession was put in place to keep any Catholic from taking the throne. Queen Anne, an Anglican Stuart, would reign from 1702 to 1714.

No fan of revolution, Atterbury made a name for himself as a preacher and chaplain under Anne despite him being a Tory- a natural enemy of Anne in her later years. Nonetheless, Atterbury continued in his place as an ardent supporter of the church of England.

But as a controversialist, he secretly took part in a pamphlet war arguing against the Glorious Revolution and, at least tangentially, to the Jacobite cause that wanted to see the old line of James II reinstated under James Stuart, the Old Pretender- a Catholic living in France.

With the death of Anne, the unthinkable (for Tories) took place, and George I, a Protestant from the house of Hanover, became King of England. Francis, once again a dutiful son, swore fealty to the King but began to correspond with the Jacobites, James Stuart the old Pretender and both French and Scottish factions.

In 1720 with the birth of a son to James Stuart and the burst South Sea Bubble (speculation that lead to a market crash) the Jacobites rebelled and Atterbury took up there cause, albeit secretly. When his affinities were discovered he was sentenced to the Tower of England and some saw him as, among other things, a pawn of the “Wild Americans” that saw the Jacobites as subverting the crown.

Atterbury was exiled, first to Brussels in Paris and then to Paris where he went into the service of James Stuart, then in Rome protected by the Pope who supported his claims (and if your head is spinning, it should be. These were wild times). But Atterbury could not go to Rome and stayed faithful to the Church of England despite his now revolutionary sympathies. The Dictionary of National Biography wrote of him:

“If he mingled politics too much with religion, it must be remembered, in justice to him, that the two subjects were so strangely mixed up in that eventful time that it was all but impossible for a public character to disentangle the one from the other.”

And such was the controversy that helped inform the disestablishment of the church and state in America with Atterbury, the exiled and disgraced (but then secretly buried in Westminster for his defense of the church) preacher and politico who died in ignominy in Paris in 1732. Born on this day in 1663 Francis Atterbury was 68 years old.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and Mark 11, where we find a zealous Jesus.

15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’

18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 6th of March 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man about whom it might be said: If he mingled politics too much with religion, it must be remembered, in justice to him, that the two subjects were so strangely mixed up in that eventful time… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man for the sake of peace has made his religion the oil to his political water, 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.