Category: Religion

The two top Bishops in the Church of England are the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. The word ‘bishop’ comes from the Greek ‘episkopi’ and the first Bishops appeared very early on in Christianity, being seen as the main preachers and organisers of worship.

For a long time they  were believed to hold their spiritual authority in a direct line from the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, since Bishops consecrate up-and-coming Bishops and the first Bishops were consecrates by the Apostles. This is called Apostolic Succession. In more superstitious times they were even thought to transfer special mystical powers to the next generation.

As the number of Christians grew, Bishops needed assistance in holding all the services and ceremonies that were needed, so more clergy were appointed under them and the status of Bishops became more lofty and their role evolved into more of an administrator and ambassador.

Today they oversee all the vicars/priests and chaplains in their diocese (assigned area) including those at church schools and public services such as prisons. The UK has around 140 Bishops, although since 1690 there have been none in Scotland, where church leadership is shared in a group structure instead of being placed with individuals.

(Image of the consecration (entry into the sacred) of the Bishop of Oswestry: KHardie1906 at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The successive 1549, 1552, 1559, 1604 and 1662 editions of The Book of Common Prayer illustrate the struggle of the Church of England to separate itself from Roman Catholicism. Punctuated by the brief reign of Catholic Mary I (1516-58) and the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), these handbooks for clergymen reflected a desire for reform pitched against a fear of letting go of long-held doctrines and rites. Entwined in these customs was the ‘mystery’ of priests speaking in a tongue (Latin) unintelligible to their English-speaking congregations.

Some were very attached to their ‘blind faith’ and rioted when Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) dared publish his Prayer Book in 1549 in English. It set out the order of the Communion, collects, epistles, gospels, lessons and prayers for a variety of occasions and for the first time those listening could understand the words and marvel at them.  Their prosaic significance had a huge impact on the language.

The 1662 version is still in use, though there is also a 1979 edition. To conduct church services, a CofE vicar only needs his Bible and this Book, with its calendar of special days, the form of daily and weekly worship, a catechism, the Psalms, lectionaries (Bible references for particular services), thanksgivings and celebratory rituals all included.

(Images LtoR: picryl.com / Public domain, Images George Rex at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Many of the UK’s cathedrals have their own schools in which boys and sometimes girls are trained as soprano/treble choristers. They are called the ‘front row’ since that is their position in the choir stalls, with the adult altos, tenors and basses behind them. Parish churches, by contrast, rely on volunteers and ladies may take the place of pre-teens for the soaring high notes. Accompanied by an organ, the choir is usually arrayed at right angles to the congregation on both sides of the chancel area. It is by the choir’s lead that people learn hymnal tunes.

This  tradition began in the monasteries and continued in spite of religious upheavals. The acoustics of a building open to the rafters produces a sound that is other-worldly and it is no wonder that thousands of church choirs exist throughout Britain.

Child choristers sometimes go on to have singing careers. Those enrolled at cathedral schools are, in effect, already professional in that they perform or rehearse every day and their school fees are subsidised. The self-discipline and confidence that they learn help them in a variety of careers. For example, Sir Alastair Cook, England cricket captain, was a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral!

(Top image: Fledermauskind at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, multitudes of children worked in factories from Monday to Saturday. On Sundays they would fill the streets in “misery and idleness… in noise and riot… cursing and swearing” (Cliff, P., 1986).

Consequently, efforts began to be made to establish Sunday schools, held in teachers’ homes initially, to instill Protestant Christian values and literacy to help improve the children’s lives. While advocates believed this would divert them away from crime, others worried that an educated poor would become revolutionary!

Two of the British pioneers of the Sunday school were Hannah Ball (1734-92), who opened her Buckinghamshire establishment in 1769, and Robert Raikes (1736-1811), a newspaper publisher in Gloucestershire, whose accounts of his philanthropic Sunday school venture helped to spread the idea.

Since the advent of compulsory schooling and particularly since WW2, the Sunday school has largely disappeared and been replaced in some churches by after-service children’s activity sessions.  Over its roughly 200-year existence, Sunday school enrolment reached around 2,500,000 during the 1800s. Taking a snapshot of its later decline, however, in 1953 attendees numbered 1,300,000 but in 1980 this was 500,000.

Overall, the Sunday school movement deserves due recognition as a sincere contribution to social stability during Britain’s rapid industrialisation.

(Image: Frank Beard, 1896, at itoldya420.getarchive.net / Public Domain)

The originally Persian religion of Zoroastrianism does not easily take converts, so it has one of the smallest congregations in the UK, at just 4,000 souls. Indeed, Mumbai in India probably has the largest proportion of the Zoroastrian community across the world. It is said to be an ancient religion which influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with its ideas of judgement and good deeds, not riches, being important.

Zoroastrianism is named after its prophet, Zarathustra/Zoroaster, who had a vision of Ahura Mazda (God) and six lesser beings after wandering around Persia and despairing of the wickedness he had witnessed.

He subsequently proclaimed that: “Happiness comes to those who bring happiness to others” and “Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds”, undeniably splendid guidance for life. ‘Asha’ is the good, honest, lawful way and ‘Druj’ is the opposite, to be avoided if one does not want to suffer the consequences in the after-life.

In the UK we had a famous, well-loved and highly talented Zoroastrian on the pop-rock music scene, namely Queen‘s Freddie Mercury (1946-91), whose birth name was Farrokh Bulsara. His ancestors were ‘Parsi’ ~ Persian Zoroastrians who fled to India from persecution by the spread of Islam between the 7th and 10th centuries.

(Image of Zoroastrians in the West Midlands: Paresh Solanki at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

One result of establishing the Church of England was the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Wales, over 800 of them in total, during 1536-40. This included all types and sizes of building where monks or nuns lived communally and practised daily Catholic worship. They were places of learning, employment, hospitality and nursing, but corruption had also set in to some extent, funded by paid requests for prayers and pilgrims’ donations.

In 1535 an audit of monastic possessions and property ~ Valor Ecclesiasticus ~ was carried out along with reporting of the inmates’ behaviour, e.g. drunkenness, and this gave King Henry VIII (1491-1547) and his adviser, Lord Cromwell of Wimbledon (c.1485-1540) both financial and moral reasons to proceed with closing them all down, starting with the smallest and continuing up the scale.

Henry needed money for war with France and the monasteries owned 20% of the land, which was sold off in a move which was largely welcomed. The buildings were either repurposed as manor-houses, colleges, CofE parish churches and cathedrals, such as Chester, Gloucester and Bristol, or they were demolished and the masonry and metalwork reused in Henry’s other projects. Thousands of abbots, monks and nuns were paid off, but some rebelled and were executed.

(Images LtoR: the cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral by Eirian Evans at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0, Thomas Cromwell / Public domain)

Nottinghamshire-born Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) enrolled at Cambridge University aged 14 and remained there for more than two decades, taking holy orders in 1520 and obtaining his Doctorate of Divinity in 1526. His first marriage, to Joan, cost him his Fellowship at Jesus College but when she died in childbirth he was reinstated. It was on a break from Cambridge in 1529 that he first met King Henry VIII (1491-1547).

Thus began his pivotal role in the establishment of the monarch as supreme head of the English Church instead of the Pope, and the introduction of Protestantism. He made the most progress in drawing up new Articles for the Church of England during the reign of young Edward VI (1537-53), as Henry had not really been interested in any religious reform and had appointed Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-56) in order for him to pronounce Henry’s various marriages successively invalid and valid..

Cranmer’s involvement was not without its dangers (he sent his second wife, Margarete, and their children abroad for their safety) and Henry gave him his ring as proof of royal backing against anyone who came to arrest him. His luck finally ran out with the accession of Catholic Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary (1516-58), Henry’s first deligitimised daughter, and he was burnt at the stake for supposed treason.

(Images LtoR: first official Bible in English distributed by Cranmer to all parish churches, by University of Glasgow Library at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, and Thomas Cranmer / Public domain)

The monastic movement came to the British Isles in the 6th century. The remote settings of monasteries, such as the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, were indicative of the monks’ desire for solitude, but the subsequent trail of pilgrims and gifts of money and land in exchange for favourable prayers, led to monasteries becoming very wealthy and powerful.

Each monastery (variously known as an abbey, priory, friary or, for the nuns, a nunnery or convent), had rules based on a particular ‘Order’, such as the Benedictine, Cistercian or Trappist. Personal possessions were few and all inmates lived communally, wore the same habits, were obedient to the Scripture and were celibate. One monastic rule was to give hospitality whenever requested, so there would be large kitchens, bakeries, breweries, ‘warming’ rooms and guest rooms, and monks would even build inns and farms on their estates.

In Old English, a monastery was a ‘mynster’, hence the profusion of British place names beginning or ending in ‘minster’. God-fearing monarchs actively encourged the establishment of hundreds of monasteries until the 10th/11th centuries when parish churches began to be built, although monasteries continued to be centres for learning, with huge libraries, and to carry out charitable works.

(Image of Whitby Abbey ruins: Christopher Hilton at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Amidst the inclination for reform prevalent in the 1830s, some Oxford scholars of theology reacted strongly to the government taking steps to lift restrictions on other religions in Protestant Britain. The ‘Oxford Movement’, as it became known, sought to rejuvenate and re-emphasise the Church of England‘s standing by introducing aspects of Catholicism, a strategy painted as a return to its roots, or a ‘High Church’ revival.

Although this did not stop further religious deregulation, it did leave its mark and the CofE adopted a ‘middle way’ between Protestantism and Catholicism, as proposed by one of the Movement’s leaders, John Henry Newman (1801-90) of London. Previously unadorned churches were now awash with candles, imagery, open pews, robes, rituals and a new hymnody.

During the Movement’s heyday (1833-45), many supporters of this transition actually went so far as to convert to Roman Catholicism, including Newman himself, who was made a saint in 2019! Other key figures included John Keble (1792-1866) from Gloucestershire and Professor Edward Bouverie-Pusey (1800-82) from Berkshire. They argued that the CofE was a truly ‘catholic’ ~ lowercase c ~ church. The Movement published 90 Tracts explaining both how the CofE could be improved and in what respects it should revert to ‘tradition’ as they saw it.

(Images LtoR: John Henry Newman by Martin Beek & richly decorated Oxford Movement church in London by Nick Garrod, both at Flickr.com / both CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The exquisite workmanship seen in the structure of Ely Cathedral exhibits the now rare manual skills that were once employed to elevate church architecture symbolically towards a higher realm. Among the oldest of the UK’s cathedrals, it is set on what was a lofty island which was joined by reclamation drainage works to the Cambridgeshire mainland in the 1600s, vastly improving access for the many pilgrims drawn to it.

The Saxon princess St. Etheldreda (or Ethelthryth, c.636-79) who first had a wooden abbey built in this spot in 673, obviously desired almost complete isolation ~ not only was the island surrounded by marshland but she personally took a vow of chastity, maintained throughout her two marriages!

Today’s huge building complex, which has earned the nickname ‘Ship of the Fens’, is the result of several reconstructions and renovations, including replacement with a stone Romanesque cathedral and monastery soon after the Norman Conquest. The nave, at 246 feet, is one of the longest in Britain and the Cathedral has a classical octagonal tower, completed in 1342, which may reference the number eight’s association with eternity to ensure that, at the very least, the tower does not collapse like its predecessor did early one winter’s morning in 1322.

(Image: Steve Knight at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Durham Castle and Durham Cathedral sit side-by-side on a peninsula off the River Wear that looks tailor-made for these sandstone landmarks. From this fortified spot, the new Norman rulers could ward off Scottish incursions and display their Church+State superiority against Northumbrian rebels brutally and spitefully suppressed in what became known as ‘The Harrying of the North’.

The Cathedral, in particular, would have been a stupendous sight for approaching aggressors, but it also served to draw awestruck adoration from Christian pilgrims. Completed in 1133, it measures 216ft high, making it Britain’s tallest building for a while. With its side extensions it had enough space for monks, multiple altars, copies of the 1216, 1225 and 1300 versions of Magna Carta and the shrines of the Venerable Bede and of St. Cuthbert (c.635-87), whose body eventually arrived after having left Lindisfarne many years before. Bearing a reputation for miracles, Cuthbert’s relics were a lucrative attraction.

Although most of its treasures were confiscated in the Reformation, the Cathedral’s architecture remains untouched and is a testament to the skill of hundreds of stonemasons who worked on creating its ribbed vaulting and Romanesque ornate columns. Uniquely, its bishops were called ‘prince-bishops’ until 1836 and had as much power as a monarch.

(Image: Andrew Tryon at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)