Modern British Heresy

caption: A Trial for Heresy in an English Court during the Eighteenth Century . in  Footprints of the World's History,  William Bryan, Historical Publishing, 1891 Heresy is crime. Heresy is teaching or action within a Christian community which purports to be orthodox but which is formally rejected by competent authority after due process. It is a crime of misrepresentation. The harm that heresy does is comparable to the crimes of fraud or forgery: what had been presented and received as authentic turns out, on examination, to be fake and valueless. Heresy is an offence against the teaching of a church, promulgated within a jurisdiction adjudicated in a court and the offender is subject to punishment on a finding of guilt A court has five functions: to act on behalf of the whole community to encapsulate the issues in terms that are justiciable to determine the culpability of the offender to assign punishment on conviction to legitimate forceful action against a convicted off...

  The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy, John Henderson Henderson, J. B. (1998). The construction of orthodoxy and heresy: Neo-confucian, islamic, jewish and early christian patterns . Albany (N.Y.: State University of New York Press.)  Henderson is the William R. and Letitia Bell Endowed Professor , Co-ordinator of Chinese Studies , Department of History, Louisiana State University This book is a dizzying survey and analysis of orthodoxy and heresy across five religions and twelve hundred years, give or take.  I like the notion that the exercise “may be characterised as ‘the science of the error of others’” (p2) (citing Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew, p.154) , but Henderson’s method is not scientific and is none the worse for it. It is historical, at a high level of abstraction, founded on an extensive and impressive range of reading and command of his materials. I did not see a general or abstract definition of heresy. Perhaps I missed it, but I hope not: I ass...

  A very long time ago, in 1999, a suggestion was put forward in some quarters of the Church of England that Don Cupitt might be tried for heresy. (Cupitt’s Official site ; Wiki ; Sea of Faith )  I was appalled by the idea and published an article about the futility of the proposal in the Modern Church journal Modern Believing .  Having taken my stance I then had to work out why I thought the issue was important. After all, I only  knew Don Cupitt by repute so this was about me much more than about him. The idea and substance of heresy has proved to be sufficiently interesting to keep me ferreting round and round the issue for the subsequent twenty years. I have been a member of the Church of England ever since deserting my natal Methodism In my teens. I was ordained in 1988, my bishop telling me at the time that he would never have ordained me if he had believed what the training course had told him about me. Perhaps both were right; I’ve never asked to see my file...

James Haire Haire was Professor of Systematic Theology at Belfast Presbyterian College. His accuser, James Hunter of Knock, was a member of the General Assembly’s College Committee.  In the background was a growing reaction against critical approaches to scripture in Presbyterianism, albeit a century after its shoots had first sprouted in Germany. Haire was accused of fermenting schism by the conservative Presbyterian Bible Standards League ( Wiki ). The college was a particular focus of the League: “There have for some time past been murmurings in regard to the teaching in the Assembly's College”. (The Lurgan Mail Saturday 22 May 1926 p3 col1). Rev. James Hunter, Haire’s accuser, sat squarely in the conservative camp. Eighteen months earlier he had resigned his church stating “that there was a fearful evil eating away the life of their Church all over Christendom. It started in Germany, and nothing had been done in dear old Ulster to combat the evil. He felt that it had been laid...

  Carteret John Halford Fletcher began his working life as a solicitor. He was ordained as a clergyman in the Church of England In 1867 and from 1872 was Rector of the Church of St Martin, Carfax in the centre of Oxford ( wiki . history and images ) . He was married to Agnes and they had three daughters and six sons. Fletcher sat firmly at the broad church end of clerical opinion. In 1874 he invited the then notorious Bishop of Natal, John Colenso ( wiki ), to preach in his Church. When it became public, the invitation was met by a prohibition from the Bishop of Oxford on the grounds that Colenso was not licenced to preach in the Diocese. That Sunday the church held “an unusually large congregation” and Fletcher read the sermon Colenso had been due to deliver. Perhaps the reporter was disappointed that  “The discourse was not of a controversial character, and consisted chiefly of a plea for liberty of conscience.” ( Oxfordshire Weekly News - Wednesday 02 December 1874 p5, Co...

It's been a while since I posted, in part because of the cheerful distractions of Christmas and also because I've been chasing a number of rabbits down rabbit holes, finding very little.  1) The bishop of Carlisle: a trial that didn't happen (Source:  Munden, A.F. (1987) The Anglican Evangelical party in the diocese of Carlisle in the nineteenth century with particular reference to the ministeries of Bishop Samuel Waldegrave and Dean Francis Close. Doctoral thesis. University of Durham. Download  here . )   Waldegrave was a man of principle who laboured ceaselessly for the well-being of his diocese far from the centres of power in the church. An Evangelical and supporter of the  Church Society  he naturally opposed the High Church wing of the Church of England and sought to keep them out of his diocese. In 1867/68 he preached a series of sermons against ritualism (p348).   However, the Church of England's law and culture enabled a church's patron ...

This is the second of two posts. It is focused on the accusation of heresy against Archdeacon Horrobin. Conflict between the bishop and his archdeacon, Horrobin, was but one element in a longer story of conflict within the governing class of the Isle of Man. I have set out a drop of that story in the previous post . Both posts are drawn from E.B. Pusey, The Works of the Right Reverend father in God, Thomas Wilson D.D. Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man. Volume 2, 1722 here ; Volume 1 is here . (Page numbering for the second volume is continuous with the first and begins at p.491.) =========== Horrobin’s heresy In Whitsun week May, 1722 the annual Convocation of clergy in the Isle of Man took place. The Bishop addressed the assembled clergy and then turned to his Archdeacon. First Horrobin had permitted Madam Horne, the Governor’s wife, to Holy Communion despite being barred from receiving it by the Bishop (p. 503). Horrobin denied knowing she was under censure. A litany of witnesses declar...