Tag: Protestant Martyrs

Heretics and Hypocrites

(Photograph depicts young Russian protestors from the Eurasian Youth Union, taken in 2006).

This Saturday the people of Lewes, East Sussex converge for their annual bonfire party. The Lewes celebration is the biggest and most extravagant bonfire night in the country. It commemorates the foiled Guy Fawkes plot and honours the memory of the Lewes martyrs, seventeen Protestants who were tortured and killed for their beliefs during the reign of Queen Mary.

The Lewes festivities are part of a local tradition, and attract both fame and infamy nationally. The costumes and displays are deliberately designed to be provocative, lampooning the excesses of the historical popes and other pious leaders. Clearly those who spoke out at the time knew that the most devious used their religious authority to cloak their own immorality. They were prepared to die defending their convictions.

It is obvious that the intention behind this is to mock and pillory figures of power rather than the devout believers. Every year a notorious establishment figure is made into a “Guy” to be burned on the bonfire. Historical religious persecution is casually dismissed as a distant era of primitivism and superstition, but the modern age has not moved on in terms of accepting others who profess a different opinion to the prevailing conventions or sensitivities.

The fate that afflicted those individuals who questioned the authority of the Catholic Church was gruesome, but the modern punishment of cancellation is much more insidious on a psychological level, and even more damaging than the physical tortures of sixteenth century inquisitors.

Until very recently every school child in Britain was implored to recite the rhyme to “Remember remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot”. This is not an attack on religious difference, but a reminder that a fanatical terrorist almost succeeded in destroying freedom and democracy in this country and this included freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.

It is vital to point out that if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded, then the United Kingdom would have become a theocracy and every citizen would be controlled through a combination of intimidation and violence to adhere to the state religion. No-one would be free to question, or to highlight any double standard or hypocrisy, these are things that we now take for granted.

Unfortunately a new kind of heresy is being suggested, and it is promulgated from a powerful and influential class of people. Most people are not allied to this extreme cause but are too afraid to voice dissent, lest they lose their jobs or their friends. They are also subject to mockery, sarcasm and vulgarity rather than reasoned discussion. This is a modern kind of inquisition and it should be recognised as another form of torture. No-one should be subject to this kind of barbarism in 2022.

Remember, remember….

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“The Whore Of Babylon”-Illustration.

From Alan Moore`s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-Black Dossier” (DC Comics 2018).

Tonight the people of Lewes remember the scandal of Guy Fawkes and the foiled Gunpowder Plot with the biggest Bonfire celebration in the UK. However Lewes also remembers the fate of 17 of their citizens who were burned at the stake for professing their Protestant faith. These were 17 Protestants out of an estimated 300 who were put to death during a murderous five year spree of religiously motivated killings under the Catholic monarch “Bloody” Queen Mary I.

 

A cursory observation of the Lewes Bonfire would suggest that very few people have forgotten or forgiven the actions of the Catholic Queen who hounded and then murdered Protestants. However historical context should be applied. Some participants appear to lampoon “Popery” with scarlet robes and vestments, but it is ridiculing the Catholic excesses of Mary Tudor, not the more benevolent actions employed by the Catholic church of today. Overt anti-Catholic prejudices rarely feature nowadays.

 

Nonetheless there have been a few occasions when high profile figures have appeared ready to stoke the flames once more. In 1981 the late firebrand cleric Rev. Ian Paisley arrived in Lewes with his “anti-Popery” leaflets. Such overtly flagrant bigotry was unwelcome and the following year an effigy of him was summarily burned.

 

Rev. Paisley`s  attempts to expunge the Catholic religion from the British Isles were regarded as provocative and foolhardy. His fiery sermons from the pulpit were lionised by his community but condemned by his detractors as the utterances of a prejudiced and ignorant man. However in later life his stance towards Catholics mellowed.

 

His metamorphosis now seems extraordinary. While he was growing up in the isolated Protestant backwaters of County Armagh, his Preacher father instilled in him a harsh and uncompromising version of Biblical scripture. His father`s example lead him to believe that the King James Bible was to be read literally and was there to revive a more authentic Christianity. He believed that the Word was truth.

 

A similar uncompromising view of the Bible and Christianity imbued itself into the consciousness of Queen Mary, and later into the minds of Guy Fawkes and his plotters. We need to remember that religious extremism of any kind is morally wrong. The fact that there have been people throughout history prepared to murder others for professing another faith should serve a warning for us all.