Some Gripes Nailed to a Church Door

Audio:  https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/some-gripes-nailed-to-a-church-door

Welcome to Between The Stools on 29^th October 2023. This date was chosen as the nearest Sunday to 31^st October, the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to Wittenberg church door in 1517. This year is the quincentenary of his wife Katharina von Bora smuggling out of a nunnery in a barrel.

So we are thinking about reformation, but not necessarily exclusively the Reformation. Why are the events of the early 1500s known as the definitive reformation with a capital R? This is one of only two services in our History Year in which we leave Britain, and spend some time in Germany, which is a significant country for the modern world, and not just for the 16^th Century.

Before I share my connection and take on Luther, I’d like to have a brief community chat. Some may wonder why I am not stopping my planned programme to focus on world events. You may have wondered that at other times. You may have noted that I speak about these less of late; it’s not that I’m intimidated to do so, although I have felt fatigued with the constant focus, even in alternative circles, on fear and stress. On the 20^th anniversary of the Twin Towers, I quoted James Alison, and that sentiment – whether James would say so – feels to me to be apt for Israel, Ukraine and Maine. I feel that our eyes and ears are very much guided towards certain situations, and we are invited (if not expected) to stop and gaze at the awfulness happening. I am glad that so many are moved to help and to show their care and also outrage at injustice. I am appalled by suffering and injustice; take it as a given that my heart and prayers are with those displaced, fearful, coping with loss. I am also aware of how the news is curated to instil certain ideologies and for us to have certain opinions, which will allow if not support coming moves. These may be military, or legal; both are political. I am saying: both have a care and to take care; and why are our heads turned almost forcibly in one direction: what are they hoping we’ll not see in the other? James Alison spoke of the One who invites us to look away from the spectacle – not in ignorance or uncaring. Ask: who is benefiting from this (someone always is) and where might this be leading?

Today, we are thinking of another priest who dared to speak out and do different

Let us take a moment and a prayer before thinking on him and others round him

It was interesting researching Martin Luther – born in a three year, 10^th Nov 1483 – to see what people were saying about him, and who. The videos I easily found were by conservative English speaking, often American, Christians. I found two broad categories: those who generally admired Luther and saw him as the father of the (return to) the true church; and those who pointed away from him, for theirs was the true church. I also read some Catholic commenters who didn’t understand how this man could postulate turning from the true church and gaining wisdom and authority from scripture alone.

Well, to our Catholic fiends, I wish to say: I’m not sure Luther did, just turning from the pope: he reformed, not refounded the church (I don’t believe his ‘don’t name a church for me, I’m a bag of maggots’ speech). And the fact that his famous epithet is in Latin (‘Sola Scriptura’) is telling too.

May I be a little personal? Firstly, yes, I am drawn to Luther as a fellow church criticiser and leaver. When I walked out of the Anglican church three years ago, I did think of nailing my article on a church door. (I had one in mind, for a reason). But Martin seems to have picked Wittenberg’s Castle Church not as a symbol of his disillusion but as thel local place that calls for debate were posted. The very last Anglican act I did [in 2020] was to attend a film screening of Luther (2003), with Joseph Fiennes in the title role. I looked to Luther for inspiration and solidarity. How did his list get spread all round Europe, and without the internet? How did he survive possible charges and punishment for the commotion he caused? What if my list too caused a commotion bigger than I’d imagined?

(Other posts relating to my church critique are at

Why ‘The Church’ isn’t Biblical

Why the C of E is wrong – I

Pastoral care is made to care

Martin’s list was picked up by others who used the printing press to spread it. I heard that it took 2 weeks to disseminate round Luther’s city, and 2 months for it to be in other countries, but about a year for it to be known in all Europe. He was called to trial and excommunicated, but this only gave him courage, for what else had he to lose? When his works were publicly burned by order of the pope, Martin burned Leo X’s works, including the papal bull (document of decree) against him, and invited the town to join him…yet there was fear that he could go the way of his writings.

You’ll note I critiqued the church which Luther’s ideas helped form.

I had thought that for Protestants, Luther and Calvin were our heroes and forefathers. I had resisted both because of my tying them to my background and those in it eager that I should know and digest their works and ideas as gospel. [I give an example in the audio] I associated Calvin especially with harshness, although when I did first study him, I found him less so than his supporters. I clarify that even as a young conservative Evangelical, I rejected Calvinism as erroneous. I now certainly do.

A great turning point came around the 500 year anniversary of Luther’s Door Day, at which I attended an event. I bought a booklet by Ted Doe: Who Do You Think you Are? a brief history of Baptists and other Radical Christians in Norwich. He is a Baptist minister. I too come from a Baptist background and became drawn to learning about nonconformist history. Despite my own lifelong personal faith, three degrees including Religious Studies, and attending public lectures on Christian history, I learned something completely new from Ted’s book. I was in my 40s.

He asked us to put our hands up if we were Protestant. If his reader was Baptist, we were to keep our hands down, for such early dissent belonged to a different tradition. No, this was not hairsplitting, but another important but lesser known fork.

The reformation is two pronged: I had hitherto assumed it to be a single stick. What is usually implied as the reformation is in fact a tine: the Magisterial Reformation. This is Luther’s reformed church, tied into the magistrate, the civic office. In short, it is the continued, if not more intimate connection between church and state. It is entwined with political power, and just…power. It continued as a national chain, even if it couldn’t quite be called catholic – universal – in the sense that the church of Rome attempted. The Vatican vied with, if not was replaced by, churches of England, Scotland, the Dutch Reformed, and yes…the Lutheran church. It has big churches – often, as here, pinching the extant ones and de-housing Catholics – robes, altars, licensing and hierarchy. In England, it has a set book. I explored last month and before that Queen Elizabeth I’s “I will not make windows into men’s souls” speech was not a generous indication of toleration and spiritual privacy, but perpetuating the Protestant and Catholic idea that as we can’t know what you believe, we’ll assume your outer conformity to the one church – ours.

But there were those – other than now outlawed Catholics – who would not conform. Their ideas continued to be persecuted, as they had been when Catholicism ruled. There were those for whom the reformation did not go far enough; it was new wine into old skins – that of the Old Testament. (I first heard this biblical phrase used against the church from Ted Doe, although it’s been done since at least the 2nd century, by Marcion). I see it as old wine too: for apart from the removal of colour, statues and screens from inside churches, what really changed? Over here, it was the language of the services, but there were those for whom the Bible spoke another language.

These were the Radical reformers. Their names are not as well known as the leaders – or people we attribute as having led – the Magisterial Reformation. The Radical Reformation wanted to go back to the root (whence ‘radical’ gets its name) and that for them meant the Bible and the early Church.

This included the Anabaptists, a banner for Mennonites, Hutterites – the latter sounding like Old Testament tribes – and the Amish community. My interest hitherto has been in the next century – with the start of Baptists, Quakers, and Independents – and in Robert Browne later in that one. (Yes, I missed off Presbyterians who are between tines). Now I feel a thirst to learn more about these other groups and their leaders, more than the four+ horsemen (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Erasmus) of the nonapocalypse. (We could add Tyndale and Knox, who I knocked in February)

I hope to share my findings and ideas with you at a later date, but for now to flag up that Geneva and Wittenberg are not the only fruit cities in reforming the church.

There seems to be spin on Calvin: passionate Evangelicals debunk him as a murderer and liar, especially for his involvement in burning a non-Trinitarian Spaniard medical doctor called Miguel Serveto (anglicised to Michael Servitus), using scripture against Calvin, whilst another defends, saying he wanted to protect Servetus [there seems to be alternative spellings] and didn’t have the authority to. But most tell me that Calvin was very powerful in his adopted city and ruled it as a theocracy, or rather autocracy. Can I know which is true?

Calvin was far from the ‘leave church and state separate’ of my nonconformist youth – so why do they like him? Is it the harsh doctrines that render humans powerless and agentless? The theology summarised in TULIP is spiritual rape (‘grace’ that can neither be chosen nor resisted, and once drawn in, cannot be escaped) and an unlawful contract because it cannot be freely entered into nor left by the weaker party. As a lawyer, shouldn’t Calvin have known that?! (I’m aware that TULIP is a post Calvin summary by his followers)

Calvin made god in his own image: one of absolute unquestioning sovereignty, who puts to death if you disagree.

It is of concern that both Luther and Calvin were lawyers; that mindset in theology is something I have criticised before. I refer to my January sermon about Job, and see Job’s issues in early Luther at least. For them, God’s relationship with humans is about subservient placation – the method of the latter often being a mystery to the human. What does God want? What is sin – and why are there so many of them? Righteousness is in a legal sense, of being blameless, as opposed to guilty. It is about rule keeping more than a loving relationship. I find that Luther’s works are like the book of Job: a step away from the current ideology into the right direction, but that many steps further are needed. It’s radical when you’re trying to earn your place in heaven and God’s favour to say: it’s grace, it’s a gift, it’s not about you…but that is a theology based round salvation and suffering where deus ex mechina is dragged out as excuse to make it God’s prerogative, which is poor reasoning for one who likes argument and study.

Luther’s 95 theses are lines, sentences – not self sufficient points (doubt is cast over the nailing – but isn’t everything interesting turned into legend, not fact?), mostly on indulgences. He kind of creeps to the pope and says that vicars have authority to forgive sins (he’s ordained). The list is very legalistic, about remissions and penalties, assuming the warped balance sheet of secular law.

Two years on, he writes something more interesting – Babylonian Captivity – in which he says: I didn’t go far enough with the 95…now he openly questions the pope (yea!) and calls the Catholic church the Antichrist (irony coming up).

Luther has already progressed theologically, but his early spirituality is a sad one. He became a monk because of his belief that he’d not yet pleased God enough to go to heaven and avoid hell, so when struck in storm, he makes a contract (more law): save me and I’ll give my life (enter servitude, become yours).

Note that Martin – named for the saint’s day on which he was born – did not address God directly in that storm, but prayed to a female intercessor – and not even a biblical one (ironic for Mr Scripture Alone: where is Mary’s mother St Anne in the good book, good doctor?). As a monk, he was always confessing over nothing for hours; pride, complacence, arrogance….sent him back to the confessional on another loop.

I think he may have had an HSP/other worldly personality, with which I sympathise.

There’s lots of prostration (especially seen in 2003 film): at the lightning lash, as he takes his monastic vows, at his trials (one unappealingly but significantly called The Diet of Worms). This shows much about the hierarchy and abasement and twisting of ‘obedience’ (which means to listen, not comply) in the church.

Luther and Calvin had their brand of religion as their own show: Calvin’s Geneva Bible, published with his notes, translated to fit his theology; Luther’s bible was translated to his poetic and linguistic ear, beautifully I’m told, but he was making constant choices about how Greek and Hebrew best sounded to the ordinary German. I tired of hearing the expression ‘peasant and ploughboy’, as if these roles delineated one’s intellect, and perpetuates the lowly ‘status’ and thus hierarchy, placing these at the bottom (as an academic and churchman, Luther is much higher). He put some Biblical books in an appendix; the Apocryphal ones (Maccabees, Tobit…with purgatory in them) were taken out of the Protestant Bible, and still are. Luther clearly didn’t know what to do with prophecy (Daniel and Revelation – where his image of the Roman church as Antichrist is), and was going to annex part of other books, such as Esther; and he was going to cut the letter of James, which speaks of the importance of works, which clashes with his tenets. Luther’s church (still the Church, St Mary’s Wittenberg) services were his bible, his sermons, his songs and psalms… Yes, you might say I ought to watch that as a criticism, noted.

Luther promoted women as child bearers; if sexual/reproductive desire is strong, then the church can’t make monastics keep their vows. He was still living as a monk and academic (as he’d done since youth) and then knew little of women or family life (of course he did go on to marry and have kinder). His ideas as I’ve read them makes women breeders and helpmeets, unable to discuss as equals. He apparently upheld societal norms regarding work and submitting to city authorities to register to have ‘permission’ to live there.

Luther was firmly against the wicked moneymaking corruption of indulgences – good. What might a fear based lucrative scheme be in our day, involving a narrative of destruction and death? (Clue: one also is a long i word). Note how responsibility to others is also used as an impetus – then and now.

I support the notion of Babylonian captivity, but he and other reformers (note, re-form not reboot or redesigners) seemed to throw out mother with dragon, harshly treating those outside of their beliefs; Babylon, I believe, is wider than the Vatican and has embraced Canterbury and Germany. (I’m not wholly referring to the 20th C for the latter).

In Babylonian Captivity, he says – being crudely and dismissively rude about his detractors – that mass is a legal testament, in the sense of inheritance from one who died (so who died in the Old Testament?). I squawked mightily. Luther says that Christ’s shedding of blood secures his promise (more legality) that we unworthies get eternal life, on the condition of our faith. Even the sacrament (and he yet believed in 3, including penance) is a legal contract – and what strange surety Christ offers! (memorial cannabalism as a renewed promissory note from God). My reading implies that it’s not in fact faith or grace alone, but that a legal promise is required. On p23 of the translation by Wentz et al, Luther writes “For without the promise there is nothing to be believed; while without faith the promise is useless, since it is established and fulfilled through faith.” Hence, I see salvation and heaven are conditional offers for Luther, and that there needs to be an offer and a legal instrument from God (and, implictly, a threat – of what happens if you don’t take up the offer). Not so much grace now, or gospel (ie good news).

There is another tract, perhaps lesser known, on freewill which says that we don’t have one (The Bondage of the Will). That I found rather alarming, but it was necessary – in his mind, not mine – for his doctrine of justification by faith and grace. I’m bemused at how much time theologians spend on debating the mechanisms of grace and salvation, and even prayer. Again, this is a legal argument, this time to refute Erasmus, but saying that it’s watertight is to simply battle Luther back on his own terms. I do not play his way; his is a bizarre game. Logic and dogma come before inner knowing, love and relationship. It is a profoundly unspiritual, unevolved way to see faith and God…a god made in Luther’s image, conformed to law-as-god and the weight of sin as a debt to pay, a bully who causes evil and then punishes others for the outcome. (I’m aware that Luther’s position may have moved towards love and away from law; I like that modern films portray this, for it shows they get and support that message).

I again refer to James Alison, who says in On Being Liked that atonement theory makes sin too big a character in the human story, the one round which all others – including God – dances.

I want us to question why anyone is given giant status that can’t be questioned. Why the films on Luther, with famous actors…but have you seen one on Menno Simon? I could spend much longer in Wittenberg, wrangling over tracts, but I feel more drawn to the critique and to other movers. I want to ask why Luther is allowed to be hallowed by the mainstream.

Was the Good Doktor really good? (I had said, I wasn’t necesarily saying no but nor was I saying wholly yes. Then I read what happened to the peasants). What do you think? Have I rightly understood his final message?

I’m interested in the apocalyptic watershed reformation and how that relates to us now. I feel that another reformation is due, a truly radical one that goes to the root – not necessarily to emulate the early church, but to ask what faith and community are, and about our relationship with God and each other.

I’m also interested in Germany’s role in the wider world and that I’ve heard it is key for its restoration.

Thank you for joining me tonight; blessings to you

Next time is Nov 26^th, and we’ll be in another continent and the 20th Century for a 60th anniversary but I’m adding an extra post on 9th Nov (prerecorded, no set time) on Margery Kempe

Elspeth betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

LENT 6: 30/3/23 – Falcon

My weekly Lenten reflections will be on a wife of Henry VIII each week – although not in order

These seek to not retell their stories, but to look at them with a spiritual eye

An illegal book is being held up and thrust at you. It’s yours. What do you do?

Last week’s queen was an author of controversial books. This one wasn’t penned by Anne Boleyn, but contemporary William Tyndale, exiled in Antwerp, where he was put to death the same year as her.

Four hundred and seventy years later, a woman sits in a staffroom, reading. She wafts colleagues who wish to interact away: she is not here, but in 1533…and now even more pressingly,1536! Drawn by the deep purple and gold dress on the cover, awakening nascent historic interest, I spent an intense summer with Anne whom I hitherto knew only in name. Philippa Gregory and Retha Warnicke made me wish for Anne’s end, but Vercors made me want to put flowers on her grave. It is with that French cartoonist’s view – joined by English academic Eric Ives, novelist Jean Plaidy, and historian Joanna Denny – that I have stayed…perhaps until now.

I have saved who I consider the most interesting wife until last; it through Anne Boleyn that we will view Easter this year. Instinctively I knew that the biting prose which first introduced me to Anne was not the truth and that another story was bursting to be known. I found not the ‘strumpet’ who threatened a marriage, a nation and her daughter’s right to reign through her own selfish ambition, but the champion of all the things which I admired, deliberately vilified in the time-honoured way for unusual women who threaten an ungodly fearful status quo: whore and witch.

What I would like to look at today is that book of hers, the reading of which risked her life and that can be argued to have caused the reformation – as it can of Anne herself. Because Anne’s faith is so often missing from books and films, it is only in recent weeks that – despite writing a postgraduate dissertation on her popular depictions – I have started to realise the content of that book and its significance. Since that dissertation, I have learned new things about the reformation and the church of England. So do I still feel the same about the woman who was catalyst and initiator of these? (p132 ch 6 of Denny)

Anne’s faith was – according to Denny and Ives – her driving force. She used her position with a king otherwise not very interested in reform or critical of Rome to effect the most radical change since the Catholic church’s formation. She and her family sponsored, smuggled, and pleaded for reformist works and people. Her reaction to being caught with Tyndale’s tract was to go to the king to ask for it back and share her new reading material with him, for she realised that this tome contained the answer not only to his Great Matter (ie divorce from Katherine of Aragon) but to a new England.

It was Netflix’s Blood, Sex and Royalty – one of a new breed of sexed up documentary with talking academic heads interspersed with graphic sex – that alerted me to this book’s message. I understood that the New Learning, a fascination with which Anne’s brother and father also shared, was about emancipation for the masses by being able to read the Bible yourself. Tyndale clearly advocates the Bible in one’s mother tongue and bats away the excuses of the clergy – that it’s too hard for ordinary people to understand and that biblical languages don’t easily translate into English. He states that Hebrew and Greek ‘agreeth’ far better with English than Latin, in which the Bible was hitherto. He also expects that heads of households instruct in God’s Word – but how can they if it’s not in their language and they can’t have a copy at home? (Henry conceded one in each church).

We’ll think more about the significance of being able to read and own the Bible in July.

The New Learning was also about standing away from the ‘Church’ teaching of salvation by works. Last week I asked: saved – from what?

My understanding is that ‘by works’ means: please the ‘Church’ and pay it to obtain God’s favour, pretending to conflate the two. It means that we have to work to please God and through that alone will we attain Glory and avoid Hell. (The Parable of the Labourers in Matt 20 and much of the New Testament epistles are evidence against that). Reformed theology rightly says: grace is not earned, it is a gift from God. Grace and salvation, for me, are not the same. Were they for Anne?

Last week I also showed my concern for our relationship with God being expressed in legal terms: that of justification, which Tyndale also advocates (that too is the language of the court).

Anne loved to debate theology and did so with those around her constantly. Would we still agree?

I agree that not being ‘saved’ by works doesn’t mean that it isn’t important what you do. Anne Boleyn cared about right action: in that 2022 Netflix documentary I believe Tracy Borman said that Anne introduced charity to the court; several writers state that she had concern for her subject’s wellbeing and high standards for the conduct of her ladies, as well demonstrating her own as refusing to go to the king’s bed until they were contracted to marry and Katherine put aside.

An aspect of action that Tyndale took on in The Obedience of the Christian Man (1528) is one’s relationship with so-called authority. Much of it is conventional, as his his rendering of the New Testament: I tested his translation on the verses prohibiting women teaching (such as 1 Tim 2:12) which came up last week. He endorses violence against one’s children in the name of correction; exhorts that servants obey masters, for they are God unto you (as are parents, and most worryingly, kings). Tyndale said ‘If thou obey, though it be but carnally, either for fear, for vain glory, or profit, thy blessing shall be long life upon the earth’, thus that obedience for any reason will garner you God’s favour whereas the opposite will garner you the opposite. I am highly disturbed by that statement and heartily disagree. ‘Kings were ordained’ and ‘the sword put in their hands’, wrote Tyndale. He also said that kings are God’s vicars upon the Earth (ie stand ins) and may do as they wish. I dread to think how such sentiments fed Henry’s ego. Already believing that he had the divine right to rule and was puffed up with pride, Henry now had in writing – apparently backed up by well chosen theologians – that he should be the supreme authority in his nation. Tyndale attacks all kinds of clerics, including monks, whom he claims were ‘free and exempted from all service and obedience due unto man’ save the pope. He calls men of the cloister marked by the Beast (haven’t many of us wondered if we witness that in our time?). How might that rather unqualified and nonsensical remark have fuelled hatred of the monasteries and their destruction? (We’ll meet some cloistered people this year).

From what I’ve read and understand, I don’t think that Tyndale was as radical an author as Robert Browne later in century, who questioned civic authority more generally. Anne too was questioning only one form – albeit a very powerful one – and one that made England part of an empire: Rome’s. But was she really about making an empire of our own, about seeding a nation state? Vercors thinks so, and he saw our courage to stand alone against Hitler as being rooted in Anne Boleyn. Would she have seen it as good to stand alone from Europe? Had she forseen something deeper when she steered this Sceptred Isle from the Mitred one? I am unsure what I think of the sceptre. I don’t support empires and am ashamed of Britain’s and how far reaching it was. If this is a conscious legacy of Anne’s, it is not something which I admire.

I have so much more to say on Anne: I’ll be saying some of it next Sunday, and have blogged about her previously. For now, I wish to state my disappointment that Blood Sex and Royalty, after having Anne and the glossy lipped professors debate theology and make a point of her having Tyndale, doesn’t end with her legacy as a theologian. Her brother tells her that she’ll change the world, but neither shows nor tells how. Once again, after the axe falls, so does the curtain: the story of Anne ends with the usual coda – a ginger toddler who will become known as Gloriana. Thus Anne’s contribution to England was her genes, not her courageous work in uncoupling from a continental-wide yoke of corruption and inequality. Her downfall is shown for not bearing sons and keeping the king’s favour, not because of the swift work of her enemies. Who and why is something we’ll take up again.

I wish to leave you for now in the final Lenten reflection of this year with Anne Boleyn, not on a scaffold or in a prison (although we’ll sit with her the latter,with Jesus, next Thursday), not as a monogram hastily etched away and likenesses destroyed, but a woman who cared so much about the exciting new faith in Jesus that she was willing to spend ten years with one of the most dangerous rulers of all time to change hearts, minds, laws and history.

We’ll have Tudor themed Maundy Thursday and Easter online services, at 930pm and 8pm BST.

Both will be about 45 mins. The first will be quite and reflective. Both will feature music

Please email me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk if you’re interested in coming live by the end of Weds 5^th as I will make decisions based on that

I shall also be performing a reading of my novella The Jury In My Mind for the 111^th anniversary of the Titanic the following week. It will be online free to listen to (but not download) for a short time from weekend 14/15^th April 2023

Note the change of date for June’s service to reflect an important anniversary

LENT 5: 23/3/23 – Maiden

My weekly Lenten reflections will be on a wife of Henry VIII each week – although not in order

These seek to not retell their stories, but to look at them with a spiritual eye

How would you react if you found a warrant for your own arrest? This lady of the week put it back, but her voluble distress after reading it drew her husband to her. She did not reveal the source of her sobs.

Catherine Parr did not go to the Tower. Perhaps she had learned from Anne of Cleves and Jane Seymour how to at least appear docile and say what the king wanted to hear. Pretending that she did not mean to instruct her husband in faith, only seem to oppose him to draw out his great and superior learning was a very Neck Turns The Head strategy – and one that saved hers. When the warrant she’d no doubt dreaded was served, writhing Wriothesley come to arrest her was turned away by the king.

Catherine Parr’s warrant – which Henry had agreed to – was not for alleged adultery like the other two wives, nor witchcraft, but heresy. Heresy and witchcraft are not far apart – both are beliefs and practices not sanctioned by, and perceived as a threat to, the church and its authority. By authority, it really means the hegemony and solo privilege of that institution.

Catherine may not have begun married life as a heretic – to Henry that is – she was married 4 times. Some historians claim that she was conservatively Catholic when the ever rounder and more irascible king pulled her away from the one she loved – an ambitious man who would try to be de facto king himself, and suffer the fate that she avoided. My interest in Catherine isn’t the relationship that resumed after Henry’s death almost as quickly as his own new spouses. The epithet ‘survived’ – I am bored of that crude rhyme – isn’t just about Catherine 3 outliving Henry VIII – although not for long; it’s that the warrant was not executed. It’s what Catherine believed and was trying to achieve with her reluctant queenship that interests me.

Like next week’s queen and the lens through whom we will view Easter this year, Catherine saw herself as an Esther, alongside the man she called Moses, letting the people go from the oppressive yoke of a man titled P. Catherine felt directed to accept the king – not that it would have been easy to decline (hardly meaningful consent) – because she prayed and felt God reply that this role was divine service to England. Catherine had admired Henry (!) but thought he who had begun so positively in removing the grip of Rome from this country was slipping. Henry didn’t leave the Catholic form of Christianity, just the rule of Rome, which of course, he’d replaced with himself. His 1539 act reiterated Catholicism in all but papacy, creating all other belief as criminal.

I admire Catherine’s courage and the principle of using her queenship – a sacrifice and a risk for her – to further reform, and especially as a spiritual mission. I am not sure that I agree with the content of that mission. Catherine Parr, a published author of theology, is the darling of the conservative reformed modern Christian, such as Lutheran pastor Don Matzat. His synopsis of Henry’s reign is telling: Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard are guilty of adultery; Anne’s faith and mission are conspicuously absent: the break from Rome was because of Henry’s unassailable wish to marry her. Who actually did the reforming of this new independent national church isn’t stated but it’s implied that it was left to others…such as Henry’s final wife.

On discovery of Catherine’s last book, “Lamentations of a Sinner”, Don speaks in delighted terms of Catherine’s abasing herself to gain Christ, echoing Luther’s belief in self-accusation to come to a state of grace. The abasement was controversial for a queen – hence it was not published in Henry’s lifetime. It was an early spiritual autobiography of the new kind: where the author shows their journey from guilty to justified, from wicked to redeemed. It’s a genre which I grew up with.

I sympathise with spiritual epiphanies and honesty about one’s own journey but I reject the Worm Theology inherent in this work and Don’s glee in it. Why is finding God a see-saw of egoes? Why is accusing yourself of sin the first step in beginning a relationship with Jesus?

Catherine was concerned with the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone, as well as his teaching that all spiritual knowledge and authority comes from scripture alone. They were tenets which I was raised with, and kept with…until relatively recently.

Justification is a legal term – reformed theology, as with the apostle Paul’s, is peppered with it. But I do not agree with basing your understanding of God on the flawed and worldly precepts of a broken and ironic system of justice. It came from an ex-Pharisee early on in Christianity, who was still very influenced by the old religion – that of right practice and rules. Paul began developing radical thought away from traditional Judaism, seeing God’s grace as the means of justification. Crudely in my evangelical upbringing we were told this word meant that we are made ‘just as if we’d never sinned’. It is different to expunged, which means blot out (so a record of wrong is gone) but justify goes a step further: it is almost as if time is reversed and the sin wasn’t committed. Actually, legally today, justification is closer to its normal English usage (often legal terms aren’t): it means that an acceptable excuse is given which prevents the guilty party from being punished.

Theological sources tell me that justification is a once and for all rendering of Not Guilty, effected in Jesus’ death. So Jesus’s overcoming death says: we all did do a capital crime that offends God, but a declaration rather than explanation is made which removes from us, the offender, the liability for that offence, and makes us righteous? How very Job.

And what is this crime we all do that earns us the forever fiery pit in God’s eyes – the judge in a courtroom (these terms require courts) to which we are not invited to defend or explain ourselves? Is it the things we could have done different and need to put right? Does it cover the more grievous acts which we may commit? Or is it missing the mark and falling short, like a weak misshot arrow, of a target that can never be reached by humans? What is perfection? And who is an angry, jealous, vengeful god, behaving like Henry VIII, to hold us to a standard that he misses?

Or is our crime not keeping all the many rules in the Pentateuch?

The reformed understanding is and I think was that those lists of Leviticus no longer applied after Jesus. Protestants preach that they no longer need to keep The Law – just the Ten Commandments, and Jesus’ Double Commandment. Oh, and a few exhortations by Paul (these can vary over time and your exact denomination’s beliefs). One of those which hung around in Catherine’s day, and in my background, still may, is that of women not teaching men. Henry levelled this at Catherine. But as anyone who really knows the Bible can tell you – Catherine was likely one; her contemporary who we’ll meet in July was certainly another – Paul doesn’t exactly say that. I’ll give you a full exposition of what I think he does say in July.

I have started something big here that I’ll continue over the year. My issue with Catherine’s doctrine is not to downgrade faith and to have to work one’s way into Heaven and God’s favour, but that she relies on corrupt, patriarchal legalism for her tenet. It is not that church tradition and law is greater than the Bible, but that text is misused, and that God speaks to us with an inner knowing. I’ll say more about that on here, and in my next novel. I stand with Catherine against Rome, but not against the freedom for Catholics to express their faith, nor for an alternative political institution – especially one with the same hierarchy and tyranny at its heart.

Catherine’s radical friends included the fourth wife of someone in last Sunday’s sermon – Catherine Willoughby, who became Mrs Brandon, duchess of Suffolk, and Marguerite of Navarre who influenced next week and Easter’s subject. What these women believed and fought for, and whether we would or should now, we will continue to explore.

We’ll have Tudor themed Maundy Thursday and Easter online services, at 930pm and 8pm BST.

Both will be about 45 mins. The first will be quite and reflective. Both will feature music

Please email me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk if you’re interested in coming

I shall also be performing a reading of my novella The Jury In My Mind for the 111^th anniversary of the Titanic the following week – stay tuned for more information

A sermon for Truth Telling Sunday 2020

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-sermon-for-truth-telling-sunday-2020

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-sermon-for-truth-telling-sunday-2020

I was informed by text one September 11^th that if I were a good Catholic (instead of a proudly wicked nonconformist) that I would know this day was St Clara’s day – patron saint of journalists and those who write for the truth to be known. Now, I note that there are several St Clara or Claires, but I don’t really care who this saint is and when her day is. I just love what she stands for. As a writer and a truth teller, I was pleased that the church [no big C], which I disapprove of more than ever, has given a day to at least one saint who upholds truth telling and speaking out.

The irony is not lost on me. As I began preparing for this, I watched the Anglican church come out of lockdown and the local diocese’s ordinations. I was aware of acute discrepancies between what the candidates swear to do and be, and what actually happens. The church has conformed to covid controls, and made its own – one in particular was unworthy of its inclusive church pretensions because of its disability discrimination regarding masks and toilet use. Yes, it is the exact opposite of all you’re supposed to stand for. And yet, head touching of multiple candidates was still allowed, because zapping with authority and the apostolic succession is so important to conformist churches.

I noted the church’s use of [no sainting here] Peter’s phrase – the ‘royal priesthood, holy nation’ that I was used to crooning in the 1980s. As a nonconformist, it had never occurred to my younger evangelical self that this quote from 1 Peter 2:9 could mean that the priesthood of any established chain, such as Anglicans, Catholics, or Orthodox, is royal and passed like a bloodline, Reiki master style, or something out of the Da Vinci Code. ‘Royal priesthood’ seems much more of a feature of the old Jewish religion than the new Christian Way that was offshooting from it. ‘Holy nation’ feels like a reference to the Jewish people. Writing as and to those familiar with Judaism, Peter’s words, for me, say: I am equating this new kingdom of God with what we are used to. He also seems to say that Gentiles are included in what had been a closed camp. All believers belong to the holy nation now – it’s not about ethnicity and geography any more. Amen!

But I’m aware of Peter being misused and also that he deliberately took mantles not given to him. I again mention Lauri Ann Lumby’s understanding of Peter in her novel, Song of the Beloved: a Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which draws on extra canonical sources and her own considerable knowledge. I have great respect for Lauri’s work, and she is not alone in the opinion that Peter’s version of Jesus – along with his brother James – is a skewed one, which suits people trying to build another hierarchical ownership system, just like the one they broke away from.

I am seeing this thread in British history, which I hope is meaningful and transferable for all my readers/listeners, wherever you are. I’d like to take 4 points from it and weave these questions:

1) How do we please God? 2) How do we please our rulers? 3) How do we live well? 4) How do we recognise one who lives well and pleases God and his ruler? (They probably do say ‘his’).

And the answer for each is the same – for them. It is not the same for me.

The traditional answer to those four questions is:

For 1-3: keep the law; and 4 is – by ease, wealth and status in their lives.

For the traditionalist, 1&2 are entwined: God leads via those he ordained, in a hierarchy, whose status shows the favour found with God. Hear my duck noise!

Let me start with the Roman empire, which links Jesus and the early church’s day, and the first stop in my land’s history. When I’ve heard historians speak of Rome, it’s often with some admiration. Not: here was an atrocious, hard, ruthless people who ruled much of Europe, the Middle East and even parts of Africa, and tried to squash our indigenous way of life – and charged us for it, calling it ‘protection’.

We seem to admire the people who were organised and tactical fighters with shields that tessellated, who built straight roads and our first towns and lasting buildings. Because they had underfloor heating, we somehow think that if they were technologically ahead, that these people are worthy of our respect. Because they did what we did – rule a vast area with might and wealth, supplanting natives – we quite like our Italian tin and brush hatted not quite friends.

There was a TV and book series: What The Romans Did for Us. It extended to the other eras which I’m going to visit.

My answer to what these people did for (or to us) is similar for each:

They introduced hierarchy and homogeneity (and yes, hypocausts).

Forts and towns followed a pattern; soldiers followed a pattern; residents followed a pattern. It’s called the laws of the New Leadership. Do as you’re told and you may live, even thrive. We’ll rename your geography, bring our uniforms, language, gods.

I note Rome’s own gods, and how Christianity and Judaism often portrays its One True one. Please God (in both senses). God needs obeying and placating. Give up something to him/her. A sacrifice, a present. Praise him; make a promise of allegiance. Offer yourselves. If you want something, a certain outcome in war for example, you must follow these guidelines. If you don’t get what you wanted, your god is displeased. You must work out why and ameliorate before you suffer more.

Another irony is that Rome, who persecuted Christianity, became its headquarters. And Christianity advanced in the way that the Roman Empire did: spread and conquer. Accept this system or die. Even in less aggressive forms, there is something tactical and militant about mission. The Church of England’s tagline is: “A Christian presence in every community.” I’d once have found that comforting, but it now sounds ominous. There’s a sense of ownership of their patch, even of nonworshippers. When a new couple told a minister that they’d just moved into the parish, the minister said, “So that means we own your soul.” It’s just what some churches think.

The were 2 different styles of mission in Britain: one from Ireland, starting at Iona; and one from Rome, starting in Kent. One wanted to supplant the extant Pagan beliefs; the other incorporated them. Whilst I critique both, it’s my understanding that the Celtic way was a less authoritarian and more egalitarian form of faith. Sadly, the Celtic way lost out. Their military leadership may have receded, but Rome found a new way into Britain. Now the church – considering itself worthy of a capital C [snort] – had councils, and made decisions about the Good Book and what was considered acceptable belief. In Northumbria, the Roman way won in another council – the synod of Whitby – and the Celtic church was superseded.

Yet it’s not forgotten, and like Mary Magdalene, it’s enjoying a resurgence.

My next stop is 1000 years on from the Roman invasion. I’m intrigued that when they left four centuries later, Britain returned to its Celtic ways. I’ve seen reconstruction pictures of Canterbury and Colchester – large walled Roman towns – lying in ruin with thatched huts and pigs running round in gardens, where once side by side houses of tile and brick stood. Towns were abandoned with the cessation of the military and central administration.

But then new invaders came, with almost the same name as those in AD 43.

They even copied the architecture of Rome, which is knowns as Romanesque.

Another group from continental Europe, this time from the North.

They had the same game plan: conquer in battle, claim the capital, and then start building – motte and bailey castles instead of milecastles, replace churches with bigger ones, our style. Claim Pagan holy spots with sites of our own.

As I read about Dunfermline in Fife, I was sad to realise that a famous Queen – Margaret – and her son, David, did Scotland what I think is a disservice. Margaret was sainted for her piety, which really meant that she set up monasteries. Both she and David had spent time in England, and they took what they found there to their homeland, instead of the preferable reverse.

Much like at Durham, the largest church yet seen was built on the site of a simpler, older one; and a palace complex was mixed in with the monastic accommodation and leadership. (David did the same at Edinburgh). Kings started being buried at Dunfermline abbey, as they were at contemporary Westminster. It tied secular and sacred power together; it made a statement via a building, towered in both senses. God is mighty, we are mighty. Masonry might costs. You might want to think about that when visiting, and contribute whilst you contemplate how vast and untouchable God is in the long dark space where words of another tongue will be said amidst flashes of colour and smelly mist (what the Welsh call incense). Hence God is mysterious, and those who enact his mysteries are to be revered because of the glorious robes they wear, the words they utter that you don’t understand, the ceremonies that they do – although they’ll be behind a screen, and you can’t see.

Just like the Jews had wrongly taught that God’s name is unsayable – lest its power be accessed by all; just like the Bible wasn’t in the common tongue and could only be read by priests; now they said: God is at the altar, and the altar is very far away. You won’t be able to get to the High one (of course, there are hierarchies – the ones in the nave you use aren’t as holy as the one up the far end for the important people, where all the gold is).

As a cathedral lover, I’m struck by how reprehensible this view of God is, and how unlike the New Testament, and the God of my understanding.

Margaret introduced the Benedictine Rule (note the word, it’s true in both senses) – more Italian monopoly, like the board game, for this was the predominant monastic system which also was about hegemony and homogeneity. These buildings had a set shape, as did their service patterns, and their trappings of worship, familiar today but alien and offensive to those of nonconformist and Celtic understanding.

Thus queen and king imposed a foreign way which was part of the conquerors’ world, to a place that wasn’t even conquered. This was the era of private ownership. This was the time that both Scotland and England had a unified single sovereign each over the whole land, which had hitherto been a group of tribal kingdoms. I note that early abbots and bishops were Norman or Italian – thus preserving and imposing the nationality and ways of the incoming nation.

They brought back walls, in all senses. They brought in feudalism.

So what did the Normans do for us? They reintroduced a system, secular and sacred. They were even prepared to fight so-called holy wars to defend territory from other would-be acquisitive and not dissimilar religions of the book with theocratic rule and proselytising tendencies. Now sacred and secular were really muddled.

My next stop is half a millennium later. At last rid of being someone else’s empire, we began to make our own, which continued for half a millennium. The Church – for there was but one way allowed to worship God – badly needed reform, as much of Christendom recognised. But we didn’t really reform here, we just changed its name and its head. It drowned all music but its own, including adherents to the extant version, and those would-be more radical reformers. This was an opportunity to reset, to develop anew, but it was missed. Hitherto church wealth went into private hands. You might call it redistribution, but it was just another group having unequal power, another group who felt that conformity and homogeneity – and surveillance – lead to safety. You can have the Bible in your own language, and services, but there are only state approved ones. Anything else is forbidden, and will be punished. Whereas Britain now stood alone from continental rule, it was making itself insular and ruled by another tyranny. (Familiar?) Whereas those powerful rich monasteries might have been corrupt and unaccountable, the real issue was that they didn’t answer to bishops or the king, and they also preached to the community, things which might have given the populace freer ideas. However, despite further attempts at tightening and persecution, by the end of the next century, new Christian groups prevailed and had at last a modicum of freedom…

But it took until my last stop – the 19^th Century – for full emancipation. Catholics and Unitarians had to wait until Regency times to practice legally; under George IV, Celts were freed to speak their language and wear their dress, and the first new university in England was founded, finally ending the stranglehold of Oxbridge. That same decade – the 1830s – the Reform Bill was passed; and our Houses of Parliament were burned. By the end of the century, under Victoria, we had a new set. And what did they say? We are the head of an empire, with buildings which reflect the start of it. We are a wealthy nation, thanks to our expanded territories and industry. We try not to think about the inequalities in our land. Some of us do, and we call the generous endowments ‘philanthropy’ – but how much love of fellow humans is there really in these foundations? For it means that rich individuals, church, and state control more – education, welfare, health – whilst puffing up the name of the endower, as medieval sponsors did with their fat cat tombs and almshouses (read: get out of Hell card). Look at the offices, banks, town halls of this era, and how the railways stations and factories have cathedral-like qualities, which say: we are proud of where we’ve come from and where we will go.

What can I say of the Victorians? Another opportunity missed; a time of two halves. A time where technology and growth were put before equality, and attempts at righting the balance were avuncular and patronising at best; a time when dangerous new health practices were begun. Hysteria is homogeneity, and straight jacketing is metaphorical. Yet it was also a time of broad spiritual resurgence.

The next century soon started breaking down the strata so proudly preserved by the Victorians and ensuing Edwardians. The Empire fell apart; women got the vote and increasing equality. Conservatism was shaken by left wing ideas and flower power. Welfare was born, of the non workhouse variety. Yet as improvements seemed to be made, strictures tightened elsewhere, and ominious new structures were created.

The 20^th Century was a roll towards the Age of Aquarius – or God’s New Kingdom. Still the prevailing beliefs are that hard work and productivity please your rulers and your God, and each other; that sacrifice is at the heart of life as much as faith; that rule keeping is right action, endorsed by the judiciary as much as Judaeo-Christian belief; and that wealth and health are signs of God’s blessing – in the New Age thinking as much as the Prosperity Gospel. Hence, we’ve not moved far.

And we need to – for it’s not truth. God is love, not fear; love does not need placating. God doesn’t care about status – She rather likes upending that value.

Shaken pillars are now being dismantled. We are at a very exciting time, a real watershed moment. I’ve often wondered how close to those previous moments – when an army is coming, when new scary laws come in – are the times we live in. Would we recognise it and what could we do? Not live another 400 years in their thrall, that’s something I’m certain to not let happen. And although we must be responsible with what we say, I’m aware that so-called alternative or conspiratorial ideas are being censored, whilst newspapers – yes, even you, Guardian – are not truth telling. (And yes despite a crap attempt at a dissemination website, I note that there’s a correlation between Gates funding and how outspoken you are.) We need truth tellers, so thank you to all those websites and other channels who have spoken out – but mind that you don’t keep us in fear. I’m wary of double agents.

I am practising truth telling, as I hope I always do, in my blog and elsewhere; but truth telling also means speaking positive truth, and I hope that when I call into question and affirm our worth and sovereignty, that my readers and audience feel empowered, as I do writing and speaking it.

I’m seeing lots of links, and that the things I write about – from tipping to television licences to antiterrorism to tracing and testing – all have a similar undergirding. There is an imbalanced contract, where the few are not really giving us a service, but tacitly expect us to serve them. There is a cost to the ‘service’ – which is fiscal, and/or compliance. It’s time that we woke up from the deep state, deep church (I note that the Anglican church is one of the world’s richest ‘endowers’ – a corporation set up in 1948.) We are not in bond, we are free.

Sept 12^th is St Elspeth’s day, according to role playing. She watered through a long drought, knowing that plant was not what it seemed. There’s also a warrior Queen Elspeth who fights injustice. I hope that I embody both. Whether your birthday is around now – and I’m aware of two local people in office I’ve mentioned in this blog with a birthday whose behaviour clashes with the saint of that day – this is a time for you to start truth telling, standing in your truth, and making sure that history won’t look back on this era as a going back to what was worse, or allowing the advancement of technology or keeping us safe to really be about the advancement of the interests of the few. Let us move back and forward, to the best of what was, and innovate something we’ve not yet dared try, and push out of this broken, fear based system for once and for ever.

I’ll have more to say on all this.

The next sermon is the last Sunday of the month for something harvest and equinox

Anne Boleyn – champion of free thinking

Although Anne is the mother of Elizabeth, for me – Elizabeth begat Anne.

When Elizabeth (1998) became my favourite film, I wondered who “your mother the whore” was, and gradually took a step back in time to the previous generation – and there found an equally, if not even more remarkable woman.

The first time I read about Anne Boleyn was in 2002 and I came to her almost in ignorance. I dismissed people in my lunch hour, saying I was in 1533 and not available. As I read Philippa Gregory’s novel about Anne’s sister, I suddenly remembered the rhyme about Henry’s wives and what was going to happen.

By the time Gregory’s venomous pen had done depicting this conniving, hard, brutal woman, I was willing Anne to be executed; but by the time I picked up Vercor’s book, I wanted to put flowers on her grave.

Vercors is a photographer’s pen name, whose novelised biography says that the evil, grasping concubine did not make sense; and that underneath the deliberately etched layers was a heroine – for women, for  England – but most of all, free thinking believers. And strangely, it took a Frenchman trying to make sense of our independence from Hitler in the second world war to see it.

Just as Joan of Arc was resurrected at a time of resurgent nationalism in France, it seems Anne Boleyn is ripe for a similar rediscovery on many levels – yet she has not really been used.

The harsh view of Anne prevailed over four centuries, but there seemed to be a concurrent re-imagining in the 1980s. Professor Eric Ives, historic fiction writer Jean Plaidy, and Vercors all published in around the same year. Theirs was a different Anne to what had gone before – a maligned woman of sympathy, talent, though complex and potentially with a hard streak. And except for Philippa Gregory, books all have followed this portrayal since – whether they be fiction or academic – but not yet on the screen. Howard Brenton’s recent play is all about the debt that King James  and his Bible owed to the supposed strumpet a hundred years earlier.

Joanna Denny’s focus is summed up by her idea that Anne was a neo-Esther, something Anne herself propagated by having her chaplain preach on this in front of the royal court. Likening Anne to Esther recalls not wicked grasping Jezebel but another Old Testament queen, chosen by the king, which gave her an opportunity to save her minority group of endangered religious people. Denny emphasises Anne’s controversial new beliefs and her daring work to use her position to promote them when such beliefs were persecuted. Denny sees Anne as wooed against her wishes and morals, and argues that the portrait (quite literally) was deliberately obscured by her enemies. The dark features, mole and sixth finger are traits attributed in the 16^th C to diabolism which were invented to destroy the memory of this powerful woman.

Professor Ives and Joanna Denny write about her faith extensively, the latter making it Anne’s principle driving force.

I’ve read in fiction and academic sources of Anne’s forbidden religious book (The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale) being stolen by Wolsey and given to Henry. Anne uses this opportunity to discuss the book’s radical ‘New Learning’ contents with Henry, and so influence him with protestant beliefs.

Henry was not interested in reforming the church. After Luther pinned his 95 points on that church door, Henry wrote an impassioned, I think quite immature letter to defend the catholic church. It was his advisor Thomas Cromwell who is understood to have used Henry’s marriage and pope dilemma to allow divergence of belief to come openly and safely into England, and I believe that Anne and Cromwell initially worked together on this.

What Anne’s beliefs were and how to term them might need some clarification. She has been called evangelical. The term ‘Evangelical’ – not quite as we understand it –  was less radical than the Lollards, and not really heretical. It was not the same as being Protestant. The key features of evangelicalism, as today, were reading the Bible for oneself; accessing God direct and not through a priest; being against superstition; and one’s personal relationship with God. Anne is said to have exposed the fake miracle at Hailes abbey of Christ’s flowing blood (actually provided thought a duck’s blood dispensing machine). Anne has been spoken of as Lutheran, yet Karen Lindsey and Eric Ives claim that Anne’s faith was not wholly opposed to the established church, and that she had a confessor and took mass, and did not denounce transubstantiation – only its trappings.

It might occur to some that if Anne had a reformed faith, that scheming involving adultery, wealth and power are incompatible with it. Ives says that 16th C didn’t see God’s and personal glory as incompatible, just as some people today feel wealth is part of their spirituality.

Something which is not readily emphasised about Anne is her moral household –  and her generosity to the poor which went beyond the usual royal favour.  She expected her ladies to sew for the poor, and was likely to be behind a Poor Reform Bill of 1536. She was also a patron of schools and universities, and rallied for her patronees. Being a reluctant focus of passion and harassment is very different to pursuing Henry purposely – and she did refuse to be his mistress.

Belief is a choice, and is ultimately, I believe what appeals rather than on argument and proof alone (that subject is another article). So I choose to see Anne as an Esther, a renaissance woman of power, taste and intellect, and I take particular interest in her reformed faith. Anne’s faith was of intellect and heart with practical outworking. And it allowed divergence into non conformism.

I therefore with others think that it was not Henry, and not really William Tyndale that caused the English reformation – but Queen Anne Boleyn of England, the Moost Happy [sic], who was crowned (depending on which calendar you use) this week, 480 years ago.

Anne Boleyn at the Globe

I am having a summer of Tudors. I have had many such summers as I have studied these over a period of 11 years, but I even when I spent a year academically researching their popular depictions, I have never seen so many plays on Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn in a few months as in these past ones.

I have just seen the production at the neo-Elizabethan Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, on its opening weekend – a new play which sold out last year, as was the performance to which I went.

In his introduction to his script, playwright Howard Brenton quotes the views of historians David Starkey and Antonia Fraser, reflecting the likely opinion of the public. He does not mention Prof Eric Ives and Joanna Denny whose prominent books depict a very much more positive Anne. Joanna especially – as does Karen Lindsey – writes of the systematic demonisation of Anne’s character. All three remind that our few historical contemporary sources are chiefly Anne’s enemies, none of whom featured in Brenton’s play. Books – both novels and academic – have been ahead by 30 years in showing Anne as a national heroine, but stage and screen still cast Anne as the ambitious, hard siren. Philippa Gregory’s 2002 novel and ensuing film adaptations have done much to reverse this positive literary view, which has become in vogue again with most recent publications.

Brenton’s 2010 play promised a view closer to the one I adopted: the Reformist queen: ‘Esther not Jezebel’ – the title pf my 2006 dissertation. (I had attributed it to Joanna Denny, but I think it is my own). American author Robin Maxwell had Queen Elizabeth I reading her mother’s words in her novel The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn; Howard Brenton has King Authorised Bible James reading Anne’s annotated Christian book and realising his connection to the fallen queen of two generations ago who suffered the same fate as his mother. (I never use the phrase that the blurb does – his debt. As you’ll see from my Justice in Banking blog on this site, I have strong views against debt culture). Note too that being executed does not denote failure, but rather a brutal signal of mission accomplished.

I was interested that a play was picking up the religious theme, as often theology is seen as too heavy and dull for entertainment, particularly when we are a multi and often no faith society. But the themes of tolerance and violence and faith recur, and spirituality is again popular though not always in established, orthodox ways. And this 16/17th C period is a seminal one in our history in which the burgeoning of new beliefs is central.

I was drawn to the play because it was written by a man who evidently could see Anne’s merits – significant as I felt Anne appealed most to women. But it was Eric Ives in 1986 who said that Anne was an appropriate vehicle for feminism – though few have picked up that gauntlet – and it’s women who have written many of the works which fuel popular imagination that recast her as Jezebel.

It may seem obvious given its performance setting, but I didn’t expect Howard’s play to feel so Shakespearean, in the rowdy audience, bawdy and earthy kind of way. The experience of the Globe merits a few lines – booking fees, standing without umbrella or stick for £5 or, of if you pay £15-37 for a seat, there’s charges for cushions (and the wooden seats have lips which I think are designed to make you need one – but I managed without); and a foreign group behind me who whispered throughout (translating to a child who was too young to be there) and put their feet on the seats. The atmosphere was closer to comedy than serious theatre, though there were both elements in the play. King James romps in a dress with ‘interesting stains’ with a male courtier whom he kisses; it starts with the ghost of Anne bringing her severed head out in a bag; and it ends with an all cast jig.

James (Garnon/Stuart) perhaps was the most charismatic character on the stage, his strong Scots accent mixed with a tick, his camp manner helped by his shoes and beard. While we’re on accents: I am infuriated that the country folk once again got that generic West Country which is insulting and ignorant. There are many Eastern and southern counties accents, all quite distinct, and they sounded no more convincing than The Worzel’s Combine Harvester song, which was at least meant to be comedic. It’s like getting all North American or Celtic accents muddled. Actors and dialect coaches, take note!

I was not pleased at Anne’s physical appearance. She is famous for being dark, though Joanna Denny believes this is part of the demonisaton programme as ‘swarthy’ skin was seen as a sign of diabolism – appalling as that notion is. Denny believes that Anne was dark auburn, as per the most likely genuine contemporary portrait of Anne – but nowhere have I heard of her as blonde. Couldn’t Miranda Raison have dyed her hair or worn a wig? And couldn’t Henry be red haired? And why did Cardinal Wolsey have a beard?

I did not like the gore lust of the opening but I did like that Anne begins by assuming the knowledge of her death – which we never see – and by establishing a rapport with the audience. I liked the originality and pertinence of linking her and King James and the amount of material covered in an engaging way. Anthony Howell made a positive King Henry, kind instead of raging over the birth of a girl; but the man who had so many butchered in his name is relieved of too much of his violent, cruel and inhuman side. My favourite Henry remains Ray Winstone, whose complex depiction was the first to show me a man whom I could weep for as well as despise. Sometimes in Howard’s version, earthy comments – such as what Henry really wishes to say in his letters to Anne – mar the real point: the vulnerability of Henry’s enduring, consuming passion which must extend further than his tights to have raged so long and moved so much to be with her.

The audience was too quick to laugh at anything. The person who called out ‘ah’ in sympathy with broken Cardinal Wolsey was more correct that those who giggled, but either response turned this into a panto rather than the moment of pathos. When an important theological tenet dawns on Henry – that he could be king and head of the church without need of the pope and thus have his new wife – again, there was laughter. But it wasn’t essentially about being funny, it was the turning point of the play and British history. We spent too much of the play in Caliban mentality rather than the Prospero and Ferdinand.

My gripe had been til this weekend that no-one has explained Anne’s swift demise satisfactorily. Brenton shows something I have not found in my research or other books – I hope to discover where he found it. (I wrote and he told me: Eric Ives). But if it is true, it does account for the scheme to scaffold that in 3 weeks had the most powerful woman in the kingdom’s head in a basket. If Anne knew that Cromwell was embezzling ex monastic funds meant for charity, she had the key in which to bring about his downfall as Wolsey and More. (No temperate, cuddly Mr Northam here; this [absent] More is a torturer). Cromwell would take his advice to Anne earlier in the play, and strike before struck. The charges of multiple adultery and incest – treason in themselves – seem ridiculous, but perhaps an insecure king who could love and hate in equal measure could be persuaded in a very intense period to sign the death warrant.

But the frustration is that Brenton potentially closes one mystery but leaves something else unsatisfactory. The villain we focus on, particularly after Wolsey leaves, is Thomas Cromwell. The slippery faced multi officed politician always features heavily in Tudor plots, and he is usually credited as being the man who brought Anne’s death about. Here he is portrayed as a fellow in faith, aiding illicit Reformist texts and their author’s passage out of the country. Yet his secret Protestant beliefs clash with his vile practices of threats and spying. They also don’t prevent Cromwell’s clandestine bond with Anne turning sour very suddenly and without enough explanation. One moment, they are sharing a prayer; suddenly he’s arresting her, banning her from speaking to or seeing her husband, and making up charges against her. The play – as with many other stories – does not say that Cromwell is executed during Henry’s reign, rather less efficiently than Anne’s French swordsman.

The jaunty dance at the end ruined the power of the ending. It should have ended with the ghost of Anne taking James’ hand – a quiet, poignant gesture. Instead the 150 minutes is augmented by cheering stamping dances that aren’t even fitting, and those final moments are quickly forgotten in their wake.

Ultimately, I am a little disappointed, but that is because it didn’t show my Anne; but that is good, because it leaves the way open for me to do so myself.