Milton-Obama; liberty, faction, faith

How can nations founded on liberty and difference hold together and get anything done? Or churches, for that matter? Is what you need centralised nutcrunching authority? Head Office? Your own Mikado?

Absolutely not, says John Milton. Preparing an address for his 400th birthday bash I was struck by the power of Milton’s broad vision for England, at a time it lay in ruins after the civil war. His recipe was not repression, but liberty. Rulers should release the inherent strength of people, rather than holding them down, censoring, or suppressing their energies. Thus his Address to the Lords and Commons of England (1644):

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heavenly radiance.

It is the duty of the Lords and Commons to nurture free private citizens, not slavish conformists, in a way Milton associated with Roman Catholic countries. This develops people’s capacities, rather than treating them like naughty children and enforcing servitude.

Consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to...

He talks of sectarianism, and the energy faction induces, and the seeming weakness of Liberty, that actually encourages difference to flourish; seemingly a weakness... In fact the broad dispersing of authority is a strength, not a weakness:

For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great Prophet may sit in heav'n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfill'd, when not only our sev'nty Elders, but all the Lords people are become Prophets. No marvell then though some men, and some good men too perhaps, but young in goodnesse, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weaknes are in agony, lest these divisions and subdivisions will undoe us. The adversarie again applauds, and waits the hour, when they have brancht themselves out, saith he, small anough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will be ware untill he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill united and unweildy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over timorous of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to perswade me...

True leadership is not about suppressing dissent, but helping free people frame smaller issues in their bigger context. Intractable issues are usually based on false antithesis; ask a silly question and you get a silly answer. Worrying away at intractables in their own terms is what gums up the works. Of course there are people in any organisation who thrive on gridlock and frustration, because it provides an arena within which they can posture and bully their way, indulging ego, building their own significance.

What the impossible issues need is reframing in some context within which people can get traction, discover and release their inner energy, and come gather, persuaded, around a bigger vision. Release that energy, and all the Lord’s people become prophets...

Liberalism, religion, Milton at 400

Today’s the Day! John Milton’s 400th Birthday. In Horton Church I accidentally trod on Milton’s mother’s grave, back in October. Tut, tut. As well as his family’s home, this county boasts Milton’s Cottage at Chalfont St Giles, where he wrote Paradise Lost, whilst sheltering from the London plague. There is a timeless quality about Milton’s writing, and relevance. Awhile back the Church produced a report called In Tune with Heaven, duly excoriated by Paul Johnson, especially the title, which he denounced as typical trendy Church of England, a mindless genuflection to the ad-speak of the 1960’s. People who knew much about music would instantly recognise this title (from Parry’s anthem) as a quote from John Milton’s Sonnet At a Solemn Musick — a mindless genuflection, perhaps, but to the sixteen sixties, not the nineteen sixties. Some people, but not Paul Johnson, could tell the difference between a Sixties advertising jingle and John Milton. But it’s an interesting mistake.

Milton is hardly a likeable figure, but the power of his mature epic writing stands him head and shoulders above the crowd. There’s something maddening about the precocious effeminate boy who conceives the bold design of being a writer, often treading the narrow line between brilliant and insufferable. Milton certainly suffers from some modern critics whose religious and biblical illiteracy doth not help them understand what they are reading. So why read Milton today, apart from poetick grist to the lit crit mill?

It is fundamentally wrong to think Milton a “Puritan,” in blanket terms. As an adult he was very much an Independent, emphatically not a Presbyterian (thus his quip about new presbyter being old priest writ large.) His own personal theology, De Doctrina Christiana, unpublished in his lifetime, was pretty much libertarian, with touches of Arianism, and eccentric flourishes like having a personal theology in the first place. Now all our theologies are profoundly personal, like it or not.

Milton detested bishops, or what he called prelaty, with its controlling tendencies, prisons and enforcement schemes. He detested all tyrannies, civil and religious. He radically rejected any notion that faith for grown ups can be based on authority and coercion as opposed to conviction freely arrived at. Like his views on divorce, these are not comfortable positions, even today, but they are his considered view. It is interesting how we now live in a Monarchy with an established Church, but whose processes have transformed from within over 350 years to a point strikingly similar to much that Milton enivisaged. As we all have to learm when we leave student politics behind, Railing against the system is cheap and easy, but process is infinitely more important than structure to quality of life and human outcome.

As much as Milton would have abominated the Diocese of Oxford along with bishops and all their works, he might have endorsed two aspects of our present operations:

1. The abolition of tithes, an almost obsessional bugbear of JM. He believed it wrong to run the Church off anything except voluntary contributions. From 1843 to 1920 his wishes came true, and tithes were abolished. I couldn’t say everyone is that much more keen on their replacement, Parish Share, than Milton was on tithes!
2. His famous tract on the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates warmly endorses servant ministry — the legitimacy of authority for Milton rests not on anointing, custom or revelation, but on its conformity to Christ’s servant example.

At a time the word “Liberal” has for some become simply the habitual term of abuse; the catch-all sneer-at label, it’s worth reading Milton’s Areopagitica again. In it Milton lays down one of the basic foundational building blocks of an open society. Neither Pope nor State have any privileged role, says Milton, in censoring, defining or defending public truth. The most dyed in the wool political and religious Conservatives use and take for granted this liberty of thought and speech, along with the rest of us.

Thanks to Graham Peacock for a Poster which, in itself, serves as an instant summary of English History 1649-1660. John Milton neither panicked, nor freaked out. A resurrected Milton would doubtless be online, blogging away at the tyrannies and self-deception of our powers that be. He believed that monarchies and theologies of infallibility in the Church bred a sick, servile society. He would fall about laughing at people craven enough, as he would see it, to imagine final religious authority could be found in any human source, least of all popery, Protestant or Catholic.

Challenging stuff — So, he might well be asking us,“However much you hate the word, are you not all Liberals now?”
What’s the difference between liberalism as an essential precondition of an open society, and the liberalism people use as a term of abuse?

How those Christians love one another

Great to take the morning service in Burnham, Slough yesterday, and see the new Vicar, Bill Jackson, settling in so well. Readings were Romans 13 (whatever regulation, love is the fulfilling of the law) with a gospel from Matthew about people being accountable to the body, and direct with one another when wronged. People sometimes make it sound as though “the faith once delivered to the saints” is an entirely dogmatic reality. In fact it does, as I understand it, include the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ enacted parable of the women taken in adultery, and these remarkable words from Romans... Gospel is inherently relational; and more people don’t believe in God because they perceive relational deficits in Church than because of any dogmatic factor.

Feeling a little sappy about loving other Christians, someone showed me a bit of graffiti at St Peter’s. The Church was trashed about 350 years ago in the English Civil War, and around that time someone inscribed on a pillar

THE:P
OPE:IS
A KNAV
E:

I suppose Alexander VII probably was a bit of a card (Alexander VI Borgia certanly was). Those were the days...