History of Church and State

In a world where the very worst people pose as defenders of "Judeo-Christian" civilization, priests have always raped children with impunity, Buddhists slaughter Rohingya women and children, every Evangelical Christian pastor seems to be in bed with Donald Trump, and endless violence in the Middle East seems to get much of its sanction from religious affilation  (I could go on), I was struck by the article "What's a Muslim to do about Hajj?" in Slate magazine online.

I’ve always dreamed of converging with fellow Muslims on the location believed to be the birthplace of our final prophet, and where the first words of the Quran were revealed: Iqra. Read.

Now I’m starting to wonder how I can go at all. And I’m also wondering why more Muslims don’t question the powers that control our most sacred site—and how the Saudis have already twisted it to their own political and financial ends.

...To participate in one of our religion’s most important rites, we shouldn’t have to look past the Saudis’ merciless, brutal campaign in Yemen. We shouldn’t have to look past decades of notorious and flagrant human-rights abuses.

History of cemeteries in a secular age

Congregations dwindle, and churches close all over.  In the cities they sometimes turn into condos. In rural areas they may re-emerge as private homes or retail outlets or community halls.

But the cemeteries beside them endure. Who takes care of them when the congregations are gone?

In Cornwall, Ontario, recently, the problem was handed over to a backhoe and a dumptruck, and tombstones dating back to the 1830s ended up as rubble.

Turns out there actually is an agency for these matters, the Bereavement Authority of Ontario, and it is not pleased with the Presbyterian church that ordered the demolition.

That’s the law. When you’re buried, you’re buried in perpetuity…forever. The cemetery has to be responsible for the care and maintenance of a grave site.

As it happens, a large crowd of my ancestral in-laws are buried in a rural Catholic cemetery in western,Ontario. The church, like many others in that diocese, is long closed, but upkeep for the many little graveyards like it is apparently a serious ongoing burden for the diocese. Perpetuity does not come cheap.

Meanwhile, Cornwall historian and friend of this blog Stuart Manson has to take it personally:

He says his fourth great-grandfather, James Gillie, was and is probably still buried there.
“Our family has no knowledge about his body being disinterred and moved like some apparently were. So, from our perspective, he still lies still there in that cemetery although he’s probably rolling in his grave right now,” Manson said.

Photo credit: The Cornwall Newswatch -- which seems to do a pretty good job covering local news, in an era when local news outlets are about as endangered as local cemeteries.

Blair Stonechild, Histories of reconciliation

Last night in Toronto, Blair Stonechild, historian at the Indigenous University of Canada in Regina, was in Toronto talking at St. Joseph's Chapel on the University of Toronto campus about "Reconciling with Indigenous Spirituality," and referencing his recent book The Knowledge Seeker: Embracing Indigenous Spirituality.

I've been reading more about the treaty relationship and control of resources and sovereignty than about spirituality as elements in the reconciliation that is needed. Stonechild didn't directly address the connections between the two. It's complicated.  But he impressed a large audience last night.

Luther: In the beginning was the word

So you were thinking 2017 would be noted for the 150th anniversary of Confederation, or the centenary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, or, say, women voting in a Canadian federal election.

There are competitors.  In Wittenburg, it's all about Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in 1517, and somewhat inadvertently launching the Protestant Reformation:

Thesis 86: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"

The nailing to the door part may be a legend, sez Wikipedia, but next year Wittenburg (pop c.6000) is going to be all over it.  Wittenburg, Nova Scotia, maybe not so much.

History of Anglicans: Ridley College at 125

At the private Catholic boys school where I did my high school years, the understanding was that there were Catholics and then there was a vast undifferentiated mass of non-Catholics all pretty much blurred together. It was something of a surprise to me some years later, to encounter an Anglican with a precisely reversed perspective: she saw the world as C of E and then everyone else. I’m not sure it had much to do with theology or faith in either case. For the Catholics it was a tribal loyalty; for my friend it was maybe more tinged with class consciousness.

Much later, the DCB asked me to write its Volume 15 entry on one Newman Hoyles. Hoyles was being included mostly for his legal career, which I knew something about. But I became intrigued to encounter through him another Christian subdivision I’d never really considered before: the low and the high Anglicans, and particularly the feud between them in Toronto and Ontario in the late 19th century.

As I now understand this (mostly from my immersion in Hoyles), low Anglicans were/are “protestant:” evangelical, anti-hierarchical, and aspiring to a direct, unmediated experience of faith, while the high Anglicans were/are “Anglo-Catholic:” respectful of hierarchy, convinced of the wisdom of authority and received tradition, and not entirely accepting that there had ever really been a “protestant” schism between Rome and Canterbury. (There is a good deal of scholarship, notably by Curtis Fahey and Alan Hayes, to put this corner of Canadian church history much better.)

Anyway, my man Newman W. Hoyles was not at all low society but he was very much low Anglican. Alongside his career in the law, he lent much time to helping build up low-Anglican institutions to parallel the high-Anglican ones Ontario had inherited from the Bishop Strachan/established church/clergy reserve times. By the end of Hoyles's career, the low Anglicans had Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto to match the high Anglican Trinity. They had the elite girls’ school Havergal as their alternative to Bishop Strachan School. They had the Evangelical Churchman to balance whatever the high Anglican paper was called.

And in 1889 they launched the private boys’ school Ridley College in St. Catharines to counter Upper Canada College in Toronto. Newman Hoyles, then 45 and established in both his legal career and his low-Anglican good works, was very much involved. The name alone suggests what the evangelical Anglicans thought of Anglo-Catholicism. None of that Cardinal Newman stuff for them: poor Nicholas Ridley was burned at the stake in England during the Catholic restoration under Queen Mary. My tribal-Catholic remnant found this all two-churches-in-one thoroughly implausible, but my more dominant historian side was kinda charmed.

Which is all to say that this year Ridley College school (not just boys any more) is observing its 125th birthday, and I was asked if I’d like to take note. Duly noted.

Image: Ridley College

History of Religion: Jim Flaherty's Faith

When Jim Flaherty died last week, much was made of his "Irishness."  Clearly a personality was implied more than a citizenship (Flaherty was born in Ontario; his parents came from New Brunswick). The implication was: gregarious, male-bonded, pub-friendly, a little rough around the edges, and socially-conservative -- probably a kid who went to a Catholic boys high school where one of the brothers coached the hockey team.

Indeed, Wikipedia sez Flaherty went to Bishop Whelan and Loyola High Schools and went to university in the US on a hockey scholarship.  That fits!

Except his state funeral today is at St James, the Anglican cathedral in Toronto. Just the most convenient location? Was he never a Catholic after all, or did he convert somewhere along the path? It's certainly an old Upper Canadian tradition: converting to the elite church as you seek to move up in the world.

The nice thing about this is that nobody really gives a damn. He could have been some generic 20th century agnostic for all anyone cares. I have not seen a peep in the media about the significance of the place where his funeral is being held.  You can still call Jim Flaherty Irish, but those old tribal religious identities just don't seem to matter any more.  Hurrah.

Rest in peace, Jim Flaherty.

Update, April 16:  Bob Rowlands of St John's comments:

You ascribe a sordid motivation to Jim Flaherty’s move from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism when you write, “It’s certainly an old Upper Canadian Tradition: converting to the elite church as you seek to move up in the world.” What a snide, cynical remark! That you would write such a thing in a public forum perhaps says more about you than it does about Jim Flaherty.

Sainte-Kateri

I was inclined to be more creeped out than moved by this weekend's lavish canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha, the young Mohawk woman who died in a Jesuit-led mission community outside Montreal in 1680. Alienated from much of her nation and much given to corporal mortification, she has always seemed a tragic figure rather than a role model, and copping a sainthood from Pope Benedict  seems like, I dunno, accepting an honorary degree from a shady online college.

But one could not help but be impressed by the substantial number of Mohawk and other First Nations people for whom this was important and affirming, who said, "This shows we can be respected too."

A reminder: for historians, the story on this is Allan Greer's Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits.  As one reviewer said, "In rescuing the "lily of the Mohawks" from her hagiographers, Allan Greer has produced an utterly fascinating volume."  Greer mentions that the Jesuit-driven cult of Kateri was such that one could argue she was the most famous Canadian who ever lived.  I saw no mention of Allan's work in the media coverage of the canonization events.

Update:  Brian Busby reminds me that Leonard Cohen introduced a lot of people to Kateri Tekakwitha too!