Files
Click on an image to view its copyright status.
Description
Tercentenary events took many forms, ranging from large-scale public entertainments, like pageants, to small-scale lectures held at chapels and churches. The latter events tended to be aimed at members of non-conformist communions, often under the auspices of the Free Church Council. But Harrogate’s was one of relatively few Mayflower celebrations to take the form of an interdenominational meeting. There the Harrogate Council of Christian Congregations brought together non-conformist brethren with the Anglican establishment.
The audience for the event was large and the speakers and attendees came from the established and non-conformist churches, but also from academia – both religious and secular. The Rev. Professor Underwood, from the Baptist Rawdon College, and Arthur James Grant, Professor of History at Leeds University, both gave talks, though of a very different kind. The organisers of the Harrogate meeting managed to bring together religious and civil scholarship, as well as Christians from across the non-conformist and establishment divide.
Here we can see an interesting analogy between the “difficult pasts” we face in the twenty-first century. The vicar of Harrogate’s Christ Church, Rev. D.S. Guy, had the difficult task of explaining the behaviour of the Church of England of three hundred years ago. Guy opened proceedings by in effect disavowing the actions of the Church of England of the seventeenth century. The passage of three hundred years had given a perspective that those in the past could not have had and, as he was at pains to point out, the Church of England of the twentieth century would behave very differently towards men of sincere religion like the Mayflower separatists in the present-day. He also professed admiration for the patriotism of the Pilgrim Fathers, echoing a sentiment that was increasingly prevalent since the nineteenth century: that the Mayflower Pilgrims had understood English liberty better than the Englishmen who stayed behind.
Professor Grant, historian at Leeds University spoke next. Grant had begun his career publishing books on classical Greece, but, with the onset of war, he turned towards modern Europe and the history of international relations. He brought this erudition to bear in his lecture, which began by elaborating on the political and religious context of the seventeenth century but ended as a paean to the League of Nations. And, while praising those elements in the United States, “the best in America”, which advocated for the League, Grant intimated that Britain itself must maintain allegiance with the League at all costs. Grant was typical of many academic voices of the time. Historians, classicists, economists, biblical scholars, political scientists: most were united in their support of the League of Nations.
Professor Underwood, of Rawdon College, ended with what was a somewhat predictable note: the Pilgrims underwent sacrifices and great hardship of a kind unknown to the modern Christian. Modern Christians had instead an “armchair Christianity”, which allowed them to recline and enjoy the luxuries of modern life. Such moralising was likely as tedious for the audience then as it seems to us today. But what was interesting about Underwood’s message was that it was aimed not just at non-conformists, but also at the best of the Anglican communion, whose piety he willingly acknowledged and commended.