Category Archives: The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Lilias Trotter — August 28

Africa, Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

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Bible connection

…unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. —Matthew 5:20

All about Lilias Trotter (1853-1928)

Lilias Trotter has been recently reintroduced to our century through the documentary, Many Beautiful Things, which depicts her life and vision.

Trotter was born in England in 1853 to an upper-middle-class family. She was a gifted artist and was told she could be England’s greatest living artist, but in order to do so, she would have to give herself totally to her art. At the same time, Lilias had a growing faith which encouraged her not only in her personal spiritual growth, but also in service to others.

Trotter felt the call from God to go to North Africa and serve the Lord there. She thought she had to choose between pursuing her career as an artist and answering the call God had placed on her heart. She chose to follow God. As a single woman who was denied support from a mission agency because of health issues and who didn’t know the language or culture, going to Africa was a radical decision.

Here’s a peek at her life story. Lilias Trotter’s father died when she was twelve. She was devastated. Fortunately, the family’s financial circumstances were only comparatively diminished by his loss. When the family moved to 40 Montagu Square, their next-door neighbor was writer Anthony Trollope.

In her early twenties, Trotter and her mother were greatly influenced by the Higher Life Movement, and Lilias joined the volunteer force that counseled inquirers during the London campaign meetings of American evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Trotter’s mother thought her self-taught daughter was an exceptional artistic talent. In 1876, she sent some of Lilias’ drawings to art critic and social philosopher John Ruskin while all three were staying in Venice—the latter while recovering from the early death of Rose La Touche, a young pupil to whom he had proposed marriage. Ruskin praised Trotter’s artistic skill, and she became an informal student and a good friend despite the disparity in their ages. Ruskin told Trotter that if she would devote herself to her art “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be Immortal.”

Although Trotter was drawn to the prospect of a life in art, in May 1879, she decided that she could not give herself “to painting and continue still to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’” Trotter became active in the Welbeck Street YWCA and served as secretary, “a voluntary position usually filled by women like herself from wealthy families.” She did a considerable amount of teaching and (unusually for respectable young women of the period) fearlessly canvassed the streets alone at night near Victoria Station for prostitutes who might be persuaded to train for an employable skill or to simply spend a night in a hostel. In 1884, suffering from physical and emotional exhaustion, she underwent surgery which, though “slight in nature…left her very ill.” Apparently her heart was permanently damaged in the process.

During the next few years, Trotter felt an impulse toward missionary work in non-Christian lands, even telling one of her friends that “whenever she prayed, the words ‘North Africa’ sounded in her soul as though a voice were calling her.” In May 1887, when a missionary to North Africa asked at a religious meeting if God was calling anyone to North Africa, Trotter rose and said, “He is calling me.” On her thirty-fourth birthday, she applied as a candidate to the North African Mission—which then rejected her because she was unable to pass its health examination. However, because she had the resources to be self-supporting, the Mission decided that she might “work in harmony” with the society without being an official member.

Nine months later, Trotter and two other financially independent women—including Blanche Haworth, who for more than thirty years played “Martha” to Trotter’s “Mary,” arrived in Algiers. Trotter recalled, “Three of us stood there, looking at our battle-field, none of us fit to pass a doctor for any society, not knowing a soul in the place, or a sentence of Arabic or a clue for beginning work on untouched ground; we only knew we had to come. Truly if God needed weakness, He had it!”

The women moved into the French quarter and diligently studied Arabic through French study materials and eventually through a professional tutor. They also learned how do domestic work, all of them previously having had their needs met by servants.

Later Trotter said that the early years were like “knocking our heads against stone walls,” but the women were indefatigable, trying one technique after another in an attempt to make inroads into the Algerian culture and all the while improving their Arabic. Eventually Trotter was able to gain access to the heavily secluded women by first befriending their children. The outreach to women, she believed, was a “great line of cleavage in the rock face of Islam.”

Converts were banished, beaten, even (Trotter believed) poisoned with “mind drugs” that were to be administered in food or drink and would produce “a paralysis of mind and will.” Many converts died, and Trotter “came to rejoice in their loss. ‘We were glad to let them go….One draws a breath of relief when they get safe home [to heaven].’”

Trotter’s health was so seriously impaired that she regularly spent extended periods of convalescence in Great Britain or on the continent. Adding to the difficulties of the English missionaries was French colonial suspicion of their activities. The local government bought a house across the street and for three years lured potential converts away with competing classes. Spies and gendarmes even followed the women into the southern desert and threatened fines and imprisonment for any who went near them or accepted their literature.

Lessons from a Hero: What Lilias Trotter Can Teach Us Today
An illustration from Trotter’s Parables of the Cross.

By 1906, with warming relations between England and France, Trotter experienced less governmental antagonism and more freedom for her missionary work. In 1907 five new workers joined the “Algiers Mission Band.” By 1920, there were thirty full-time workers and fifteen preaching stations. Trotter became the reluctant, but unchallenged, leader of the group. Trotter was sensitive to the contemporary difficulty of a woman exerting authority over a man, but as the staff included more men, she shrewdly refined “the organizational system to capitalize on their leadership.” Trotter never solicited funds because she said God’s wealth was boundless.

Trotter was also a pioneer in attempting to adapt Christian missionary endeavor to the Algerian culture. Referring to evangelistic meetings as a “European idea,” she proposed evangelizing with “a native cafe on a Christian footing,” readings of the Bible in a “rhythmical recitative” accompanied by a drum, a craft house that would teach little girls embroidery, and a Christian retreat for women to “take the place of the outings to shrines which are their only chance of fresh air.” Trotter designed cards that had biblical passages drawn by an Arab scribe because “no one but a native can give the subtle lines & curves of the writing as they should be.” The mission society even published a series of cards with a sentence from the Koran followed by verses from the Old Testament.

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While Lilias turned her back on fame, she did not turn her back on her art. In addition to art found in her journals, she used her art in the pamphlets she created to share the gospel with the people in Algeria. Trotter was a “prodigious writer,” filling a journal page nearly every day for forty years and illustrating the world around her with sketches and watercolors. From these efforts came several books of somewhat flowery and mystical prose, including Parables of the Cross and Parables of the Christ-life. Though she considered orthodox Islam “dry as the dune, hard as the gravel,” she responded to the “sincere hunger for things of the spirit” in the Sufi mystics and wrote for them The Way of the Sevenfold Secret as a devotional guide based on the seven “I am” statements found in the Gospel of John.

Confined to bed during her last years, Trotter devoted herself to prayer, writing, and sketching while continuing to manage the affairs of the Algiers Mission Band as best she could. As her body failed, her mind remained clear, even at the end asking prayer for the strength to dictate a letter to Amy Carmichael of India, with whom she had regular correspondence. As she was dying, while attendants sang a hymn, she exclaimed, “A chariot and six horses.” “You are seeing beautiful things,” someone asked. “Yes,” she said, “many, many beautiful things.”

More

The documentary: Many Beautiful Things

The original biography.

Parables of the Cross online

What do we do with this?

Trotter was inspired by the higher life of notable Christians. Perhaps you will be inspired by her.

Trotter loved those who were marginalized. She ministered among the prostitutes in London and lived among the poor of Algiers, ministering with women and children. One Algerian woman shared this about her: “No one loved us like she did.” Lilias writes in her journal, “I have been thinking lately what a work for God it is just loving people.” In our current cultural climate of hatred for the ‘other’, we have an opportunity to be people of love, not hate. To overcome evil with good. 

She had courage to take risks, following where God was leading her. Her choices were radical, defying concern from friends and societal expectations. She served the Lord alone.

She was willing to turn her back on everything she knew and what was familiar and comfortable to follow God. She was willing to leave behind comforts, friends, culture, language, and fame. This is no different for people today who choose to follow Christ. It costs them everything. 

She recognized that her gift as an artist was from God; it wasn’t her own doing. While we might think we are where we are today because of our own abilities, in reality it is God who decided which time period, family, country, and gifts were given to us. We are simply stewards of all that we have and are to use our gifts for God’s glory and to further His kingdom.

She engaged in cross-cultural ministry by listening and learning from the people. She respected their culture. She did not come to the people with a paternalistic mindset; rather, she came as a fellow traveler in life and as a learner. She met physical needs as well as spiritual needs. She was driven to share the love of Christ with whomever she met.

William Booth — August 20

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

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Bible connection

Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer. – 2 Timothy 2:3-4

All about William Booth (1878-1912)

William Booth, “The Prophet of the Poor,” was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded The Salvation Army and became its first General (1878–1912). The Christian Mission he started in 1865 later acquired a quasi-military structure and government and spread to many parts of the world where it is now known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid.

After Booth died, 150,000 people filed by his casket, and 40,000 people, including Queen Mary (yes that Queen Mary), attended his funeral. It was a remarkable end for a man born into poverty and who worked in the midst of poverty his whole life.

Booth was born near Nottingham, England. His parents were not religious and lower middle class at best, with little education. His father, “a Grab, a Get,” according to Booth definition, died when he was 14. By that time, William was helping to earn the family income as a pawnbroker’s apprentice.

Sometime during his fifteenth year, Booth was invited by a couple to attend a Wesleyan chapel, where he decided to follow Jesus. He wrote in his diary, “God shall have all there is of William Booth.” Then came another life-changing experience: he heard Charles Finney (see Aug. 16) speak in a Nottingham church. The crowd led Booth to see that “soul-saving results may be calculated upon when proper means are used for their accomplishment.” Booth went on to make a lifelong commitment to Finney’s methods.

Booth and a group of friends set out to evangelize the poor. They made nightly open-air speeches, after which they invited people to meetings in homes. Their use of lively songs, short exhortations calling for a decision for Christ, and visitation of the sick and their converts (whose names and addresses they recorded) anticipated methods Booth would write into Salvation Army Orders and Regulations 30 years later. When he was criticized for using secular tunes to attract crowds, he replied, “Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven.”

When his pastor proposed that he prepare for ordained ministry, Booth accepted. The disorganized church to which he was called repelled him. During this period, he met Catherine Mumford. Beginning with their second meeting on Good Friday 1852, they entered one of the most remarkable relationships in Christian history. They married in June of 1855.

By 1861 Booth decided “settled ministry” did not suit him, and he resigned. He and Catherine became itinerant evangelists in Wales, Cornwall, and the Midlands, Britain’s “burned-over” districts. The Booths preached in lantern-lit tents on unused burial grounds, in haylofts, in rooms behind a pigeon shop—anywhere to fulfill his famous words, “Go for souls and go for the worst!”

An invitation for Catherine to preach in London in 1865 led him to accept temporary leadership of a mission in East London. That area in the 1860’s was a crowded, squalid, maze of hovels, 290 people to the acre. It was said that every fifth house was a gin shop, and most of them had special steps to help even the tiniest children reach the counter. After seeing some of East London’s gin palaces, he told Catherine, “I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, ‘Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labors?’”

Booth soon organized his own East London Christian Mission. In 1878, he energized it by giving it the name “Salvation Army,” with himself as the General. Military trappings were added over the next couple of years. The idea caught the imagination, and within ten years, the Salvation Army was established in the United States, Canada, and Europe as well.

Over the years, he and Catherine created an elaborate social relief system because he believed charity would speed the work of evangelism. In 1890, he published the best-selling In Darkest England and the Way Out to explain his social relief scheme.

At the time of his death, the Salvation Army had become a family-run Christian empire, with seven of the Booths’ eight children taking leadership positions. Today, following the pattern established by the first general, the Salvation Army marches on with over 25,000 officers in 91 countries.

Quotes:

“While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight—while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God—I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!”

“The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”

“God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.”

More

Get his story from the Salvation Army.

Hear William Booth in his own voice

Watch a dramatization of a vision if William Booth. [Try an artistic one with an English accent!]

Joan Kroc’s bequest of McDonald’s money to the Salvation Army changed things.

This video is a 1978 revision of materials discovered in 1953:

What do we do with this?

Booth’s passion caused some major relationship issues and division. At the same time it caused a lot of healing and drew people into relationship with Jesus who would never have gotten there through a more traditional church. Does anything move you, in particular these days? Are you movable? Booth would ask you, “What are you waiting for? Jesus did not hesitate to rescue you.”

Umeko Tsuda — August 16

Asia, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Bible Connection

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

He also told them this parable: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. — Luke 6:38-40 NIV

All about Umeko Tsuda (1864-1929)

Umeko Tsuda believed all women in Japan should have equal access to higher education and that only education could help improve women’s status in the country.

Tsuda Umeko was a Japanese educator who founded Tsuda University. She was the daughter of Tsuda Sen, an agricultural scientist. At the age of 7, she became Japan’s first female exchange student, traveling to the U.S. on the same ship as the Iwakura Mission, the government’s exploration tour of Western culture.

Tsuda was born in 1864 in Edo, present-day Tokyo. Four years later, the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate gave way to the Meiji period (1868–1912), when a new, young Japan sought to modernize its political, social, economic, cultural, and religious systems. In this era, Christian women came to play an important role in Japanese society.

While in the United States, Tsuda lived with Charles Lanman, the secretary of the Japanese legation, and his wife, Adeline, both of whom were committed Episcopalians. Inspired by their faith, Tsuda also embraced Christianity and was baptized.

When she turned 18, Tsuda returned to Japan and worked as a children’s tutor there. She soon returned to the United States to pursue an education at Bryn Mawr College, in a Philadelphia suburb, majoring in biology and education. During her second stay stateside, Tsuda became convinced that the only way to improve women’s status in Japan was to give them the same opportunity to enter higher education as men.

“Oh, women have the hardest part of life to bear in more ways than one. … Poor, poor women, how I long to do something to better your position!” she wrote in a letter to Adeline Lanman.

Existing schools for Japanese girls and women aimed only to educate them to be submissive wives, sisters, and daughters at home, whereas education for boys and men was far more comprehensive. Tsuda soon established the American Scholarship for Japanese Women to provide financial aid to women studying in the United States who would return to Japan to lead in developing women’s education. Some of them became influential political and educational leaders in Japan during and after the Meiji period.

Such inequality in educational opportunities was also why she founded Joshi Eigaku Juku, the Women’s Institute for English Studies, in 1900. The Tokyo-based school afforded women equal opportunities to pursue higher education in the liberal arts. After World War II, the Women’s Institute became Tsuda University, which is now one of the most prestigious institutes of higher education for women in Japan. Tsuda also became the first president of the Japanese branch of the World Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in 1905.

For all her accomplishments, Tsuda was not immune to discouragement:

“There is a great work to be done, but the laborers are indeed few. God bless the cause, and bless and keep us all. I wonder if I can ever do any good. … It is tiresome work, and I am not used to it all yet, and I don’t know how to work best for the Master’s cause,” she confessed in another letter to Adeline.

Tsuda’s legacy remains strong today. She was ranked one of the top 20 most prominent Japanese women in a 2019 survey by national magazine Tokyo Weekender, and her face will appear on the ¥5,000 bill starting in 2024.

As Tsuda wrote, “Somehow God seems to be opening the future [in] some way, and he has given me such a strange, wonderful, uncommon-place life, thus far, that it seems as if the future could not be merely useless.”

More

Bio from Japan Society of Boston  [link]

What do we do with this?

Can you imagine who you would be if your family had sent you to a new country when you were seven years old?

Tsuda might have married an American and settled into a nice, wealthy life in the Philadelphia suburbs. Instead, she went back to Japan and threw herself against the limits of her traditional society. She broke down many barriers. No doubt her faith encouraged her, like Jesus, to give what she had been given for the lives of others.

Charles Finney — August 16

North America, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Bible connection

Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

All about Charles Finney (1792-1875)

One time someone brought a shotgun to one of Charles Finney’s revival meetings, intending to kill him. May you cause that kind of trouble as you defy the powers!

Some people might not think Finney fits into the “cloud of witnesses” that make up our respected spiritual ancestors. He was the “father of modern revivalism.” He was the forerunner of Billy Graham in the sense that he popularized the “altar call” and other tactics many find a bit too coercive or manipulative. But his demands for living a truly Christian life, his determination to get something going, and his presumption that people could live up to their radical calling, is right up our alley. He was also among the first to have women and African Americans participating in his meetings as equals with white men. One story is that the altar call’s original purpose was to come forward to sign petitions to abolish slavery.

The zenith of Finney’s evangelistic career was in the 1830′s during the Second Great Awakening. In Rochester, New York, he preached 98 sermons that caused a ruckus.  Shopkeepers closed their businesses, posting notices urging people to attend Finney’s meetings. Reportedly, the population of the town increased by two-thirds during the revival, and crime dropped by two-thirds over the same period. In 1900 church historian Susan Hayes Ward wrote “The hearer at the time felt that Mr. Finney was talking to him personally rather than preaching before an audience…He did not speak about sinners in the abstract, but he talked to the individual sinners before him.”

In 1832 he began an almost continuous revival in New York City as minister of the Second Free Presbyterian Church, organized especially for him. In the middle of his installation service he became ill with cholera. Others who caught the disease that day died. Finney almost died, as well, and it was months before he could take up his full duties.

From its inception the church embraced Finney’s passionate anti-slavery stance.  Black worshipers were welcomed (albeit in a separated section) –- a policy which, coupled with Finney’s outspoken abolitionist sermons, did not sit well with many outsiders and newspapers.  During the riots of 1833, a mob broke into the church and attacked black members.  On July 8 the Courier and Enquirer spat “Another of those disgraceful negro-outrages &c., occurred last night at that common focus of pollution, Chatham Street Chapel” (Susan Hayes Ward).

In 1834 after further anti-abolitionist riots, Finney moved into the huge Broadway Tabernacle his followers built for him. He stayed there for only a year, leaving to pastor Oberlin Congregational Church in Ohio, and to teach theology at Oberlin College. In 1851, he was appointed president of the college, which gave him a new forum to advocate the social reforms he championed, especially the abolition of slavery. Oberlin College, under his leadership, was the first college to admit woman and black/brown people to be educated with white men.

Finney married evangelism to social reform, New Testament evangelism with Old Testament prophecy, piety with radicalism, and conversion with action. He got people talking and acting. He was not content with them simply receiving or consuming. His commitment to Jesus meant taking care of the poor and the needy, and his deep commitment to social reform was seen in the radicalism of Oberlin College and in his major push to end slavery. Those he inspired continued to take risks in order to relate to each other and change the world.

Finney quotes:

Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together. Never do they love one another so well as when they witness the outpouring of each other’s hearts in prayer.

No government is lawful or innocent that does not recognize the moral law as the only universal law, and God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge, to whom nations in their national capacity, as well as individuals, are amenable.

When there are dissensions, and jealousies, and evil speakings among professors of religion, then there is great need of a revival. These things show that Christians have got far from God, and it is time to think earnestly of a revival.

More

Oberlin College remembers Finney.

Questioning Finney’s legacy: Michael Horton, Christian History, PBS.

What do we do with this?

Don’t get yourself shot unless you have to, but how should you stir up enough trouble being a Christian that you arouse opposition? Ever think of doing that? Ever make a plan?

Pray for revival to break out. It would be great if people shut their business down (or turned off the TV) to come meet with Jesus followers and experience the presence of God!

Basil, Fool for Christ — August 2

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)
Icon of St. Vasily the Blessed (Bas relief, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow)

Bible connection

For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you! For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment. — 1 Corinthians 4:7-13 NIV

St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, viewed from Red Square

All about Basil, Fool for Christ (1468-1552/1557)

Basil is known as Vasily the Blessed, or Vasily, Fool for Christ, or Vasily, Wonderworker of Moscow, or Blessed Vasily of Moscow, Fool for Christ. He is one of the best known Russian Orthodox saints of the type known as a yurodivy or “holy fool.” He is so well known that one of the most iconic buildings in Moscow, near the Kremlin, was renamed in his honor.

Basil was born into a family of serfs in December 1468 in a village which is now a neighborhood in Moscow. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker and soon showed his unique calling. For instance, when a merchant ordered special boots but could not wait for them to be finished, he told the shoemaker he would get them when he returned the following year. Basil wept and said, “I wish you would cancel the order, since you will never wear them.” When his perplexed master questioned him, he explained that the man would not wear the boots because he as he would soon die. After several days the prediction proved true.

Basil adopted the eccentric lifestyle of other holy men who were known as fools for Christ. The role of “holy fool” is especially honored in the Russian Orthodox Church. Dostoevsky includes characters who are “holy fools,” Lizaveta and Sonya (the heroine), in Crime and Punishment. Tolstoy tells about Grisha, the holy fool who came onto his parents’ estate in his memoir. Francis of Assisi is a notable Roman Catholic example of a person who thought being a fool for Christ was his calling. While there is great variety among them, holy fools in every case are ascetic Christians living well outside the borders of ordinary social behavior, including conventional religious behavior. In many countries they might be locked away in asylums or simply ignored until the elements silence them, after which they would be thrown into unmarked graves.

Basil was known for walking through the streets of Moscow barefoot (in the cleaned up version of the story) or naked in the burning summer heat and the harsh winter cold. His actions were often strange. For instance, the story goes, one time he overturned a kalachi (sweetbread) stand, and another time he spilled a jug of kvas (near beer). The angry merchants beat him, but he endured the beatings with joy and he thanked God for them. Then, it was discovered that the kalachi were poorly cooked, and the kvas was badly prepared. Soon, his reputation grew, and people saw him as a holy fool, not just a fool, as a man of God, and a denouncer of wrong.

Basil preached mercy. He helped those who were ashamed to beg, but who were the most in need. He harshly condemned those who did not give alms for love but thought they could use the action to buy God’s blessings on their business. Basil passed by a house in people were drinking and wild and he wept and hugged the corner of the building. When Basil was asked why he answered: “Angels stand in sorrow at the house and are distressed by the sins of the people, but I entreat them with tears to pray to the Lord for the conversion of sinners.”

It is said that Basil could foresee the future. In 1547, he predicted the great fire of Moscow. It is said he extinguished a fire at Novgorod by prayer. Once he reproached Tsar Ivan the Terrible, because during worship he was preoccupied with thoughts of building a palace on the Vorobiev hills. Another time, Basil gave Tsar Ivan some meat during Lent, telling him it did not matter whether or not he fasted from eating meat, because of the murders he had committed.

Basil was so revered by Muscovites that, when he died, his thin body was buried, not in a pauper’s grave on the city’s edge, but next to the newly erected Cathedral of the Protection of the Mother of God. Tsar Ivan himself acted as pallbearer and carried his coffin to the cemetery. From that time people began calling the church St. Basil’s, because to go there meant one would pause to pray at Basil’s grave. Not many years passed before Basil was formally canonized. A chapel built over his grave became an integral part of the great building, adding one more onion dome to the eight already there.

More

History of St. Basil’s Cathedral [Wiki]

“The Way of the Holy Fools” by Jim Forest.

“Jesus the Holy Fool” by Hans Boersma.

Would you like to see the architectrure of the iconic church?

What do we do with this?

Paul sounds a bit irate when his detractors mock his foolishness for Christ. Jesus seems innocent, as if being a fool were normal and being normal were foolish. Basil seems like he can’t help himself because he is just not normal. What is unique about you that the world needs to see? What will it cost you to show it and what difference does it make if it costs you?

Conrad Grebel — August 1

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)
Conrad Grebel imagined by Oliver Wendell Schenk in 1972.

Bible connection

When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles. But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, “We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.” On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to.

Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.” At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.

The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”

Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!  — Acts 5:22-29

All about Conrad Grebel (1498–1526)

Conrad Grebel acted on his convictions with his twentysomething buddies (and quite a few older relatives) and catalyzed the Swiss Brethren, an offshoot of the Radical Reformation, later tagged the Anabaptists.

Grebel was born in Grüningen to Jakob and Dorothea Grebel. The family moved to Zurich when he was around fifteen years old.

Grebel spent six years in three universities but never earned a degree. In Paris he lived a wild life. When his father cut off his funds, he returned to Zurich.

In 1521, he met with a group led by Ulrich Zwingli, leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. The two studied Greek, Hebrew and the Latin Bible together.

His life changed in 1522 when he married a woman below his social class his family  found inappropriate. He later experienced a Christian conversion and underwent a dramatic lifestyle change, becoming an ardent supporter of Zwingli and his church reforms.

The next year differences between Grebel and Zwingli arose. Both men wanted the Catholic Mass to be abolished but when Zurich city councilmen did not favor it, Zwingli relented. Grebel believed the councilmen had no authority over the church and also didn’t think the church had authority over the state.

What he really believed in was the authority of the Bible. The principle that galvanized the new movement was adult baptism. The Bible did not mention infant baptism. But the church and state both used it — the fromer to control members and the latter to identify citizens. Grebel and his group believed only adults should be baptized on the basis of their profession of faith. On January 17, 1525, Zwingli called for a public debate on the issue. Felix Manz and George Blaurock joined Grebel on the side of believers’ baptism.

City council members and Zwingli disagreed and ordered Grebel’s group to disband and all unbaptized infants to be baptized. Grebel’s daughter was an infant, but he refused her baptism.

In the Home of Felix Manz’s Mother

Soon Grebel met with the exiled radicals and baptized Blaurock. Then Blaurock baptized Grebel, Manz and others present. Grebel traveled to St. Gall and preached the gospel of repentance and baptism, and more than 500 people responded to his call. This was the beginning of a significant radical outbreak that was soon suppressed.

In October 1525, Grebel was arrested. In prison he wrote a defense of adult baptism; what we know of it is from quotes in a Zwingli pamphlet from 1527. He escaped in March 1526 to continue preaching. A few months later he died of the plague at the age of 28.

His closest friends were martyrs — Manz was drowned in 1527, and Blaurock was burned at the stake in 1529.

Although his ministry was less than four years and his time as an Anabaptist only a year-and-a-half, Grebel’s contributions made him known as “The Father of Anabaptists.”

Quotes

Seek earnestly to preach only God’s word unflinchingly, to establish and defend only divine practices, to esteem as good and right only what can be found in definite clear Scripture, and to reject, hate, and curse all the schemes, words, practices, and opinions of all men, even your own. –– Letter to Thomas Munzter

Moreover, the gospel and its adherents are not to be protected by the sword, nor [should] they [protect] themselves, which as we have heard through our brother is what you believe and maintain. True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anguish and tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death, tried in fire, and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by slaying the physical but the spiritual. They use neither worldly sword nor war, since killing has ceased with them entirely, unless indeed we are still under the old law, and even there (as far as we can know) war was only a plague after they had once conquered the Promised Land. No more of this. — Also Letter to Thomas Muntzer

More

“The Face of Conrad Grebel” from the university that bears his name in Waterloo, Ontario [link]

Anabaptist Encyclopedia entry [link]

The story of the first baptisms from Plain Values. 

The Bruderhof have a nice history series:

What do we do with this?

If you are a twentysomething, or newly married with young children, take heart! People have done important things in your exact situation. You might also celebrate the  college students who have disrupted the U.S. response to the Gaza incursion by Israel.

The powers-that-be quickly put the kabosh on radical reform. They Catholic Church doesn’t allow any reform and will begin hunting down people who don’t toe the line, soon. But the more liberal Swiss canton leaders and rulers of the smaller states in Germany also have no taste for giving away they power to the people to make their own decisions, or even to read the Bible for themselves. This is the kind of discouragement your radical readers have expereinced first hand. What are you willing to suffer for Jesus and the truth of the Gospel?

 

Ignatius of Loyola — July 31

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

 


Bible connection

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. — 2 Timothy 2:1-7

All about Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556)

Ignatius Loyola was born in 1491 as Iñigo Lopez de Loyola, to a noble and wealthy Basque family, one of 13 children. As a young man Ignatius was inflamed by the ideals of courtly love and knighthood and dreamed of doing great deeds. He was sent to the Spanish court to become a page. He embraced court life with enthusiasm, learning weapons, gambling, and courtly love—he was “a man given to the vanities of the world,” he later wrote in his autobiography, “whose chief delight consisted in martial exercises, with a great and vain desire to win renown.”

In 1521, In a battle with the French for the town of Pamplona, Spain, he was hit by a cannon ball the size of a fist. The five-foot-two-inch Iñigo was helped back to Loyola by French soldiers (who admired his courage). He underwent surgeries to reset his right knee and remove a protruding bone. For seven weeks he lay in bed recuperating.

During this time, he began reading spiritual books and accounts of the exploits of Dominic and Francis. In one book by a Cistercian monk, the spiritual life was conceived as one of holy chivalry; the idea fascinated him. During his convalescence he received spiritual visions, so that by the time he recuperated, he had resolved to live a life of austerity to do penance for his sins.

In February 1522, Iñigo left his family and went to Montserrat, a pilgrimage site in northeastern Spain. He spent three days confessing his life sins, then hung his sword and dagger near the statue of the Virgin Mary to symbolize his break with his old life. He donned sack cloth and walked to Manresa, a town 30 miles from Barcelona, to pass the decisive months of his career (from March 1522 to mid-February 1523). He lived as a beggar, ate and drank sparingly, scourged himself, and for a time neither trimmed his tangled hair nor cut his nails. He attended Mass daily and spent seven hours a day in prayer, often in a cave outside Manresa.

While sitting one day by the Cardoner River, “the eyes of his understanding began to open,” he later wrote, referring to himself in the third person, “and, without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith.” At Manresa, he sketched the fundamentals of his little book Spiritual Exercises.

Over the years, Ignatius became expert in the art of spiritual direction. He collected his insights, prayers, and suggestions in his guide for new disciples called the Spiritual Exercises. His 200-page text is one of the most influential books on the spiritual life ever written. With a small group of friends, he founded the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits. Ignatius conceived the Jesuits as “contemplatives in action.” This also describes the many Christians who have been touched by Ignatian spirituality.

“Act as if everything depended on you; trust as if everything depended on God.”

“Go forth and set the world on fire.”

The quotes above are among the most famous from Ignatius and they sum up the practicality and ambition that he lived out after his commitment to follow Jesus.

Those of us who are Protestants probably haven’t been given much information about Ignatius because he was a strong opponent of the Reformation in the 1500’s and vigorously supported (some would argue blindly) the hierarchy of the Catholic Church at the time. None of us gets everything right and this lasting division of the Church has proven itself to be deeply problematic for centuries. Much is lost if we refuse to listen to one another.

Ignatius became a powerful leader in the Church of his day. His writings have become a wonderful guide to many who seek Jesus. He was a devoted follower who took his early experiences as a soldier prior to his conversion and applied all the good lessons he learned to the work of discipleship.

More

Here is a video biography

Here is a nice spirituality site with extensive biography resources: [link]

Discernment of spirits for young people [link]

Pilgrimage reflections by Rod. [link]

What do we do with this?

Ignatian spirituality is one of the most influential and pervasive outlooks of our age. Here are ten markers of Ignatian spirituality. Consider them. Try them.

1. It begins with a wounded soldier daydreaming on his sickbed.
Ignatian spirituality is rooted in the experiences of Ignatius, whose conversion to a fervent Christian faith began while he was recovering from war wounds. Ignatius gained many insights into the spiritual life in the course of a decades long spiritual journey during which he became expert at helping others deepen their relationship with God. Its basis in personal experience makes Ignatian spirituality an intensely practical spirituality, well suited to laymen and laywomen living active lives in the world.

2. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
This line from a poem by the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins captures a central theme of Ignatian spirituality: its insistence that God is at work everywhere—in work, relationships, culture, the arts, the intellectual life, creation itself. As Ignatius put it, all the things in the world are presented to us “so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.” Ignatian spirituality places great emphasis on discerning God’s presence in the everyday activities of ordinary life. It sees God as an active God, always at work, inviting us to an ever-deeper walk.

3. It’s about call and response—like the music of a gospel choir.
An Ignatian spiritual life focuses on God at work now. It fosters an active attentiveness to God joined with a prompt responsiveness to God. God calls; we respond. This call-response rhythm of the inner life makes discernment and decision making especially important. Ignatius’s rules for discernment and his astute approach to decision making are well-regarded for their psychological and spiritual wisdom.

4. “The heart has its reasons of which the mind knows nothing.”
Ignatius Loyola’s conversion occurred as he became able to interpret the spiritual meaning of his emotional life. The spirituality he developed places great emphasis on the affective life: the use of imagination in prayer, discernment and interpretation of feelings, cultivation of great desires, and generous service. Ignatian spiritual renewal focuses more on the heart than the intellect. It holds that our choices and decisions are often beyond the merely rational or reasonable. Its goal is an eager, generous, wholehearted offer of oneself to God and to his work.

5. Free at last.
Ignatian spirituality emphasizes interior freedom. To choose rightly, we should strive to be free of personal preferences, superfluous attachments, and preformed opinions. Ignatius counseled radical detachment: “We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.” Our one goal is the freedom to make a wholehearted choice to follow God.

6. “Sum up at night what thou hast done by day.”
The Ignatian mind-set is strongly inclined to reflection and self-scrutiny. The distinctive Ignatian prayer is the Daily Examen, a review of the day’s activities with an eye toward detecting and responding to the presence of God. Three challenging, reflective questions lie at the heart of the Spiritual Exercises, the book Ignatius wrote, to help others deepen their spiritual lives: “What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ?”

7. A practical spirituality.
Ignatian spirituality is adaptable. It is an outlook, not a program; a set of attitudes and insights, not rules or a scheme. Ignatius’s first advice to spiritual directors was to adapt the Spiritual Exercises to the needs of the person entering the retreat. At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is a profound humanism. It respects people’s lived experience and honors the vast diversity of God’s work in the world. The Latin phrase cura personalis is often heard in Ignatian circles. It means “care of the person”—attention to people’s individual needs and respect for their unique circumstances and concerns.

8. Don’t do it alone.
Ignatian spirituality places great value on collaboration and teamwork. Ignatian spirituality sees the link between God and man as a relationship—a bond of friendship that develops over time as a human relationship does. Collaboration is built into the very structure of the Spiritual Exercises; they are almost always guided by a spiritual director who helps the retreatant interpret the spiritual content of the retreat experience. Similarly, mission and service in the Ignatian mode is seen not as an individualistic enterprise, but as work done in collaboration with Christ and others.

9. “Contemplatives in action.”
Those formed by Ignatian spirituality are often called “contemplatives in action.” They are reflective people with a rich inner life who are deeply engaged in God’s work in the world. They unite themselves with God by joining God’s active labor to save and heal the world. It’s an active spiritual attitude—a way for everyone to seek and find God in their workplaces, homes, families, and communities.

10. “Men and women for others.”
The early Jesuits often described their work as simply “helping souls.” The great Jesuit leader Pedro Arrupe updated this idea in the twentieth century by calling those formed in Ignatian spirituality “men and women for others.” Both phrases express a deep commitment to social justice and a radical giving of oneself to others. The heart of this service is the radical generosity that Ignatius asked for in his most famous prayer:

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

William Wilberforce — July 29

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)
Unfinished portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1828

Bible connection

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. — 2 Corinthians 5:1-10

All about William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

In the late 1700s, when William Wilberforce was a teenager, English traders raided the African coast on the Gulf of Guinea, captured between 35,000 and 50,000 Africans a year, shipped them across the Atlantic, and sold them into slavery. It was a profitable business upon which many powerful people were dependent. One publicist for the West Indies trade wrote, “The impossibility of doing without slaves in the West Indies will always prevent this traffic being dropped. The necessity, the absolute necessity, then, of carrying it on, must, since there is no other, be its excuse.”

By the late 1700s, the economics of slavery were so entrenched that only a handful of people thought anything could be done about it. That handful included William Wilberforce.

This conviction surprised those who knew Wilberforce as a young man. He grew up surrounded by wealth and was educated at Cambridge. But he wasn’t a serious student. He later reflected, “As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.” A neighbor at Cambridge added, “When he [Wilberforce] returned late in the evening to his rooms, he would summon me to join him…He was so winning and amusing that I often sat up half the night with him, much to the detriment of my attendance at lectures the next day.”

Yet Wilberforce had political ambitions and, with his connections, managed to win election to Parliament in 1780, where he formed a lasting friendship with William Pitt, the future prime minister. But he later admitted, “The first years in Parliament I did nothing—nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.”

But he began to reflect deeply on his life, which led to a period of intense sorrow. “I am sure that no human creature could suffer more than I did for some months,” he later wrote. His unnatural gloom lifted on Easter 1786, “amidst the general chorus with which all nature seems on such a morning to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving.” He had experienced a spiritual rebirth.

He then abstained from alcohol and practiced rigorous self-examination as befit, he believed, a “serious” Christian. He abhorred the socializing that went along with politicking. He worried about “the temptations at the table,” the endless dinner parties, which he thought were full of vain and useless conversation: “[They] disqualify me for every useful purpose in life, waste my time, impair my health, fill my mind with thoughts of resistance before and self-condemnation afterwards.”

He began to see his life’s purpose: “My walk is a public one,” he wrote in his diary. “My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.”

In particular, two causes caught his attention. First, under the influence of Thomas Clarkson, he became absorbed with the issue of slavery. Later he wrote, “So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”

Wilberforce was initially optimistic, even naively so. He expressed “no doubt” about his chances of quick success. As early as 1789, he and Clarkson managed to have 12 resolutions against the slave trade introduced—only to be outmaneuvered on fine legal points. The pathway to abolition was blocked by vested interests, parliamentary filibustering, entrenched bigotry, international politics, slave unrest, personal sickness, and political fear. Other bills introduced by Wilberforce were defeated in 1791, 1792, 1793, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1804, and 1805.

When it became clear that Wilberforce was not going to let the issue die, pro-slavery forces targeted him. He was vilified; opponents spoke of “the damnable doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies.” The opposition became so fierce, one friend feared that one day he would read about Wilberforce’s being “carbonated [broiled] by Indian planters, barbecued by African merchants, and eaten by Guinea captains.” 

Slavery was only one cause that excited Wilberforce’s passions. His second great calling was for the “reformation of manners,” that is, morals. In early 1787, he conceived of a society that would work, as a royal proclamation put it, “for the encouragement of piety and virtue; and for the preventing of vice, profaneness, and immorality.” It eventually become known as the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

In fact, Wilberforce—dubbed “the prime minister of a cabinet of philanthropists”—was at one time active in support of 69 philanthropic causes. He gave away one-quarter of his annual income to the poor. He fought on behalf of chimney sweeps, single mothers, Sunday schools, orphans, and juvenile delinquents. He helped found parachurch groups like the Society for Bettering the Cause of the Poor, the Church Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Antislavery Society.

In 1797, he settled at Clapham, where he became a prominent member of the “Clapham Sect,” a group of devout Christians of influence in government and business. That same year he wrote Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians—a scathing critique of comfortable Christianity that became a bestseller.

He did all this in spite of the fact that poor health plagued him his entire life, sometimes keeping him bedridden for weeks. During one such time in his late twenties, he wrote, “[I] am still a close prisoner, wholly unequal even to such a little business as I am now engaged in: add to which my eyes are so bad that I can scarce see how to direct my pen.” Friends called him “all soul and no body.”

He survived this and other bouts of debilitating illness with the help of opium, a new drug at the time, the affects of which were still unknown. Wilberforce soon became addicted, though opium’s hallucinatory powers terrified him, and the depressions it caused virtually crippled him at times.

When healthy, however, he was a persistent and effective politician, partly due to his natural charm and partly to his eloquence. His antislavery efforts finally bore fruit in 1807: Parliament abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. He then worked to ensure the slave trade laws were enforced and, finally, that slavery in the British Empire was abolished. Wilberforce’s health prevented him from leading the last charge, though he heard three days before he died that the final passage of the emancipation bill was ensured in committee.

More

Wilberforce Institute and the ongoing fight against slavery.

What do we do with this?

An addicted, sickly man uses his inherited wealth to change history. It is a good story in any culture, much more in the rapacious history of Europeans.

Revisit today’s Bible reading and consider your own “long view.” What are the things you hope to be working on when you die? Some may have been your life’s work. In an age when advertisers regularly teach us that the long view does not matter, putting our attention on heaven is truly radical.

Johann Sebastian Bach– July 28

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Image result for bach

Bible connection

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. – Matthew 5:11-12

All about J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

The Bach Archive researcher, Michael Maul, was looking through a shoebox that had only narrowly escaped a fire in the Anna Amalia Library a few months before. Inside lay more than 100 letters and poems dedicated to the 52nd birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach’s patron, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. Maul had hoped to find a greeting from the composer himself, who in 1713 was the court organist. What he found instead was a two-page hand-written aria for soprano and harpsichord, the first Bach vocal work discovered in 70 years.

The text is a 12-stanza poem by Johann Anton Mylius, beginning, “Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn” (Everything with God and nothing without him). The music, British conductor John Eliot Gardiner told The Guardian, is “a reflective, meditative, soothing piece, as Bach’s church music so often is.” The Bach Archive asked Gardiner to record and perform the piece and the aria’s first recording can be heard at NPR.org.

J.S. Bach is still influencing people with his faith expressed in his music.

When he was 48, Bach acquired a copy of Luther’s three-volume translation of the Bible. He poured over it as if it were a long-lost treasure. He underlined passages, corrected errors in the text and commentary, inserted missing words, and made notes in the margins. Near 1 Chronicles 25 (a listing of Davidic musicians) he wrote, “This chapter is the true foundation of all God-pleasing music.” At 2 Chronicles 5:13 (which speaks of temple musicians praising God), he noted, “At a reverent performance of music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence.”

Bach was a Christian who lived with the Bible. Besides being the baroque era’s greatest organist and composer, and one of the most productive geniuses in the history of Western music, Bach was also a theologian who just happened to work with a keyboard.

He was born and schooled in Eisenach, Thuringia (at the same school Martin Luther had attended), part of a family that in seven generations produced 53 prominent musicians. Johann Sebastian received his first musical instruction from his father, Johann Ambrosius, a town musician. By age 10 Bach was orphaned, and he went to live and study with his elder brother, Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf.

By age 15 Bach was ready to establish himself in the musical world, and he immediately showed immense talent in a variety of areas. He became a soprano (women weren’t permitted to sing in church) in the choir of Lüneburg’s Church of Saint Michael. Three years later, he was a violinist in the chamber orchestra of Prince Johann Ernst of Weimar. After a few months, he moved to Arnstadt to become a church organist.

In October 1705, Bach was invited to study for one month with the renowned Danish-born German organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude. Bach was so enamored with his teacher, he stretched the visit to two months. When he returned to his church, he was severely criticized for breach of contract and, in the ensuing weeks, for his new organ flourishes and harmonies that accompanied congregational singing. But he was already too highly respected to be dismissed.

In 1707 he married a second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, and went to Mülhausen to become organist in the Church of Saint Blasius. After various moves and prominent jobs, he finally settled down in Leipzig in 1723, where he remained for the rest of his life.

St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, restored after being bombed in WW2

Maria died in 1720, and the next year he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, an accomplished singer. She bore him 13 children, to add to the seven he’d had by Maria, and helped copy his music for performers.

Bach’s stay in Leipzig, as musical director and choirmaster of Saint Thomas’s church and school, wasn’t always happy. He squabbled continually with the town council, and neither the council nor the populace appreciated his musical genius. Some said he was a stuffy old man who clung stubbornly to obsolete forms of music. Consequently, they paid him a miserable salary, and when he died even contrived to defraud his widow of her meager inheritance.

Ironically, in this setting Bach wrote his most enduring music. For a time he wrote a cantata each week (today, a composer who writes a cantata a year is considered ambitious), 202 of which survive. Most conclude with a chorale based on a simple Lutheran hymn, and the music is at all times closely bound to biblical texts. Among these works are the Ascension Cantata and the Christmas Oratorio.

In Leipzig he also composed his epic Mass in B Minor, The Passion of St. John and The Passion of St. Matthew—all for use as worship services. The last piece has been called “the supreme cultural achievement of all Western civilization,” and even the radical skeptic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) admitted upon hearing it, “One who has completely forgotten Christianity truly hears it here as gospel.”

After Bach’s death, people seemed glad to wipe their ears of his music. He was remembered less as a composer than as an organist and harpsichordist. Some of his music was sold, and some was reportedly used to wrap garbage. For the next 80 years his music was neglected by the public, although a few musicians (Mozart and Beethoven, for example) admired it. Not until 1829, when German composer Felix Mendelssohn arranged a performance of The Passion of St. Matthew, did a larger audience appreciate Bach the composer.

In terms of pure music, Bach has become known as one who could combine the rhythm of French dances, the gracefulness of Italian song, and the intricacy of German counterpoint—all in one composition. In addition, Bach could write musical equivalents of verbal ideas, such as undulating a melody to represent the sea.

But music was never just music to Bach. Nearly three-fourths of his 1,000 compositions were written for use in worship. Between his musical genius, his devotion to Christ, and the effect of his music, he has come to be known in many circles as “the Fifth Evangelist.”

More

10-minute video biography

Sheep May Safely Graze with period instruments

A capella boy choir Libera sings an Air

What do we do with this?

It should not surprise us that a Christian musical genius was left unpraised and even abused in the flower of his talent. Yet it is still shocking. Maybe it should encourage us to keep on serving whether we are  appreciated or not. Whatever genius we offering is just that, an offering, not our part of a transaction for which we expect a profit. As Jesus keeps saying, “What does it profit us if we gain the whole world and lose our souls? What can we give in exchange for our souls?”

Revisit what you think it important. What has God given you to give and how are you making it a priority? Is some power trying to undermine your devotion?

Argula von Grumbach — July 14

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)
Argula von Grumbach
Medal with the portrait of Argula von Grumbach, Hans Schwarz, Nürnberg, around 1520 © Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg

Bible connection

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” — Romans 1:16

All about Argula von Grumbach (1492–1554/7)

Von Grumbach was born in 1492—the year Columbus sailed—to the lively, educated, and chivalrous von Stauff family, living in Ehrenfels Castle on the Laber River in Germany. Her first name recalls the noble Argeluse, a prominent character in the epic Parsifal about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. When she was 10, her father gave her a beautiful Koberger edition of the Bible in German.

Ruins of Ehrenfels Castle on the Rhine River
Ruins of Ehrenfels Castle on the Rhine River

When she married nobleman Friedrich von Grumbach in 1510, she set up homes in little Bavarian villages and market towns: Lenting, Dietfurt, Burggrumbach, and Zeilitzheim. Her children were born there. Her time in small villages prepared von Grumbach for her later role in establishing Lutheranism in these rural areas.

Martin Luther put a note in her much-loved copy of his Little Book of Prayers.

In 1523, during the exciting early years of the Reformation, this Bavarian noblewoman, with four little children dependent on her, took a big risk when she challenged the influential theologians of Ingolstadt University to a public debate in German about their persecution of a young student. They arrested and interrogated an 18-year-old student, and threatened him with death if he would not renounce his evangelical views. Theologians didn’t lower themselves to debate with lay people, much less a women, not to mention in German rather than Latin.

Von Grumbach knew the young man and reacted with horror:

“My heart and all my limbs tremble. Nowhere in the Bible do I find that Christ, or his apostles, or his prophets, put people in prison, burnt or murdered them. How in God’s name can you and your university expect to prevail, when you deploy such foolish violence against the word of God?”

They tried to ignore her, but friends had her letter to the teachers published by the new social media of the time: the printing press. Sympathizers and publishers with a  nose for news raced to reprint the compilation. It went “viral” — mere woman challenging a university!

The woodcuts on the front covers portray von Grumbach, Bible in hand, alone, confronting an intimidated, bewildered group of scholars. The heavy books of their traditional theology and canon law lie discarded on the ground.

Earlier that year in Zürich, a public debate took place between defenders of the old church and the evangelical reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531). It was conducted in German, and it had convinced the city fathers to promote the Reformation. Von Grumbach followed the news. No doubt this dramatic event encouraged her to make her own protest—though she said that she did so in fear and trembling:

I suppressed my inclinations [to criticize Catholic preaching against Luther]; heavy of heart, I did nothing. Because Paul says in 1 Timothy 2: “The women should keep silence, and should not speak in church.” But now that I cannot see any man who is up to it, who is either willing or able to speak, I am constrained . . . .

She had found it impossible, following Matthew 10, to keep silent:

I find there is a text in Matthew 10 which runs: “Whoever confesses me before another I too will confess before my heavenly Father.” And Luke 9: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, I too will be ashamed of when I come in my majesty,” etc. Words like these, coming from the very mouth of God, are always before my eyes. For they exclude neither woman nor man. And this is why I am compelled as a Christian to write to you.

Von Grumbach’s responses were both substantial and sensational. In words that ordinary people could understand, her pamphlet—which was soon followed by seven others she wrote—raised key issues about freedom of speech, the authority of Scripture, and the urgent need to reform the church.  She pointed out that throughout Scripture and right down through the history of the church, the Holy Spirit had moved women like her to speak out, and she sensed that she stood in this prophetic tradition.

Argula von Grumbach (Jina) – Reformation Europe
Church of the Redeemer, Beratzhausen

Argula von Grumbach’s forthrightness infuriated every leading institution of her time: the university, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the Bavarian princes under whose rule she lived, and not least her own husband, “Fritz.” Critics pointed to his inability to “control his wife,” and Fritz lost his lucrative job in the service of the Bavarian dukes as punishment.  Her letters only survived because authorities confiscated them as they gathered evidence for a legal challenge involving her son, Gottfried. She had tough times.

Von Grumbach never received the public debate she asked for, but instead struggled with financial difficulties for the remainder of her life, pawning a precious necklace again and again to raise funds. Her second husband, Burian von Schlick, a Bohemian nobleman, ardently supported the Reformation but also died prematurely, imprisoned by his relatives over a family dispute. In a raw and violent society, tragedy upon tragedy befell von Grumbach. Near the end of her life, she herself was grossly mistreated, held captive, and forced to flee her family home in Bavaria.

Quotes

God’s spirit is within you, read,
Is woman shut out, there, indeed?
While you oppress God’s word,
Consign souls to the devil’s game
I cannot and I will not cease
To speak at home and on the street.

What I have written to you is no woman’s chit-chat, but the word of God.

Ah, but what a joy it is when the spirit of God teaches us and gives us understanding, flitting from one text to the next, so that I came to see the true genuine light shining out.

More

An exhibition in Munster included a musical:

Walmart (!) will sell you a copy of her 1860 biography by Eduard Engelhardt.

Peter Matheson, emeritus professor at Knox Theological College, Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote the definitive biography: Argula von Grumbach: A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation and Argula von Grumbach: A Woman Before Her Time

What do we do with this?

If you are a woman, you might enjoy some overdue validation.

If you are a Bavarian, you might wonder at the violence and division religion caused in your territory. It still exists today. Millions of people have turned their backs on the church because of it.

Von Grumbach was so brave! Her convictions carried her into all sorts of good trouble. Jesus was buried in a lot of nonsense in her day. She worked hard to sweep it all away. We could use some sweeping in our era , couldn’t we?