How do we see ourselves?

Last weekend was the Residents Festival in York, where many tourist attractions open their doors for free to the people who live here.  One of the things I went to see was England's oldest living convent. The Bar Convent and Living Heritage Centre is a working convent of the Congregation of Jesus and a living history museum.  When it was built in 1686 practicing Catholicism was illegal in England. People were fined for not attending Anglican Church services.  Catholic priests were being brutally murdered for nothing more than practicing their faith.  Lay Catholics faced social ostracism, heavy fines, prison, torture, and death depending on the time period and location.  One woman came to Yorkshire and said not only was she going to open a convent to illegally practice the Catholic faith, but also to make it a school to educate young girls because they deserved a good quality education. These female Jesuits continued that practice of educating Catholic girls to the same standard as boys while also proving them the social opportunities of going to dances and the theatre that they would need to be successful in society.  Multiple times they opened their doors to refugees who needed care. All while quietly keeping their faith which could have resulted in all of the nuns being jailed, tortured, or killed.

Bar Convent from Blossom Street.  This building actually conceals a
domed chapel inside.  Picture from www.bar-convent.org.uk.

This visit got me to think back.  In November I went to sing in a choir at a Catholic service at Markenfield Hall to commemorate the martyrs who died in the Rising of the North about a century before the Bar Convent was built.  The Rising of the North was insurrection that began on November 20, 1569 at Markenfield Hall by the Catholic English nobility (mostly in Northern England and Scotland at the time) against Queen Elizabeth I with the aim of reestablishing Catholicism (allowing freedom of practice, freeing the Scottish Queen and other Catholic nobles, and reinstating the Catholic nobles who had their land and titles removed).  For those who don’t know, they failed and the leaders largely ended up dying in battle or being executed for treason.  Catholicism was illegal until the the 1790s.  While I am greatly simplifying a complex set of events, at the core of all of this was the ego of Henry VIII - his frustration with his first wife; his desire to have a male child; his desire to marry a younger woman; but mostly his ego that led him to not just separate from the Catholic Church, but make himself the head of a new church and then persecute Catholics - including some of his friends and formerly trusted advisors.

Markenfiield Hall through the gatehouse - the chapel is on
the second story of the Hall.  Picture is mine.

Having grown up in the US Midwest and taught to not make waves, when I arrived at Markenfield Hall to sing I was a bit concerned about how you commemorate people who rebelled against the government - I shouldn’t have been concerned because I’m from the US and we do it every year on the 4th of July - but I was.  Brother Robert who celebrated the service gave an absolutely amazing framing for this experience.  Service started in the gateway pictured above and then we walked in silence to the chapel in the Hall.  During the walk he challenged us to think about the men and women that walked the same path long ago.  How did they feel about the likelihood that if they did not succeed they would face execution and their families would be killed or loose their land and status?  How did they see their actions?  How would they view our right to religious freedom today?

During his sermon Brother Robert asked us to close our eyes and imagine the leaders of this group in the sacred space with us - this sacred space where they prayed and participated in the same ritual 400 years ago that we were enacting now.  As we pictured them he challenged us to contemplate what we would ask them.  While some of these men had ideological or political goals, many of these men were desperate.  Risking everything not only for them, but for their wives, children, grandchildren is a huge decision.  I am led to believe that many of these men took the action of violent rebellion against the legal government because they felt they had no other choice.  So I would ask these desperate men:

What could the monarchy, the government leaders, the religious leaders, the general public have done to stop it from getting this far?  Not just the obvious bit about the monarch not actively persecuting you, but everything else. What did your friends and neighbours, your local government, the Anglican religious leaders do to make you, personally, this desperate?  Because this is still happening.  People are increasingly feeling desperate and this is leading to finding scapegoats; to singling people out because of race, faith, disability, gender, nationality; to normalising harassment and threats; to escalating isolation and fear.  I don't want to see it end in the same way.  I don’t want to see an armed rebellion, a major civil war, or the murder of innocent people for their faith in 21st century America . . . So what can I do?

What made these men feel so desperate, I am unlikely to know, but I'd like to think that it isn't just the few people in power who could have changed the outcome.  I think that that their friends and neighbours from the majority standing up for them could have eased the isolation, the fear, and the desperation that led to the rebellion.  I'd think that open and honest discussions could have lessoned persecution.  And I really hope that we as citizens of the US can learn this lesson.  So I went on my first protest - I'm sorry Dad because I know you worry! - to show that refugees and Muslims are welcome - to show that “Love Trumps Hate."  And at the same time I ponder how I can reach the people who voted for Trump because they are scared about the future, worried about their jobs and health care, worried about their children's education, worried about the unknown and the fast pace of social and technological change.  Because these people are just as likely to feel isolated and desperate in the coming months and years.


Disclaimers: I am a US citizen (so to the English forgive me for oversimplifying your complex history).  I am not Catholic (so forgive the details I might have gotten wrong).  I do not advocate in any way violent rebellion against the government (I now feel the need to put this on everything I write publicly regarding politics).