What Does The Fifth Of November Remember, Remember?

Adrian Warnock has been blogging about Guy Fawkes’ Night and his gratitude for the fact that it celebrates our Reformation heritage. (Well, perhaps just theoretically these days – rather like Christmas). Certainly the history is lost on many people, apart from cries of “Where are you, Guy Fawkes, when we need you?” at times when we are frustrated by our politicians.

 

He refers to the biggest celebrations every year in Lewes, where huge parades takes effigies through the narrow streets of the old county town. Protestants were martyred in the town in 1556 and the traditional effigy is of  Paul V, who was Pope at the time of the Gunpowder Plot. In recent years the Bonfire has had news coverage for the controversial choices of effigies. In 2003 the bonfire society from the nearby village of Firle made an effigy of Travellers, after problems there had been in the village. Prosecutions under race hatred laws were considered; the travellers were fearful, because there had been actual fire-based attacks on their communities in Sussex in the recent past; locals regarded it (as with other effigies, such as Osama bin Laden in 2001, as satire). My wife is a Lewesian and could not understand the possible prosecutions; I, having grown up in a very multi-racial area, could understand fears of racism.

 

Like Adrian, although I have many fine Catholic friends, I am grateful for a Reformation heritage being preserved. However there must be qualifiers. The word ‘bonfire’ comes from ‘bone fire’, that is, burning people alive. There is something to be deeply ashamed of here, too, as Christians. Is this the way of the Cross? Further, it was not simply a matter of the Reformation being preserved, but a particular strand of it: moderate Anglicanism, reformed in doctrine and Catholic in church order. It was a form of Christianity that would continue to persecute those it disagreed with – witness the Cavalier Parliament. It took until the nineteenth century before legislation began to remove discrimination against Catholics and Non-Conformists.

 

But having said that, there is something generally very ugly here with which all Christians must grapple: when we get into power we can do terrible things. The Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell persecuted the Anglicans and the Catholics. What is it we have failed to learn from the Cross about power?