BONFIRE NIGHT AND THE HISTORICAL PARALLELS OF THE POLITICS OF RELIGION With bonfire night almost upon us and ISIL wreaking havoc in the Middle East and spreading terror around the world in the name of religion (Islam),it is interesting to see what parallels there may be - if any - between the politics of religion within Islam now,and Christianity all those years ago in England. Somehow,the religious significance and sectarian underpinnings of bonfire night seems to have been lost in the fog of history. Bonfire night, celebrated every year on the 5th of November ( 5/11...ironically )for the past 400 years,is a commemoration of the ill-fated gunpowder plot in which Guy Fawkes and his co- conspirators planned to blow up Parliament on its opening day in 1605,with thirty six barrels of gunpowder that they had managed to stash away in the basement of Parliament buildings ; as devout Catholics,theirs was a simple but God-ordained mission ; to kill the heretic Scot,King James I ,and annihilate the entire English ruling class,paving the way for a return of England to the papacy ; such was the duty of every true Catholic and they were prepared to be martyred for it. The plotters saw themselves as warrior monks fighting for God and country ; they were well versed in the continental Jesuit works on tyrannicide and were comfortable with the idea of mass murder of an unjustregime. It had all began with Henry the VIII breaking away from Rome and establishing the Church of England because the Pope had refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Arragon ; this set Protestant England on a collision course with the Catholic Church that led to decades of war and sectarian killings,the repercussions of which are still felt in England today. It gave us the legacy of Queen BloodyMary,second successor to Henry the VIII who gained notoriety and hence her nickname,as a result of her penchant for burning Protestants at the stake in a vain attempt to return England back to Catholicism.Fortunately her reign was short- lived and following her death,she was succeeded by her half sister Elizabeth I in 1558. Elizabeth I was staunchly Protestant but tolerated Catholics as long as they worshipped discreetly and maintained allegiance to the crown. Despite this,a Papal Bull was issued by the then Pope in 1570 severely criticising Elizabeth,calling her a heretic and sanctioning the right of Catholics to rid her of the throne!This pushed Elizabeth to adopt a hardline stance against Catholics ; an act of Parliament ordered all priests and Jesuits to be driven from the Kingdom ; this resulted in the execution of Jesuit priests at Tyburn,many of whom - like Edmund Campion -are considered martyrs by the Catholic Church and several of whom have been canonized as the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. When Elizabeth died childless,the Scottish Stuart King James I was offered the English crown in 1603 in a union of crowns,so as to ensure that the throne remained in Protestant hands!He continued the persecution of Catholics,introducing requiscency fines for non-attendance of Catholics to church services; it was against this backdrop of relentless persecution that Robert Gatesby recruited other disenchanted Catholic gentlemen,including Guy Fawkes,to plan the gunpowder plot. The failure of the plot sealed the fate of Catholicism in England : in an intriguingly convoluted tale of conspiracies and religious violence,it saw Catholics in Ireland massacre about 4000 English Protestant settlers in the in the Irish rebellion of @ 1640 ; King Charles I beheaded by Oliver Cromwell partly because of suspicion of Catholic sympathies as he had married a Catholic French Princess much to the annoyance of his Protestant subjects ; and finally the accession to the English throne of a Dutch Protestant King in 1688 - Prince William III of Orange - and a Parliament act that barred accession to the throne by a Catholic as well as forbidding the heir to the throne from marrying a Catholic ; recently this ban against the heir marrying a Catholic has been rescinded but a Catholic can still not become King or Queen. Despite the Good Friday agreement of 1998 which brought peace to Northern Ireland,the marching season which every year commemorates the Battle of the Boyne in which Prince William III defeated King Jamess II Catholic army in 1690, remains a source of tension and sectarian violence in this divided community today.This sectarianism spills over in varying degrees,into other spheres of life not just in Northern Ireland but in the whole of the United Kingdom,the most conspicuous of this being football teams whose support base is either Catholic or Protestant. It seems ironic that religion which is meant to promote love,peace,harmony and forgiveness has been,and remains the source of so much violence in the world : we seem to have lost sight of the true and central meaning of religion - which is to leave in peace with our fellow man - and become more interested in practice and observation of religious ritual ; religion has become conflated with politics ; that is why we can justify killing our enemies and other innocent people in the name of our faith. So as we celebrate bonfire night,let those of us from faith communities contemplate and reflect upon the lives we lead in the name of our faiths and strive to make our religions to be true instruments of peace in the world as God intended it,rather than tools for political persecution and division. As-salaam-ailakum,......Peace to you all,........Namaste.........Om shanti shanti shanti.........
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:20:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015