But there was a problem. The many men hanging on the nearby trees were not Lutherans at all. The Spanish, in their intent for a religious massacre, hadn’t even properly identified their victims’ faith.

They were Huguenots. And the massacre was the obliteration of Fort Caroline, the second and last French colony in what would later be the United States.

The first voyage

Two years earlier, some of the same murdered men were about to take their first steps onto new world soil for the first time after a grueling two months of ocean voyage. On a far bank, a local Indian chief watched the small party of colonists arrive on shore on what is today Parris Island, South Carolina.

To the Frenchmen’s relief, the reception was civil, even though no real communication was possible. The chief sat erect with an air of authority on green palmetto and magnolia leaves while he ordered his men to lay out a plume of red egret feathers, a basket made from palm fiber and a great skin with vivid paintings portraying various wild beasts.

In return, the captain Jean Ribault presented silver-plated bracelets, a sickle, a mirror and some knives. The friendly dealings with the local tribes would prove invaluable and one of their only good fortunes.

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Following the stiff greeting, Ribault erected a stone pillar at the mouth of the St. John’s River in honor of his French king and made his formal claim for the land for France.

Ribault was a young naval explorer and devout Christian, hand-picked by the financier Gaspard de Coligny, to lead the soldiers in the dangerous endeavor across the Atlantic.

But despite his recent arrival, Ribault was eager to leave immediately to procure reinforcements for the colony and report. He chose 28 men to stay behind and maintain the French claim on the land. The men pleaded that Ribault stay just long enough to assist them build a proper fort. He acquiesced and together they established Charlesfort, named in honor of the young king Charles IX.

Ribault wasted no time in heading back to France, but had no idea his time would have been better spent governing the colony back in America than facing the chaos at home.

The wars of religion were in full swing. Ribault returned to his northern coastal hometown Dieppe and was immediately a perfect target for persecution. He fled over the English Channel where he thought he would gain refuge from a religiously sympathetic Queen Elizabeth.

He had assumed wrong. Suspected of being a traitor, Elizabeth had officials throw him into the Tower of London. And he now had to patiently await his fate.

To make matters worse, his supporter Coligny had his own problems and was preoccupied with the factions and massacres taking place in France.

Meanwhile, back in the Americas, the colony was floundering pitifully.

Ribault had left an Albert de la Pierria in command. And from the surviving accounts, he enjoyed his power trip. But popularity was not his strong suit. The colonists saw him as a ruthless tyrant and waited hopeful for Ribault’s return.

In one instance, Pierria hung a popular drummer for insufficient reasons. He also banished a soldier to the wilderness and failed to keep his promise to send food every eight days. The offense had been minor according to popular consensus. Pierria vowed he would not keep his promise to send food and, on the contrary, would be glad to hear of the soldier’s death.

Afraid of the same fate, the soldiers planned a mutiny and decided to kill Pierria.
French history accounts do not make excuses for the colonists nor give justification for the reasons. Historians have merely mused whether the act was one of self-preservation or a ghastly murder.

But chaos was certainly the prevailing mood.

From every angle the colonists’ future was bleak. They were living in a rudely constructed fort with dwindling supplies, borrowing what they could from neighboring tribes. They had not heard from Ribault for a year.

Even though there was no boat craftsman among them, they decided it would be better to die trying to build a return vessel than continue living in the colony. They received rope from two neighboring Indian chiefs and used moss to caulk the boat and pine bark to cover the frame. The sails were sewn from shirts and bedclothes.

But then the real problem arose. The seas were calm, and after three weeks they had only advanced 25 leagues.

Supplies ran out and the men were starving, eating only 12 grains a day, the equivalent of 12 peas. Next they resorted to eating shoes and leather jackets. For fluids they resorted to drinking sea water and urine.

Next a violent wind destroyed some of the vessel’s siding and the boat began to fill with water. All prepared to perish until one sailor rallied spirits and assured them they had only a short distance to go. With momentary hope they devised a desperate proposition to sustain them until they could reach land.

They decided it would be better for one to die than that all should perish. And so they executed Lachere, the same man who Pierria had banished back at the fort. The French soldier Laudonierre records that: “his [Lachere's] flesh was equally divided among his companions, a thing so pitiful to recite that my pen is loath to write about it.”

Following the execution and cannibalism, the account continues that God sought fit to have Englishmen in a rowboat happen upon the vessel, providing them with sustenance.

Once back in France, several of them were thrown into prison for the mutiny and murder of Pierria. Some considered the prison a better fate than the barbaric new world life.

It looked as though the miserable failure of the colony would prove a discouragement to future endeavors, but Coligny was not convinced. There had been no proper spiritual or military guidance. He planned a second venture, but since Ribault was still in chains awaiting a negotiation, he put a young, enthusiast captain Rene Laudonniere in charge.
Laudonniere had accompanied Ribault on the first voyage and the return for reinforcements.

This time Coligny commissioned three ships with about 300 Huguenots. Women, children, artisans and tradesmen were included in the numbers as well as soldiers. Even an artist named Le Moyne accompanied the journey, sketching the area’s flora and fauna and later a coastal map outlining Florida. It was 1564.

A second start required a second location, and instead of setting camp at the previous Charlesfort location, he returned to the original landing place at the mouth of the St. John’s River. Fort Caroline was established.

Laudonniere’s diary became one of the few records of the accounts that followed.
It was clear he wanted to set a good beginning to the start of the second colonization: “The next morning at daybreak I ordered a trumpet to sound so that we could assemble and give thanks to God for our favorable and happy arrival. We sang songs of thanksgiving to God and prayed that it would please Him of His holy grace to continue His accustomed goodness toward us, his poor servants, and to give us aid in all our enterprises so that all might redound to His great glory and to the advancement of our king.”

But the second settlement was hardly the idyllic colony Laudonniere had envisioned. He found himself vowing allegiances to various tribes at war, which resulted in captures and convoluted diplomacy.

While the tribe disagreements began to climax, a man of their company, Roquette, claimed that he was a great magician and had discovered a mine of precious metals farther up the river.

Laudonniere records that after his refusal to search for the gold, the men planned a mutiny against him, first trying to poison him and then placing a keg of gunpowder in his tent in order to kill him.

After tracking down the mutineers, he had four of the leaders hung to show an example to the rest of the colony. The account echoed similarities with the first trip, only this time, Laudonniere’s story survived.

Meanwhile back in France, Ribault, finally released from prison, outfitted several ships with the help of Coligny and set sail with soldiers to give more reinforcements.

His reception with Laudonniere was icy, with Laudonniere concerned that Ribault had come to usurp leadership. Reports had been circling that Laudonniere had played king and abused his authority. But Ribault assured him they could both dwell peacefully together and had no attention of taking over the fort.

At the time the Spanish king, aware of the French presence and Ribault’s recent arrival along the Florida coast, felt the timing was right to remove the Huguenots from the area. He chose Captain Pedro Menendez Marques to do the job.

It was a cloudy night in late September when the Spanish crept up to the temporary camp. One of the Fort Caroline mutineers had led the Spanish to the fort. Laudonniere records that they were taken by surprise and they eventually fled in defense. Only a handful survived the attack, and three or four were seriously wounded.

The men spent the night hiding in rivers and eventually joined Ribault’s company farther north. The second colonization attempt had failed, and they prepared to sail back in two vessels. Laudonniere embarked immediately, while Ribault chose to map the coastal area of Florida before his return.

But his attempt to map the coast turned out to be an unfavorable choice. A bad turn of weather left them shipwrecked near a Spanish settlement where they were soon captured. Ribault, his lieutenant D’Ottigny, and Laudonniere’s lieutenant were tied up and led to the nearby Spanish fort, where they assumed they would die.

Ribault insisted on seeing the Spanish governor, but his request was ignored. The commanding officer asked Ribault if he expected his soldiers to obey Ribault’s commands. The French captain replied, “Yes.”

The Spaniard said, “I propose to obey the orders of my commander also. … I’m ordered to kill you.” And with that he thrust a dagger into Ribault’s breast and then killed D’Ottigny in the same way.

The Spanish soldiers were told to kill the rest of the men with Ribault by knocking them in the head with axes and clubs all the while calling them Lutherans and enemies to God and the Virgin Mary. All were killed except a drummer from Dieppe named Dronet, a fifer and a fiddler named Masselin, who was kept alive to play for dancing. The Protestant account of the attack was relayed by a Dieppe sailor, one of the lone survivors of the incident at the Spanish fort, his account recorded by Le Moyne.

Le Moyne records, “[The soldier] was among those who were pinioned for slaughter, and was knocked in the head with the rest, but, instead of being killed, was only stunned; and the three others with whom he was tied falling above him, he was left for dead along with them. The Spaniards got together a great pile of wood to burn the corpses; but, as it grew late, they put it off until the next day. The sailor, coming to his sense among the dead in the night, bethought himself of a knife which he wore in a wooden sheath, and contrived to work himself about until little by little he cut the ropes which bound him.”

After escaping he became a slave for a year at the Spanish settlement Fort Augustine before escaping and boarding a English vessel and finding his way back to France.

Read more about Fort Caroline at the Leben website!

Americans today are very familiar with the image of Franklin and his importance to the founding of the United States. As an author, publisher, thinker, politician, inventor and statesman, Franklin’s contributions to American life, culture and thinking are all but impossible to calculate.

Despite the fact that Franklin’s parents had, in his words, “brought me through my childhood piously in the Dissenting way,” he would also recall that, “I was scarce 15, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself … I soon became a thorough deist.”

By the time that George Whitefield stepped foot in America in the late 1730s, Franklin had an illegitimate son, a common-law marriage to a woman named Deborah Reed, and was beginning to develop a reputation as a womanizer.

By the time Whitefield made his second trip to America in 1739, the Anglican preacher was a celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Yet Whitefield’s childhood had done little to predict a famous religious celebrity – his father passed away when he was two, and he described himself as a child as, “so brutish as to hate instruction and used purposely to shun all opportunities of receiving it. I soon gave pregnant proofs of an impudent temper. Lying, filthy talking and foolish jesting, I was much addicted to, even when very young. Sometimes I used to curse, if not swear. Stealing from my mother I thought no theft at all, and used to make no scruple of taking money out of her pockets before she was up. I have frequently betrayed my trust, and have more than once spent money I took in the house in buying fruit, tarts, &c., to satisfy my sensual appetite. Numbers of Sabbaths have I broken, and generally used to behave myself very irreverently in God’s sanctuary. Much money have I spent in plays, and in the common amusements of the age. Cards and reading romances were my heart’s delight.”

Yet Whitefield had grown up to help found the Methodist movement and had been largely responsible for beginning the movement that would become known as the First Great Awakening.

Whitefield’s trip to America in 1739 was heralded by the press of the American colonies, not the least of which was the Pennsylvania Gazette, owned and operated by Benjamin Franklin.

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George Whitefield

Whitefield, a young, blue-eyed evangelist, just shy of 25 years of age, had scarcely set foot in the colonies before he went to work on one of his first projects in the new world – an orphanage for the colony of Georgia. In fact, the same November an issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette that heralded the coming of the famous preacher also contained an advertisement of a sale that would be held at Whitefield’s house of “Goods: Being the Benefactions of Charitable People In England, towards Building an Orphan-House In Georgia.”

Franklin described his opinion of the problems in this most southern of British colonies, “The settlement of that province had lately been begun, but, instead of being made with hardy, industrious husbandmen, accustomed to labor, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it was with families of broken shop-keepers and other insolvent debtors, many of indolent and idle habits, taken out of the jails, who, being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.”

These two giants of the 18th century agreed on the need to do something about the orphans of Georgia, but they disagreed about the solution.

Whitefield wrote to Harman Verelst, accountant for the Georgia Trustees, in 1740 explaining his plan, “The building of this Orphan House I find will be of great service to the colony in general. It prevents many leaving the place and I believe will be an encouragement for others to come over.”

The trustees of Georgia might have been pleased with the reverend’s designs, but Franklin was not. In his autobiography, written near the end of his life, Franklin recalled his feelings on the matter, “I did not disapprove of the design, but, as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, and it was proposed to send them from Philadelphia at a great expense, I thought it would have been better to have built the house here, and brought the children to it.”

Franklin advised Whitefield of his thoughts on the orphanage, but Whitefield, for his own reasons, ignored Franklin’s judgment and went ahead as planned. His wisdom spurned, Franklin attended an open-air sermon for which Whitefield was so famous, resolute in his determination not to donate any funds towards the project when a collection was taken.

Soon, however, his fortitude weakened, “I silently resolved he should get nothing from me, I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the silver; and he finish’d so admirably, that I empty’d my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”

The man who grew up a Puritan and became a Deist, and the ruffian who became a staunch Calvinist were both interested in putting the written sermons of Whitefield down on paper. Whitefield saw in publishing another avenue by which he might continue to promote the gospel, and Franklin saw an opportunity to sell more subscriptions and so he was only too happy to oblige.

As one historian put it, the net result of the joint publishing venture was that, “Franklin made money, Whitefield gained souls, and the two men became friends.”

There’s much, much more to this fascinating story, which you’ll find here.

Aaron Sharp is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and is a freelance writer from Little Elm, Texas.

By some accounts, as many as 100,000 peasants stormed across London Bridge, seizing the Tower of London and executing the Archbishop of Canterbury. Outraged by a poll tax that was far too high for the poor to pay, the countryside united behind Tyler, a former soldier who had retired from military service to become a village blacksmith. The population of England had been decimated by the Black Death, leaving far too few peasants to fund the excesses of nobility, crown and church.

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Reformer John Wycliffe had translated the Bible into the common tongue, adding impetus to a growing “Lollard” movement among the poor, who demanded an end to excessive church wealth and the opulent and dissolute lifestyles of the priests and high churchmen. Indeed, the conditions could not have been riper for rebellion.

As the peasants moved through London, executing government and church officials, their leaders enforced a bizarre discipline amidst the chaos, ordering that no one should loot or enrich themselves.

When at the very doorstep of 14-year-old King Richard II, their sovereign rode out to meet them. The rebels were in full battle array, but Tyler rode forth to meet the king alone.

What happened at that point has been the subject of endless conjecture. Whether Tyler took offense at a personal slight spoken by one of the king’s men and pulled his knife, or whether he was simply struck down by one of the king’s entourage, all we know for certain is that an altercation ensued and Tyler lay mortally wounded. It was reported by those present that Tyler had demanded an end to church wealth and that all Englishmen would henceforth be of one station. To these demands, Richard initially agreed.

Leaderless, the rebel army began to disperse. Richard allowed most to return to their homes and farms, but many of the leaders were systematically hunted down and swung from the gallows. The campaign of terror continued for years until the newly married king hearkened to the pleas of his queen and issued pardons to the remaining rebels.

To read more about, Wat Tyler, please visit Leben’s website.

By Greg Uttinger

“Even at this distance Sidney is dazzling.”
– C.S. Lewis

We rarely connect Philip Sidney with the Reformation. We might remember him as a soldier, statesman or courtier. We certainly remember him as a poet. He wrote “Astrophel and Stella,” the first successful sonnet sequence in English. Before that, he wrote the first piece of English literary criticism, “A Defense of Poesy.” Both remain classics. His third major work was “Arcadia,” a prose romance with overtones of political and religious commentary.1

But for Sidney, poetry – that is, imaginative literature of any sort – was ever the handmaiden of virtue. The moral philosopher might point out the true and the right, and the historian might multiply examples of the false and the wrong, but the poet can go further: The poet can show the true and right to be admirable and worthy of imitation. The poet can create an image of virtue that captures the imagination.

Philip Sidney placed a high price on virtue and was frequently commended for his own.

Indeed, his reputation for virtue so irked his enemies that the Durants could write, “Only his heroic end won him pardon for his virtue.”2

The poet Spenser more kindly called him, “the President of Noblesse and Chivalry” and “the world’s delight.”

But Sidney’s concern for virtue was a concern for the rule of Christ, for Christendom; to Sidney, that meant the political success of Protestant Christianity in Europe.

“Sir Philip Sidney, all agree, actively championed the formation of an international Protestant political and military league throughout his political career and died fighting on behalf of the Protestant ’cause,’” remarked Professor Barbara Brumbaugh of Auburn University.

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Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was born into a family that, for reasons right or wrong, had long championed the Protestant cause. His grandfather, John Dudley, had ruled England under Edward VI and, after the young king’s death, had brought Lady Jane Grey to the throne. In fact, Lady Jane’s husband Guildford was Dudley’s youngest son. Philip’s father, Henry, had been Edward’s companion. But, oddly enough, Philip himself was named after Philip II of Spain, his godfather!

At 10, Philip Sidney entered Shrewsbury to study under the Calvinist schoolmaster Thomas Ashton, a disciple of Martin Bucer. At 14, Sidney went to Christ Church at Oxford.

His contemporary biographer, Thomas Moffet, wrote of him, “He determined the plan of his university life not with reference to the ends of natural inclination, but within the boundaries of duty and virtue; and in his eyes, his speech and his manners he presented a certain pattern of modesty and antique integrity.”

Sidney left Oxford without a degree, a thing common enough for those not bound for church office. Illness may have played some role.

At 17, and with royal permission, Sidney set out on a tour of the Continent to learn languages and the practicalities of foreign relations. The year was 1572.

Sidney entered Paris as part of the Earl of Lincoln’s retinue. During his summer there he earned the friendship of the Huguenot scholar Hubert Languet; the logician and philosopher Peter Ramus; the future leader of the Huguenots Philippe Duplessis-Mornay; and the young king of Navarre, Henry III (later Henry IV of France). Sidney also gained the approving notice of Charles IX, who made him the “Baron de Sidenay.” And so Philip Sidney was in Paris when the St. Bartholomew’s massacre broke out. He found sanctuary in the home of Francis Walsingham, his future father-in-law. When the bloody storm had subsided, Walsingham sent Sidney on to Germany under a safe passage from the king of France. Sidney wintered in Frankfort. There he continued his friendship with the Hubert Languet (1518-1581), a friendship that would grow more intimate with correspondence during the nine years until Languet’s death.

Languet saw Sidney “as the Messiah who could lead the much-desired unification of the Protestants of Europe. Languet hoped to bring together the Lutherans, the Calvinists and the Anglicans of England, and by this means to resist the forces of Catholicism, which seemed neither to slumber nor to sleep. To this purpose Languet felt his greatest contribution could be to guide, train and even create the future champion of the Protestant cause.”

The next summer Sidney pursued his education in northern Italy. Though dogged at times by ill health and a tendency toward melancholy, he wrestled with his Latin style and worked on spherical geometry in Venice and then continued his studies at the University of Padua, a major center of intellectual life. Through letters Languet continued to direct his studies, encouraging him in moral philosophy and Latin, the language of diplomats and discouraging his interest in geometry and literature, studies he would have no time to complete. Languet also suggested some acquaintance with German would be useful in Sidney’s future role as a diplomat.

In 1574 Sidney returned to Vienna, where he spent more time in his studies with Languet and worked on his fencing and horsemanship. The next year, as his time in Europe drew to an end, the Earl of Leicester, his uncle, suddenly summoned him home. To London he went and took his place at Court and served with success.

When Elector Frederick III died in 1576, Queen Elizabeth sent Sidney to console the elector’s two sons, Lewis and John Casimir. Beyond this, and more covertly, Sidney’s mission was to explore ways of forwarding a Protestant league among the princes of Germany. He traveled with Hubert Languet to Heidelberg and then on to Prague, where Rudolph was holding court. Sidney had some success with Casimir. But his address to the emperor, advocating a general league against Spain and Rome, had no effect.

Sidney returned home through the Netherlands, where he conveyed Queen Elizabeth’s congratulations to William of Orange on the birth of his first child (who was Elizabeth’s goddaughter.) In fact, Sidney stood in for Elizabeth at the child’s baptism. William would later ask Fulke Greville to tell Elizabeth “that her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest counsellors of estate in Sir Philip Sidney that … lived in Europe.”

When he was safely back in London, Sidney joined in the life of the court again, but with little relish.

Sidney had to follow the queen on progress, trifle with her ladies, join in games of skill and knightly exercises with the gentlemen about Court. Yet it is certain that this life wearied him. He was forever seeking to escape; at one time planning to join Prince Casimir in the Low Countries; at another to take part in Frobisher’s expedition; and more than once contemplating “some Indian project.”

In 1578 Sidney wrote a masque called “Lady of May” to honor Elizabeth’s visit to his uncle’s home. It was his first literary work. But shortly thereafter he wrote something more in keeping with his political passions: a letter arguing against the proposed marriage of the Queen to the Duke of Anjou, a move intended to seal an English and French alliance against Spain. Elizabeth received the advice, but bristled at the correction. Sidney wisely withdrew from court and spent a year with his sister, Lady Pembroke. Finally, Sidney had time to write: He wrote the first version of “Arcadia,” continued “Astrophel and Stella” and began his “Defense of Poesy.”

In 1583 Sidney was knighted so that he could stand in for his absent friend John Casimir, whom Elizabeth wished to make a Knight of the Garter. Soon after Sidney received an appointment to work with his uncle, the Earl of Warwick, in overseeing preparations for a war with Spain.

In the fall Sidney married Frances Walsingham. His new father-in-law was Elizabeth’s informal spymaster, “the Father of Modern Intelligence,” and because of his extensive network of contacts, Sidney became a useful source of information. During this time, Sidney continued his literary pursuits, beginning a versification of the Psalms, translating Sepmaine (The Seven Days of Creation) by the Huguenot Du Bartas, and beginning a translation of Duplessis-Mornay’s Trewness of the Christian Religion.

In 1584 William the Silent was assassinated, and Spain pushed its advantage in the Netherlands. Elizabeth finally consented to allow organized intervention. She put the Earl of Leister in charge. She made Sidney governor of Flushing in the Netherlands, where his chief concerns became getting pay for his soldiers and salvaging some kind of military advantage.

After a successful raid on Spanish forces near Axel in July, 1586, Sidney joined Sir John Norris in the Battle of Zutphen. There a musket-shot broke Philip’s thigh bone. “The horse he rode upon, was rather furiously cholleric, than bravely proud, and so forced him to forsake the field.” As Philip passed “along by the rest of the Army, where his Uncle the Generall was, and being thirstie with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought him; but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor Souldier …gastly casting up his eyes at the bottle. Which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head, before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with these words, Thy necessity is greater than mine. And when he had pledged this poor souldier, he was presently carried to Arnheim.” Gangrene took hold of his leg, and with the help of doctors, he died twenty-three days later. He was buried in St. Paul’s, with rites unequalled until Nelson’s funeral-unequalled for a commoner until Churchill’s. The people of London saluted Philip Sidney’s passing with the words, “Farewell, the worthiest knight that lived.”8

To read more about Philip Sidney, please visit Leben’s website.

But Anne, the first published poet of the new world, not only mourned the loss of her household goods. All her papers, books and manuscripts were gone. Later she penned her sentiments of loss in a poem describing the calamity and God’s providence in saving her and her family.

But ‘fore I could accomplish my desire,
my papers fell a prey to th’ raging fire.
And thus my pains (with better things) I lost,
which none have cause to wail, nor I to boast.

Instead of using the calamity as a reason for bitterness and frustration, Anne rebuked herself sharply for her attachment to physical possessions. She viewed the fire as a second test of her obedience to God’s will. She had long ago relinquished her worldly luxuries when she arrived in the new world at the tender age of 18, realizing that a life focusing on heavenly wealth was her calling.

It may be disconcerting to liberal scholars that the first published poet living in the new world was a godly woman devoted to her husband and eight children. Surely, she must have been a feminist ahead of her time, limited by the male-dominated Puritan traditions and expectations and burdened by the obligation to bear many children. But her poetry is a testimony of the opposite. It portrays a woman of faith and courage, submissive to God and her husband and devoted to the rearing and happiness of her children.

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When she was eight her father became the steward to the Puritan-inclined Earl of Lincoln. With the position came the privilege for his children to read literature, history and religious works from the Earl’s expansive library and benefit from the same tuition given to the Earl’s younger sisters. In a time where higher education was not considered necessary for women, the countess placed a high emphasis on women’s education. For Anne it was the beginning of a life-long love of learning.

During this time the family’s location in Boston, England, allowed Anne to hear the preaching of John Cotton at St. Botolph’s Church. Cotton’s preaching proved an influence on Anne’s later beliefs regarding her personal relationship with God. She later recorded that even at the age of six or seven she was pressed with an earnest desire to confess her sins and would not be able to rest until she had done so.

At 14 and 15 many young girls of the time would have been preparing for marriage. But Anne was lying in bed, literally fighting for her life. She had caught smallpox. For many months she waited for God’s will and prayed for mercy that she might be spared.

She later wrote: “When I was in my affliction I besought the Lord and confessed my pride and vanity, and he was entreated of me and again restored me.”

A year later her life underwent another great change. At 16 she married a young, devoted man of Christian ideals, Simon Bradstreet, the assistant to her father. It was the beginning of a relationship of love and devotion. They would learn to be a great source of comfort and strength to each other as they faced a rough, unknown world. Two years following their marriage, they stood looking out upon a wilderness that would be their new home. England and the refined life they knew was only a distant memory.

Under the reign of Charles I, the Puritans were pressured into taxations and innumerable religious stresses. Finally, relatives within the Earl of Lincoln’s family decided to finance a Puritan colony in the new world, following the example of the pilgrims on the Mayflower. Eleven ships made up the fleet, with the Arabella, Anne’s vessel, leading the expedition.

Even on the journey across the Atlantic, Anne would have quickly seen how her sheltered life was morphing. By the time she and her husband, along with her father’s family, arrived, there would have been 17 deaths and a stillborn child among the ships.

In later writings she confessed she found that the horrors of her circumstance caused her heart to rise in rebellion against covenanting with the new congregation: “I came into this Country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined to the church at Boston.”

In her first few years of colonial life, something even more than Anne’s growing interest in writing occupied her thoughts: her infertility. Her later writings on the subject leave little room for an argument that she was a feminist saddled with children.

She wrote, “It pleased God to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me and cost me many prayers and tears before I obtained one.”

Anne and Simon would eventually have eight children.

For the Puritans, there was considerable thought and intent of motive in the decisions and endeavors they made, even ones that might seem trivial like writing a few lines for enjoyment. It’s clear Anne was no feminist intent on publishing fame or declaring her opinions in verse. No Puritan took up a literary vocation without accepting a heavy responsibility, and there was no precedent in the history of Puritanism to undertake such a burden. Only a conscious ardent desire to become a poet combined with a strong sense of spiritual dedication give the necessary courage for a Puritan woman of 1636.

In her later writings she clarified the reasons why she had begun to write: “I have not studyed in this you read to show my skill, but to declare the Truth – not to sett forth myself, but the Glory of God.”

Besides her intentions, Anne did struggle with her own theological questions: “Many times hath Satan troubled me concerning the verity of the Scriptures, many times by Atheism how I could know whether there was a God; I never saw any miracles to confirm me and those which I read of how did I know but they were feigned. That there is a God my Reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see, the vast frame of the heaven and the Earth, the order of all things, night and day.”

The strenuous and constantly physical aspects of colonial life demanded much from Anne. Her duties were to run the household, often with the absence of her husband. There were no longer just a few colonists scattered along the coast of the New World. From 1630 to 1640 many ships brought immigrants seeking a new way of life and religious freedom. From about 1638 to 1642 Simon became involved in diplomacy to join the various groups into a “Union of Colonies.”

As a young mother not always having all the answers, it makes sense that many of her writings are directed in forms of prayers to God for strength against the waves of anxiety. With Simon’s absences also a pressing matter on her heart, she learned to channel her longing into written words. Writing verses on their marriage and her devotion to him would become consistent through the course of their marriage.

Anne’s most famous testify to her devotion:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

On behalf of Parliament, Anne’s brother-in-law John Woodbridge left for England to negotiate with the imprisoned King Charles. It must have been during this time that Anne gave him a collection of her poems, which he made planned to have published without Anne’s knowledge.

In his prologue for the first edition, her brother-in-law banished any doubts that the collection of verse had been written by a woman: “It is the work of a woman, honored and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanor … for her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet management of her family.”

Long after English readers were finishing her collection of poems, Anne was opening the cover and turning the pages of her first book, “The Tenth Muse,” lately sprung up in America. No doubt it stirred the communities in the colonies. Not only was Anne the first female poet of the new world to be published, she was also the first poet of the Americas to be published at all – a paramount accomplishment for a woman during that time.

Following the publication of “The Tenth Muse,” Anne’s poetry focused chiefly on topics related to friends and familial relations. Following the birth of her eighth child, named John, Anne’s health began to fail. During this time, she wrote verses in supplication, battling not only ill health, but faintness of spirit. The result was verses that confirmed an even greater faith in God to deliver her from her depression and sickness.

Thou heard’st, thy rod thou didst remove
and spared my body frail,
thou show’st to me thy tender love,
my heart no more might quail.
O praises to my mighty God!

With all but two of her children either away at school or married and with families of their own, Anne found that the later years of her life allotted more time for meditation and reflection. During this time she lived through a fire, experienced the loss of grandchildren (which she penned her sentiments about), fell to serious illness several times over again and all the while continued in her poetry writing.

She passed in 1672 with Simon at her side, which must have been a great comfort after all the time he had been absent. Six years following her passing, a new volume hit the shelves of England libraries, and her poems continued to grow in demand both in England and the colonies.

Anne represented a strong example of Christian piety and conviction. She also set a precedent in the new world that a woman could be both a godly, submissive wife who desired to care for her children and yet aspire to cultivate her own talents.

In an autobiographical account left for her children and family, Anne admitted that throughout the course of her life she had questioned her faith many times. She questioned the existence of God, His requirements of her, the losses she endured and a belief that Christ was the only way to salvation.

But she accounts that God was the one to pull her through these moments: “Sometimes I have said, ‘is there faith upon the earth?’ and I have not known what to think; but then I have remembered the words of Christ that so it must be, and if it were possible, the very elect should be deceived. ‘Behold’ saith our Savior, ‘I have told you before.’ That hath stayed my heart, and I can now say, ‘Return, O my Soul, to thy rest, upon this rock Christ Jesus will I build my faith, and if I perish, I perish’; but I know all the powers of hell shall never prevail against it. I know whom I have trusted, and whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that I have committed to his charge.”

Anne did not set out writing for fame or personal satisfaction. It is impossible not to read even her more classical early works without recognizing the clear intent of her writing: to glorify God.

To read more about Anne Bradstreet, visit Leben’s website.

Born in Richmond, Ind., in 1859, Chapman made his public profession of faith at the age of 17 in the Richmond Presbyterian Church. He attended Oberlin College and Lake Forest University and was ordained to the gospel ministry after completing his seminary training in Cincinnati at Lane. He served in a number of Presbyterian churches in the East and Midwest, as well as serving pastorates at Reformed churches in New York, but it was as an evangelist that Chapman was best known among his contemporaries.

While evangelistic crusades in later times came to be associated with Baptist and Pentecostal ministries, during Chapman’s ministry, public evangelistic meetings were largely associated with Presbyterianism.

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In 1905, John H. Converse, a prominent Presbyterian businessman, offered to underwrite Chapman’s expenses if he would devote all his energies to evangelism. Chapman was president of the Baldwin Locomotive Company and a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Chapman agreed, although he could not have imagined the preaching opportunities that this would eventually present. Chapman revived the earlier practice of Pennsylvania churches of different denominations to cooperate in evangelism, by working with a variety of evangelicals in town after town. One of his innovations was to launch simultaneous evangelism meetings at dozens of churches in a city concurrently. Before long, huge crowds would gather to the Presbyterian Chapman.

At one point, Chapman hired a young former baseball player to serve as an “advance man,” arriving in a targeted city several weeks before Chapman to construct a temporary facility or pitch a huge tent, as well as recruit a choir. (The young ballplayer, a fellow Presbyterian, would subsequently launch out on his own with “methods” decidedly more theatrical than the sober Chapman. His name was Billy Sunday).

Chapman maintained a lifelong friendship with Dwight L. Moody, whom Chapman credited with helping him as a young man to understand the doctrine of assurance. Although quite ecumenical within evangelical circles, Chapman was a hidebound conservative when it came to fundamental doctrines, leading a campaign to have all Presbyterian missionaries recalled from the field that would not affirm the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Poor health forced Chapman to step down from his role as travelling evangelist in 1918. A grateful Presbyterian Church elected him moderator of their General Assembly in May of that same year, although the Lord would call him home later that same year.

To read more about Chapman, please visit Leben’s website.

The French Protestants, or Huguenots, were faced with two options: They could leave France, or suffer the penalties imposed by the law for practicing their faith –imprisonment, death or life as a galley slave.

In 1598, the Edict of Nantes had been introduced, guaranteeing certain religious rights to the Huguenots. These rights suffered steady attacks throughout the 17th century, resulting in increased restrictions on those practicing the Protestant faith.

In 1715, 30 years after the revocation of the edict, Marie Durand was born. Marie grew up in a time of uncertainty and persecution for Huguenot families, for Louis XIV’s death in the year of her birth provided them with no reprieve. His successor, Louis XV, intended to pursue what he viewed as the eradication of the Protestant heresy, a goal which Louis XIV had not been able to accomplish. Many Huguenot families were not able to leave France, and to avoid persecution they began to practice their religion in secrecy.

Marie grew up in a home equipped with hiding places for the family Bible and even for family members. When Marie was a young girl, her mother, Glaudine, was arrested after attending a secret Protestant service and died shortly thereafter. Marie’s brother, Pierre, 11 years her senior, became one of the “pastors of the desert.” These men preached in open fields, in caves and in homes, to those in exile and to those in hiding, in continued defiance of the strictures placed on them by the French monarchy.

Marie’s father, Etienne, was arrested in 1728, and Marie and her newlywed husband, Matthew Seres, were apprehended in 1730. Marie was interred in the Tower of Constance in Aigues-Mortes. She was then but 15. She never saw her husband again.

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The French dragonnades – military units organized for the express purpose of seeking out Protestants – attempted to use Marie and Etienne’s arrests to get Pierre’s attention. The authorities promised to set Marie free if Pierre would turn himself in, but Marie urged him not to yield to these offers. Pierre continued to preach until he was arrested on Feb. 12, 1732. He was found guilty of disobeying the king’s orders, and judgment was passed upon him. On April 22, 1732, this judgment was carried out – death by hanging.

Because Marie would not renounce her faith, she remained locked in the Tower of Constance for almost 38 years.

Originally a military lookout and lighthouse, the Tower of Constance had been converted by King Louis XIV into a women’s prison in the 17th century. Very little light and air came through the narrow openings in the walls that served as windows.

During her time of imprisonment there, it is reported that Marie was a great encouragement to the other women with whom she was imprisoned. She served them in many capacities, including nurse and spiritual leader. She read psalms, sang hymns and prayed daily. She also acted as an official correspondent, penning letters for those who could not write and sending petitions to government officials to inform them of the prison’s horrible conditions. Many of her letters still exist today and are a testimony to Marie’s tireless efforts. She never wavered in her strength or faith.

In 1767, Prince de Beauveau, the governor of Languedoc, perhaps enlightened by one of Marie’s letters, expressed his disapproval of the horrific conditions the women endured inside the Tower of Constance. Against the will of Louis XV, he ordered their release, and in 1767 Marie and her fellow captives began a new life outside the tower walls.

Marie returned to the home of her family, though by then she was the only surviving member of the attack that had been mounted against their faith. She lived there, supported by a church, until her death in 1776.

Ascribed to Marie’s hand, one word remains still visibly etched on the cold stone walls of the Tower of Constance: “resister” – to resist.

Learn more about Marie Durand at the Leben website.

In that assumption, they would be quite wrong.

In fact, it was not until 1917 that George V, seeking to make his Germanic family seem more “British,” changed the family name from “Saxe-Coberg” to the more Brit-friendly “House of Windsor” and encouraged the royal family to marry in the Abbey with full Anglican pomp and ceremony.

It had been 500 years since the last royal wedding in Westminster Abbey, when in 1382 Richard II would marry Anne of Bohemia, a young woman whose passion for reformation was used of God to defend the Englishman Wycliffe, inspire the Bohemian Hus and change her world, and ours.

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When young Anne first stepped on English shores, she entered a kingdom torn by civil strife. Wat Tyler’s Peasant’s Revolt that had fielded 100,000 men against the crown had been crushed by King Richard II, and those who had participated in the uprising trembled in fear awaiting punishment for their treason.

While many in such unfamiliar circumstances would shun controversy, Anne implored Richard to be merciful, going so far as to argue that their cause had not been without merit. Moved by her entreaties, Richard issued an edict of pardon, citing the wishes of good Queen Anne.

Richard had become king at the age of 10, upon the death of his grandfather, and already at the age of 13, he had taken notice of the young Bohemian princess. Anderson notes that when she turned 15, her family adjudged her competent to make her own decisions regarding matrimony. By providence, they both chose wisely, to the good of their respective nations and for the yet-future Reformation.

John Wycliffe’s writings had already made their way to Prague, and historians note that those who attended the young Princess to England were themselves adherents of the movement to breathe new life into a corrupt and corrupting church.

Anne’s words to Richard regarding the Peasants’ Revolt would not be the last time that the young Bohemian queen would give wise counsel to her husband to the saving of both church and realm, for indeed, they were perilous times.

They were also times of enormous opportunity, for the papacy was in turmoil. Gregory XI had died in 1378, and the cardinals had gathered to choose his replacement in Rome; however, a large majority of the cardinals were French, intent upon replacing Gregory with yet another French pope at Avignon. Under threat of violence, they chose an Italian instead, but once safely back in France, they renounced their decision and chose a competing pope.

“Trust we in the help of Christ on this point,” wrote Wycliffe, “for he hath begun already to help us graciously, in that he hath clove the head of Antichrist, and made the two parts fight against each other.”

While such fiery language was not uncommon during the later Reformation, to see language battle lines drawn so sharply at such an early date begs the question of when, exactly, “the Reformation” actually began. As the warring papal factions hurled invectives that make Wycliffe’s language pale by comparison, the English Reformer nevertheless used the interim to advance across a broad theological front.

Wycliffe denied that the bread and wine were physically changed into the body of Christ, that the Church of Rome held any special authority over the churches at other places and that Peter was granted greater authority than any other Apostle. He also boldly proclaimed that ecclesiastical persons of any rank should have neither prisons nor the power to put men into them.

Courtney, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was an implacable foe of Wycliffe and schemed endlessly against him. In this cause, he enlisted the support of Urban VI (the Italian pope with whom the English clergy had sided) and besieged Richard to take action.

For every dagger launched by Courtney, Anne used examples from the Scriptures to deflect the increasingly bitter attacks. The church authorities had not yet conceived of the idea of executing those accused of heresy – that would come far sooner than any could have imagined – but the church authorities had access to prisons enough to hold as many heretics as Courtney could prosecute. Anne’s hand was strengthened by the support of a fellow Wycliffe supporter, the king’s mother, Joan. Together, they worked quietly and effectively to protect Wycliffe and his labors.

Richard also found himself beset by political intrigue in the person of the Duke of Gloucester. Weakened by a series of poor decisions, Richard found himself unable to protect or defend his allies and friends, with a number of them suffering prosecution and execution.

Among those to die was Sir Simon Burley, the man who had been sent to Bohemia to escort the young princess to England, a task which earned him the admiration and friendship of both Anne and Richard. Sadly, it was to no avail, for, despite pleading on her knees for three hours, Anne was unable to prevail upon Gloucester to show mercy.

Even as Wycliffe approached the end of his years on earth, the younger Jan Hus was carrying forward his reforms in Anne’s home country of Bohemia. As Anne braved the ire of the papacy to defend Wycliffe and shield him from prosecution, the aged reformer was moved to share his appreciation and admiration with those on the Continent.

When assailed for his English translation of the Bible, Wycliffe would note that not only did his queen read the Scriptures in the vernacular, but she had actually translated the four Gospels into English! Her daily Bible reading gave her ready command of the Word, which permitted her to quickly and effectively call forth a biblical answer to every challenge that she, or her beloved husband, faced.

The English population was of two minds about their young queen. She bore no children, thus failing in the first duty of her office, according to the times, but her gentleness and many acts of kindness won the hearts of most. Despite her royal upbringing, she was a friend of commoners and the poor. In fact, her generosity was one of the “faults” with which her detractors sought to discredit her. When expenses of the royal family came under scrutiny, it was discovered that she was feeding no less than 6,000 of the poor daily at her tables.

It was not to be dukes, archbishops or popes that would end her young life, however, but rather the scourge of the age, the Black Death. Struck down by plague at the tender age of 28, Anne left a husband so broken by grief that he ordered the palace where she had died to be torn down, brick by brick. He ordered a tomb to be prepared that would someday hold both their remains, depicting the king and queen reposed peacefully, hand clasped in hand. He would join her in death a short five years later. Their tomb, now damaged over time, lies just down the way from where William and Kate spoke their vows.

The original inscription, likely penned by Richard II himself, reads:

The dust of Anne, the second Richard’s queen,
Lies now entombed beneath this spacious stone;
Her lovely form enchained wherever seen,
Her face with meek and radiant beauty shone.
Dear was her Saviour to her loving heart;
Her love and gentleness to all she showed;
In healing strifes she ever did her part;
With peaceful thoughts her heavenly bosom glowed.
To her the poor, with want and care oppressed,
Could look with hope for pity and relief;
With heart and hand she succoured the distressed,
Nor grudged to cost of want and pain and grief.
The lonely widow’s tears she wiped away,
And to the sick the healing draught she brought,
Whoever suffered found in her a stay;
To live for others – this she daily sought.”

Yet, even in death her role in the cause of purifying a sorely tarnished church was not concluded, for her attendants, after her death, returned to Bohemia, filled with a familiarity with the Scriptures and the writings of John Wycliffe, stoking the fires of the burgeoning Hussite movement.

To read more about Anne of Bohemia, please visit Leben’s website.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs
And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purpose will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
the bud may have bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

The words of this hymn are vivid and beautiful poetic imagery, but more than that, they are rich in spiritual truth. They speak of the mysterious and unfathomable ways of God, or simply put, they speak of God’s mysterious providence. They also compose one of the most familiar hymns of the hymn writer and author William Cowper. This notable hymn is a testimony to Cowper’s faith. In it he puts to verse his clear understanding of the sovereignty of God over all the affairs of life.

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God blessed Cowper to pen some of the most wonderful religious verse that has ever been written in the English language, even though his mental state was such that he often struggled with the deepest depression and mental anguish.

William was the fourth child of Rev. John Cowper, Chaplain to George II. He was born in Great Berkhamsted, England; however, his older siblings died and his mother Anne died in childbirth when his brother John was born; William was not yet six years old.

Many biographers attribute Cowper’s mental instability to the death of his mother in childbirth in 1737. This is only speculation inasmuch as Cowper never speaks to the cause of his times of despair and severe melancholy. However, in this hymn, “God Moves in A Mysterious Way,” he certainly addresses the often mysterious and dark providences of God. In reading this hymn you see that he has come to grips with God’s sovereignty over evil in His child’s life.

You see a similar vein of thought in the book of Job, “He stirs up the sea with His power, And by His understanding He breaks up the storm” (Job 26:12). Job, too, had to deal with the mysterious providences of God, and so Cowper has imagery familiar to this book.

Cowper’s family is noteworthy for its literary and ecclesiastical standing. As mentioned earlier, his father had served as chaplain to King George II, but also notable is that his mother was a descendent of John Donne, who served as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral and was a recognized poet.

William Cowper

As a young boy Cowper distinguished himself while attending Westminster School by penning verse both in Latin and English. He had prepared himself for law and even read for the bar. But that was not to be, for his mental problems had begun. So much so, that in the early 1760s he was admitted to what was termed then a “lunatic asylum.”

Yet even in this asylum, the sovereign God came to him, and while he was a patient he came to faith in Christ and was converted to the evangelical faith. This evangelical Calvinistic faith would be the anchor of his soul throughout his life.

In 1867, a relationship would begin that would be of benefit for not only Cowper’s soul, but for the Christian church throughout the ages. It was at this time that John Newton, the noted pastor, theologian and hymn writer, invited Cowper to come and live in Olney, a small community in Buchinghamshire, England. Newton had arranged with Mrs. Mary Unwin, a widow whose husband had been a pastor, to allow Cowper to board with her. This arrangement proved both beneficial to Cowper and to Newton, as Cowper would assist him in the Olney ministry. Often Cowper would accompany Newton on his pastoral calls and help lead in prayer meetings and Bible study.

In 2002, I had the privilege to visit Cowper’s house, now a museum for both Cowper and Newton, in Olney, England. In many ways it was the typical architecture of the house built in that period. What I found notable was when you went out in the back yard, there you could see the Olney church building nearby where John Newton served as pastor. I also observed a foot path leading through his gardens from the back of his property to Olney church building. I could picture in my mind’s eye Cowper making his way to be with his dear friend and pastor.

Soon Cowper and Newton were composing hymns together. These hymns were used in the common worship of the people of Olney. This co-labor in producing hymns eventually led to the publication in 1779 of the Olney Hymnal. This hymnal contained 280 hymns and verse by Newton and another 67 by Cowper.

It is said, “what Cowper’s contributions lacked in quantity they more than make up in quality.”

In the front of the Olney Hymnal these verses are found: “And they sang as it were a new song before the throne; – and no man could learn that song, but the redeemed from the earth” (Rev. 14:3); “As sorrowful – yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10).

The last verse seems to capture the spirit and life of William Cowper.

Among the popular hymns penned by Cowper are: “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” “Jesus, Where’er Thy People Meet” and “O For A Closer Walk With God.”

Read the text of “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” and you delve into the riches and depth of Cowper’s understanding of the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Truly he was an evangelical poet of the highest order because he grasped so clearly the necessity of Christ’s death and the shedding of His blood as the heart of the gospel.

Look at and meditate at each stanza:

There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains,
lose all their guilty stains;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day;
and there may I, though vile as he,
wash all my sins away.
Wash all my sins away,
wash all my sins away;
and there may I, though vile as he,
wash all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood
shall never lose its power
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.
Be saved, to sin no more,
be saved, to sin no more;
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
thy flowing wounds supply,
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die,
and shall be till I die;
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing thy power to save,
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave,
lies silent in the grave;
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.

Some have criticized his evangelical faith in Christ, and in particular his Calvinism, as the cause of his mental problems. Rather I think we should recognize it as a testimony of God’s marvelous grace in Cowper’s life that was the only true pillar to an otherwise troubled life. Note his words in the fourth stanza of the aforementioned hymn, “Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.”

Furthermore, the Christian should not be surprised that one of God’s servants should struggle with such mental anguish as Cowper did. Consider the Apostle Paul’s words in his first letter to the Corinthians, perhaps in a new light, when you think of Cowper.

“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God – and righteousness and sanctification and redemption – that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the LORD’” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).

In the church building in East Dereham, where William Cowper is buried, you find a tablet praising him with “spotless fame” and that “his virtues form’d the magic of his song.” Knowing Cowper from the legacy of hymns he has given us, I doubt very much that he would have approved of such self-praise. No, Cowper’s glory was in his only Savior Jesus Christ as he wrote in his last stanza of “There is a Fountain”:

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing thy power to save,
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave,
lies silent in the grave;
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.

To read more about William Cowper, please visit Leben’s website.

And yet, the real Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains something of a mystery. The reason, I suspect, is that when Hitler ordered his execution in the closing days of the war, Bonhoeffer was still a relatively young man of 39 years.

Mataxas’s book has been lionized by the evangelical press, but excoriated among those who have built their theological houses upon the shifting sands of a sanitized, liberal Bonhoeffer narrative. Evangelicals would do well not to fall into a similar trap.

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This warm and highly readable biography should be taken at face value, i.e. biography, and we should resist the temptation to reverse engineer an alternative “Bonhoeffer theology” more pleasing to our own theological sensibilities. Instead, we should appreciate the opportunity to share this German pastor’s thoughts as revealed in his private notes and journals (which constitute much of what is new in Mataxas’s book) without insisting that every current of thought fit neatly into our own theological categories. Few of our reputations would benefit from having a theology built upon our casual and anecdotal thoughts, yet it is tempting to do so with Bonhoeffer.

For me, it was impossible not to come away from the notes of those private moments without a strong feeling of evangelical kinship that was entirely different than my reaction to Karl Barth, for example. I had assumed they were much the same, theologically speaking, yet it was Bonhoeffer in Harlem that shows how eclectic his thinking really was. The fact is that almost everyone can find something to like, and to feel uncomfortable about, with Bonhoeffer’s theology.

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When Bonhoeffer came to America in the ’30s to study and work at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he immediately realized that the notion of liberal and conservative in the U.S. was quite different than in Germany. At home, Barth was considered a “conservative” simply because he supported the notion that God existed.

Later generations of evangelicals would blanch at Barth’s so-called neo-orthodoxy and be rightly scandalized by his relationship with his research assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum. For many, Barth came to epitomize liberal Protestantism, much to the befuddlement of European theologians. It was, however, Bonhoeffer’s encounter with African-American Christianity that outlined in brightest detail the differences between the two.

Try as one might, it would be hard to imagine Barth leaving the heady fellowship of the Union Seminary chapel to head across town to the Abyssinian Baptist Church, yet that is precisely what Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, week after week.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a student

Bonhoeffer would write of his fellow students at Union, “The lack of seriousness with which the students here speak of God and the world is, to say the least, extremely surprising. … Over here one can hardly imagine the innocence with which people on the brink of their ministry, or some of them already in it, ask questions in the seminar for practical theology – for example, whether one should really preach Christ. In the end, with some idealism and a bit of cunning, we will be finished even with this – that is their sort of mood.”

To try and grasp how such views were perceived, Bonhoeffer’s professor John Baille’s comment is instructive, calling Bonhoeffer “the most convinced disciple of Dr. Barth that had appeared among us up to that time, and withal as stout an opponent of liberalism as had ever come my way.”

Metaxas then brings us a quote from the young Bonhoeffer that demonstrates a remarkable grasp of the church condition in American Christianity at that time.

“Things are not much different in the church,” Bohhoeffer wrote. “The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events. As long as I have been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear something like a genuine proclamation, and that was delivered by a Negro (indeed, in general I’m increasingly discovering greater religious power and originality in Negroes). One big question continually attracting my attention in view of these facts is whether one here really can still speak about Christianity. … There’s no sense to expect the fruits where the Word really is no longer being preached. But then what becomes of Christianity per se?

The enlightened American, rather than viewing all this with skepticism, instead welcomes it as an example of progress,” Bonhoeffer continued. “The fundamentalist sermon that occupies such a prominent place in the southern states has only one prominent Baptist representative in New York, one who preaches the resurrection of the flesh and the virgin birth before believers and curious alike.

“In New York they preach about virtually everything, only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life,” he concluded.

One can easily see why modern Lutheran, Reformed and other evangelicals feel cheated that they have been deprived of this Bonhoeffer for so long. Yes, there are Bonhoeffer quotes that appear to question the historicity of the virgin birth, but there seems nothing censorial about his description of this lone, bold Baptist in New York who proclaimed this doctrine “before believers and curious alike.”

Bonhoeffer saves his sharpest darts, however, for the man who was the titular head of liberal Protestantism in America, Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick had famously delivered a sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” in which he roundly criticized those for whom the virgin birth, bodily resurrection, Scriptural inerrancy, etc. were considered essential. Fosdick had ended up as pastor of the Riverside Church in New York, built by John D. Rockefeller himself in order to showcase Fosdick’s theological liberalism.

As Metaxas points out, had Bonhoeffer also known of Fosdick’s appeasement views toward Hitler, he might have avoided Riverside Church altogether that one morning.

As it happened, he walked down to services at Riverside and left as thoroughly disgusted as he seems to have ever been, writing, “The whole thing was a respectable, self-indulgent, self-satisfied religious celebration. This sort of idolatrous religion stirs up the flesh, which is accustomed to being kept in check by the Word of God. Such sermons make for libertinism, egotism, indifference. Do people not know that one can get on as well, even better, without ‘religion’? … Perhaps, the Anglo-Saxons are really more religious than we are, but they are certainly not more Christian, at least, if they still have sermons like that.”

No, it was to the black churches of Harlem and the American South to which Bonhoeffer turned to find authentic Christianity.

For many Americans, the name Adam Clayton Powell Jr. recalls to memory the firebrand Democratic congressman who also served as pastor of the Abbysinian Baptist Church. But in Bonhoeffer’s day, it was the father, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., whose towering presence cast a shadow over African-American Christianity.

Born not far from my own home in Virginia, Powell Sr. – reputed to be the son of a white farmer and a Native American mother – chose to identify himself as African-American, migrating with many Southern blacks to the industrial cities of the North.

In New York, the young minister challenged his congregation to move to Harlem and build a massive church edifice, which would soon house the largest congregation in America. It was to this church that Bonhoeffer trekked most Sundays while at Union, even taking on the responsibility to teach a children’s Sunday School class. He had been taken to Abbysinian by a classmate, Frank Fisher. Dietrich would also accept Fisher’s invitation to spend one break period with him at his home church, the two of them traveling about in the American South.

The impact of this trip, and Bonhoeffer’s growing affinity for African-American Christianity, would have a seminal effect on his own thinking about German anti-Semitism back home.

Frank Fisher was also destined for troubling times, returning to the South to pastor the West Hunter Street Baptist Church. He was arrested with Martin Luther King during the civil rights era, served long and diligently in the National Baptist Church Convention, and upon his death, was succeeded by Ralph Abernathy.

The other strong influence on Bonhoeffer was a French Reformed student named Jean Lesserre. Lesserre may well have been instrumental in helping Bonhoeffer develop his views on the imperative of Christian action, which is ironic, since Lesserre was, like a number of French Reformed of that era, a pacifist. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer would have to deal with his own Lutheran theological history, in particular, Luther’s doctrine of “Two Kingdoms.”

The Nazis seized upon Luther’s doctrine and turned it to their own ends. By the late 1930s, Luther’s doctrine of Two Kingdoms was the lullaby that rocked the church to sleep as the trains to Auschwitz rumbled by in the long, dark night. Modern Lutherans rightly complain that the Nazis twisted Luther’s doctrine beyond recognition, but when added to Luther’s virulently anti-Jewish writings penned in his twilight years, it became a toxic soup, indeed.

Along with fellow Lutheran Martin Niemöller, Bonhoeffer would struggle to fashion a coherent theological foundation for, first, the Confessing Church (composed of those churches which refused to become part of Hitler’s “German Church” movement), and later Bonhoeffer’s actual participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler. It would be a challenging and theologically difficult journey.

Metaxas leaves the reader wanting Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Lutheranism explored more deeply.

He does include one statement in which Bonhoeffer says, “As long as Christ and the world are conceived as two realms bumping against and repelling each other, we are left with only the following options: giving up on reality as a whole, either we place ourselves in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ – and in both cases we deceive ourselves. … There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world. Partaking in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and the reality of the world. The reality of Christ embraces the reality of the world in itself. The world has no reality of its own independent of God’s revelation in Christ. … The theme of two realms, which has dominated the history of the church again and again, is foreign to the New Testament.”

One of the most wonderful pictures Metaxas draws of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the very proper German student returning to his homeland on the verge of the Second World War, armed with a large collection of black gospel records. He would cherish these recordings, playing them often for friends, and especially his students at the underground seminaries and schools he directed on behalf of the Confessing Church. They reminded him not only of his friend Franklin Fisher, and his days teaching Sunday School at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, but also of that strain of authentic Christianity that he encountered in the midst of a parched New York ecclesiastical landscape.

American Christians are inclined to categorize, to put every pastor, teacher, theologian or personality in a box. There is no box for Bonhoeffer. We can only speculate as to how his theology would have taken form and shape had he survived that last week of the war, but he did not.

We are left instead with a universalism that falls well short of evangelical orthodoxy. What we should not do is deprive ourselves of hearing his story in his own voice, a gift which Eric Metaxas has presented to us and for which the Church should be duly thankful. There is much here to tug at the strings of our hearts.

Read more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the pages of Leben by clicking here.

Then get your copy of “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” from the WND Superstore!