Article contents
‘Angels Seen Today’. The Theology of Modern Spiritualism and its Impact on Church of England Clergy, 1852–1939
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In 1852 an American medium, Maria Hayden, crossed the Atlantic, landed in London and began offering séances in fashionable salons. From this point on, and certainly well into the twentieth century, spiritualism proved attractive to many. What spiritualism offered was, primarily, an extravagant claim: that it was possible for the living to communicate with the departed. By various means, people from all classes, religious traditions and geographical locations ‘tried’ the spirits, seeking to make contact with famous characters from history or departed family members. Spiritualism offered, sometimes, spectacular signs and wonders: flying furniture, levitating mediums and ghostly presences, all of which attracted the attention of journalists. Fashions for such signs came and went; the claim to communicate with the dead, however, remained at the heart of spiritualism.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 45: The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul , 2009 , pp. 360 - 370
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009
References
1 It is usually acknowledged that modern spiritualism began in the home of the Fox family, in Hydesville, New York State, in 1848. For a good account, see McCabe, Joseph, Spiritualism: A Popular History from 1847 (London, 1920).Google Scholar
2 See, for example, Cornhill Magazine 2 (1860), 219–24.Google Scholar
3 This claim was made to the committee set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury examining spiritualism. See ‘Archbishop’s Committee on Spiritualism. Report of the Committee to the Archbishop of Canterbury’ (unpublished report, 1939), 6.
4 The Times, 15 March 1862.
5 Britten, Emma Hardinge, Nineteenth Century Miracles, or Spirits and their Work in every Country of the Earth (Manchester, 1883), 165.Google Scholar
6 The debate was held on 15 October 1919: Authorized Report of the Church Congress held in Leicester (London 1919), 113.
7 See Rowell, Geoffrey, Hell and the Victorians (1974; republ. Oxford, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Rashdall, Hastings, The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology (London, 1920), 437.Google Scholar
9 Beloe, R. S., Be Ye Ready: A Sermon Preached in the Parish Church of Holton (London, 1861), 15.Google Scholar
10 The controversy over the Athanasian Creed in the 1870s, for example, gave rise to a number of sermons upholding this belief.
11 This may, in part, have been due to the fact that spiritualism did not become a single definable movement. For an overview of the attempts to unite spiritualists as a movement, see Nelson, Geoffrey K., Spiritualism and Society (London, 1969), 89–110.Google Scholar
12 See, for example, Two Worlds, 18 January 1918.
13 Owen, Robert Dale, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (London, 1860), 352 Google Scholar; also Tweedale, Charles, Present Day Spirit Phenomena and the Churches (Chicago, 1920), 5.Google Scholar
14 See, for example, Spiritualist, 19 November 1869.
15 Green, Mabel Corelli, Life in the Summerland (London, 1922), 7–8.Google Scholar
16 Theobald, F. J., Heaven Opened, or, Messages for the Bereaved from our Little Ones in Glory (London, 1870), 7.Google Scholar
17 Lodge, Oliver, Raymond (London, 1916), 197–98.Google Scholar
18 Owen, George Vale, Life Beyond the Veil (London, 1926), 17.Google Scholar
19 Theobald, F.J., Homes and Work in the Future Life, 3 vols (London, 1885-87), 2: 55–56.Google Scholar
20 Doyle, Arthur Conan, The New Revelation (London, 1981; first publ. 1918), 41.Google Scholar
21 Adin Ballou thought that there were seven: Ballou, , An Exposition of Views Respecting the Principal Facts, Causes and Peculiarities Involved in Spirit Manifestations (London, 1852), 55 Google Scholar. The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph, August 1835, divided six spheres into a further six grades, making thirty-six. Another spirit thought twelve: New Spiritualist, 27 September 1922.
22 Benson, R. H., Spiritualism (London, 1911), 9.Google Scholar
23 Spiritualist, 31 December 1869.
24 Report of lecture given to the Mechanics’ Institute, Openshaw, by Mrs Heywood, Green of; Two Worlds, 9 December 1887.Google Scholar
25 Houghton, Georgina, Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance (London, 1881), 9 Google Scholar; Ballou, , Spirit Manifestations, 56 Google Scholar. It ought to be added that some spiritualists argued that spirits could fall as well as rise. A base nature and refusal to conform to God’s laws might halt or reverse progress: see, for example, Colley, Thomas, Sermons on Spiritualism at Stockton (London, 1907), 16.Google Scholar
26 A number of clergy were exposed as spiritualists by fellow clergyman and spiritualist Tweedale, Charles: see his Man’s Survival after Death (London, 1909), 409.Google Scholar
27 Percy, and Dearmer, Nancy, The Fellowship of the Picture: An Automatic Script Taken Down by Nancy Dearmer (London, 1920), 8.Google Scholar
28 For an example, see ‘The Confraternity of Clergy and Spiritualists’ to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 9 December 1939: London, Lambeth Palace Library, Papers of Cosmo Gordon Lang, Vol. 70, fol. 297.
29 John Victor Macmillan to Alan Don, 27 November 1935: Lang Papers, Vol. 133, fol. 297.
30 The president of the London Spiritualist Alliance in 1900, following a lecture by Hugh Haweis of St James, Marylebone, commented that finding clergy who were spiritual ists was not a novelty, although finding them proclaiming this in public was: Light, 5 May 1900.
31 ‘A Church of England clergyman’ [Davies, Charles Maurice], The Great Secret and its Unfoldment in Occultism (London, 1895)Google Scholar; Owen, , Life beyond the Veil Google Scholar; Dearmer, Nancy, The Life of Percy Dearmer (London, 1940), esp. 275.Google Scholar
32 There were many clergy members of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882.
33 Spiritualist, 19 February 1875.
34 Light, 26 March 1881.
35 Davies, Charles Maurice, London Sermons (London, 1875), 173.Google Scholar
36 Tweedale, , Man’s Survival after Death, 11.Google Scholar
37 See esp. Chambers, Arthur, Problems of the Spiritual (London, 1907).Google Scholar
38 Dearmer, Percy, The Communion of Saints (London, 1906), 21–22.Google Scholar
39 See, in this volume, Snape, Michael, ‘Civilians, Soldiers and Perceptions of the Afterlife in Britain during the First World War’, 371–403.Google Scholar
40 Winnington-Ingram, A. F., The Church in Time of War (London, 1916), 159.Google Scholar
41 idem, The Spirit of Peace (London, 1921), 159.Google Scholar
42 idem, The Church in Time of War, 299.Google Scholar
43 Maud, John Primat, Our Comradeship with the Blessed Dead (London, 1915), 72.Google Scholar
44 Streeter, B. H., ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’, in idem et al., Immortality: An Essay in Discovery, Co-ordinating Scientific, Psychical and Biblical Research (London, 1917), 75–129, at 139.Google Scholar
45 Barnes, Ernest, Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (London, 1920), 3.Google Scholar
- 2
- Cited by