Tea at Trianon: Defending the Christian Character of England

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Defending the Christian Character of England

From First Things (Via Supremacy and Survival):

While I would recommend Omrani’s book without hesitation, his treatment of the Reformation irked me a little. Omrani at one point refers to the “trauma” of the Reformation, alongside that of the English Civil War. This feels a lopsided term for how the English now see the Reformation, and even for how they saw it by the end of the sixteenth century, when Elizabethan England was a confident Protestant nation set self-consciously against its Catholic foes. Chapter 4 focuses on the history of religious art in England, with much lament over Reformation iconoclasm. Whatever one thinks of it, that iconoclasm and the resultant restrained aesthetic of most Anglican churches is now a part of Christianity’s formation of English identity, a fact Omrani doesn’t really acknowledge.

Furthermore, chapter 8, which outlines the English Reformation’s legacy of political liberty, contains two notable flaws. First, and somewhat pedantically: Omrani suggests that “the foundations were being laid for the divine right of kings” when Henry VIII argued that the fifth commandment (“Honor thy father and mother”) entailed obedience to the governing authorities. Yet this interpretation was novel neither to Henry nor even the Reformation. One can easily find it in Thomas Aquinas.

Second, Omrani fails to moderate his otherwise commendable account of Protestant political liberty with the English Reformation’s particular emphasis on conservatism and good order. One should never criticize an author for the book he didn’t write, but I was surprised that this chapter, and the book as a whole, made no mention of Richard Hooker. Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity not only provided the theological scaffolding for the Anglican theological tradition, but was foundational for all post-Reformation Anglophone political thought. Hooker bridged the gap between medieval scholasticism and early modern political thought with his work on natural law, and in a tumultuous time articulated the need for “orderly public judgment to prevail over private judgment” (to quote my friend Brad Littlejohn). This omission surprised me all the more since Omrani is based at the University of Exeter (where I was an undergrad): I imagine that he has enjoyed a Cornish pasty on a sunny day on the green of Exeter Cathedral, where there sits an imposing statue of Hooker, his Laws open upon his knee.

These criticisms aside, Omrani’s history is rich, lively, and coherent overall, as is the briefer second section on what Christianity still has to offer England. Blessedly, he articulates this without framing Christianity in terms of the bland Blairite “British values,” a term which Omrani repudiates. His account of Britain’s secularization rejects the idea of rationalism leading inevitably to godlessness, focusing more on “new technologies and concomitant new ideas about human psychology.” TV, the vinyl LP, pirate radio, and cars led to new forms of association, displacing the church’s prominence in the social lives of young people; meanwhile, psychoanalysts and educators championed self-expression and the welfare state ballooned. This is a shrewd analysis, although it could do with a dose of the “Great Man” theory of history. British secularization was the agenda of the political elite as much as anything, forged with cunning intent in the 1960s by the likes of Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins. (Read more.)