Remember, remember ... the 23rd of October
The rebellion had a profound impact on the physical presence and infrastructure of the Church of Ireland. Cathedrals and parish churches were destroyed, settlements served by the Church of Ireland attacked, and a significant proportion of parishioners killed or expelled. For example, in what would become Jeremy Taylor's diocese, both Dromore Cathedral and the parish church - later cathedral - at Lisnagarvey were destroyed, with rebuilding only completed post-1660 during Taylor's episcopate. It marked the beginning of two dark decades for the Church of Ireland, as F.R. Bolton notes in his history of the Caroline tradition in the Irish Church:
Many members of the Church of Ireland were massacred, benefices occupied by Roman Catholics, and churches re-consecrated to foreign rites. Eight years later the Church of Ireland was to be driven further underground by the Cromwellian occupation of Ireland from 1649.
It is little wonder, then, that after the Restoration the Church of Ireland saw fit to commemorate the beginning of such a dark time, and deliverance from it, a time which commenced with - in the words of the collect for 23rd October - "Rebellious Conspiracy against our then Sovereign, and the whole Church and State of this Realm".
But can such a liturgy have any possible contemporary resonance? The 1640s were brutal and bloody years in Ireland. English and Scottish communities on the island turned on the native Irish and old English with no less brutality than the rebels had displayed. Then came the massacres under Cromwell. The decade was to cast a long, sectarian shadow over communal memories and relationships on this Island. Does 'A Form of Divine Service' for 23rd October, marking the outbreak of the Rebellion and giving thanks for its failure, not perpetuate such sectarian memories?
I do not believe this need necessarily be so. In fact, a failure to sustain our historical memory - and all of its pains and suffering - does not aid reconciliation. To have forgotten the events of 1641 and the years following is too easy: a convenient air-brushing of the difficult and painful history of this Island. Contrast such communal amnesia with, for example, Psalms 105 and 106, in which a national history is gathered up in prayer and lament, petition and thanksgiving. Commemorating the Rebellion of 1641 and its impact on the Church of Ireland forces us to confront the bitter realities of sectarianism and violence, even as Psalm 106 confronted Israel with bitter acknowledgement that "we have sinned with our fathers", while yet giving thanks that "Many a time did he deliver them".
Of course, other Christian traditions join us in praying these Psalms, precisely because their histories are also to be gathered up in prayer and lament, petition and thanksgiving. The endurance and fidelity of Irish Presbyterians and Irish Roman Catholics in the face of penal laws, persecution, and discrimination is no less a cause for thanksgiving, no less a witness to grace. But this is precisely the point: the Anglican witness on this Island was similarly sustained by grace and providence, enabling this tradition to contribute to the Christian presence in Irish society in the centuries to come. Our histories, then, are redeemed, caught up in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, becoming signs of grace and hope.
It is right that Irish Roman Catholics commemorate the martyrdom of St. Oliver Plunkett; that Scottish Roman Catholics commemorate St. John Ogilvie; and that the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales are commemorated. Endurance, sectarian bitterness, suffering, political and theological debate, all gathered up in grace and hope. But this is no less so with 23rd October, 30th January, 29th May, or 5th November. For here too, in these dates, is another story but one likewise witnessing to grace, hope, and providence. The nuances, compromises, intrigues, and moral failures of all of these stories sets before the truth that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God": lament. The endurance and deliverance to which they all testify encourage us in the hope "that neither death, nor life ... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord": thanksgiving.
All of this is lost when the various Christian traditions sanitise the past, when we determine that we will not remember. What can then actually emerge is an abstraction: Christian communities with little or no sense of past mercies or past sins, ignorant of the extent to which "we have sinned with our fathers", of the extent to which we are dependent on gracious providence. As Rowan Williams puts it in Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church (2005):
Church history, like all good history, invites us into a process of questioning and being questioned by the past; the difference is that the Christian past is unavoidably part of the Christian present in such a way that we have to be extra careful not to dismiss, caricature or give up the attempt to listen.
In this context, it is important to note the quite striking sense of penitence which pervades the Form of Service for 23rd October:
We this day assembled before thee, do with shame and sorrow acknowledge and confess, that our sins had most justly provoked thee to wrath ... our sins are greater, more bold, and more provoking; in particular our contempt and neglect of thy sacred Ordinances, our vain and false-swearing (for which the land mourneth) our unchristian uncharitableness, and shameful intemperance, our sacrilege and covetousness, hypocrisie, slandering, and deep security in the midst of all our sins and dangers - from the prayer to be said at the conclusion of the Litany.
There is, in other words, a thoroughly Augustinian ethos to the prayers set for 23rd October, a recognition that we thanksgiving is being offered for gracious deliverance, so too 'we' are caught up in and shaped by the original sin which distorts all human societies, the same original sin in which the rebels shared.
It would also be rather perverse for an Irish Anglican not to give thanks on this day, not to give thanks for the failure of the 1641 rebellion. The success of the rebellion would, almost certainly, have spelled the end of any meaningful, significant Anglican (and other Protestant) presence in Ireland. Is it not a good thing, a gift of providence, that an Anglican presence was sustained in Ireland because of the failure of the rebellion? Should it not be a cause of thanksgiving that the Irish Anglican tradition was able, because of the rebellion's failure, to take its place in shaping this Island, past and present?
One of the lections appointed for 23rd October quite beautifully captures this. The reading from II Chronicles 13 recounts Abijah's speech in the face of Israel's rebellion under Jeroboam:
Have ye not cast out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites ... But as for us, the Lord is our God, and we have not forsaken him; and the priests, which minister unto the Lord, are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business. And they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense.
... of which and all other thy mercies, we beseech thee to give us such a lively and lasting sense, as that we may shew forth thy praise, from generation to generation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (from one of the collects appointed for 23rd October).
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