|International Vegetarian Union (IVU)|
A thesis presented to the London School of Economics, University of London,
The author is now Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at Kent University, England, and has given permission for this previously unpublished thesis to be published on the IVU website. The ownership and copyright remain hers and no part of this thesis may be used elsewhere without her express permission.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE BIBLE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
It was out of the Bible Christian Church that the Vegetarian Society developed [editor's note ], and the two are in this early period so intertwined that this and the following subchapter on the Society must be read together.
The Bible Christians (1) - often called Cowherdites after their founder William Cowherd - were an offshoot of eighteenth-century Swedenborgianism. In 1773 Swedenborg's writings had attracted the attention of the Reverend John Clowes, rector of St. John's Manchester, and he became a leading follower of Swedenborg, though, despite doubts and criticism, he remained in the Church of England. Swedenborg had originally hoped that his ideas would permeate the established churches and lead to their spiritual rebirth, rather than form the basis of a separate sect, and Clowes, like many other Anglicans, found the church sufficiently tolerant of his views. Other Swedenborgians, however, including many who were dissenters, found their churches less accommodating, and from these groups came the main drive to establish separate Swedenborgian congregations. In the late eighteenth century these formed themselves into the New Church. (2) The desire for a separate Swedenborgian church was also felt among some of Clowes' congregation, and in 1793 they formed themselves into the New Jerusalem Temple, Peter Street, Manchester, and they invited Clowes' ex-curate, William Cowherd, to become their minister. In 1800, after a disagreement, Cowherd left Peter Street, and opened his own chapel at Christ Church, King Street, Salford. By 1808, through a combination of differences in interpretation and in personality, relations between Cowherd and the New Church, especially the London congregations, were increasingly strained. The break finally came in 1809 when Cowherd unfolded his new beliefs in vegetarianism and total abstinence; (3) from then on these were to be the two distinctive features and enthusiasms of the Bible Christians, as they were now to call themselves.
Before we look at the Bible Christians themselves, however, we need to place this schismatic version of Swedenborgianism within the wider context of an older, non-orthodox religious tradition, for Swedenborgianisrn, whether in the form of the New Church or in the more diffuse influence of Swedenborg's writings, is part of a more enduring, though submerged, religious strand that can be traced from at least the seventeenth century, and that is most clearly associated with the influence of Jacob Boehme. (4) John Harrison believes that this 'mystical, antinomian' strand achieved in the eighteenth century a degree of popular following, and he identifies as the central features of this Behmenist influence: 'first, that all things have an outward and an inward form, and the former is the reflection or parable of the latter; and second, that God is made manifest within men'. (5) These were allied to a mystical apprehension of nature that drew on alchemic and astrological ideas and that can be said to have preserved elements of the hermetic tradition. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, there are important similarities between this earlier religious tradition and late-nineteenth and twentieth century developments in the broad context of Indian spirituality and of various forms of esotericism. While one need not accept the pedigrees that such gnostic groups have, since the late nineteenth century, produced to validate themselves, there are sufficient similarities to suggest the existence here of an enduring and coherent strand within the western religious tradition. The principle features of this centre around: the tendency to self-deification and God as indwelling; a neo-palagian strand of perfectionism; an interest in symbolism and in the microcosm/macrocosm analogy; an immanantist approach to the natural world; a concern with purity, sometimes including sexual purity or ideas of divine marriage; an emphasis on Spirit and Love; and, sometimes, on female symbolism. Vegetarianism is also a recurring association. It is essentially non-normative, both in the sense of being outside the socially accepted versions of religion, and in the sense of not being involved in the validation of social structures. Later periods add other features such as reincarnation.
Cowherd at Salford attracted a large following among the working class that extended beyond the actual membership of the sect, restricted by its temperance and vegetarian demands. (6) This was partly through their offering free seats and an open burial ground, but it was due also to Cowherd's concern for the poor - the people came to him for medical help and for his well-known soup. This approach was continued in other Bible Christian chapels, situated in the depressed areas of Hulme and Ancoats.
In 1817 a section of the congregation, some twenty adults and nineteen children, fired with the idea of America, set sail under the leadership of the Reverend William Metcalfe. (7) America at this time exerted a powerful appeal for radicals who saw in it the home of free republican institutions. (8) After many difficulties Metcalfe established a congregation in Philadelphia and began to make contact with the forerunners of American vegetarianism - Dr William Alcott, Bronson Alcott and Sylvester Graham. Metcalfe himself returned to England on more than one occasion to act as pastor for the Bible Christians and to work as a lecturer for the Vegetarian Society. The English Bible Christians retained close links with their sister congregation in Philadelphia, and through them with the American Vegetarian Society. It is clear that the Bible Christians, and later the Vegetarian Society, belong to what Thistlewaite has called the Atlantic Community, that shared network of contacts and friendships on both sides of the Atlantic, centred around the humanitarian crusade, anti-slavery, peace and temperance, and ultimately resting on the interdependence of the Atlantic economy. (9) The Concordium's connections with the New England Transcendentalists are also part of this; and English vegetarianism retains its close American links until at least the 1870's. (10)
The Cowherdites had chosen the title Bible Christian to denote their reliance on scripture alone as the source of doctrine. (11) Despite the shared name, there were no links between the Cowherdite Bible Christians and the Bryanite Methodists; indeed like the main branch of Swedenborgianism represented by the New Church, their religion was markedly different in character from Methodism and from the traditions of Old Dissent, for though Biblical exegesis was central, following Swedenborg's 'science of correspondences' they applied a symbolic and rationalistic approach to scripture that was very different from the literalist and fundamentalist traditions. (12) The author of the preface to Cowherd's Facts Authentic to Science and Religion, probably Scholefield, attacked literalist interpretations as often absurd and even at times counter to the true essence of biblical religion, repudiating 'dry disquisitions about words' and urging that people look behind these fallible products of man for the true principles of religion which are grounded in religious 'facts', (13) In the same way that science is grounded, so too can religion be, when it rests on facts revealed through scripture, properly understood. The approach was strongly rationalistic, and the model was science. Science at this time held a strong appeal for working-class radicals. It represented the fount of reason, providing true knowledge of the world and of men. It was part of the enlightenment attack on obfuscation and priestcraft, and as such on privilege and traditional claims to power. This rationalistic approach gave an intellectualist cast to their appeal. The Bible Christians formed part of what has been termed the proletarian enlightenment, and this was reflected in their strong interest in medicine, science and education. We shall discuss this background further in the context of the Vegetarian Society. (14) The Bible Christians put great emphasis on independence of mind; 'we do not really believe what we cannot rationally understand' (15) and they emphasised freedom of belief, stating that they did not presume 'to exercise any dominion over the faith or conscience of men'. (16) They recorded that 'they did not form a sectarian church', (17) for in the same way that science has no sects, they argued, religion, properly understood, reveals the same truth to all men. Their vaunting of reason and their popular scientism makes them at times appear very like the deists, and they clearly operated in the same social and intellectual milieu as did the early working-class deists and free thinkers; indeed Richard Carlile took the view that 'this sect of Bible Christians is so mixed up with infidelity and made up of infidels that it is to me incomprehensible' (18)
It was an approach that stressed religious optimism - original sin, the cross and salvation were set aside – and Christ's divine humanity glorified, so that man's aspiration became to realise the divine humanity within himself. There was no emphasis on personal sin or conversion. Man was not saved by the experience of faith, so much as by the value of his life as a whole. Their strong belief in free-will gave a Pelagian tone to their approach; the emphasis was on spiritual and moral regeneration according to principles rationally apprehended, and their vegetarianism was part of this.
Central to Swedenborgianism was the assertion of' the reality of and primacy of spirit. Swedenborg, though trained in the new scientific world view, had turned away from its single world to assert the reality of another realm of being. (Though this did not, as we have seen, among the Bible Christians at this time imply the rejection of science.) This was the realm of true causes behind the surface phenomena of the material world; here, states of being rather than the measured time and space of science were the fundamental categories. Events in the world incarnate the deeper reality of spirit, which reality is made accessible through the doctrine of correspondences, and the literal events and descriptions found in the Bible are thus symbols of deeper religious truth. (19) It was an easy step from this cognitive style to the idea of eating patterns as manifesting a deeper moral relationship. Though Swedenborg does not appear himself to have been a full vegetarian, (20) his characterisation of meat-eating as symbolic of man's Fall lends itself to obvious vegetarian development. (21)
There is an implicit dualism in this tradition and certain thinkers, perhaps including Cowherd, took up its radical implications and argued for a total primacy of spirit; thus all the Trinity and not just the Holy Ghost was pure spirit and the death of Christ, so far from being the means of the atonement of the material world, was symbolic of the sacrifice of bodily necessity to free the spirit. Man too could become fully spirit, and thus restore the open vision which he had once enjoyed and which Swedenborg had experienced in his visions of Heaven and Hell. Eating the more spiritual food could be part of this. (22) However the secular activities of the Bible Christians suggest that this dualist implication of some of their thought was much tempered in practice, and developments within the church and its partial transmogrification into the Vegetarian Society in the 1850's represent a subtle but important shift on this issue.