Apocalyptic Sects and the English Civil War

This is the story of several apocalyptic sects--Brownists, Ranters, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy Men-- that emerged in the era of the English Civil War and afterwards. It explores the shattering of Protestantism into smaller and smaller sects, and details some of the most colourful. Certain of these are still with us today, and have affected American history and the development of liberal democracy.
#sects #EnglishCivilWar #EarlyModern

[@macarenalastra3707]

Great video, very interesting! Is there any particular book that you recommend about this topic of 17th century protestant sects??

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

Thank you! The classic on this is Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (and others). He is a Marxist but extremely interesting on the whole matter.

[@macarenalastra3707]

@@JustineBrownsBookshelf thanks, I'll check it 👌

[@skadiwarrior2053]

Thank you for another interesting dive into religion/history. Didn't know much about the Ranters. I suppose it's where we get the phrase "Ranting and Raving" from. On the use of thou this is still used by people still using old dialects. Heard it a lot as a child along with thee,has't and did'st. Don't hear it much now though. Thanks again.

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

I had gathered “thou” lingered on in the North... glad you added that.

[@AdorablePuppyKisses]

Can you recommend a good book on the English Civil War for someone unfamiliar with the period?

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

Peter Ackroyd’s “Civil War: the History of England volume III” for an overview. Leanda de Lisle’s “The White King”.

[@AdorablePuppyKisses]

Justine Brown's Bookshelf thx

[@omiorahman6283]

Art looks like attack on Titan

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

It’s wild, isn’t it... the pamphlet art of the period is remarkable.

[@omiorahman6283]

@@JustineBrownsBookshelf yes it's excellent

[@jacobitewiseman3696]

Thanksgiving basically America's celebration of there own exile.

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

Haha yeah that's about it...

[@nicholasdolinger6745]

What is the background music in this video?

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

Corelli, Concerto Grosso no 9 in F major

[@KaiColloquoun-gt7kw]

Annoying

[@christophmahler]

A fine transition into the era of the restoration. I remember travelling 'Asia' in my youth, in search for the romantic 'blue flower' of the apostolic communities, described in the various bible translations, I read after droping out of high school and giving away my clothing to the group of homeless people in front of the 'bourgeois' appartment complex. ...only to find alert militaries, stiffling bureaucracies and the _'confessionalist'_ shadows of *a once **_supreme_** and **_universal_** Church* . If it weren't for the 'holistic' theology of early Greek and Desert fathers, I had encountered still preserved in the archives of Cistercensian 'drop-outs', I'd had to make the complete opposite conclusion of Augustine when he was a Manichean, but puzzled that the Catholic Church _still_ existed after more than three centuries... *'All carneval and no lent'* ... (Fairfax failed to assassinate Cromwell) kzbin.info/www/bejne/fHPNk35qp9iqqdk (Antifa in 'Kurdistan') kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWHbXqR8oM6Nl9U 12:37 There's a phenomena of being _vague_ , unspecific and sentimental in German informal language when 'thou' ('Du') is uttered inflationary - as _if_ signalling intimacy - while emphasizing 'me' as the actual, covert message of most sentences. Vague langue is widespread where bending principles and customs of the law of a country is to be expected - as e.g. in regard to mandates for central banking. "When he hears the words 'genus' and 'species' , at one time he says they should be understood as *universals* , and at another that they refer to the _maneries_ of things. I know not in which of the authors he has found this term or this distinction, (...) perhaps (...) it is an item of jargon [in the baggage] of present-day doctors." (John of Salisbury: 'Metalogicon'. 1159) The deeper argument, I can think of here, however is that the longing for the _holy spirit_ of the early Church is legitimate and if a well established community becomes entrenched in dogma, formalism and 'simony' (commercialization and politization of spirituality), 'heresy' in the form of segregation is almost inevitable - while *devoting oneself for the **_spirit_** of tradition* , so it appears to me, will heal almost any 'commune' from delusions or deviance and establish *legitimate authority* . ( *'Born Dropped Out'* ) kzbin.info/www/bejne/m3q0p2SKj82KgqM (St. Isaac the Syrian and the Fullness of the Desert) kzbin.info/www/bejne/jp2tmaJ5eduLoq8 Don't drink the Kool-Aid! [Crawling back to temporary 'Lumberland' - 'toadspotted' as is - before _e v e n t u u u a a a l l y_ shipping out to ... _'Armageddon'_ , opposing 'regime change'.]

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

Always suspected Fairfax had mixed feelings so I’ll watch that with interest. Marvell lived at his estate and wrote the wonderful poem “Upon Appleton House” there.

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

...I do sympathise with the desire to rediscover the spirit of the early Church among the laity. I only want it to happen within the unified body of the Church... I suspect that rooting out the monasteries cut off that avenue for many.

[@christophmahler]

@@JustineBrownsBookshelf "I’ll watch that with interest (...)" I haven't seen the full movie 'To kill a King' (2003), but the depiction of Oliver Cromwell as a socially deprived _idealogue_ is noteworthy - like a cat passing from the left ...twice. If one looks closer, it becomes obvious why we won't have another 'glitch' in the Whig narrative - the movie was entered into the 25th _Moscow_ International Film Festival around the US 'war of agression' against Iraq. Ex Oriente Lux.

[@christophmahler]

@@JustineBrownsBookshelf "I suspect that rooting out the monasteries cut off that avenue for many." My - longwinded, slightly redacted - comment to Your discussion with Justin Murphy on this very point (the 7th paragraph relates specifically to historical Western monasticism): I appreciate Justine Browns interest in the work of Thomas More - as I think a critical debate on utopian thinking is crucial in present public discourse - but I would like to point out several topics that appear to me as typical for the shortcomings of traditionalist thinking (mostly due to a neglect of 'Aristotelian empiricism' , an intellectual flaw that corrupts any sincere systematic reasoning into just another utopian ideology , i.e. like John Dee's neo-platonic 'commonwealth' ). 01:33:10 Justine Brown: "one can build communes in capitalist countries, but one can't have capitalist experiments in communist countries (i.e. North Korea, Soviet-Union)." (paraphrased to that effect) Such statements, although seemingly self-evident, given the Cold War reference, can be proven as mere deduction likely due to a lack of actual regional studies ( empirical approach): The People's Republic of China is the historical example how the crisis of Western liberalism during the 20th century has lead to a 'transformation of Leninism' within the former semi-colonial, multi-ethnic 'culture state' of imperial China - in the 19th century the 'rural periphery' to London's 'City'. What started as a radical divergence from orthodox urban Marxist doctrine with Mao's reliance (the Goumindang had purged the 'Westernized' Party and their COMINTERN advisors in the coastal cities) on the *traditional* peasantry (that already developed a strong communal spirit during the 19th century 'Taiping Rebellion' - and which still keeps icons of Mao despite the famines during the 'Great Leap', as in Nanjie that depends - like the West - on migrant workers) eventually evolved into incremental introduction of 'market mechanism' ('household responsibility system', 'Special Economic Zones', 'socialism with Chinese characteristics': i.e. there is no private property of real estate) where bottom-up deviance of farming families fused with top-down macro-economic planning of open minded technocrats (Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang and others). This sequence of historical events shows in my opinion where to look today when one asks for scalability of regional models (instead of gazing into the squabbling New Left that imitated the failed 'Cultural Revolution'). 'Socialist Republics' that were more ideological than pragmatic don't exist anymore (that process was also reflected in the 'Sino-Soviet Split' between Khrushchev and Mao due to the shift towards a consumer economy after STALIN's death - the collapse of the Soviet-Union normalized relations which animated the US to shift from Nixon's informal agreement to a sudden policy of 'China bashing'). On the other hand, communes in the West like the Kibbutzim movement in the state of Israel have declined due to global economic pressure (i.e. 'cash crops' market, urban job opportunities vs agricultural employment) and the cultural 'Westernization' (towards Adorno's 'culture industry' - children of Kibbutznik value the 'Multiplex' higher than the local movie projector). 'Owenite' co-operatives and 'Chartist' escapism into privacy (Brown's upbringing included) cannot compete with global trade (i.e. off-shoring of production by Western investors). I agree with Brown that 'marriage' is the very first and ultimate political association , long before party membership (which inevitably leads to Oligarchy , according to *Robert Michels* who turned fascist ). ('Journeyman Pictures' on the decline of the Kibbutz movement) kzbin.info/www/bejne/bni0kJWPqpKWna8 What would be necessary appears to me a critical research within catholic social doctrine (analog to military history that is no longer conducted by officers with a professional bias) that stops idealizing affiliated institutions and analyses the economic weaknesses of monasticism (i.e. 'La Trappe' with it's subsistence farming - vs the powerful 'Temple' and it's financial services ) that lead inevitably to it's secularization, fragmentation and the present niche existence of mere 'museal'/'touristic' function. None of that is scalable without taking recent observations and sociological terms like Durkheim's *'Anomie'* and Weber's *'bureaucratization'* into account. Arguably, it was the offical purpose of the 'Society of Jesus' to master the intellectual challenge of modernism , but their 'Liberation Theology' largely failed in the Americas (including their 17th century 'Jesuit state' in Paraguay) against the predominant 'Washington Consensus' (with 'Jorge Bergoglio' 'retreating' into the Vatican) as their elitist prestige lost credibility in liberal societies, see i.e. the Swiss 'almost-Cardinal' *Hans Urs von Balthasar* and his efforts of mobilizing laymen spirituality : (US Bishop Robert Barron on Balthasar) kzbin.info/www/bejne/q6K2lqGieMh5rdU Maybe there are 'cultural pathways' to create communities that will not decay into sheer cults (drinking 'Kool-Aid' in 'Jonestown') and that can sustain themselves (see i.e. 'anthroposophical' initiatives of 'Camphill', although usually subsidised along the European constitutional principle of 'subsidiarity' or communal self-administration , possibly some form of an advanced 'cottage industry' that can bypass 'publishers' in order to interact with consumers): (Camphill Northern Ireland portraits itself) kzbin.info/www/bejne/bnfchaN6mbmMq8k Or revolutionary and neo-reactionary 'accelerationism' is realistic and the present ill-conceived 'New World Order' of 'liberal hegemony' ( *John Mearsheimer* ) is as prone to collapse as any imperial polity - from which local initiatives will spawn naturally . (Livestream - feat. Justine Brown) kzbin.info/www/bejne/hISUYptrqNJ7jcU

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

@@christophmahler That’s right, you have been thinking deeply about this for a while... I’m working my way through Hilaire Belloc’s “The Servile State”; Distributism has a lot to offer. Belloc argues that the Dissolution and enclosures led to our present system. Am planning a discussion of the Diggers next time. One can see how some of these Puritan groups reached their positions, having grown up in a denuded landscape.