Tried for a Sermon: Henry Sacheverell and the Perils of False Brethren
Asher Kenney and Dr. Kyle Robinson
In this episode Asher Kenney and host Kyle Robinson examines a case in the records of early eighteenth century England. Dr. Sacheverell’s 1709 Sermon on the perils of False Brethren and the ensuing trial and public controversy that occurred as a result. This particular historical episode reveals several key long-term consequences that are arguably derived from England’s political experience of the Reformation. An experience that was being reshaped by new forces of party politics at the dawn of the eighteenth century.
How can we study belief? What are the longer term implications of religious change in society? These connected questions form the core of our course and our investigation of Early Modern Europe (c. 1450-1789). Indeed, the meaning of belief was the central issue of contention in Europe from the dawn of the Renaissance until the twilight of the eighteenth century and its Revolutions.
The shattering of the Christian consensus and the rise of the empirical frame was a pathway cleared with the twin swords of Humanism’s cry of ad fontes and Luther’s injunction of sola fide. The route uncovered was a journey to the “Modern” in all its beauty and ugliness. Yet, stones lay upon this trail, rocky reminders whose pain and obstacle convey the irony that Europe’s greatest religious revolution resulted in the ultimate secularization of the continent and of the West in general. Still, secularization, caught as it is in a dialectic with Christianity, is a form of belief, and belief remains central.
The effort to experience, define, and understand both acceptable and unacceptable beliefs will be our compass to map Europe’s Early Modern world, the world of unfolding Reformations. This course will consist of primary and secondary readings, lecture, classroom discussion, as well as multiple student writing assignments culminating in a final research based student podcast.
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