This month I’ve been visiting secret places. I study English Catholic families in the seventeenth century who were trying to pass their faith on to their children in the face of persecution. My husband and I traveled to the North of England to track down the stories, secret communities, and ways of living that these obstinate Catholics left. I visited schools that they covertly formed in private homes for the local Catholic children, went ancient holy sites of furtive pilgrimages such as Holywell in North Wales, looked for the signs of clandestine chapels or “priests holes” in the houses of Catholic gentry and read letters written in code or disappearing ink in the archives they formed to preserve their stories for the next generation. Looking at all these artifacts of a faith that were carefully preserved, I began to ask myself: How public does Christian faith really need to be? Does practicing secretly mean it is less flourishing? Am I less of a Christian if many of my particular rituals are constrained or outlawed?
While persecution was only sporadic during the century that the Stuart family ruled England, Catholics had to constantly negotiate how much risk they were willing to take. They were only a tiny fraction of the population, but they loomed very large in the minds of English Protestants. Much of the concerns Protestants articulated about Catholicism included criticism about religious coercion, so the English church after the Reformation claimed it did not persecute for faith-based reasons, but only because of the political allegiances Catholics. Still, English Catholics in the seventeenth century were not allowed to have access to the material elements of their faith: prayer beads, books, and the elements of the eucharist. Parliament also made it illegal for them to share their faith with the Protestants around them and to educate their children in their religion.
When the Church of England had been formed in the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth famously said that she wanted “no windows into men’s souls” and that it was fine for English folks to think what they wanted about their Christianity. For instance, if they wanted to believe that the bread and wine of the communion service was in fact the “real” body and blood of Jesus, they could do so quietly in their own minds. However, they still needed to show up to the local parish church and use the Book of Common Prayer. They definitely could not bring in a priest ordained by a Roman Catholic to conduct communion or confession in the Catholic style. By the end of her reign, close to 5% of English citizens had decided they could not shift to this new church and identified as Roman Catholics.
Parliament consistently updated its laws against Catholics (called “penal laws”), sometimes including Dissenting Protestants in their restrictions. While Protestants who opposed the Church of England faced difficulties, only Quakers were executed for their religious practices, which (similarly to Catholics) were perceived as having political implications. Catholics were the primary recipients of house searches and international travel restrictions in addition to consistent fines and criminal prosecution. And yet their numbers remained consistent after the initial fallout of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. As someone studying religious minorities, I am curious about how having to hide one’s faith might have impacted its importance to them, the richness of practice, or its effectiveness in their lives.
Christianity has consistently held up martyrdom and the persecuted church as models for how pure faith can and should be practiced. The era of the Roman Empire when most of the early saints met their deaths yielded some of the greatest examples of how Christians should live. When overt political persecution ended, some Christians felt they needed to adopt ascetic practices or go into the literal wilderness to develop the spiritual habits that result from life being a bit more difficult. In the season of global missions, those who have had to sacrifice to spread the gospel, often in the face of death, have also been lifted up as inspiration for the rest of us who are able to perform the rituals of our faith without difficulty or opposition.
So how necessary is the public, regular, and communal practice of our Christianity—worship, prayer, education of our children, testimony, proselytizing, charity in the name of our religion? Maybe we would all do better if we had to hide our faith a bit more? Are Christians who are oppressed “better” Christians than those who can easily engage in the way they want with their beliefs? My research indicates that Catholic families were deeply worried that their children would not have the rich faith experience that was available where their practices were legal. For those who did walk in the footsteps of their parents, this persecution seems to have confirmed them. But for each of those devout children and converts, there were almost as many who found it easier to collaborate with the state church, attending the Protestant universities or conforming to avoid fines.
Philip Jenkins’ work on Christianity in the East seems to also indicate that in places where persecution was unrelenting, it worked. Eamon Duffy’s controversial study of England under Mary Tudor contended that her policies against Protestantism were working and if she’d had a longer reign, Protestantism would not have predominated in that country. Having to hide one’s faith or only practicing it with great difficulty does actually mean that many people will give it up.
But it also adds a sweetness to the small community that remains. Traditions and tightly-knit groups have a significance when there is a cost. There is a need to rely on the protection of God and to invest in the spiritual resources that this identity requires. I can learn from the folks that I’m studying to take advantage of the freedom I have to be part of a public church. But I can also learn to be more intentional about what that means and to cultivate spiritual practices to get me through hard times.
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