Of course the 14th of July is mostly known as Bastille Day, marking the storming of that fort, armory, and prison, and the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. On the same day a couple of years later in 1791, and not insignificantly connected, the so-called Priestley Riots in Birmingham England began. For three days a mob ran supreme in the city, attacking religious dissenters who had expressed among other challenges to the status quo, actual sympathy with the revolution. Their principal target was the Reverend Joseph Priestley, renowned in history more for his scientific work, but at the time as notorious Unitarian preacher and radical.
In the afternoon a mob had first disrupted a hotel banquet of the Lunar Society in honor of the revolution, then moved on to the Quaker Meeting House, but were dissuaded from attacking it when reminded it was Priestley and his Unitarians that were the real threat to order. The New Meeting House where Priestley served was attacked and burned to the ground. This actually gave Priestley and his wife just enough time to escape from their home ahead of the mob who then proceeded to burn it together with his library, laboratory and research. Nothing was left but ashes.
The couple were passed secretly among friends while the riot raged right through the 17th.
Not long after Priestley and his family safely immigrated to the United States where he would establish the first church in the country to use the name “Unitarian.”
For me this moment triggers all sorts of things. For, one, there’s that French Revolution. In many ways it can be marked as a turning point into modernity. The rejection of monarchy and the motto “Liberte, egalite, fraternite, Liberty, equality, fraternity is a guiding light for me as to what human society is for. And, also the absolute failure of that revolution, first through the horrors of bloody revenge and then a spiraling into madness sparking Jacques Mallet du Pan’s infamous observation, “Revolutions devour their children.” And, of course, from that the rise of a dictator, and whose world-class overreach led to the eventual restoration of the monarchy, itself barely chastened.
Now one can legitimately assert it was a marker, a false start in some very real ways, but the beginning of something that would lead toward a new vision of society. Similarly the indignities visited upon Priestley and his family and other dissenters, on the one hand gave America that first overtly Unitarian church, but also even in the homeland was a step toward a larger liberty.
So, in the long haul, perhaps good. Although I think anyone who believes its all upward and onward is past optimistic.
What we usually get are mixed bags.
Ill and good traveling together. But whose ill and whose good, that’s one unanswered question. And, in what balance of ill and good, again, open question…
I think about the lessons of history. And I find that not the most comforting of thoughts. When change comes, of course there’s disruption. And violence. And how those who initiate the revolutions rarely seem to be who actually prevail.
About the only thing that seems certain is that the demons greed, hatred, and maybe the worst one of all, unbridled certainties are stalking the earth, ravening lions seeking whom they may devour.
And so here we are. One more Bastille Day is at hand. One more Priestley riot is in the making. Hard to deny, revolution is in the air. You can smell it like napalm in the morning. And, of course, the question. The real question. Whose revolution is actually coming?
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