Nearly 400 years ago, the church was the site of the Putney Debates. From October 28 to November 11, 1647, no smaller measure of a man than Oliver Cromwell represented the officers while Major Edward Sexby and Colonel Thomas Rainborough led the common men of the sword. For two weeks, they squared off to address lack of payment and other grievances against Parliament declared by the foot soldiers that had recently seen to King Charles’s imprisonment at Hampton Court.
The Putney Debates elevated the questions of political authority and the then-radical proposals for universal [male] suffrage and other democratic reforms one hundred years before the same ideas leeched into the political discourse of colonial America. Some in the ranks of the “Levellers”—as those in the cause of the common soldier were called—sought to limit terms in Parliament to one year and to dissolve the unchecked power of kings, bishops and the House of Lords.
At the time, those inevitable political ideals washed England in fear, even among those who had orchestrated the overthrow of King Charles. With Cromwell’s grip on the proceedings slipping and advocacy for military mutiny gaining currency, army leaders closed down the Putney Debates with a promise to engage in a listening process over the cruel course of time.
“The generals feared that the debates were fatally undermining the discipline and unity of the Army, which was the only guarantor of order in England. They moved to regain the initiative,” according to a church history of the Putney Debates by Nick Westcott and Giles Fraser.1
Fed by the passions of renewed warfare, which were punctuated by the escape of King Charles the following week and his beheading 14 months later, fear suppressed the march toward progress, deferring for centuries political change and the tangential theological shifts in the nascent Anglican Communion.
As a site for high drama and history, St. Mary’s, Putney, has few peers in English history and the church renewed its reputation on Sunday, July 13, when then bishop of New Hampshire walked in to worship.
“Fear is a terrible thing and it does terrible things to us,” claimed Robinson, preaching on the text from the first chapter of Jeremiah in which the prophet claims, “I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”
“People are fearful of the next terrorist attack; they are fearful of losing their job. Some people are fearful of not finding a place to sleep tonight,” Robinson said, just warming to his homiletic cadence. “How sad and how discouraging that the Anglican Communion would be tearing itself apart ..."
“Because of heretics like you, sir,” claimed and repeated by a man, Max Maxwell, as if in a Shakespeare drama. He rose to his feet, punctuating his verbal assault on the bishop of New Hampshire with his motorcycle helmet and vitriolic calls for repentance.
Robinson stood, quiet, fingers folded around his service bulletin. St. Mary’s Vicar Giles Fraser rose to intercede and invited the congregation of several hundred into song: “Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son, endless is the victory thou o’er death hast won.”
After the disrupter was encouraged to leave, the preacher continued.
“Pray for that man,” Robinson said. “Fear is a terrible thing. And the opposite of love is not hate, but fear.
“We are fearful right now about the Church [but] we ought not be fearful for the Church. The Church is not ours to win or lose; the Church is God’s. It is God’s gift to us. It is not ours to save or lose. It is ours to behold. It ours to be good stewards of. It is even ours to take some risks with.
“Can we get over our fear for the Church and start being good stewards of this amazing and beloved gift God has given to us? Can we on behalf of God be willing to risk the beloved Church the way it has always been to have it become the Church God might have it become?”
“The Anglican Communion is going to be fine," said Robinson. He praised the Archbishop of Canterbury for having the focus of the upcoming Lambeth Conference exactly right by putting emphasis on the matters of the world—war, hunger and division—well before the topic of human sexuality.
“This issue [homosexuality] that has been raised to an unprecedented level above all that we believe together belongs in its rightful and secondary place,” Robinson said. “The fear that grips the world is so much more important [than issues of sexuality]
“God will bring all of us to the center; none of us will marginalized; none of us will be pushed to the side ever again,” said Robinson.
“This discussion we are having in the Church is not so significant because of what is says about homosexuality, but what it says about God,” he said. “Listen to the arguments being made about homosexuality and ask yourself ‘what image of God do you get when you hear those words?’”
“When the church treats women and gays like second-class citizens, does that make you want to run to your local Anglican church to get to know God better? When we constantly feed people the bread of anxiety rather than the bread of life, does it make you believe in God’s love more?
“I am going to Lambeth and I am going unafraid,” Robinson said to those listening at St. Mary's. “The call of Jeremiah is so perfect because like Jeremiah, I feel like such a boy. Don’t you feel like such a boy or a girl sometimes when you think what is ahead of us: changing hearts one at a time until we get to the kingdom?
“I think God wants us to be bold. I think God wants us to take risks. I think God wants us to not be afraid.”
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