November 18, 1978

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by gerryadmin

 

jonestown-massacre

The Jonestown Massacre. Jim Jones (b. 1931) was a charismatic American cult leader, founder of the Peoples Temple and instigator of a hideous mass suicide. A devotee of Marxism, Jones viewed Christianity as a way to spread the communist gospel. His advanced views on racial integration won him considerable support in political circles and a multi-racial church following.

After moving his church from Indiana to California in the 1960s, Jones established a number of Peoples Temples across the state. His ability to mobilize black voters for Democratic candidates led to commendations from Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter and Harvey Milk but his disenchantment with orthodox Christianity was becoming more open. When news of his sexual and physical abuse of congregation members was about to be exposed Jones moved hundreds of his followers to “Jonestown”, a farm commune the Temple had established in Guyana.

Relatives of Temple members bombarded the American government with tales of kidnapped and maltreated inhabitants of Jonestown. In November 1978 Congressman Leo Ryan and an NBC News crew visited the site to investigate and to take back any Temple members who wished to return to the United States. They and the defectors were gunned down at an airfield by men loyal to Jones. Later that day, drug-addled and paranoid Jones convinced hundreds of Temple members to kill their children and commit “revolutionary suicide”, telling them that they would soon be attacked and tortured by outside forces. 909 bodies were found in Jonestown, including that of Jim Jones.

 

 

November 16

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by gerryadmin

 

1885

Death of a Canadian rebel

Louis David Riel (1844-1885) was born into a family of Métis businessmen in the Red River colony of Rupert’s Land, what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. Showing early promise he was given a French-language education in hopes that he might be the first Catholic priest from his community but, though intelligent, he dropped out of his studies and worked in the United States before returning to his home in 1868.

Rupert’s Land was at that moment under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company but it was soon to be transferred to the new nation of Canada. A flood of Ontario Protestant settlers had created tensions with the native, Métis and French-Canadian population and a nationalist sentiment arose. This was put to the test when a party from Canada attempted to make a survey of Red River land, threatening the locals who had no written title and whose traditional seigneurial river-lot land division would not easily fit the Canadian model. Riel led an armed group to oppose the Canadian interlopers and to assert that Métis concerns would have to be taken into account. When a pro-Canadian party armed in resistance the Métis imprisoned them and set up a Provisional Government to negotiate with Ottawa. While negotiations were going on in 1871 Riel foolishly ordered the execution of an obstinate Canadian, Thomas Scott, a deed that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Negotiations resulted in the creation of a new province of Manitoba, and settlement of land claims but a military expedition from Ontario forced Riel to flee to the United States to avoid arrest. Though elected to the Canadian Parliament in subsequent years he was never able to take his seat. He obtained a pardon for his actions but at the price of a 5-year exile. During his time in the United States Riel’s mental condition weakened; today he might be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia characterized by a religious mania and delusions of grandeur. He was institutionalized for two years; on his release he headed to the American West, settling in Montana and becoming an American citizen.

When Métis and native grievances in Saskatchewan grew intolerable in the 1880s, a delegation was sent to Riel to ask him to return to Canada and resume a leadership role. He did so but much of the white support he had initially won dissolved when his religious obsessions turned into megalomania and he began favouring armed resistance to the Canadian government. Open warfare broke out in 1885 with a number of native tribes and a faction of the Métis took up arms, seized hostages and clashed with local troops. Though the rebels achieved some fleeting victories a Canadian force under General Middleton crushed the rising at the Battle of Batoche in May.

Riel was put on trial for treason in Regina and was found guilty with a jury recommending mercy, given Riel’s shaky mental state. John A. Macdonald ordered the execution to go through. “Riel shall hang,” he proclaimed, “though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.” He was dispatched on  this date in 1885.

November 15

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by gerryadmin

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1908

Death of the Dragon Lady

Cixi (1835-1908) was the Dowager Empress of China during that empire’s last dynasty, the Qing (or Manchu). She effectively ruled that country for 47 years attempting to hold back the tides of change and to limit the power of foreigners.

A concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor, she gave birth to the royal heir and upon the death of her husband in 1861 she ruled as a regent for her son. When he died in 1875, she placed her nephew on the throne and ruled through him. This was all contrary to dynastic tradition but she was a ruthless infighter and shrewd politician who outmaneuvered ministers and royal family members to keep her grip on power.

In the 19th century China was a shaky and tottering empire, forced by European and American governments to accept the opium trade and foreign domination of much of the Chinese economy. Cixi at first approved of, and then undermined, attempts to modernize China. By the 1890s the growing threat from a modernized Japan compelled many officials and the emperor to press for drastic reform, the Hundred Days’ Movement, to which Cixi responded by launching a coup, ending the reforms and exiling the emperor.

In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion broke out, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising, that saw the massacre of thousands of foreigners, especially missionaries, and Chinese converts. The rebel armies moved on to Beijing where they laid siege to the diplomatic compound, drawing the world’s attention to the matter. Cixi, at first, secretly, and then openly, sided with the Boxers, which proved a mistake as foreign military forces invaded China and crushed the rebellion, levying heavy penalties on her government. She lived long enough to see her choice, Prince Puyi, ascend the throne but shortly after her death, a revolution overthrew the Qing and set up a Chinese Republic.

November 14

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by gerryadmin

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1940

The destruction of Coventry Cathedral.

In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe, the German airforce, began the Battle of Britain, wave after wave of attacks designed to eliminate the Royal Air Force, as a necessary prelude to a sea-borne invasion of England. By the autumn of that year the Germans had decided that they had failed in their plans and abandoned the notion of a cross-Channel incursion. The Luftwaffe was directed instead to concentrate on bombing British cities to destroy their enemy’s industrial capacity: this made Coventry, with its many armament plants, a logical target.

On the night of November 14 the Germans launched Operation Moonlight Sonata, an attack of 515 bombers dropping 500 tonnes of high explosive and 36,000 incendiary devices. Two-thirds of the city’s factories were hit, at least 500 people were killed, thousands were rendered homeless and St Michael’s Cathedral, a tall Gothic building dating from the 1300s was almost entirely obliterated. The lesson the British earned from this was that such bombing of urban areas could be effective and it justified the massive retaliation they and the American airforce would deal out to German cities in the coming years.

In the post-war years it was suggested that Winston Churchill had been alerted to the raid on Coventry by decoded Enigma signals but chose to give no warning to the city lest the Germans realized the secrecy of their code machines had been compromised. This seems not to have been the case and the British had no warning of the attacks to come.

The grand Gothic building was never rebuilt and a new modern edifice was erected on the spot. This sculpture of St Michael overcoming the Devil is on the outside of the new cathedral.

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November 12

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by gerryadmin

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1554

The English Church returns to Roman Catholicism. The reign of Henry VIII (d. 1547) had seen the Church of England leave the obedience of Rome, though retaining most Catholic doctrine. His young son Edward VI (r. 1547-53) had decreed a full-blown Protestant church with a new Prayer Book, vernacular services and married clergy. His death brought to the throne his half-sister Mary I who had clung to her Catholicism and who was determined to see her church return to Rome. Because the Henrician reformation had distributed church lands to the nobility, Mary had to proceed carefully. In November 1554, with her marriage to a Spanish Catholic prince and the pope’s agreement that the return of church lands was not necessary, her Parliament passed the Second Act of Repeal. The House of Lords and the House of Commons declared themselves “very sorry for the schism and disobedience committed in this realm . . . against the See Apostolic” and they sought “as children repentant to be received into the bosom and unity of Christ’s Church.” All the antipapal legislation passed since 1529 was repealed and the old treason and heresy laws were revived. Within a few months the Marian government had started burning stubborn Protestants and earning the queen her sobriquet of “Bloody” Mary. Historians have argued ever since whether Roman Catholicism could have ever been successfully reimplanted into the English character had the queen lived longer than she did (d. 1558). In any event the succession of her half-sister Elizabeth would lead to a return to Protestantism and an Anglican Church.

November 11

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by gerryadmin

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Feast Day of St Martin of Tours

St Martin, born c. 316, was a Christian soldier in the army of the Roman Empire, known for his charity. He is famous for having cut his military cloak in half to share with a freezing beggar. After leaving the army he became a hermit in Gaul but was compelled by townsfolk in Tours to become the local bishop. He evangelized widely and established a monastery where monks would later develop the handwriting known as Carolingian miniscule, a wonderfully readable improvement on earlier hands. St Martin’s burial site drew thousands of pilgrims and became a rich shrine, the target of a Muslim raid from Spain in 732. Because of his cloak, he is the patron saint of tailors; because cackling geese gave him away when he attempted to hide from the summons to be a bishop, goose is traditionally eaten on his feast. His cult was always favoured by the French monarchy and so he is also a patron of France.

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1918

The end of World War I, the worst armed conflict in human history to that time. Even in its early stages there were strong religious motivations for the war with each side claiming divine sanction. German equipment carried the motto “Gott Mit Uns”; the Turkish emperor in his role as Caliph declared the war a jihad and called on Muslims in the French, British and Russian empires to rise up against their rulers; Russians declared that the German Kaiser was the Antichrist; evangelist Billy Sunday characterized the war as “Germany against America, hell against heaven.” Millions of troops in every army believed themselves to be crusaders of a sort. The war was conducted savagely, destroying countless churches – the ruin of the great Gothic cathedral in Ypres became a symbol of the horror of the Western Front. It did not spare the noncombatant; France alone lost 5,000 military chaplains in the fighting; Belgian and Russian nuns were raped; Cossacks pillaged villages on the Eastern Front; Armenian Christians suffered a genocide at the hands of the Turkish army. Religions seemed capable of supporting the violence but not restraining it. The religious consequences of the war were profound. It led to the Russian Revolution which gutted the Orthodox Church and instituted an atheist regime; the defeat of the Ottoman Empire led to the destruction of the Caliphate; hideous new secular faiths such as fascism and Bolshevism replaced Christianity in the hearts of many disillusioned veterans.

November 10

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by gerryadmin

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1989

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Erected in 1961 as a way of keeping citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from fleeing Communist rule by entering West Berlin, the “anti-fascist protective rampart” was a symbol of the repression needed to maintain Marxist-Leninist societies. Though originally billed as a barrier to Western aggression, it was obvious to all that it had been built to keep young, educated East Germans in. As a government document explained:

Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity.

Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a “guaranteed future” one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favours a new war and destruction?

Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labour in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness? …

[W]orkers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists.

Punishment was deadly at times. Though 5,000 East Germans managed to escape, perhaps as many as 200 were killed in the attempt with thousands more caught and arrested.

In 1987 Ronald Reagan challenged the legitimacy of such a barrier in his famous speech on the 750th anniversary of Berlin:

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!

The disintegration of the Eastern bloc was becoming clear in 1989. Hungary opened its borders, allowing East Germans to defect through that country. The will of the GDR government to use deadly force evaporated and guards began to allow thousands through. This event led directly to the collapse of the GDR and German reunification.

 

November 10

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by gerryadmin

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1871

An expedition led by journalist Henry Stanley discovers the long-lost missionary David Livingstone. Livingstone had gone as an evangelist to Africa in the 1850s and though he was unsuccessful at converting the native inhabitants his reports back to Britain were widely-read. His stories of his endless travels and the evils of the Arab slave trade made him a hero in the English-speaking world. He disappeared from sight in 1866, supposedly searching for the headwaters of the Nile. When nothing had been heard from him for years the New York Herald sent Stanley to find him. Stanley’s own expedition into the interior was perilous but he eventually reached the missionary in what is now Tanzania. His first words to his quarry became famous: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley went on to a life of continuous adventure, eventually discovering the sources of the Nile and winning a knighthood; Livingstone died of malaria in 1873 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

November 9

Home / Something Wise / November 9
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“Oh, Jeeves,’ I said; ‘about that check suit.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Is it really a frost?’
‘A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.’
‘But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.’
‘Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.’
‘He’s supposed to be one of the best men in London.’
‘I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.”

November 9

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1965

Roger Allen Laporte, a 22-year-old former seminarian, protesting against American participation in the war in Vietnam, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York.  Inspired by the examples of Vietnamese Buddhist monks, American pacifist Alice Herz, and the Quaker Norman Morrison who had committed self-immolation earlier, LaPorte drenched himself with gasoline, and set himself alight, dying the next day from his burns. When asked why he had done this, La Porte replied, “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.” The Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the 1930s, stresses charity, non-violence and a counter-cultural Christianity.

Laporte’s suicide by fire would not be last such death in protest against American participation in the Vietnamese war. Two others would follow by 1970.