Written by Clara Kernodle
London, like much of Europe, is an unchristian city full of churches. Heavy stone columns, marble statues and monuments and elaborate mosaics hide one sad fact: these holy buildings are spiritually empty. Few Londoners are practicing Christians, and the nation, like Iceland and Nordic Europe, has been falling away from her Christian heritage for decades. Church is now just a pretty building.
As many English and Bible majors know, England boasts an impressive Christian heritage to which many nations ought to have aspired. Though modern England has put away her Christian past, the foundation upon which she stands is a mighty one of faithful, servant-hearted nurses, politicians, preachers and schoolteachers. It is a foundation not easily forgotten. Last week, our Harding University in Europe (HUE) group took a tour of Old London’s Christian heritage, beginning at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Ben, our guide, is a 50-year-old photographer and evangelizing Christian who regularly reads George Whitefield’s sermons, runs the Twitter account for the great Puritan preacher Thomas Watson and has not yet given up London to godlessness. Standing on the corner by the house of the mayor of London, he told us about the most admirable and the most forgotten of the English Christian servant-leaders: Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. Ben pointed ‘round the corner, where we could barely see the small bronze statue of Eros in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Little known, Ben said, is the statue’s true name and dedication, which is the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. Shaftesbury, who lived from 1801 to 1885, is now forgotten by mainstream and secular England. In his time, however, he was known as the “Poor Man’s Earl.”
Unlike many politicians or social reformers of the day, the Christian faith was central to Shaftesbury’s labors. He was not bogged down in anxiety over work-church balance, and wrote that “no man can persist from the beginning of his life to the end of it in a course of generosity or in a course of virtue unless he is drawing from the fountain of our Lord himself.” Christ was the focal point of Shaftesbury’s life, and because of this, his political life was devoted to God instead of ambition, moneymaking or fame. He practiced evangelical Anglicanism and worked to convert the unbelieving English population, clinging fiercely to the God of “wisdom and mercy” while working to improve the lives of the poor and destitute.
During the Industrial Revolution, little boys as young as eight were allowed to work as chimney sweeps’ apprentices. Since no one checked the ages, boys as young as four stood on rooftops and climbed into chimneys the size of a breadbox; small though they were, many got stuck, were injured or even died while working as apprentices. The Earl of Shaftesbury stopped this practice and sponsored free schools — the Ragged Schools — for young boys in poverty. Before Shaftesbury’s work, thousands of people deemed lunatics were locked in asylums, chained to the wall by the neck, slept naked in straw, hosed down once a week with freezing water. Shaftesbury alone paid attention. He entered these asylums, saw with his own eyes the situation of the useless and insane, and as he wrote himself, dedicated his life to “the advance of human happiness.” Shaftesbury’s work resulted in strict recordkeeping, better quality of care and fewer unwarranted detentions. As a member of the opposing party wrote, Shaftesbury was “a ready, steadfast, and willing friend” to the poor and working class. At his funeral, the streets were crowded with the young and the poor. Many of them held signs that said, “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was a stranger, and you cared for me.”
We cannot forget England, without which the free American church would not exist. And we cannot forget the Earl of Shaftesbury, who sacrificed power and ambition for the sake of the needy.
