How many of you watch Songs of Praise on Sunday the 13th? The BBC programme has been broadcast for decades; it was first broadcast in October 1961 and is the longest running series of its genre on television anywhere in the world. I haven’t seen it in a while but I did catch last Sunday’s as it was focussed on the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower and featured a couple of colleagues – the Revd John Bradbury, the URC’s General Secretary and the editor of REFORM, Stephen Tomkins. Stephen has written a book on the events surrounding the pilgrims and it is now available in hardback through the URC’s shop on http://www.urcshop.co.uk for a special price of £14.
The so-called Pilgrims were basically separatists who broke away from the Church of England and became outlaws sailing to North America and away from the law. They settled in Plymouth, New England, believing they were called by God to build a foundational settlement there. The movement of which they were a part had some profound effect on church and state especially in the USA and created, among other things, the original documents of belief that later developed into the Declaration of independence. The URC is ‘just one of the heirs of their tradition today’ (Reform September 2020).
As with so much, there was good and there was harm in what these puritans attempted to do as they expressed their faith in dissenting ways and how they sought freedom of expression, especially in matters of religion, as a key to understanding their faith in Jesus Christ. One of the nonconformists, John Robinson, is an important figure in the events surrounding The Mayflower and up until quite recently his words echoed around congregational churches through a hymn based on his farewell address to the pilgrims, rarely sung today, called “We limit not the truth of God” with the chorus “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his word”. These words express a deep belief that God is a living God and God’s Word(s) is ever developing and reforming. We shall listen to the hymn – in Congregational Praise number 230 – this Sunday in church. The hymn celebrates the ever changing nature of our understanding of what God is, calling us away from our assumptions and understandings to new ways of worship and life with Christ. The weeks of isolation and frustration around the pandemic might lead us to change and respond to the new demands God makes on us. What is God saying through Covid 19 and how might we respond?
Martin