Journal of Religion and Theatre

Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 2002

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The dark is known as the place in which things cannot be seen. Of this simple proposition, the odd corollary is that which cannot be seen can be known only in the dark. That which cannot be seen includes that which it is not possible to see, but it also incorporates that which one ought not to see. The dark thus delineates a space of transgressive possibilities as well as human impossibility or limitation. The dark is also a place of violation, where power or strength (which is the root sense of "violation") meets weakness. In Irving's view, the Holy Ghost had been a real presence in his midst, and, though he himself had not had power to summon this presence, he believed in the transcendent capacity of his parishioners' art. The violation of church doctrine that enabled the Holy Ghost to become present by human means was, in his view, a necessity. That the violation might be seen as his all-too-human failing did not trouble him, because he believed in an overarching, pre-emptive authority, but when those very same parishioners who had given him grounds for belief in a miracle had identified him as a power of darkness, then he was put in an ultimate double bind. Either discount their inspired word (and cast doubt on the whole of his preaching from Scripture) or discount his own complicity in the event (because why would an agent of Satan enable the speaking forth of the Holy Ghost). Irving could not win. In either case, the human capacity to sin, which Irving could manage in his preaching, would become too much a real presence in holiness.

A recent article in the New Yorker describes a new and profitable trend in movie-making, sponsored by Christian organizations, which are essentially film adaptations of the Book of Revelation. Contemporary stories of Apocalypse, the Antichrist, Rapture, Satanic presence, and end time, all envisioned with thriller-movie effects, bring to audiences a sense of the dire need to come to redemption now: "It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a Christian spin: the horror comes not from outer space but from our own corrupted souls".(49) The article recounts how a large number of people who would otherwise have kept Hollywood and their fundamentalist beliefs in utterly separate categories (if they acknowledged Hollywood movies at all) have created a market for these movies. The power of those movies is that they recast their beliefs in terms of the powerful effects of dramatization and cinematography. At the same time, the risk [page 55] the filmmakers run is operating in a business that is otherwise known for its secular expression, its vivid depiction of evil, and even the occasional open blasphemy, such as The Last Temptation of Christ. For the audience of Edward Irving's church, the effect of the Holy Ghost seeming to perform daily must have had a comparable effect. The revelation of holiness in the midst of enlightened religion could not help but produce dark shadows in which the Satanic might be seen to lurk.

Endnotes

  1. Roger Mehl, The Sociology of Protestantism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970) 56.
  2. Cf. Jesus' command: "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant [diakonos], and whoever would be first among you must be the slave of all" (Mark 10:43-44).
  3. David Bebbington, "Revival and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England," Modern Christian Revivals, ed. Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) 17, 4.
  4. P.E. Shaw, The Catholic Apostolic Church, Sometimes Called Irvingite: A Historical Study (Morningside Heights, NY: King's Crown Press, 1946) 12-13.
  5. Shaw 13.
  6. Rev. G. Carlyle, ed. The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, Vol. V. (London: Alexander Strahan, 1865) 94-95. Some held a much lower opinion of Irving's performance as minister, such as William Orme in 1825: "Irving, you may depend upon it, is a pure humbug. He has about three good attitudes, and the lower notes of his voice are superb, with a fine manly tremulation that sets women mad as the roar of a noble bull does a field of kine; but beyond this he is nothing, really nothing. He has no sort of real earnestness; feeble, pumped up, boisterous, overlaid stuff is his stable" (quoted in Mackie, 140).
  7. Mackie, 144.
  8. Arnold Dallimore, Forerunner of the Charismatic Movement: The Life of Edward Irving (Chicago: Moody Press, 1983) 60.
  9. Trial of the Rev. Edward Irving, M.A.: A Cento of Criticism (London: E. Brain, 1823) 55.
  10. Robert Baxter, Narrative of Facts, Characterizing the Supernatural Manifestations in Members of Mr. Irving's Congregation, and Other Individuals in England and Scotland, and Formerly in the Writer Himself (London: James Nesbet, 1833) 129.
  11. Mrs. Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving (London: Hurst and Blackett, n.d.) 287-288.
  12. Oliphant, 311-313. Carlyle saw the Irving sensation during the mid-1820s in a less favorable light: "The doors were crowded long before opening, and you got in by ticket; but the first sublime rush of what once seemed more than popularity, and had been nothing more – Lady Jersey 'sitting on the pulpit steps.' Canning, Brougham, Mackintosh, etc. rushing day after day – was now quite over, and there remained only a popularity of 'the people,' not of the plebs at all, but never higher than of the well-dressed populus henceforth, which was a sad change to the sanguine man" (Carlyle 185-86).
  13. Carlyle, 221.
  14. Carlyle, 244.
  15. Oliphant, 318.
  16. Mackie 168.
  17. Mrs. Oliphant disputes the newspaper's phrase: "The actual utterances, as they were thus introduced to the full congregation, were short exhortations, warnings, , or commands, in English, preceded by some sentences or exclamations in the 'tongue,' which was not the primary message, being unintelligible, but only the sign of inspiration – so that a 'violent harangue in the tongue' was an untrue and ridiculous statement" (Oliphant 327).
  18. Oliphant 325-326.
  19. Oliphant, 321.
  20. Oliphant 330.
  21. Carlyle 254, 251.
  22. William Jones, Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Edward Irving … with Extracts from, and Remarks on his Principal Publications (London: John Bennett, 1835) 340.
  23. Jones 373.
  24. William Hazlitt, "Pulpit Oratory – Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Irving," The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. By P. P. Howe. Vol. 20 (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1932) 11, 39. William Hazlitt, "Rev. Mr. Irving," The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. By P. P. Howe, Vol. 11. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1932) 20, 114. "The more serious part of his congregation indeed complain, though not bitterly, that their pastor has converted their meeting-house into a play-house: but when a lady of quality, introducing herself and her three daughters to the preacher, assures him that they have been to all the most fashionable places of resort, the opera, the theatre, the assemblies, Miss Macauley's readings, and Exeter-Change, and have only been equally entertained no where else, we apprehend that no remonstrances of a committee of ruling elders will be able to bring him to his senses again, or make him forego such sweet, but ill-assorted praise. What we mean to insist upon is, that Mr. Irving owes his triumphant success, not to any one quality for which he has been extolled, but to a combination of qualities, the more striking in their immediate effect, in proportion as they are unlooked-for and heterogeneous, like the violent opposition of light and shade in a picture" (Hazlitt 11, 39-40).
  25. Jones 372.
  26. Jones, 371. Robert Baxter supplies many passages to associate Irving with a Romantic actor, such as: "His fervid imagination bodied forth his ideas in brilliant, and oft-times gorgeous apparel; and the whole energies of the man were so much swayed by the imaginative faculty, that he scorned the limits of precision, and dashed his speculations through every barrier, until they were enthroned amidst the glorious realities of our heavenly hopes" (Robert Baxter, Irvingism in its Rise, Progress, and Present State (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1836) 6-7).
  27. Davenport, 37.
  28. Oliphant 328.
  29. Oliphant 328-329.
  30. Mackie 164.
  31. Baxter, Narrative 14.
  32. George Pilkington published a thorough analysis of the utterances in 1831, entitled The Unknown Tongues Discovered to be English, Spanish and Latin and the Reverend Edward Irving Proved Erroneous in Attributing These Utterances to the Influence of the Holy Spirit (London: Field and Bull, 1831).
  33. Baxter, Narrative 14.
  34. Oliphant 343.
  35. Baxter, Narrative 20.
  36. Baxter, Narrative 24.
  37. Oliphant 344.
  38. Baxter, Irvingism 22.
  39. Oliphant 353.
  40. Oliphant 353.
  41. Oliphant 379-380.
  42. Oliphant 389.
  43. Oliphant 395.
  44. Oliphant 395.
  45. Oliphant 395.
  46. Oliphant 402.
  47. Baxter, Irvingism 11.
  48. Oliphant 400.
  49. Scott Spencer, "Lights! Camera! Rapture!: The Christian Thriller Heads for the Cineplex," New Yorker (10 September 2001) 107.

Works Cited

Baxter, Robert. Narrative of Facts, Characterizing the Supernatural Manifestations in Members of Mr. Irving's Congregation, and Other Individuals in England and Scotland, and Formerly in the Writer Himself. London: James Nisbet, 1833.

-----. Irvingism, in its Rise, Progress, and Present State. London: James Nisbet and Co., 1836.

Bebbington, David. "Revival and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England." Modern Christian Revivals, ed. Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Dallimore, Arnold. Forerunner of the Charismatic Movement: The Life of Edward Irving. Chicago: Moody Press, 1983.

Davenport, John Sydney. Edward Irving and the Catholic Apostolic Church. New York: John Moffet, 1863.

[page 56] Hazlitt, William. "Pulpit Oratory – Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Irving." The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. By P. P. Howe. Vol. 20. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1932, 113-21.

-----. "Rev. Mr. Irving." The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. By P. P. Howe. Vol. 11. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1932, 38-47.

Irving, Edward. "On the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Commonly Called Supernatural." The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, ed. Rev. G. Carlyle. Vol. V. London: Alexander Strahan, 1865, 509-61.

Jones, William. Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Edward Irving . . . with Extracts from, and Remarks on his Principal Publications. London: John Bennett, 1835.

Mehl, Roger. The Sociology of Protestantism. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970.

Oliphant, Mrs. The Life of Edward Irving. London: Hurst and Blackett, n.d.

Shaw, P. E. The Catholic Apostolic Church, Sometimes Called Irvingite: A Historical Study. Morningside Heights, NY: King's Crown Press, 1946.

Spencer, Scott. "Lights! Camera! Rapture!: The Christian Thriller Heads for the Cineplex," New Yorker (10 September 2001), 105-09.

[Tarbat, William]. Remarks on Mr. Baxter's Narrative of Facts Concerning The Supernatural Manifestations in Members of Mr. Irving's Congregation. Liverpool: J. Davenport, 1833.

Trial of the Rev. Edward Irving, M.A.: A Cento of Criticism. London: E. Brain, 1823.
 
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