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Literary Criticism from a Cape Town Pulpit: Ramsden Balmforth's

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Literary Criticism from a Cape Town Pulpit: Ramsden Balmforth's In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi ISSN: (Online) 2305-0853, (Print) 1018-6441 Page 1 of 7 Original Research Literary criticism from a Cape Town pulpit: Ramsden Balmforth’s explications of modern novels as parables revealing ethical and spiritual principles Author: Literary criticism evolved slowly in southern Africa. One of the first commentators to write 1 Frederick Hale about this topic was the Unitarian minister, Ramsden Balmforth (1861-1941), a native of Affiliation: Yorkshire and Unitarian minister who emigrated to Cape Town in 1897. Eschewing conventional 1Research Unit for Reformed homiletics in its various forms, in dozens of instances he illustrated ethical and spiritual points Theology, Faculty of in his Sunday sermons or ‘discourses’ by discussing their manifestation in literary works. Theology, North-West Crucially, these texts did not merely yield illustrations of Biblical themes, but themselves University, South Africa served as the primary written vehicles of moral and ethical principles, and the Bible was rarely Corresponding author: mentioned in them. Balmforth’s orations about novels were published in 1912. The following Frederick Hale, year he preached about selected operas by Richard Wagner, and in the 1920s Balmforth issued [email protected] two additional series of discourses focusing on dramas. In all of these commentaries he Dates: consistently emphasised thematic content rather than narrative and other literary techniques. Received: 29 July 2016 He extracted lessons which he related to his ethically orientated version of post-orthodox Accepted: 21 Apr. 2017 religious faith. Published: 27 July 2017 How to cite this article: Hale, F., 2017, ‘Literary Introduction criticism from a Cape Town pulpit: Ramsden Balmforth’s The phenomenon of preaching has hardly been an unexplored topic in the history of Christianity. explications of modern Its critical analysis boasts a long but inconsistent pedigree. Scholarly research has illuminated the novels as parables revealing homiletical approaches of many preachers while leaving those of most others in the shadows. ethical and spiritual principles’, In die Skriflig 51(1), a2178. https://doi.org/ To cite but a handful of prominent examples, one can point to studies of preaching of such 10.4102/ids.v51i1.2178 renowned British and American clergymen as James S. Stewart (Barbour 2000), Martin Luther King Jr. (Lischer 1997), Harry Emerson Fosdick (Ryan 1989), Fulton Sheen (Sherwood 2010) and Copyright: Peter Marshall (Hyde 1963). © 2017. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Meanwhile, the historical study of preaching in South Africa has advanced on an uneven front. Creative Commons Much of it has concentrated on a relatively small number of well-known divines such as Andrew Attribution License. Murray and others in the Dutch Reformed denominations. One of the many overlooked dimensions of this sub-topic is how Ramsden Balmforth, who served as the sagacious minister of the Free Protestant or Unitarian church in Cape Town from 1897 until 1937, perennially used various genres of modern literature in a series of sermons to impart his liberal understanding of Christianity to his cultivated and largely, though by no means exclusively, white audiences in Hout Street, whose ethnic composition was said to have been relatively diverse (Phillips 1927). Scholarly neglect of his preaching, which was frequently reported in the Cape Times and The Cape Argus, is unsurprising, given the diminutive size of his church which was nearly the sole Unitarian one in the country. For that matter, much of the general history of Unitarianism in South Africa remains unwritten, although the present writer has described the origins of the Free Protestant Church, which David P. Faure gathered in the 1860s and eventually evolved into a Unitarian congregation (Hale 2007). Nevertheless, this major dimension of Balmforth’s preaching merits scholarly attention for at least two significant reasons. First, at least within the South African context, he was apparently a pioneer in this kind of homiletics. His contributions to it, dealing not only with novels but also Read online: conventional dramas and even opera, were published in several books in London (Balmforth Scan this QR 1912; 1913; 1925; 1928). Second, despite the tiny size of his denomination, Balmforth was one of code with your smart phone or the most prominent churchmen and intellectuals in Cape Town. His influence extended far mobile device beyond earshot of his pulpit. In addition to his ministry in Hout Street (the core of which was his to read online. preaching on Sunday evenings), he wrote more than a dozen books about theological and literary http://www.indieskriflig.org.za Open Access Page 2 of 7 Original Research topics and contributed articles to the daily and religious press sympathy for any kind of Christianity. The documentation as well as scholarly journals in South Africa, the United of his metanoia is meagre. At some early point, which in the Kingdom and the United States of America. In his 1930s Balmforth recalled obliquely, during his ‘youth’ (and publications, he made noteworthy contributions especially in therefore possibly in the late 1870s or early 1880s) he read the fields of Biblical1 studies, Christian social ethics and Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jésus (which had been translated into literary criticism. Moreover, as a civic-minded soul in Cape English as The life of Jesus almost immediately after its Town, as he had been in his native Huddersfield, Balmforth publication in French in 1863). He was sufficiently impressed served on various civic committees and played an active part by the post-orthodox portrayal of the Nazarene, which in organisations such as the South African Peace and highlighted his ethical emphases, to deliver as one of his Arbitration Society and the Cape Fabian Society. For his first lectures at an undisclosed venue ‘A defence of Jesus’ efforts to promote social and educational reforms, he gained (Balmforth 1935:5-6). By the early 1890s Balmforth was considerable recognition in his second homeland as well as in affiliated with the Unitarian congregation in Huddersfield the country of his birth. Editor John Cope of the liberal as whose minister he served briefly, following studies at Johannesburg weekly review The Forum assured readers, Manchester College in Oxford. In the meantime, he had arguably too optimistically, in 1942 that ‘Ramsden Balmforth joined the Fabian Society in 1890 (Donnelly 2012). He will long be remembered in Cape Town and, indeed, in South remained an evolutionary, non-Marxist socialist for the rest Africa, as a pioneer of progressive thought’ (Cope 1942:5). of his life. His publications about social, political and economic issues in South Africa reflected his progressive, Preachers have long mined literary works for sermon non-revolutionary views. Owing to his frail health, illustrations and by following in his predecessors’ footsteps Balmforth answered a call to succeed Faure in the pulpit of Balmforth was not entirely breaking new ground. However, the Free Protestant Church and emigrated to Cape Town the series under present consideration was noteworthy, when he was 36 years old. Apart from infrequent return because Balmforth’s use of modern imaginative literature visits to England and at least one trip to South Asia, he was not primarily a matter of referring to it in his explications remained in that city until his death more than four decades of Biblical texts. Rather, in each of these discourses the later. Despite his very active participation in the religious, primary emphasis was on the particular novel itself as a educational, political and cultural life of South Africa, he vehicle of some religious or ethical lesson or ‘law’ which Balmforth sought to impart. Balmforth (1932) believed that, never severed his umbilical cord to British intellectual and generally speaking, the major religions of the world were cultural life. When one reads his many books and other finally recognising that ‘human life is under the sway of publications, one can hardly fail to notice the on-going spiritual laws which man must learn to obey’. In the present influence of the liberal theology he had imbibed in the late article steps will be taken towards redressing the neglect of Victorian period. Overcoming early secularist antipathy to this topic by examining a sample of Balmforth’s sermons2 religion generally, Balmforth came under the sway of which were in fact commentaries on ethical and religious Unitarianism in his twenties, and at no subsequent point themes in works of English, American and French fiction. It does he appear to have seriously questioned that tradition’s will be shown that Balmforth highlighted what he perceived modernist emphases. as the underlying ideas and ‘laws’ in those novels to express points which he wished to convey as central to his post- At no time were Balmforth’s theological views even in the orthodox Unitarian and Fabian socialist religio-political faith. vicinity of conventional, Trinitarian Protestantism. On the contrary, by his own account he was raised in a non- religious family. Atheism had become a fairly visible public Balmforth’s political and religious phenomenon in England by the mid-Victorian period, not background least in working-class areas of industrial cities (Berman Balmforth’s public explorations of literature cannot be well 1990). Writing late in life, the future Unitarian minister understood without some comprehension of his background recalled that, unlike many church-going children in in England, especially his involvement in Victorian religious Huddersfield, he and his siblings attended a Sunday school and politico-economic life. Born in the Yorkshire industrial sponsored by the National Secular Society (NSS) – a young city of Huddersfield in 1861, this mechanic’s son was not and vibrant organisation. It was founded in 1866 chiefly by involved in organised religious life as a child or adolescent; the increasingly prominent Victorian atheist, Charles instead, he and his siblings were received part of their Bradlaugh (Niblett 2011), and associates such as George education in schools sponsored by the Secular Society.
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