Redcrosse: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today's World by Fernie Ewan;

Author:Fernie, Ewan; [Fernie, Ewan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1080381
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Redcrosse at Manchester Cathedral. By Tony Hardy

5

Fight the Good Fight?

Sarah Apetrei

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.1

EPHESIANS 6.12

It was with delight but a certain amount of nervousness that I accepted Ewan Fernie’s invitation to act as a member of the Windsor Group which met to discuss the Redcrosse liturgy as it developed. I was invited to contribute as someone engaged in research on early modern religion and gender, with a wider interest in contemporary spirituality and the spiritual resources in England’s literary heritage. The nervousness sprang from the mixed reactions I received from academic colleagues when I described the project. Historians tended to be perplexed and sceptical, finding the whole idea rather eccentric; theologians were far more accustomed to this sort of applied and interdisciplinary approach, but were nonetheless uncertain about such experimentation when it came to liturgy. In the end, my relationship with the project was not strictly confined to that of an academic consultant; my responses both to the poetry of the liturgy and to its inspiration, Spenser’s ‘Legende of the Knight of the Red Crosse, or of Holiness’, were intensely personal, and became an aspect of my own pursuit of truth and spiritual solidarity. That level of engagement seemed absolutely fitting, and without wishing to make a subjective perspective too prominent, this personal involvement will naturally emerge in the reflection which follows, on the questions opened up by the liturgy about the nature of evil, about spiritual warfare, and about national and individual vocation.

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