As well as co-founding the Plymouth Brethren movement, Victorian preacher George Muller set up a world famous orphanage in Bristol funded purely - his Narratives claimed - by prayer alone. Across the world, Muller continues to inspire countless evangelical christian books, films, TV shows and even a ballet. There is a small museum to Muller in one of the old Muller Homes, on Ashley Down Hill. Muller’s role in welfare and care history is significant: Dickens was one of a number of people visiting […]
Not A BRHG Event
BRHG are very pleased to announce that as part of LGBTQ+ History Month 2024 Mike Richardson will be speaking about the 'people's lawyer' Hugh Holmes Gore, the subject of his excellent book. Anglo – Catholic convert to the left, Hugh Holmes Gore, was a key figure in Bristol’s labour movement during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Gore linked Clifton Christian Socialists, morally concerned about the poverty and suffering caused by economic depression, with the working class […]
How can we explain the persecution of Jews throughout European history, culminating in the horror of the Nazi holocaust? The founders of the Zionist movement argued that the cause of the persecutions was an inherent and incurable anti-Jewish prejudice on the part of the people amongst whom Jews lived. The only remedy was the creation of a Jewish State. Mike Levine questions this thesis. He argues that antisemitic prejudice, although long-standing and widespread, doesn’t fully explain when and […]
Not A BRHG Event
The exhibition ‘Refusing To Kill – Bristol’s World War 1 Conscientious Objectors‘ which was in Bristol Cathedral and the Central Library from September 2017 until February 2018 is in Bristol Archives from June 5th until July 14th. The exhibition tells the story of the almost 400 men from Bristol and the surrounding area who, for moral, religious or political reasons, refused to fight in World War 1. Alongside most of the material displayed previously, there will be new exhibits. These include […]
Not A BRHG Event
This talk given by Professor Lois Bibbings will consider conventional ideas about objectors alongside an exploration of who these men (and women) were, what they did and why, what happened to them and how they were viewed. A complex picture emerges which takes us a long way from stereotypical images of objectors as, for example, despised, rejected, unmanly, lacking courage and/or devotedly religious. This event is organised by the Bristol Skeptics Society and takes place at the Smoke and Mirrors […]
Not A BRHG Event
Part of Bristol Women’s Voice, International Women’s Day Celebrations in Room 1P04, at City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR. Note: A creche with two hour slots is available at the venue. Some writers have claimed that human religion began everywhere with worship of a 'Great Mother Goddess' responsible for fertility of earth and humans. Archaeologists have also looked to find a 'leader' or 'chieftain' in prehistoric communities. But are assumptions about hierarchy in early religion and […]
Some members of BRHG, 'The James Nayler Brigade' travelled to London on Sunday to support our comrade 5th Monarchists and Muggletonians. Armed with hatchets and a pike (which we had buried some years ago in readiness for the reimposition of the satanic monarchy) we helped storm the Guild Hall and St. Paul's in celebration of the 5th Monarchist rising against the return of the King on 6th january 1661. One of the leaders of the insurrection, Thomas Venner spurred on the Fifth Monarchists with […]
This novel is set in Oxford during the restoration in the 1660s, a time of complex intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment and uses a mix of both real and fictitious historical figures. The murder of Dr Robert Grove, a fellow of New College, and the events surrounding it are narrated from four significantly different points of view. Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic doctor newly arrived in Britain; Jack Prescott, son of a Royalist traitor and desperate to clear his father’s […]
A Review of 'Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law' by E.P.Thompson ‘Christ died as an unbeliever’ [William Blake] ‘Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! we have Hirelings in the Camp. the Court. & the University: who would if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War’ [William Blake] Watching the Olympic opening ceremony the other night I noticed that the hymn Jerusalem so beloved of public schools, […]
