The Ranters - Religious Libertines
Leveller's Day
‘Who
are the oppressors, but the Nobility and Gentry; who are oppressed,
is not the Yeoman, the Farmer, the Tradesman, and the Labourer? Your
slavery is their liberty, your poverty is their prosperity.’
Laurence Clarkson 1647.
The
Levellers and the Diggers have become better known but less discussed
are the Ranters who were a radical English sect
around the time of Cromwell. Indeed many of them had been soldiers
in the New Model Army and had felt alienated and disillusioned. The
English Civil War was not primarily a war of religion, though
religious rhetoric was universally deployed to bolster the political
cases made by each side.
There was no recognised leader or
theoretician and little, if any organisation. The views of the
principal figures were inconsistent with each other. The Leveller
ideal was the small, independent producer, and the Diggers expressed
opposition of wage-slavery. The Ranters, of course, went much further
– to them the hireling was simply a fool. It
is as difficult for us to tell how many Ranters there were. The
evidence is that that their movement was widespread throughout
England. The Ranters flourished for a few brief years from about 1648 but by the mid-1650s they had all but faded away with many turning to Quakerism or the Muggletonians.
The
Ranters offered some of the most radical ideas during the period of
the English Revolution in the mid-17th century when all sorts of
splits, strands and sects developed within the radical religious
tradition. An earlier manifestation of their belief were the medieval
Brethren of the Free Spirit or the Beghards, a 14th century heretical
group.
What
makes the Ranters significant, despite the obscure theological
origins of their ideas, is that their attitudes were not so different
from those of ordinary working people. Historian
A.L. Morton described The Ranters, as “... the extreme left-wing of
the sects which came into prominence during the English revolution,
both theologically and politically...The Ranters, and they alone at
this date, spoke for and to the most wretched and submerged elements
of the population, the slum dwellers of London and other cities.”
Apart
from a small layer of the better-off, peasants and labourers took
little notice of Puritan sermons, followed their own traditional
standards and expressed cynicism about the whole elaborate structure
of religion. Something Puritans feared almost more than Papism itself
was the blasphemy of the poor who undermined their society of hard
work and thrift. Even Gerrard
Winstanley, disparagingly remarked that Ranters held "a
general lack of moral values or restraint in worldly pleasures"
Some Ranters joined Digger communities but for Winstanley, their
extreme individualism, rejection of work and of the family made it
hard to accept them, and he specifically warned women against Ranter
promiscuity, which left them literally holding the baby.
The
Ranters were also egalitarian intent upon the overthrow of the rich
and powerful by the exploited and oppressed. Because the Ranters
believed God to be literally in every human being, they advocated the
radical equality of all people, rejected the need to adhere to the
moral law emphasised by other Christians, and denounced the rich
while calling for ownership in common. Ranters were pantheists who
saw the presence of God in all creation. The consequences, for them,
were that food and drink should be enjoyed as gifts of God. Alehouses
were common venues for Ranter gatherings.
The
Ranter attitude to sex was inclined towards promiscuity, and attitudes rather
hostile to the family. Ranters were often associated with nudity,
which they may have used as a manner of social protest, perhaps
similar to similar demonstrations staged today.
The
activities of the Ranters created a "moral panic" which
resulted in he Adultery Act, being passed by the Rump Parliament in
May 1650 and the Blasphemy Act of August 1650, directly aimed at
curbing the excesses of the Ranters and their followers. The most
notorious Ranters were arrested and brought to trial.
The
Muggletonians, admirers of the preacher Ludowick Muggleton,
originated around 1652 and its doctrines were similar to Ranter
doctrines and influenced by them. Followers of Muggletonians avoid all
forms of preaching or evangelism and meet only for discussion, actual
worship being pointless since in their opinion God does not pay any
attention to what happens on Earth. The Historian EP Thompson, jestingly described himself a
‘Muggletonian Marxist’.
The
Kent and Sussex Branch coincidentally meets at The Muggleton Inn at
Maidstone.
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