The number of North Carolinians who have not heard of the Unitas Fratrum - or, more likely, its English name, the Moravian Church - must be thin on the ground. At the very least, those who are students of the state’s history will inevitably find themselves acquainted with the institution. I may be speaking from a place of privilege here, however. Having come to the faith in the Methodist tradition - with the Moravians playing no small part in its origins - the Moravian brand of piety has always been recognizable and appreciated. My first encounters with the Moravians go back much farther. Both my parents and my grandparents imparted to me a deep love of storytelling and North Carolina’s history, but it was my mother that taught me to love ghost stories. My mother’s library of the works of Nancy Roberts quickly became my own. One of the first ghost stories I remember reading dealt with the ‘Little Red Man’ of Old Salem, Andreas Kresmer, who was buried alive assisting with a building project in 1786. A shoemaker by trade and an imp by reputation, Kresmer continued to make himself known after his death through the tell-tale taps of a cobbler’s hammer and scurrying through the corridors of the Widow’s House, until a visiting Moravian clergyman exorcised the building of Kresmer’s presence.1 So goes the story!

The Moravians have more than history, however. Having matriculated at their seminary, I count among my friends a good number of Moravian clergy and laity. I am better for having known them, and I am continually inspired by them. Their tradition is one that I can appreciate, as one whose spiritual home is the Anglican tradition. In 1749, Parliament, with the bench of bishops of the Church of England included, declared the Moravian Church “an ancient Protestant Episcopal Church.”2 It is a spirit that accords with many of the Anglican divines. Thinkers such as Christopher Wordsworth3 and Geoffrey Fisher, who held that the Anglican tradition possessed no doctrine save for those found “in the Catholic Creeds, and these … without addition or diminution,”4 would have likely found much in common with John Amos Comenius, the last Bishop of the ancient Unitas Fratrum prior to the church going ‘underground’:

“If you ask after my Divinity, I grasp, with the dying Thomas Aquinas, (for I also must soon die) the Bible in my hands, and say with my whole heart: ‘I believe whatsoever is written in this book.’ If anyone wishes to have my confession of faith in a very short compass, I will produce the Apostle’s Creed; for I know no shorter, simpler, and more effective way to decide all controversies … If anyone asks me whether I do not make use of any peculiar form of prayer, I point him to the Lord’s Prayer, because I believe that there is no better key to the heart of the Father than that given us by his only begotten Son … If anyone inquires after my rules of life, I point to the Ten Commandments, because I am firmly convinced that nobody can better inform us what is pleasing to God than God.”5

It is this kind of holy, learned simplicity - to hold to what is held in common among the branches of the Christian faith, and to avoid unfruitful strife - that has marked the Moravian Church. Nowhere has this commitment to what C. S. Lewis (after Richard Baxter) called a ‘mere Christianity’ been more evident than in the life of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Edward Rondthaler (1842-1931), pastor of Home Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, and later the Bishop of the Southern Province of the Moravian Church. Given his standing as a leader in his church, it is not that Rondthaler or his communion held to no doctrines of their own. To charges of theological fuzziness, a later bishop, the Rt. Rev. Herbert Spaugh contended that the richness of the Moravian confession and tradition invalidated this.6 Rather, it was a question of priority. Spaugh related that when Bishop Rondthaler was sending the younger Rev. Spaugh to a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, he said,

“Brother Herbert, remember the kingdom of God is far greater than the Moravian Church and you are first a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ to those who need you and then a minister of the Moravian Church.”7

For his part, Spaugh acknowledged that this may have limited potential growth for his denomination. For Rondthaler however, as for Comenius, the chief priority was to communicate the Gospel, not only apart from denominational infighting, but in an ecumenical vision that spoke to a united church. It is in this context that we come to the Memorabilia.

What are the Memorabilia?

The foreword to Rondthaler’s Memorabilia notes that the tradition of the Memorabilia is rooted in a longer practice begun by the settlers of the Wachovia tract (in the area of what is now Forsyth Country, North Carolina.) Reflecting a wider tradition of Moravian scholarship and record-keeping, each instalment of the Memorabilia is simply a “history of the noteworthy events of the year, and the reading of the same at a service on New Year’s Eve.”8 Bishop Rondthaler did not invent the practice, and there is no indication that Rondthaler grew up with any familiarity with the practice. (Rondthaler was born and raised in Schoeneck, Pennsylvania.)9 Neither did the tradition end with Rondthaler. However, as the compilers of the Memorabilia note, “it is doubtful whether ever before fifty such Memorabilia have been written in one place by one man.”10

The Memorabilia had never been intended for publication. Being delivered from the pulpit of Home Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, their interests reflect this congregation and its community, their denomination, and their state. What makes the Memorabilia continually fascinating is the glimpse it provides into these issues through Rondthaler’s eyes. In lesser hands, it may have become an exercise of exclusive navel-gazing. The compilers of the Memorabilia say as much:

“Though they were written with no thought of yourself these Memorabilia will become an abiding evidence of your erudition, your leadership, your keen observation, and in years to come many a student of history will turn to them for light on the half century which they so graphically portray.”11

The Memorabilia were published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Rondthaler’s pastorate at Home Moravian Church. Beginning with 1877, the volume concludes with the year 1927. Published in 1928, an appendix was printed in 1931 with the remaining Memorabilia, concluding in 1930. Rondthaler died on January 31st, 1931. It is worth considering the Memorabilia, not only for their witness to an important period of North Carolina history and an unique example of piety, but for their summons to common, catholic faith worked out in love.

The Memorabilia as Identity Formation

A man of wide reading and deep erudition, in the Memorabilia Rondthaler is always contextualizing the work of his congregation and the Moravian Church in reference to the wider world. Although there is not a strict sequence to the Memorabilia, a general pattern can be detected throughout them. Beginning with the state of the world and the United States of America in particular, the fortunes of North Carolina are then considered, followed by Winston-Salem. The ultimate consideration is given to the Moravian Church, its Southern Province, and the Home congregation (the daughter churches of which at the time - and to no small extent today - made up most of the Southern Province.) The effect of this structure is that the identity of the Home Moravian congregation - first as Christians, then as Moravians - is re-presented in the context of their deeds in the preceding year. This impact is heightened not only due to the Memorabilia being delivered on New Year’s Eve, but also in light of their context within the liturgical year.

With the Moravian tradition being a liturgical one, Rondthaler makes as much reference to the church seasons as he does the months of the year. The two calendars form a kind of concentric dance, with the months of the year being considered in light of their place in the church’s calendar. The instalment of 1893 provides an illuminating example as regards the season of Lent and Holy Week:

• “The 19th of February was the first bright Sunday in the new year. The storms and snows of the winter now began to yield, and with the commencement of Lent on the following Sunday we entered into a beautiful and busy season. Four instruction classes were held. They were attended by many, likewise, who were already members of the Church.

• In the course of March, Lenten services were held, one on Thursday afternoon and one on Friday evening. In this way a more blessed Easter season was provided for.

• Palm Sunday, March 26th, was a mild and pleasant day, and one of great encouragement. Twenty were received by baptism and confirmation at the Home Church, and five at Calvary. On Thursday four more were received at the Home Church during the Communion.

• The weather during the Holy Week was very favorable, and the interest in the services, which has been steadily growing from year to year, was greater than ever before…

• The diary for Easter Day says: “This was a day of which, in every respect, it could be said, ‘It is the day which the Lord hath made.’” The Early Service, on the beautiful Easter morning, commenced at five-thirty. … The Easter sermon was preached to a great multitude of people, and in the evening the services of the Holy Week were closed with devout and thankful hearts.”12

Other instances of this interplay between the liturgical and yearly calendar can be found throughout the Memorabilia. While it is important not to read too much into this writing style, it is interesting to note that Rondthaler’s first mention of the month of April only comes after Easter, despite the holiday falling on April 2nd in 1893. Instead, the liturgical holidays take precedence over the identifications of individual months. While this may seem like an exercise in stating the obvious - if it didn’t take precedence, it wouldn’t be a holiday! - it is worth highlighting in a context that is marking the conclusion of the calendar year. Though the Moravian Church is a liturgical tradition, it is also an evangelical one; it would have been easy not to lay such stress on these feasts, and instead to make common cause with other Protestant bodies. In other aspects of its life, the Moravian Church did as much, finding frequent collaborators in the Methodist tradition.13 Nevertheless, the emphasis on the liturgical calendar remained, with both feasts of the universal Christian church and those distinct to the Unitas Fratrum. Other instances of this interplay between the liturgical and yearly calendar can be found throughout the Memorabilia. The Rev. Dr. Craig D. Atwood speaks of the Moravians of the 18th century as having a sacred view of time.14 While Rondthaler and his congregation were considerably different from the Moravians of 1740’s Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and their devotion to the wounds of Christ, both groups shared a liturgical sense of time working in tandem with the calendar year. Whatever the calendar year, for the Christian, eternity is the goal, Rondthaler concludes. “May we live the rest of our time with eternity in view, and with Thee, our Saviour, in full sight.”15

The Memorabilia and Anamnesis

Similarly, the common sacraments and rituals found throughout different liturgical seasons shaped this identity. References to the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, confirmation, the Lovefeast, and other rituals and rites are replete throughout the Memorabilia. Their importance is heightened by the end-of-year context of the Memorabilia, with the sacraments and rites of the Church remaining touchstones of communion of Christ, no matter the month or the year. Whatever the calendar year, much like in the sacrament of Holy Communion itself, there is a deeper time and a deeper mystery to be entered into, and an anamnesis to be enacted.

In eucharistic rites, the anamnesis refers to the memorial aspect of the anaphora, or the Eucharistic prayer. Within the context of Holy Communion, the point is twofold: “the liturgical assembly is called by the anaphora prayer to remember, then acts objectively in obedience to that remembrance.”16 Of course, it is no mere remembrance; within the context of Holy Communion, this remembrance is a re-membering, or a re-presentation. The Memorabilia, despite having neither a sacramental nor liturgical function, may be considered in a similar way.

Despite being neither sacramental nor liturgical, the Memorabilia would have originally taken place in a liturgical context: during the New Year’s Eve service at Home Moravian Church. The record of the church’s doings within the wider context of the world were not only a re-presentation of what the church had been, but also a reminder of its calling. Rondthaler’s descriptions of the wider world are hopeful, but not optimistic; the Memorabilia resound with calls for peace, lamenting of tragedy, and beckoning his hearers to repentance and a closer walk with Christ. In presenting each calendar year of the life of the church as being inexplicably sacramental in nature, Rondthaler points to the true source of life in a world filled with strife and division. Concerning the Eucharist, St. Augustine is said to have once reflected, “behold what you are, and become what you receive.” This may well reflect Rondthaler’s own portrait of the life of his congregation, with its liturgical and calendrical emphases. The Home Moravian Church could behold what it was in its record of the preceding year, and could become what it received through a relationship with Christ, the reading of his word, and receiving him in the sacraments of the Church.

The Memorabilia as Memento Mori

As a pastor, Rondthaler was no stranger in warning his flock against forsaking Christ in his Memorabilia. Sometimes, his candor is amusingly direct, such as in the year 1880, where he is forced to quote St. Paul against those in his congregation who “are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame; who mind earthly things.”17 Perhaps the most stark example of this, however, is his use of the Memorabilia to honor the deceased and to convict the living. In this way, the Memorabilia function as memento mori.

In the first place, the Memorabilia function as reminders of the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death. In their assessment of the Memorabilia as a text to which “many a student of history will turn,” the compilers of the Memorabilia likely had this in mind. The pages concerning “half century which they so graphically portray” are replete with episodes of disaster, revolution, and death. Famous events such as the assassinations of Tsar Alexander II, President James Garfield, and President William McKinley, the 1886 Charleston earthquake, the 1889 Johnstown flood, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, the Great War, the Russian Revolution, and more are enumerated within the Memorabilia. Besides these, episodes of murder, lynching, robbery, and other crime in the state of North Carolina and the area of Winston-Salem are recorded. Although Rondthaler frequently provides a hopeful tone in the pages of the Memorabilia, his worldview was not one of unbridled optimism. This is perhaps best seen in his reflections on the sinking of the Titanic: “While the greatness of man shines out in this century more than ever before, Oh! how small men appear in some of the sudden emergencies that have marked this now closing year.”18 For Rondthaler, those things which truly matter in life are frequently unseen, while that which is widely celebrated is all too fleeting.

It is a message he communicated to his congregation in Winston-Salem time and time again, and perhaps most effectively with his dedications to deceased congregants Throughout many of the Memorabilia, references are made to reading out the names of the parishioners who died throughout the preceding year. While eventually this practice was abolished in favor of printing the names in the Wachovia Moravian (the names were too numerous to read in the time allotted), it is nevertheless reflective of the wider culture of the Moravian Church surrounding death and dying.19 While the Moravians are known for their bed-side manner at the time of death, Rondthaler’s intention in this context was somewhat different. In setting before the congregation their communal, liturgical life as well as the deaths that had interrupted that pattern, Rondthaler sought to awaken in them a better attendance upon their salvation, and to ground them in the hope that they confessed yearly in the Easter Morning Liturgy:

“This is my Lord, Who redeemed me, a lost and undone human creature, purchased and gained me from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil;

Not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and dying;

To the end that I should be His own, and in His kingdom live under Him and serve Him, in eternal righteousness, innocence, and happiness…”20

Rondthaler’s own words may best demonstrate this use of memento mori:

“We have, in the course of the review of the year’s events, read the list of those who a year ago tonight were present with us, but who during the progress of the year have gone from us never again to return, and the mere mention of their names has given an affectionate and solemn touch to our record. If the list of names of our dear departed of this year could have been presented at this time last year in a kind of proof sheet, doubtless each one would have heard his name with great surprise. And so, in due time, the case will be with us, and the thought calls for a very earnest acceptance at the close of the year of what our Savior has said: “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God abideth upon him.” If only we keep our names written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, we need not fear their entry upon any earlier death list than we had anticipated, but shall have joy and not shame at His appearing for us.”21

Conclusion: Rondthaler’s Memorabilia Today

In terms of its role as a historical text, the prediction of the compilers of the Memorabilia that Rondthaler’s work would be a valuable source was correct. Not only does the Memorabilia manage to provide a meaningful insight into a very rapidly changing community, denomination, and nation, it also provides a glimpse into the life, mind, and faith of one of the foremost leaders of that denomination.

As far as scholarship is concerned, work on Rondthaler is forthcoming, and he demands reappraisal. I am acquainted with those who are doing work on Rondthaler’s views on race, which I would venture were ‘moderate’ for the time. I think the disparity between his paternalism concerning African-Americans and his grief around the plight of Native Americans merits further study. Timothy Sapp has done work involving Rondthaler’s pivotal role in the growth of the Southern Province during the 19th and 20th centuries.

When considering the the Memorabilia as a devotional text, however, I think it stands as a deeply underappreciated gem. In recalling an entire community to the reality of a liturgical life and death together, Rondthaler’s Memorabilia stands as a potent antidote to a culture that all too frequently bypasses Advent, makes Christmas a labor, and turns the coming into a New Year into a thing that must be met with apprehension. In delivering the funerary memoir for Rondthaler, the Rev. J. Kenneth Pfohl quoted the Bishop as frequently saying, “My time is not mine but God’s. I must be careful how I use it.”22 May that be said of us all the more in this new year.

As an individual, the Rev. Wilbert Awdry has not been subjected to the same level of academic analysis as other literary luminaries such as Beatrix Potter, J. M. Barrie, and A. A. Milne. The same cannot be said for the creation that has won Awdry his literary immortality, as well as a number of epithets such as ‘the Vicar of Talking Trains,’ and ‘the Thomas the Tank Engine Man.’ Both Thomas the Tank Engine and the literary canon from which he hails, The Railway Series, have been scrutinized on the bases of gender issues, class issues, race, sex, and more. Such work is laudable, but more popular treatments of Awdry’s work directly invoke his background, and especially his clerical calling, in ways that border on the presumptuous and the inaccurate. One article for The New Yorker described Awdry as one who “disliked change, venerated order, and craved the administration of punishment,” linking this to Awdry’s holy orders.[1] Another article from the Daily Mail was more positive, but characterized Awdry as a “grumpy vicar.”[2] Even Awdry’s most popular nickname – ‘the Puff Puff Parson’ – began as a title of derision. Varied as they are, these perspectives share a common element, as they recognize the primacy of the Christian faith and priestly vocation in the life of the Rev. Wilbert Awdry.

If the reader should wonder what any of this has to do with the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, then the question itself may well reflect the need for a renewed consideration of Awdry’s life. Awdry was not only a committed priest in the Church of England, but a determined pacifist and ecumenist. Among the earliest members of the APF, Awdry’s commitment to the belief that war should never be the solution resulted in his being ejected from his curacy in one parish, and denied another parish altogether. This position was not a marginal element of his faith. Rather, it was one of the key elements of the faith of a clergyman who came to his faith and calling between two world wars. While the Rev. Wilbert Awdry may rightly be regarded as a figure of lighthearted children’s stories, he also stands as a quiet, determined witness to the necessity of peacemaking as part of the Christian life, and a model of the “ministry of reconciliation.”

“Brother’s Twopence” and the Roots of Awdry’s Pacifism

Born on June 15th, 1911, Wilbert Awdry was born into a family well-acquainted with the life of the Church. Awdry’s father, the Rev. Vere Awdry, was the beloved Vicar of Ampfield. Vere’s brother, the Rt. Rev. William Awdry, was not only the inaugural Bishop of Southampton, but also served as a Bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (the Anglican Episcopal Church in Japan) in the dioceses of Osaka and South Tokyo. Both men would remain lifelong influences for Wilbert. There was another role model for Wilbert among his family: his older brother Carol. Despite being seventeen years older than Wilbert, the bond between the two was almost instant. Carol was one of Wilbert’s godparents, and a frequent pastime found the young Wilbert going for rides on Carol’s bicycle. Their mother Lucy recorded that one of Wilbert’s nicknames for himself was “Brother’s Twopence.”[3]

It was not to last. As with so many families throughout Britain, this tranquility was shattered by the First World War. Carol Awdry became a Second Lieutenant with the Royal Munster Fusiliers; for Vere, it was the culmination of a frustrated dream, having planned to go into the army before his family encouraged him to become a solicitor.[4] This joy was short-lived, as Carol was killed at the age of twenty during the retreat from Mons. The Rev. Wilbert Awdry later reflected that “it was the supreme tragedy of my father’s life.”[5]

Biographer Brian Sibley noted that “the ghost of that brother would haunt Wilbert for many years as he strove to measure up to the idealized hero-figure.”[6] The memory of Carol and his father’s grief would doubtless shape Awdry’s response to one of his first ministerial crises – the outbreak of the Second World War. Ordained to the diaconate in 1936, and the priesthood in 1937, Awdry’s first major work was as the curate of the Rev. Percival Sexty, in Great Cheverell, Wiltshire.

A Curate’s Quiet Stand – from Salisbury to Birmingham

The relationship between Awdry and Sexty soon proved to be a strained one. To his curate’s credit, Sexty could not accuse Awdry of a lack of productivity. By now, he was married to Margaret (née Wale) whom he had met as an educator in Jerusalem, and had demonstrated himself as a capable curate and evangelist in Odiham. Having been a member of the Toc H organization in Jerusalem, Awdry successfully established a branch in his new parish. Rather, the issue concerned the question of war.

Awdry would not be dissuaded from his doubts surrounding a ‘just war.’ The memory of Carol could not be dismissed that easily. In a letter to his college tutor, the Rev. Julian Thornton-Duesbery, Awdry explained that “We have been pacifists since 1937.”[7] Awdry’s belief had not been taken up amid the outbreak of the war. Rather, Awdry appears to have been among the first members of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship after its organization in 1937 by Archdeacon Percy Hartill. [8] Awdry refused to condemn wholesale those who did feel compelled to engage in the war, however. “Every soldier has got a soul and if he joins up in a belief that what he is doing is right,” Awdry argued, “that may, indeed, be the right thing for him. I simply couldn’t be sure that it was the right thing for me.”[9] Even so, Awdry was determined in his refusal to countenance war. Biographer Brain Sibley notes that Awdry “remained … firm in his conviction that mankind ought always to view war as an unacceptable option.” Echoes of this stance may be seen as far back as 1933, as Sibley notes that Awdry was studying at Wycliffe Hall when the Oxford Union famously declared it would “under no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”[10]

Awdry’s views had been known to the Rev. Percival Sexty before the war. Now that war had come, Sexty issued his curate an ultimatum – either serve as a military chaplain, or leave the parish by September 14th, 1940. Awdry, rather tired of Sexty’s treatment, was initially more than happy with the latter arrangement. The young curate believed his troubles to be over when he found a position at a church in Salisbury, only to be denied the post by the Rt. Rev. Ernest Neville Lovett. Bishop Lovett, like Sexty, was opposed to pacifism. One of the few writers to consider Awdry’s pacifism at length, Owen Dudley Edwards, characterized Awdry’s treatment by the clergy of the Diocese of Salisbury as “bullying and abuse,”[11] a description particularly apt in light of the fact that Margaret Awdry was pregnant during this time. Their first child, Christopher, was born just two months prior to the date of the Awdry’s proposed eviction.

The Awdry family did not have to suffer this ignominy thanks to the intervention of the Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt. Rev. Ernest Barnes. Bishop Barnes and Canon Thomas Sheldon sympathized with Awdry’s dilemma, and found him a curacy with Sheldon in King’s Norton, Birmingham. Awdry was not only delivered from his plight, but to some extent vindicated. Sexty could not accuse Awdry of cowardice when he was being sent to a diocese subjected to aerial raids, as the Birmingham Blitz had begun in August 1940. Awdry later said that the good news from the Bishop of Birmingham came “out of the blue, when I was rather down in the dumps and unsure what to do.”[12] One may well see this as a providential move, as Awdry did – it was in King’s Norton that the Railway Series began to be written, which would come to allow Awdry to better provide for his family.

A Peacemaking Legacy – Learning from the Rev. Wilbert Awdry

Many would later remark that the Rev. Wilbert Awdry was a personality marked by a balance of tolerance and determination. While Awdry felt that war was immoral, this did not stop him ministering to those who felt differently. Awdry’s membership in the APF appears to have been concurrent with his organization of the Toc H branch in Odiham, “with the aim of integrating the RAF personnel into the life of the village.”[13] Awdry’s appeal that “every soldier has got a soul” was not an individualistic approach to the question of war, but emerged from a lived experience of ministering to those of a different opinion and station than his own. Another example may be found in Awdry’s own family. Awdry’s brother, George, had been involved in the Second World War, having been put to work with his knowledge of the German language. If there were any strain on the relationship, it had been sufficiently resolved to allow the brothers to collaborate on future literary endeavors. This attitude of reaching out across differences extended to those with whom Awdry found himself at odds. Although Percival Sexty barred Awdry from any preaching for fear of pacifist sermons, Awdry later said he would never have attempted this out of loyalty to Sexty – who was not only Awdry’s vicar and superior, but had been his chaplain in adolescence at Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire. In the words of Canon Poole’s Litany of Reconciliation, Awdry sought to avoid “that pride which leads us to trust in ourselves, and not in God,” and “that hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class.”

Nevertheless, Awdry could not close his eyes to “that indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,” and all those threatened by warfare. The twenty-nine-year-old curate demonstrated a remarkable resolve as he remained firmly convinced of the unacceptability of war, even when his reputation in the parish of Great Cheverell was “down with the wines and spirits!”[14] With Awdry’s unwillingness to castigate those who disagreed with him, it was a quiet determination – quite literally, given that his family knew nothing until Brian Sibley’s research into Awdry’s history for his 1995 biography. For his part, Awdry reasoned this would have been unnecessary – “I did not tell my children because the war was over, by then.”[15]

At the same time, it was a stubborn determination, refusing to yield to pressure, and one that emerged from the same faith that fueled much of the drama in his stories for children. These were stories of chaos resolved, derailments cleared, and friendships reconciled. Awdry did not intend for his stories to be evangelical tracts. If anything, they were a reaction to “Sunday readings” that the Awdry children had been weaned on, with “children so horribly good you wanted to smack them.”[16] Nevertheless, the Railway Series operated with a Christian morality, and one that quietly emphasized peacemaking and reconciliation. “This world,” Awdry would explain, “is God’s world, and we cannot choose to disobey him and live happily our way. … We all make mistakes; but if we express our sorrow, God’s forgiveness is complete.”[17] In the language of his Railway Series, however, Awdry would always conclude, “They may be punished … but they are NEVER ‘scrapped!’”[18]

The Rev. Wilbert Awdry found that he could not disobey what he understood to be one of God’s fundamental rules – "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." (Mt. 5:9) For Awdry, it was pure Christianity, and nothing less than his affirmation of the vow he had made as a priest, having been asked to “maintain, and set forwards, as much as lieth in you, quietness, peace, and love, among all Christian people.”[19] Awdry did so with a tolerance for those who disagreed, and yet with a faithful determination, trusting that God actively seeks peace in our hearts, as well as in the world around us – in short, nothing less than loving one’s neighbors, loving one’s enemies, and loving the God who made them all. Awdry’s witness was one of quiet but determined Christian discipleship. It is an example that continues to present a challenge to the faithful, commending the way of peacemaking even at potential costs to our personal life. Awdry’s witness is a stark reminder of the challenges found in this work of peacemaking, and in learning to remain faithful in the face of one’s enemies as well as one’s neighbors.

[1] Jia Tolentino, “The Authoritarian, Repressive Soul of Thomas the Tank Engine,” The New Yorker, 28 September 2017.

[2] Nicolas Jones, “Why the Grumpy Vicar who created Thomas the Tank Engine ended up HATING him,” The Daily Mail, 7 January 2010.

[3] Brian Sibley, The Thomas the Tank Engine Man: The Life of Reverend W. Awdry (Oxford, England: Lion Hudson, 2015), 45.

[4] Valerie Grove, “The Church Mouse and His Millions,” The Times, 17 December 1993.

[5] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 44.

[6] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 45.

[7] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 98.

[8] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 96.

[9] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 97.

[10] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 99.

[11] Owen Dudley Edwards, British Children’s Fiction in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 405.

[12] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 99.

[13] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 90.

[14] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 98.

[15] Stephen Pile, “Is Thomas Going Off the Rails?” The Daily Telegraph, 27 February 1995.

[16] Frances Welch, “Fat Controller Waits at the End of the Line,” Me and My God, The Sunday Telegraph, 27 November 1994.

[17] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 355; Welch, “Fat Controller Waits at the End of the Line.”

[18] Sibley, Tank Engine Man, 355.

[19] “The Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests,” The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England (Cambridge), 577.

Throughout the seven-year run of The Crown – the third installment in Peter Morgan’s saga of creative works dealing with Queen Elizabeth II[1] – the series found itself the subject of frequent criticism with regards to matters of historical accuracy. Against claims of “fake history” and “fake news,”[2] historical consultant Robert Lacey has sought to defend The Crown’s storytelling approach. Informing journalist Caroline Halleman about his approach, Lacey argues that “There are two sorts of truth. There's historical truth and then there's the larger truth about the past,” with the latter concerning "all the lives and loves and experiences and tears and smiles.”[3] While this is undoubtedly reflective of an increasingly standard approach to dramatizing history for television, such productions do not stand as completely irrelevant due to their historical inaccuracies, however much poorer they may be because of them. Such productions can provoke meaningful questions concerning ethical dilemmas, even if the events that inspired these programs never provoked such introspection in the lives of the program’s real-life counterparts. One such example is the sixth episode of the second season of The Crown, “Vergangenheit.”

The episode's central conflict concerns Queen Elizabeth II not only as England’s monarch and the supreme governor of its established church, but also in a more private, though by no means individualistic, capacity as a Christian disciple. Informed of the discovery of documents implicating her uncle, Edward, Duke of Windsor (formerly, King Edward VIII) with ties to the Nazi regime, Elizabeth is forced to consider what her responsibilities are in light of her Christian faith, from matters of individual conscience to her stewardship of the Crown and the Church. Elizabeth’s perplexity is fundamentally deontological in nature: What are her responsibilities in this situation? Following a brief examination of the episode’s plot and the themes explored, alongside a brief introduction to deontology, two perspectives on forgiveness will be considered – those of Dietrich Bonhoeffer[4] and Miroslav Volf – with a particular emphasis on the distinct and differing demands of forgiveness and reconciliation.

I. Season Two, Episode Six of The Crown – “Vergangenheit[5]”

The actual focus of the episode’s problem is not so much around the Marburg Files – so named due to their discovery at Marburg Castle – as it is around the specific contents of approximately sixty pages that have since been referred to as ‘the Windsor File.’ Outlining the relationship between Edward, Duke of Windsor, and the Nazi regime, they also refer to an ‘Operation Willi,’ wherein the Duke of Windsor would be kidnapped as leverage to secure peace between Britain and Germany – or even Britain’s surrender. While The Crown’s interpretation of history has been regarded as loose and spurious, the contents of the Marburg Files and the Windsor File are real, outlandish as they may seem. Not only this, but the Duke and Duchess were aware to an extent of these plans, and approved of them.[6]

The episode begins with a flashback to the discovery of the files, and the mutual agreement of King George VI – Elizabeth’s father, who has been dead for several years in the regular chronology of the series – and Sir Winston Churchill concerning the burial of the documents. Years later, The Windsor File is rediscovered thanks to the continued work of the Captured German War Documents Publication Unit. While several historians express the desire to publish the Windsor File – viewing their vocation as historians to compel them to “publish the truth, no exceptions”[7] – they recognize that this is an impossibility per the orders of the government. This edict does not stop an American historian from seeking the publication of a duplicate file from the U.S. State Department. This comes at a time of immense activity for Queen Elizabeth II, as she is preoccupied with the presence of the Reverend Billy Graham in England, and Edward, the Duke of Windsor’s desire to come back to England.

A representative of the War Documents Publication Unit meets with the Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, informing him of the rediscovery of the Windsor File, and the potential publication of the information. Upon being informed of the contents of the file, Elizabeth is incensed. At her next meeting with the Duke, Elizabeth excoriates him, but Edward remains cool, assuring her he seeks to make peace, and that the publication of the files could potentially backfire:

EDWARD: “Elizabeth, the British are a sensible people; they will never believe these claims against me. They will dismiss these papers for what they are: baseless rumors and German propaganda.”[8]

Elizabeth finds herself conflicted as to what she should do. While Elizabeth argues for his forgiveness, Philip disagrees, instead directing her to her former private secretary Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles. There, Elizabeth finds her suggestions in favor of the Christian virtue of forgiveness rebuffed by Lascelles, who indicates that the Marburg Files do not convey the whole story:

LASCELLES: “The Duke of Windsor made his loyalties clear as soon as he became King. Surrounded himself with a new breed of courtiers, men such as Carl, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, a renowned Nazi. … It became so bad that the government had to stop putting secret and sensitive papers in his red box. … [During a vacation taken by the Duke and Duchess that] the Führer labeled ... an unofficial state visit, ... the plan was hatched. A plan to reinstate the Duke of Windsor as King of England, effectively betraying and dethroning your dear late father, in return for German forces being given free rein across Europe. German troops were even promised to quell a colonial rebellion, if necessary. And there were visits to SS training schools and early versions of the concentration camps.”[9]

Lascelles goes so far as to note that in addition to these hypothetical scenarios being schemed, actual harm was caused by the former King. Edward had informed the regime of the American capture of Nazi plans for the invasion of France, giving them the time to alter plans. Within a month of this correspondence, Lascelles notes, Paris had fallen. Additionally, it was Edward that encouraged the continued bombing of Britain, noting that the decreasing morale would "soon make Britain ready for peace."[10]

Elizabeth’s choice has been made, whereupon she excoriates Edward, on the basis of the Christian principles she has sought to demonstrate:

ELIZABETH: “When the truth finally came out... It makes a mockery of even the central tenets of Christianity. There is no possibility of my forgiving you. The question is: how on earth can you forgive yourself?”[11]

Despite this, Elizabeth’s moral struggle is not over. Prince Philip, for his part, greets Elizabeth’s ousting of the Duke with inebriated gaiety. Balking at her estimation of herself as a “failure of Christianity,” Philip instead argues that:

PHILIP: “You protected your country and you protected the reputation of your family. Not to mention successfully banishing Satan from entering the Garden of Eden. That's Christ's business in anyone's books.”[12]

That Elizabeth is unpersuaded by this, however, is reflected in her earlier meeting with the Reverend Graham. Asking him about the necessity of Christian forgiveness, Graham reflects on Edward’s position and her own:

GRAHAM: “No one is beneath forgiveness. Dying on the cross, Jesus himself asked the Lord to forgive those that killed him. God himself forgives us all. Who are we to reject the example of God? … The solution for being unable to forgive: one asks for forgiveness oneself. Humbly and sincerely, and one prays for those that one cannot forgive.”[13]

II. Navigating the Issue: Considering Forgiveness as a Christian Duty

Like The Crown, Billy Graham’s message of born-again salvation was sometimes called into question – even by Graham himself.[14] Nevertheless, the fictional Graham’s reflections on the necessity of navigating forgiveness, even when one finds oneself unable to forgive, points to a running theme throughout the episode: the duty of Christian forgiveness. While forgiveness as a virtue is encouraged throughout the Christian New Testament, it is also enjoined to disciples as a commandment and a duty. In Matthew’s Gospel, it is found in the Sermon of the Mount: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses,”[15] as well as in the famous episode in chapter eighteen where Jesus commands Peter to forgive “not seven times, but seventy times seven.”[16] In Mark, a similar rejoinder is found after Jesus curses the fig tree in chapter eleven: “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”[17] This is to say nothing of the same command being implicit in the form of prayer that Jesus gives to his disciples – the Lord’s Prayer – or the fact that the Epistles are replete with commands to forgive, with St. Paul instructing the church in Ephesus to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other just as God and Christ also has forgiven you.”[18]

One of the facts found in The Crown’s “Vergangenheit” concerns the faith of Queen Elizabeth II. It is not known whether or not Elizabeth II ever sought counsel from Billy Graham as to whether or not she could forgive Edward, Duke of Windsor. Nevertheless, as far as the fictional Elizabeth is concerned, the duty of forgiveness – located in the context of the wider Christian moral imperative – stands as the basis for her deontological ethics. Nina Rosenstand poses the contrast between deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics in terms of where one situates the relevance of consequences:

“On the whole, we might say there are two ways to solve a problem. We might ask ourselves, What happens if I do X? In this case we're letting ourselves be guided by the future consequences of our actions. Or we might ask ourselves, Is X right or wrong in itself, regardless of the consequences?”[19]

For Elizabeth, the Christian duty to forgive initially seems to override any potential consequences. Even when Prince Philip and ‘Tommy’ Lascelles manage to convince her that theirs is the correct view, she still views the issue as a matter of her failing to properly incarnate Christian moral teaching – with Elizabeth standing as “a failure of Christianity” – rather than casting the moral injunctions of Christianity into irrelevance.[20] The question that the episode poses is whether or not the moral imperative that her understanding of the Christian faith poses can be achieved.

III. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Cheap Grace, Costly Grace, and the Ability to Forgive

A contemporary of both Edward and George, and someone who would eventually lose his life to the madness of the collapsing Reich, the Lutheran clergyman and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been noted for his reflections on the issues of forgiveness and reconciliation. Of particular note is Bonhoeffer’s most popular work, Nachfolge, or Discipleship.[21] Standing as a discourse on the moral injunctions of the Sermon of the Mount – which Bonhoeffer is careful to note are not to be spiritualized or explained away – Bonhoeffer begins with a protracted reflection on the distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace”:

“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. ... Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”[22]

Bonhoeffer proves crucial to this discussion as his description of ‘cheap grace’ was directed at the Nazi party, and more specifically at the state church which they had commandeered for their purposes. Bonhoeffer notes that, for many of the German Christians following the ‘positive Christianity’ of the Reichsbischof Ludwig Muller,

“To be “Lutheran” must mean that we leave the following of Christ to legalists, Calvinists and enthusiasts – and all this for the sake of grace. We justified the world, and condemned as heretics those who tried to follow Christ. The result was that a nation became Christian and Lutheran, but at the cost of true discipleship.”[23]

The grace secured by Christ was not carte-blanche permission to commit every misdeed under the sun; it was not something to be appropriated for the vaunting of a regime, or to destroy one’s enemies – to champion, as Adolf Hitler once said, the Christ who “was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter.”[24] Indeed, Bonhoeffer would take umbrage with Philip’s view that Elizabeth’s rejection of Edward was equal to her Christian duty of forgiving him, a view just as symptomatic of a world of ‘cheap’ grace. For Bonhoeffer, the promise to Christ’s followers was that “they will become members of the community of the cross.”[25] Unfortunately for Elizabeth, there is no guarantee of diplomatic savviness.

At the same time, Bonhoeffer presents a challenge to Elizabeth and Edward as well. For all of Elizabeth’s insistence on the need to forgive, Edward does not demonstrate repentance. The first time he is confronted, he denies his involvement, dismisses the charges as “utter nonsense,” and indirectly threatens Elizabeth with potential scandal should she fail to stop the publication of the documents. The second time, Edward leaves defeated, but not before placing Elizabeth’s charge of inhumanity back at the Royal Family’s unfair treatment of Edward over the Wallis Simpson affair, rather than facing up to his own inhumanity in helping perpetuate the loss of life at home and abroad. Edward’s continued expectation of forgiveness without any confession of his own complicity is the very definition of cheap grace for Bonhoeffer – absolution without confession, grace without discipleship. For all of Elizabeth’s meaningful discipleship, it cannot make up for Edward’s lack of the same – the costly discipleship that Bonhoeffer contrasts with cheap grace:

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.”[26]

In the final estimation, I think Elizabeth would be the only figure with whom Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be pleased, due to her seeking to live out what she sees as her Christian deontological imperative. It would be a mistaken duty in this instance, however, due to Edward’s failure to meaningfully repent, or even begin to express any kind of remorse for his cooperation with the Nazi regime. Not only is Edward not owed grace – grace is never owed to begin with – but he cannot meaningfully receive the only kind of grace with any true substance, ‘costly’ grace, if he refuses to acknowledge any error on his part. The only grace that Elizabeth would be able to impart with her forgiveness would be a ‘cheap’ grace, validating Edward’s refusal to acknowledge his complicity and the justification of his silence, and would simply stand to make matters – spiritual, social, and otherwise – worse than they had already been. In this way, Bonhoeffer’s model of ‘cheap’ and ‘costly’ grace makes explicit what The Crown’s depiction of Graham hints at: there are circumstances in which one will be unable to forgive, and not solely due to personal animosity. In order for Elizabeth to have to fill out her duty as far as Christian forgiveness is concerned, Edward must fulfill his duty of repentance; until then, Elizabeth does have one duty: to pray for forgiveness for herself, and for Edward’s soul.

IV. Miroslav Volf: Indiscriminate Forgiveness as Witness

In his own way – and despite similarities to Bonhoeffer in responding to a culture that can be both deeply “sentimental and profoundly unforgiving”[27] – Miroslav Volf’s view of forgiveness is one that would call Elizabeth to seek to find forgiveness for Edward. This isn’t necessarily unjustified. After all, taking a longer view of the situation depicted in “Vergangenheit,” one could read Edward, Duke of Windsor as a kind of prodigal son, seeking reconciliation with the Royal Family. It is true that he demeans them, and that he fails to properly admit his wrongdoing. However, his behavior could be compared to the original thinking of the biblical Prodigal Son, whose initial confession – “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you”[28] – arguably emerges more from cunning than contrition: seeing what hunger he is in due to his impoverished state, the Prodigal Son reasons that he would find employment under his father much more preferable.[29]

In his book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, Volf almost reads as if he speaks to the situation depicted in The Crown. In advocating for the necessity of forgiveness, Volf highlights the uneasy line between justice and vengeance. It is the former to which Philip and Lascelles appeal when speaking to Elizabeth. Edward already manages to live a quiet existence, avoiding the repercussions of his complicity; why should his situation be made any better, let alone continued at all? In granting such a point, Volf points to the twelfth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

“In trying to overcome evil by enforcing justice, there is always the danger that we may be ‘overcome by evil’ ourselves. (Rom. 12:21) Wreaking destruction upon the world while potentially succumbing to the power of evil ourselves are two reasons we should not repay the evildoer in kind, with ‘evil for evil.’ (Rom. 12:17)”[30]

Neither Lascelles nor Philip are flawless arbiters of morality. For all his knowledge of her father’s business, Lascelles proved manipulative in his capacity as the Queen’s private secretary, and frequently underestimated her capabilities; meanwhile, The Crown arguably depicts Philip as being almost as cunning and self-seeking as Edward, prone to self-glorification, carousing, and infidelity. Lascelles and Philip are not wrong to be horrified by Edward’s complicity in Nazi war crimes, but they take no pains whatsoever to reflect on their own complicity in the harms and horrors that emerged from British imperialism, from which they still continue to benefit. Volf would note, with the series’ portrayal of Graham, that Christian teaching is quite clear on the necessity of forgiveness. No one has the moral superiority to judge someone else as having completely voided any claims to justice, or any potential for forgiveness.

In contrast to forgiveness, Volf notes, revenge multiplies evil, and retributive justice “contains evil, and threatens the world with destruction”[31] in its wake. Only forgiveness overcomes evil, by rendering it incapable of perpetuating a cycle of ‘tit-for-tat,’ precisely because to forgive is to do what evil cannot. As Volf points out, in forgiving, “we do as God did,” and does.[32] Not only this, but Volf could very well argue that Elizabeth is on the way to forgiving Edward; for Volf, “to forgive is to condemn,”[33] as there would be no need to offer forgiveness if no harm had been committed. Elizabeth’s own cry of dereliction – “There is no possibility of my forgiving you” – could, in its own way, contain the potential for future forgiveness if considered in this light.

Nevertheless, Volf points out that despite our tendencies to limit the scope of God’s forgiveness, God’s forgiveness is indiscriminate – indeed, it is offered even before the move to repent. “Because Christ died for all,” Volf notes, “we are called to forgive everyone who offends us, without distinctions and without conditions,”[34] modeling this free grace not as a requirement for repentance, but in the faith that the person may be moved to repentance. For Volf, forgiveness must be championed precisely because it is the only approach that imitates God, which accords with Elizabeth’s desire to champion forgiveness above all else. Within the fictional universe of The Crown, it is possible that had Elizabeth not been swayed by Lascelles and Philip, Edward may have been moved to a genuine repentance by her continued insistence on his forgiveness, even if he would still be provided with the opportunity to abuse her offer of grace.

V. Conclusion

Bonhoeffer’s model of grace rightly recognizes the necessity for repentance, and Volf’s insistence on forgiveness highlights the act of forgiveness as having the potential for effecting repentance. Both Bonhoeffer and Volf recognize the duty of the Christian, however they differ in where they locate the act of forgiveness. Volf notes that we are called to forgive as God forgives us – that is, indiscriminately – however Bonhoeffer highlights that the costliness of grace must be conveyed. If grace has the potential to convert, a conversion to any life other than one wherein Christ bids his disciples to take up their cross is a conversion to a life of cheap grace. Elizabeth demonstrates a Volf-like insistence upon forgiveness throughout this episode of The Crown, and never entirely forsakes it, even as she ousts Edward – her continued misgivings around being a ‘failure of Christianity’ reflect this. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer’s approach has the advantage of rightly – or, at least, somewhat more clearly – contextualizing her Christian duty, as far as a Christian deontological ethic of forgiveness is concerned.

While it is Elizabeth’s duty to forgive, it is not within her power to effect repentance in Edward. Both Bonhoeffer and Volf would agree that this would be a work of the Holy Spirit, but it is Bonhoeffer’s dichotomy of ‘cheap’ and ‘costly’ grace that has the potential of defending Elizabeth from undue scrupulosity. In her continued prayers for Edward, Elizabeth still fulfills the deontological imperative as far as her faith is concerned. As Christ said – and in the words of the Authorized Version so familiar to Elizabeth – “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father who is in Heaven.”[35]

[1] Morgan’s previous works dealing with the late monarch are the 2006 film The Queen starring Helen Mirren, and the 2013 stage play The Audience, also starring Helen Mirren in its initial runs.

[2] Simon Jenkins, “The Crown’s Fake History Is as Corrosive as Fake News,” The Guardian, November 16, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/the-crown-fake-history-news-tv-series-royal-family-artistic-licence.

[3] Caroline Halleman, "Is The Crown Accurate? The Answer Is Complicated," Town and Country, November 23, 2019, https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a29873503/the-crown-netflix-tv-show-accuracy/.

[4] Among other places, Bonhoeffer is mentioned throughout the Lovin text, An Introduction to Christian Ethics: Goals, Duties, and Virtues. Volf is the author of our text Flourishing.

[5] “The past” in German.

[6] Brigit Katz, “Newly Released Documents Reveal Churchill’s Efforts to Suppress Details of Nozi Plot,” Smithsonian Magazine, July 21, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/newly-released-documents-reveal-churchills-efforts-suppress-details-nazi-plot-180964131/

[7] “Vergangenheit,” 00:17:07.

[8] “Vergangenheit,” 00:41:07 – 00:41:23.

[9] “Vergangenheit,” 00:45:17 – 00:47:16

[10] “Vergangenheit,” 00:48:19.

[11] “Vergangenheit,” 00:51:25 - 00:51:33.

[12] “Vergangenheit,” 00:57:36 - 00:57:52.

[13] “Vergangenheit,” 00:54:12 - 00:55:14.

[14] Graham did not express doubts in the necessity of salvation for the Christian; rather, his concerns were expressed towards the end of his life in the context of what he would have done differently – among other things, studying and preaching sermons about the Christian life in addition to the necessity of salvation. See Billy Graham, Collin Hansen, “What I Would Have Done Differently,” Christianity Today, April 2018, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2018/02/what-i-would-have-done-differently/.

[15] Matthew 6:14-15, Revised Standard Version.

[16] Matthew 18:22, Revised Standard Version.

[17] Mark 11:25, Revised Standard Version.

[18] Ephesians 4:32, Revised Standard Version.

[19] Nira Rosenstand, The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009), 210.

[21] Many modern editions translate this as The Cost of Discipleship. Nachfolge may literally be translated as “follow me” – as in “Whoever wishes to follow me must take up his cross daily and folge mir nach.” (Luke 9:23) See Charles Marsh, Strange Glory – A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Vintage Books, 2015), 243-45.

[22] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship – Revised and Unabridged Edition, Containing Material Not Previously Published (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1963), 46-47.

[23] Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 57-58.

[24] Marsh, Strange Glory, 269.

[25] Marsh, Strange Glory, 245.

[26] Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 47.

[27] Rowan Williams, from the foreword to Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005). The kindle version lacks standard pagination; as such, where applicable, the chapter and paragraph will be referred to.

[28] Luke 15:21, Revised Standard Version.

[29] Luke 15:17, Revised Standard Version.

[30] Volf, Free of Charge, 5:10.

[31] Volf, Free of Charge, 5:14.

[32] Volf, Free of Charge, 5:16.

[33] Volf, Free of Charge, 5:31-34.

[34] Volf, Free of Charge, 5:84.

[35] Matthew 5:44-45, King James Version.

I. Introduction – Job 29-31 and the Relevance of Job in the Thought of Simone Weil

It would be an understatement to say that Job complains, laments, doubts, and rages throughout the Book of Job. Naturally excluding the prologue and epilogue, the Book of Job focuses on Job’s own complaints and charges against God, and responds to them in one way or another, whether through Job’s friends or through God’s direct communication with Job from the whirlwind. Chapters 29-31 of the Book of Job stand as a kind of bridge between these kinds of communication, standing as Job’s ‘concluding arguments’ prior to the interlude with Elihu’s remonstrance of both Job and his friends, and God’s ultimate response to God. There, Job makes his last stand to defend his righteousness against the charges of his friends, and against the apparent punishment dealt by his God. Job vacillates between two positions of apparent contradiction. On the one hand, in these chapters Job is found protesting his current treatment and doubting God’s supposed faithfulness and justice – “O, that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! let the Almighty answer me!) O, that I had the indictment written by my adversary!”[1] On the other hand, it is in the throes of those doubts surrounding God’s faithfulness and justice that Job appeals to those very same attributes – “O that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, … when the Almighty was still with me, [and] when my children were around me.”[2] Nowhere is Job’s lament more clearly crystalized than in these chapters.

The French philosopher, lay-theologian, activist, and mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943) would argue that Job’s grief, doubts, and anger are not the only traits occupying the center stage of the narrative, however. Rather, for Weil, Job’s doubts and apparent godforsakenness are the grounds of the newfound faith and reconciliation that the Book of Job concludes with. For Weil, it is not that God randomly intrudes on Job’s grief after an arbitrary amount of silence, but that Job’s doubting – especially defined in chapters 29-31 – stands as the necessary precondition for the communication and relationship with God witnessed in chapters 38-41 of the Book of Job. This particular approach to the Book of Job by Weil is particularly visible in her essay, “The Love of God and Affliction,” found in Weil’s Waiting for God.[3]

For Weil, Job – perhaps more than any other character from the Hebrew Bible – is of particular importance to her theological thought. This must be distinctly understood if her views are to be appreciated, as Weil’s thought is one of intense complexity and unorthodox approaches to the canonical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity. As such, following a brief exploration of Job’s wrestling with faith, and the significance of chapters 29-31 in light of the Book of Job, the figure of Job will be considered in the context of Weil’s wider thought. Of particular importance is Job’s relevance to Weil’s idea of affliction (malheur) – with Job almost standing as a personification of this idea for Weil – and Weil’s association of Job of the Hebrew Bible with the Jesus of the Christian New Testament.

II. Job’s Griefs, Laments, and Anger in the Book of Job, and the Relevance of Chapters 29-31

Job’s grieving may well be said to begin in the prologue. Job “tore his robe” upon hearing of the deaths of his children and the theft of his belongings,[4] and his friends are able to note that “his suffering was very great” at the conclusion of the second chapter.[5] The vocalization of this grief begins immediately at the start of chapter three, however: “Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.”[6] What follows is a cycle of complaint and remonstrance. Job expresses his grief, his anger, and his need, while his friends aim to get Job to see sense, “consider what their ancestors have found,”[7] and to repent of the sin that he has undoubtedly committed. A conclusion to Job’s portion of the cycle is found in chapters 29-31, which ends with Job’s defense of his own grief, and his appeal to God’s supposed virtues of faithfulness and justice. That Job defends his position is stated more than once; Job’s friends stop arguing with him, regarding this as an exercise in futility “because [Job] was righteous in his own eyes,”,[8] and the interloper Elihu is angry with Job because “he justified himself rather than God.”[9]

The three chapters of Job 29-31 not only conclude the cycle of Job’s argument with his friends– after this, we are left with the reply of Elihu, and God’s discourse with Job – but these chapters also stand as a kind of microcosm of Job’s argument for himself up to this point. That the four friends of Job find themselves frustrated with Job’s defense of his innocence at 32:1-2 keeps in line with the narrative found in the previous chapters. Central to this consistency is Job’s vacillation between an inability to trust in what has been said of God – and even what he has experienced of God himself – and an appeal to those same attributes which he fails to see in the midst of his suffering. God, says Job, does “not answer me; I stand, and you merely look at me. You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me.”[10] The extent of this is such that Job’s acknowledgement of his coming death – “I know that you will bring me to death, to the house appointed for all living”[11] – cannot merely be read as an admission of his own mortality in light of his previous admissions of desiring death.[12] At the same time, chapters 29-31 do not merely serve to restate the preceding chapters. Rather, they stand as the conclusion as well as the summary of Job’s argument. In his literary study of the Book of Job, David Robertson frames Job’s “peroration”[13] in the following manner:

“Chapter 29 is a wish for the good old days when God was Job's friend. Chapter 30 is a description of Job's present plight, now that God has become his enemy. And chapter 31 is an oath of clearance in the form of a series of self-imprecations … [with Job’s invoking curses,] God must now act one way or the other- bring or not bring the curses upon Job, or, if he chooses not to let the case be decided in this fashion, he will have to appear and render judgment in person.”[14]

In chapter twenty-nine, Job begins to mount a defense for himself, seeking to vindicate his status as “blameless and upright.”[15] Affirming his prior good deeds, Michael Coogan and Cynthia Chapman highlight the fact that Job isn’t merely attempting to cast himself in a pious image. Rather, in stating his good deeds – demonstrating concern for the poor and the orphaned, the widows and the disabled, with Job ultimately standing as an advocate for those without help and an opponent to oppressors[16] – Job is presented as embodying “the highest values of Israelite ethics.”[17] In courtroom-like fashion, Job takes God to task for the disconnect between the righteousness of Job’s deeds and disproportionate suffering which he has experienced. “Did I not weep for him whose day was hard,” Job asks; “Was my soul not grieved for the poor? But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.”[18] Nevertheless, amid his grief, it is God who Job takes to task, still assured of his own righteousness. It is this tension between Job’s simultaneous doubting of and appeals to God’s righteousness, and Job’s unwavering, almost desperate pursuit of the vindication of his own ‘uprightness’ that Weil addresses in her considerations in “The Love of God and Affliction,” as well as in her wider reflections on Job.

III. The Love of God and Affliction – Job in the Thought of Simone Weil

Robertson’s emphasis on the intentionality and inevitability of Job’s meeting with God as being consequential to Job’s “subpoena”[19] to God has much consonance with Weil’s perspective on Job’s afflictions. A similar perspective concerning this “subpoena” may be found in Michael Brennan Dick’s essay on “The Legal Metaphor in Job,”[20] wherein he suggests that 31:35 is the “key” to this metaphor.[21] In Job 31:35, Job entreats God:

“O that I had one to hear me!

(Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!)

O that I had the indictment written by my adversary!”[22]

Here, the tension between Job’s appeals to God’s justice, his outrage at the failure of this justice to appear, and his doubts concerning any religious experience of God’s faithfulness are on full display. The Anchor Bible Commentary on Job highlights the fact that Job demands to be heard – verse 35a may literally read as “"Who would give me a hearer?”[23] Job at once feels utterly unheard, and yet makes his demand for a hearer to the void. It is to this tension between Job and God’s nature which Weil’s thought has particular relevance. Central to this issue for Weil is her idea of “affliction.” In her essay “The Love of God and Affliction,” Weil writes,

“In the realm of suffering, affliction (malheur) is a thing apart, specific, irreducible. It is wholly different than simple suffering. Affliction grips the soul and marks it to the depths with a mark belonging only to itself: the mark of slavery. ... Affliction is the uprooting of life, a more or less protracted equivalent to death, rendered irresistibly present in the soul by impairment or the immediate apprehension of physical agony.”[24]

These words could very well describe the plight of Job. Not only does Job suffer physical pains, tangible losses, and estrangement from his community through shame and his kin through death, Job himself is rendered as “a thing apart” in his suffering. Where he was once “blameless and upright,”[25] Job is now cut off from any perception of God’s presence in a positive sense. Not only does Job doubt and question the traditions to which his friends point – “what the fathers have found”[26] – but Job finds them disproven, in light of the apparent lack of connection between fidelity to God and a just reward.

It is in this crucible of doubt, Weil notes, that an important shift has the potential to take place. In her thought, Weil advances an audacious claim: “God can only be present in creation under the form of absence.”[27] In elaborating on this, a parallel passage from Weil may prove as illuminating as it is frustrating:

“There are four evidences of divine mercy here below: the favours of God to beings capable of contemplation; … the radiance of these beings and their compassion, which is the divine compassion in them; the beauty of the world. The fourth evidence is the complete absence of mercy here below. …

It is precisely by this antithesis, [between the fourth evidence of God’s mercy in the world being an absence of mercy in the world] this rending of our souls between the effects of grace within us and the beauty of the world around us, on the one hand, and the implacable necessity which rules the universe on the other, that we discern God as both present to man and as absolutely beyond all human measurement.”[28]

Weil does not think that humanity lacks the potential to experience God in any meaningful way. Not only would this discount the narrative of the Book of Job, where Job has a terrifyingly immediate encounter with God ‘in the whirlwind,’ but it would also discount the mystical experiences in Weil’s own life – among them, an encounter where she felt that “Christ himself came down and took possession of me” as she recited George Herbert’s ‘Love Bade Me Welcome.’[29] Rather, humanity cannot experience God’s presence perfectly. What can be apprehended, however, is the experience of God’s absence.[30] For Weil, this recognition of God’s absence – even if it manifests itself in doubt, or an outright atheism – can actually serve as the means for coming into the knowledge of the true God.

It is important to note that Weil’s view of affliction – culminating in a perception of God’s absence – is considered primarily in Christian terms. Weil’s use of ‘affliction’ emerged in her writings during her work in an automobile factory, where she found that "there, I received forever the mark of a slave, like the branding of the red-hot iron which the Romans put on the foreheads of their most despised slaves.”[31]

This sense of affliction – this interminable mark to which only God could speak, even if only perceptible through a sensation of absence – makes necessary the idea of grace. Such is the meaning of Weil’s view that an evidence for divine mercy is an absence of mercy in the world. That one may perceive the necessity of love and of grace in their absence is a testament to their necessity, for Weil; one would not miss these things if they had no existence to begin with. In this way, the culmination of this sense of godforsakeness is a kind of atheism; specifically, for Weil, it is an atheism that purifies, leading one to a true communion with God.

For Weil, this is the situation in which we find the protagonist of the Book of Job. Left absolutely abandoned in the loss of all that is dear to him, he finds the traditional perception of God – one whom the text does not indicate that, prior to the ‘whirlwind,’ he knew beyond the traditions of his elders and the sacrifices made to him – to be inconceivable. His own experience has lied to him, leading him to vacillate between a continued belief in God who is only worthy of being raged at, and an atheism that leaves him looking solely for the end of his life. It is in this way that Job is led away from a belief in God as a mere consolation – with no grounding in his lived experience – to an atheism that purifies.[32] The culmination of this ‘atheism that purifies’ may be found in Job 29-31, where the shift away from this vacillation between doubt and rage begins to break down in favor of the latter, albeit as a positive affirmation of the existence of God. As Robertson notes, Job’s “subpoena” in 31:35 requires God’s response – either resolve the matter in the court of cursing, which the audience would realize is unjust, given the source of Job’s suffering as revealed in the prologue, or contend with Job directly. At the same time, for Weil, it is precisely because Job has begun this shift – only possible in the crucible of affliction and doubt – that Job can possibly hope to apprehend God. With Job’s consolations gone, he is prepared for contact with God. As Weil writes,

“If Job cries out his innocence with an accent of despair, it is because he himself can no longer believe it; within himself, his own soul takes the side of his friends. Job implores the testimony of God himself, because he can no longer hear the testimony of his own conscience; it is no longer anything more than an abstract and dead souvenir.”[33]

At the same time, Weil’s ‘atheism’ in Job is not strict. Rather, it is a ‘religious atheism,’[34] paradoxically believing and doubting at the same time. As such, while Job’s ‘subpoena’ is the culmination of his preparation for an encounter with God, it is nevertheless true that what some people hint at, Weil makes explicit and carries outright: Job's continued protests of his innocence, based on his appeal to God's uprightness, is reflective of the continuation of his own faith, however dimmed or darkened by his affliction.[35] If Job did not have any faith, he could not meaningfully issue his ‘subpoena’ in 31:35. It is noteworthy that, while ‘bracketed’ by two statements that reflect an ambiguousness concerning the existence of a God, or the ability of that God to interact with the affairs of humanity, Job nevertheless makes the petition: “Let the Almighty answer me!"[36] It is a request that is answered, and it concludes with Job’s affirmation of having finally experienced God, not despite his affliction and torment, but in the midst of it (and in a literal whirlwind, no less): “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”[37]

IV. Job, Reconciliation, & the Afflicted Christology of Simone Weil

Weil’s appreciation of Job requires proper contextualization. Weil’s deeply complicated relationship with her Jewish background has led to some assessing Weil as antisemitic. While this is not a universal stance among Weil scholars, Dr. Rowan Williams, 104^th Archbishop of Canterbury, may have summed up the matter best when he wrote of Weil’s “staggering insensitivity about Judaism … [written] as if her own Jewish identity was another embarrassing bit of particularity that needed to be abolished.”[38] Similarly, Weil’s relationship to the Christian faith also requires tempering. While Weil identified as a Christian, hers was also a decidedly idiosyncratic and unorthodox faith, with Weil refusing to officially join any Christian communion. Writing to a friend – himself a Roman Catholic priest – Weil expressed the idea that if she joined the Catholic Church, she would feel as if she would be validating the claim that it were the only path to salvation. As such, she concluded that she “needed to say out in the cold with most of the human race, rather than secure her salvation.”[39]

This tension is visible to some extent in Weil’s use of Job in her Christological thinking. In “The Love of God and Affliction,” Weil directly links Job and Christ, with Job as a kind of Christ-archetype. Weil writes that

“Affliction constrained Christ to beg to be spared, to seek for consolations from men, to believe his Father had abandoned him. It constrained a just man to cry out against God, a just man as perfect as any human nature can be, perhaps more, if Job is less a historical person than a figure of Christ.”[40]

Similarly, Job is of importance to Weil as far as her Christological thinking is concerned, with his own action standing as a kind of prefiguring of Christ for Weil’s own theology. Bearing in mind Weil’s views on the sensation of the absence of love as pointing to the necessity of its existence – with a similar statement being made for God – Weil writes that “God is absent from the world except through the existence of those in this world in whom his love lives.”[41] Within this paradigm, chapter 29 attests to the fact that Job has been this for others through his enactment of the traditional Israelite virtues. It is a fact that Job himself points to in mounting his defense: “I delivered the poor who cried and the orphan who had no helper. The blessing of the wretched came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.”[42]

This reality reaches its culmination well after chapters 29-31, however. Within this model, Job’s first act after his “repentance” at the beginning of chapter 42[43] is one that is for the sake of others. God bids Job to aid his friends in their affliction, to intercede for them through intercessory prayer and burnt offering. While Job’s friends are not afflicted in an explicit sense, within the context of a Weilian reading of Job, they are afflicted insofar as they are alienated from a true knowledge of God. They stand with the same secondary knowledge of God that Job had for much of the Book of Job; only Job had the clarity to realize his need of God’s immediacy and contact in the midst of his affliction. In a parallel with Job’s children in the first chapter, Job intercedes for his friends, with the friends offering bulls and rams for burnt offerings.[44] Through the lens of Simone Weil’s view of affliction as being the grounds of religious experience in the Book of Job, Job is restored not through the restoration of his fortunes and the births of new children, nor even through regaining respect. Rather, Job is restored through the community of God and his fellow humans, appointed to serve them and intercede for them with a newfound, intimate knowledge of God. For Weil, the affliction and restoration of Job parallels the same truth as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ:

“The life of Job, from one end to the other, is a pure marvel of truth and authenticity. On the subject of affliction, anything that differs from this model is more or less stained with falsehood. … Here below, God cannot be perfectly present to us because we are flesh. But God can be almost perfectly absent to us in extreme affliction. It is for us on earth the unique possibility of perfection. For this reason, the Cross is our only hope. ‘No forest bears such a tree, with this flower, this foliage, and this fruit.’”[45]

V. Conclusion: Weil on the Boundaries and the Continued Relevance of Job

Weil stands as a complex, contradictory figure. Despite having died at the age of thirty-four, the legacy of Weil is rich, and her sphere of influence includes figures as religiously and politically diverse as T. S. Eliot,[46] Leon Trotsky,[47] Susan Sontag, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, and Pope Paul VI. At the same time, it has already been explained that an uninterpreted, unmediated application Weil’s thought may very well pose significant problems. Between Weil’s own complicated relationship with Judaism,[48] and the negotiation required between Weil’s personal Christian faith and more orthodox Christian traditions. Weil’s thought has other potential problems.

Weil’s death on August 24^th, 1943 was declared to be the result of suicide, resulting from “cardiac failure from self-starvation and tuberculosis.”[49] Ever politically engaged to the end, Weil felt that she had to subsist on the same food rations that those in occupied France were being subjected to. The debate over the motivations and the nature of Weil’s death and its inevitability continues, but it is not hard to see parallels between Weil’s own affliction – however self-imposed – and those of Job in his ashes and Christ on the cross. A far too hasty or ill-read application of Weil’s thought could result in carelessness of this kind, or other varieties that still prove just as pernicious – attempting to argue with Job and Weil that the afflictions of genocide or racism are justifiable because they may be grounds for encounters with God, for example.

Nevertheless, the thought of Simone Weil proves to be attractive to this day, and arguably for much the same reason that Job continues to haunt generations of people, believers and non-believers alike. Both are committed to plumbing the depths of human suffering, and exploring the meaning present – even when meaning seems completely absent. Instead of employing Weil to read Job in a way that justifies suffering, one may consider Weil’s take on Job’s affliction in a manner similar to that of Margarete Susman, who viewed “the silence of God [as] the most important aspect of Job’s encounter with the Divine” – a sentiment with immense consonance to Weil’s treatment of Job.[50] Job this way, a Weilian reading of Job, not to mention Weil’s own use of Job, could stand for further assessment in religious contexts. For Weil, Job is vindicated even when he is most alone, and that even in his godforsakenness, the seeds are sown for his reconciliation with God, and by God.

[1] Job 31:35, NRSVUE.

[2] Job 29:2, 5, NRSVUE.

[3] Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), pp. 31-45.

[4] Job 1:20, NRSVUE.

[5] Job 2:13, NRSVUE.

[6] Job 3:1, NRSVUE.

[7] Job 8:8, NRSVUE.

[8] Job 32:1, NRSVUE.

[9] Job 32:2, NRSVUE.

[10] Job 30:20-21, NRSVUE.

[11] Job 30:23, NRSVUE.

[12] Job 3:1-19, 6:8-13, NRSVUE.

[13] David Robertson, “The Book of Job: A Literary Study,” (Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 56, no. 4 [1973]), p. 460.

[14] Robertson, “Job: A Literary Study,” pp. 460-61.

[15] Job 1:1, NRSVUE.

[16] Job 29:12-17, NRSVUE.

[17] Michael David Coogan and Cynthia R. Chapman, A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 467.

[18] Job 30:25-26, NRSVUE.

[19] Coogan and Chapman, p. 467.

[20] Michael Brennan Dick, “The Legal Metaphor in Job 31,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1979), pp. 37–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43714618.

[21] Dick, “The Legal Metaphor in Job 31,” p. 38.

[22] Job 31:35, NRSVUE.

[23]Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible Commentary (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973), 238.

[24] Simone Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction,” in Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), pp. 31-32.

[25] Job 1:1, NRSVUE.

[26] Job 3:8, NRSVUE.

[27] Simone Weil, “He Whom We Must Love is Absent,” in Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Craufurd (London: Routledge, 1963), p. 109.

[28] Weil, “He Whom We Must Love is Absent,” p. 111.

[29] Williams, Luminaries, p. 125-26.

[30] Mathew Schmalz, “Affliction: Mental Illness and the Absence of God – A Christian’s Journey through Depression and Hypomania,” (Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, March 19^th 2018), https://cct.biola.edu/affliction-mental-illness-and-the-absence-of-god/.

[31] Susan Anima Taubes, “The Absent God,” (The Journal of Religion 35, no. 1 [1955]), 7, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1201142.

[32] Taubes, “The Absent God,” 9.

[33] Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction,” 34.

[34] Job 31:35, NRSVUE.

[35] Stephen J. Vicchio, The Book of Job: A History of Interpretation and a Commentary (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2020), 261.

[36] Job 31:35, NRSVUE.

[37] Job 42:5-6, NRSVUE.

[38] Rowan Williams, Luminaries: Twenty lives that illuminate the Christian way (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2019), p. 129.

[39] Williams, Luminaries, p. 126.

[40] Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction,” 33.

[41] Taubes, “The Absent God,” 9.

[42] Job 29:12-13, NRSVUE.

[43] Job 42:5-6, NRSVUE.

[44] “According to LXX and Syr., Job was to make the burnt offering for them, as he did for his sons [in 1:5].” From Pope, Job, 350.

[45] Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction,” 33, 38.

[46] Referring to Weil’s work, Eliot wrote that “we must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.” From his preface to Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties toward Mankind, trans. Arthur Willis (London: Routledge, 1952), vii.

[47] A contemporary of Weil’s, of whom she was both critical and appreciative. See Peter Salmon, “Simone Weil Was a Saint of the Socialist Movement,” Jacobin, February 1, 2023, https://jacobin.com/2023/01/simone-weil-philosophy-marxism-anti-fascism-labor-suffering.

[48] It is worth noting that Weil’s Jewish legacy remains contested, with many biographers noting that Weil never officially left Judaism, despite anti-Jewish invective in her writing. See Benjamin Irvy, "Simone Weil's Rediscovered Jewish Inspiration," The Jewish Daily Forward, 30 March 2009, http://forward.com/articles/104410/simone-weil-s-rediscovered-jewish-inspiration/

[49] A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone and Benjamin P. Davis, "Simone Weil", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/simone-weil/

[50] Vicchio, The Book of Job, 274.

“A Collect for Schools,” From the proposed 1928 Book of Common Prayer:

O HEAVENLY Father, whose blessed Son hath said, Suffer the little children to come unto Me: Prosper with thy blessing all teachers and scholars; and grant that, as the minds of thy children are. enlightened with knowledge, so their hearts may be daily drawn by thy Holy Spirit to the love of thee and of thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

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