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12 - Clare and Religion

from Part IV - Influences and Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

Sarah Houghton-Walker
Affiliation:
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
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Summary

This chapter explores the relationship between Christianity and ecology in Clare’s poetry, letters, and biblical paraphrases. Critics tend to secularize Clare’s writing and so overlook its biblical, religious, and metaphysical content. The chapter redresses this by assessing Clare’s early Christian faith, his relationship to Wesleyan Methodism and the Ranters, his distrust of organized religion, and his divine ecology as an expression of rural Christianity. Clare looks beyond pantheism and natural religion to identify an interwoven and sacred creation inseparable from the parish. As such, Clare valued Christianity as a ‘religion that teaches us to act justly to speak truth & love mercy’, a social and ecological politics embedded in prayer, mystery, scripture, and faith.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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