About that cross-and-crown symbol

The cross-and-crown or 'crown of life' symbol.

As this Plainfielder prepared for Easter 2010, I remembered the little rural congregation in which I grew up.

This pietistic congregation of a pietistic denomination (Evangelical United Brethren, or 'German Methodists') preached a rather stern version of the Christian life with perhaps a little too much attention to externals (drinking, dancing, card-playing, jewelry and lipstick come to mind).

The church building's interior itself was severely plain -- it could stand up well to any New England Puritan meetinghouse -- and devoid of any symbolism except for two items.

One was a set of plain brass candlesticks and a cross, which sat upon the communion table, and were still (in the 1950s, after they were there for a dozen years or so) regarded as insufferably Papist by older members of the congregation.

The other was a maroon velvet parament embroidered in gold with a cross-and-crown symbol, which hung from the front of the pulpit. It was never changed or removed. But most notably to a youngster, it was never explained.

What was the significance of that cross-and-crown symbol?

Being in an Easter frame of mind, I was thinking it referred to Jesus' passion and death and the reward of the 'crown of life'. But that appears to be mistaken, since the two New Testament references to the term (James 1:12 and Revelation 2:10) clearly refer to it as a reward to BELIEVERS who persevere under tribulation.

Which led me to William Penn (see here), whose pamphlet (we would call it a book) No Cross, No Crown was written while his butt was parked in the infamous Tower of London for having written an earlier screed attacking perceived abuses of Church and Crown (even Pepys, no shy violet, said he was 'ashamed to read' Penn's writings).

Consider this about Quakers --

Quakers were relatively strict Christians in the seventeenth century. They refused to bow or take off their hats to social superiors, believing all men equal under God, a belief antithetical to an absolute monarchy which believed the monarch divinely appointed by God.

And this Quaker contribution --

By abolishing the church's authority over the congregation, Fox [Quakerism's founder] not only extended the Protestant Reformation more radically, but he helped extend the most important principle of modern political history – the rights of the individual – upon which modern democracies were later founded.

Suddenly, that conservative little backwater rural congregation was found to be propagating the most radical and subversive of doctrines -- the equality of all under God, and individual rights!

And, as I would learn later in life, others who shaped my life and thought drew similar lessons from the symbolism of the 'crown of life': especially Bill Stringfellow, Walter Wink, Daniel Berrigan, Malcolm Boyd and Oscar Romero.

And refusing to 'bow or take off one's hat to one's...superiors', believing all are equal under God.

Subversive stuff, this Christianity.

---

• Wikipedia: "William Penn"
• William Penn: "No Cross, No Crown"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.