jepta 2001 21 - European Pentecostal Theological Association

The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, Vol. XXI, 2001
Arthur Booth-Clibborn: Pentecostal Patriarch: James Robinson
urban planning as advocated by William Penn, the founding father of American
Quakerism.' As a mark of Richardson's Quaker and Temperance sensibilities,
the proud boast of the village was for many years, "No pubs, No pawnbrokers,
No Police". What it did have were a dispensary available at nominal cost to
workers, a community hall with library1 lecture room facilities, a newsroom well
stocked with papers and periodicals and a school where evening adult classes
were held. Richardson was offered a baronetcy by Gladstone as an
acknowledgement of the philanthropic intent behind his social experiment at
Bessbrook, but turned it down. The experiment spurred another Quaker, George
Cadbury, to build the garden village of Bourneville, near Birmingham. These
Quaker and other model settlements provided much of the stimulus for the New
Town movement of post-war Britain.
Arthur's father, John Clibborn, was the co-founder of the linen mills at
Bessbr~ok.~ The Irish roots of the family lay with Colonel John Clibborn, an
officer in Cromwell's army, who became an active Quaker after being impressed
by the message and demeanour of the Friends whose meeting house he was called
upon to raze by fire at Moate, Co.Westmeath in 1657.' Another ancestor was
Robert Barclay (1648-90) whose Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1678)
made him the classic apologist of Quakerism. Coming from a financially
comfortable, background, Arthur was sent at the age of thirteen to France and
Switzerland for a private education and his formal education ended with the
award of an honours degree from Lausanne University. He had a marked
proficiency in languages, mastering five, and he was particularly fluent in French
and German. On his return to Bessbrook, he trained for a period of six years in
the family business. In the course of his training, he learnt the basic skills of
spinning and weaving on the shop floor. On completing his apprenticeship, he
became the manager of the spinning department, employing 800 people, with a
view to his taking up a directorship in due course.
His experiences in the linen mill reinforced his Quaker stance on pacifism as the
following recollection showed:
Had you ever heard, as I have, an unearthly
shriek ring up through five storeys of a huge
factory an eighth of a mile in length, and then
seen the countless revolving wheels slowing
down while, as the hum of thirty thousand
' James Walvin, The Quakers; Money and Morals, John Murray, London (1997) 90.
' Carolyn Scott, The Heavenly Witch: the Stov ofthe Marechale, Hamish Hamilton, London
(1981) 47.
M. J. Wigham, The Jrish Quakers, Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends,
Dublin (1 992) 23.
spindles and ten thousand rollers gradually
ceased, the shrieks grew louder against the
growing stillness, and had you gone down, as the
responsible manager, to find a poor boy lying in a
huge heckling machine with his arm caught in up
to the shoulder, the flesh tom off by the countless
revolving needles ...- then you would like to do
just a little to unbolt some of the machinery of
war and set free.. some of the poor mothers' sons
who have been caught in it.'
Through his later association with Dowie, Arthur would have found a certain
resonance between Bessbrook and Zion City, Illinois. Zion City too was a model
settlement, founded on temperance principle^,^ with a strong agenda of religiosocial
experimentation. Both aimed to provide the prototype for a humanely
ordered industrial gemeinschaft. Dowie pursued a broader vision than most other
innovators; it was nothing less than the creation of a theocratic c~rnmunity.~ Zion
was conceived as the perfect Christian city, the forerunner of many Zions actively
engaged in preparing for Christ's return. Both settlements, though differing
considerably in size, presented major innovations in physical planning and each
evoked wide interest among those concerned with schemes for solving societal
ills by physical and social experimentation.
In reviewing his past, Arthur acknowledged that through "living in Bessbrook ... I
had many spiritual advantages", not least because "as a member of the Society of
Friends, I was carefully and religiously brought up, (though) eighteen years of
my life passed without anyone definitely speaking to me about my soul".' He
owed his conversion to a friend inviting him to a mission at Moyallon, near
Portadown and fourteen miles from Bessbrook, where his Richardson relatives
lived and at whose manor the meetings were held. This was in 1874, the year of
D. L. Moody's visit to Ireland, and was a direct outcome of the evangelistic thrust
he brought to the province, a quickening that came closest to the spirit of the
' Carolyn Scott, op cit., 48.
' Philip. L. Cook, Zion City, Illinois: Twentieth Century Utopia, Syracuse University Press, New
York (1 996) 40-42.
' At a dedication of the site of the home for lacemakers in Zion, a deacon declared:" Here we
shall establish a city in which God shall rule Selfishness shall know no place here. All men
shall fear God and love one another" (Cook, 41).
' Carolyn Scon, op. cit., 50.