Breaking The Church: George Herbert's Problem with "Obedience"

Abstract:This essay begins by asking why, in revising, restructuring, and extending his work in the Bodleian Manuscript, George Herbert broke the original sequence of The Church after "Obedience." I then offer a speculative response to this question based on a close reading of "Obedience" and an effort to historicize its theological and social content. Three claims are central. First, I suggest that particular devotional and theological significance ought to be attributed to "Obedience" in relation to The Church sequence overall. This is true, as I figure mainly through the writings of Martin Luther, insofar as the poem addresses what for Reformation theology was a definitive principle of Christian liberty. Correspondingly, "Obedience" purposes to conduct what for the Christian subject is a defining but only potentially redeeming act of consent to God's Law. Second, through close reading and discreet reconstruction, I consider how this act of consent is obstructed in Herbert's poem. Above all, I suggest, this obstruction should be understood in terms of a social and religious contest for the voice of the first-person speaker, and a failed introspection of the Christian neighbor. Finally, I argue that "Obedience" not only marks a theological impasse that was decisive for Herbert's restructuring of The Church in the Bodleian manuscript, but additionally, and crucially, that it also shows us how his poetry and theology were vitally responsive to changing social and class relations in England during the early seventeenth century.