The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent

Candy has at long last found a chronological history of the REAL Christian Church, which is written in accordance to her preferred version of history.

I've read of the Waldnses, the Vaudois, and a bit of the Anabaptists, but I want to read all the way back to Christ's time Himself, up until the present day. Thanks to many of the wonderful readers of this blog, and their suggesting some great books to me, I've settled on one that I think will be quite accurate.

Note: The Waldenses and Vaudois are the same group of people. Vaudois is the French version. Waldo/Vaudo to Waldensian/Vaudois.

Like any good revised history, this one is difficult to find, not because it is inaccurate, but because certain religions (i.e. the Catholic Church) want to keep it hidden:

Why was/is this book so hard to obtain? I did a bit of research on this, and have found that this book - which seems to teach the true history of Christ's church, has been squelched and pushed down by certain large religions that don't like what the book has to say.

Other people have similar accusations for the unpopularity of the book. For example:

How is that Broadbent’s account differs from many others then? He travelled extensively gathering what he could from various sources and directly from those who were descendants of ‘the pilgrim church’. He reads between the lines of the accounts given by ‘their enemies’, which of course would not paint them in any favourable light. There were some preserved, written records, which clearly expose the tyrannical behaviour of much of the ‘official’ Church. Interestingly, I recall reading somewhere that many of these have since ‘disappeared’ since Broadbent’s days. The recently (1999) reissued edition of The Pilgrim Church has an excellent foreword by Dave Hunt. He also makes mention there of records no longer being in circulation. What makes this account so valuable is that it drew upon sources that were available in the Author’s day (he lived from 1861 – 1945), much of which does not seem to be now in circulation.

I added the bold to highlight the vague nature of Broadbent's sources. His evidence is apparently drawn from creatively editing sources and non-existent manuscripts. At least, that is my "reading between the lines" of this review.

According to this review, the true faithful Christians include the following groups:

I’ve learnt through this that many of the ‘unknowns’ not included in ‘popular’ Church histories were actually the true and faithful ones in Christ. As I understand, these people such as, the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards and Bogomils (some of their names were given to them by their oppressors) and numerous others are often either overlooked in many Church history books or are painted in a bad light.

The Elusive Vaudois are not an early Christian group, as Candy believes, because by their own history, they only date back to the 1100's. I do not know if Broadbent shares her view or not.

The Albigensians are clearly a group which would appeal to Candy. I believe that Ellen White also asserted that they were true believers. From Raynaldus' On the Accusations Against the Albigensians:

They said that almost all the Church of Rome was a den of thieves; and that it was the harlot of which we read in the Apocalypse. They so far annulled the sacraments of the Church, as publicly to teach that the water of holy Baptism was just the same as river water, and that the Host of the most holy body of Christ did not differ from common bread; instilling into the ears of the simple this blasphemy, that the body of Christ, even though it had been as great as the Alps, would have been long ago consumed, and annihilated by those who had eaten of it. Confirmation and Confession, they considered as altogether vain and frivolous.

Well, if you believe that, then surely you must be part of Christ's true Church! Only, that wasn't all that they believed:

First it is to be known that the heretics held that there are two Creators; viz. one of invisible things, whom they called the benevolent God, and another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent God. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God; but the Old Testament to the malevolent God, and rejected it altogether, except certain authorities which are inserted in the New Testament from the Old; which, out of reverence to the New Testament, they esteemed worthy of reception. They charged the author of the Old Testament with falsehood, because the Creator said, "In the day that ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall die;" nor (as they say) after eating did they die; when, in fact, after the eating the forbidden fruit they were subjected to the misery of death. They also call him a homicide, as well because he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah, and destroyed the world by the waters of the deluge, as because he overwhelmed Pharaoh, and the Egyptians, in the sea. They affirmed also, that all the fathers of the Old Testament were damned; that John the Baptist was one of the greater demons. They said also, in their secret doctrine, (in secreto suo) that that Christ who was born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was a bad man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine; and that she was the woman taken in adultery, of whom we read in the gospel. For the good Christ, as they said, never ate, nor drank, nor took upon him true flesh, nor ever was in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul....

This document dates from the 13th century. How would Broadbent have access to a more accurate version in the 1940's? How can he read through the lines to know that the first paragraph I quoted is all the truth, and everything in the second paragraph is a lie constructed by the Catholic Church in order to kill all of the Albigensians (also known as Cathars) as heretics? He couldn't. He can only guess, and edit to make things fit what he believed was history.

The Lollards are a group of people who were influenced by Wycliffe, and date from the late 1300's. Candy would agree with many of their doctrines, although some still held to the sacraments, and they felt that the virtue of the priest could effect the validity of the sacrament.

The Bogomils are also a later group, dating from the 10th century. While they did reject much of the Orthodox church, including the sacraments, they believed in a dualism similar to the Cathars. Everything created was evil, created by Satan. They rejected the Incarnation because God would never stoop to take part in the evil that was the material world.

So while I agree with Broadbent and Candy that there have always been groups of people who called themselves Christian but broke away from the established church, I do not feel that you can in any way make the argument that these groups were born again Christians, because they did not share the same theology. Broadbent asserts that groups of people have followed the pattern of the church as recorded in the Book of Acts, but these groups are all completely different, and some are not in keeping with the most generally held Christian beliefs (i.e. that God created the world).

In a comment posted on Candy's article, a reader asks Candy why she doesn't read some of the Early Church Fathers if she is interested in church history. Candy's reply, "because I am not interested in man's church, I'm interested in God's church. . . I'm not so much interested in mainstream historicy teachings of the beginnings of the Roman Catholic church, I'm looking for the history of the New Testament Christian church."

First, the translators of the King James Version had the utmost respect for the Fathers of the Church. Many of the early creeds of the Reformers mention the doctrines held by the Fathers of the Church. Calvin's Confession of Faith of 1559 states "And we confess that which has been established by the ancient councils, and we detest all sects and heresies which were rejected by the holy doctors, such as St. Hilary, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose and St. Cyril." Many respected non-Catholics do not see the writings of the Early Church Fathers as reflecting only the Roman Catholic church.

Secondly, where does she think that Broadbent found his information on the early Christians? I suppose from these secret sources which are now destroyed. But while Broadbent may hesitate to accept an account of beliefs of these groups from the Catholic Church, which persecuted them, it is still his source of information. By comparing the account of Raynaldus with what Broadbent writes, Candy can critically compare the two and draw her own conclusions.