Religion, Language, Nation: William Barnes's Christianity

Abstract: This article argues that William Barnes looked back to the fourth-century Christianity of his local Dorset to explore questions of faith, language, and nation. In his poetry and still unpublished sermons, Barnes spoke directly to his community in an Old West Saxon Dorset dialect about the early Christianity of their ancient ancestors. I argue that this early Dorset Christianity offered Barnes a way out of nineteenth-century Christian schisms and was also congruous with his interests in the linguistic and religious practices, myths, folklore, and archaeology of Dorset. I also propose that in embracing this early Christianity, Barnes denounced a modern Protestant imperialism whose colonizing mission functioned to eliminate local as well as global linguistic and religious specificities.