Northampton Guildhall

Northampton Guildhall is rather grand edifice belonging to that city’s council, dating to 1864. I was recently pondering a couple of the city's former MPs, one of which would have known well this building. He was Charles Bradlaugh, the founder of the National Secular Society and self-avowed atheist whose determination to destroy Christianity and the churches was his life's mission. He had a difficult and tumultuous parliamentary career from 1880–1891, but I think he would broadly approve of the Britain we now inhabit, with churches closed, Biblical literacy minimal and the average Briton largely secular in his world view. It is not thought that the generality electors of Victorian Northampton were essentially atheistic in outlook, but that they rather liked the prospect of ruffling feathers and giving an underdog a fair chance. He was repeatedly elected, despite difficulties posed by taking a parliamentary oath to an Almighty God in whom he did not believe.

The other individual is Spencer Percival, MP from 1796-1812 who successfully climbed the greasy pole to become Prime Minister. Unlike Bradlaugh, he was an evangelical Christian, though he was assassinated in 1812, the only First Lord to have suffered this shocking fate.

So Northampton boasts a dead evangelical and a triumphant secularist, with non-Christian religions apparently thriving there now. The city is surely prophetic, and this building (or its predecessors) is a silent witness to our degrading times.

For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 1 Kings 11:4

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