Luther saison 5 photo

Luther saison 5

Luther revient sur la BBC pour une cinquième saison de quatre épisodes.

Lorsque les ombres sans lune de Londres donnent naissance à un nouveau cauchemar, DCI John Luther (interprété par Idris Elba) est de nouveau appelé à s’immerger dans les profondeurs de la dépravation humaine.

Alors que les assassinats monstrueux et apparemment aveugles deviennent de plus en plus audacieux et publics, Luther et la nouvelle recrue D.S. Catherine Halliday (jouée par Wunmi Mosaku) sont pris dans un enchevêtrement complexe de pistes et de fausses directions qui semblent conçues pour protéger une corruption intouchable.

Mais alors même que l’affaire le rapproche plus que jamais du véritable visage du mal, Luther, réticent, est obligé de faire face aux démons sans sépulture de son propre passé récent. En revenant dans la ligne de tir, il doit choisir qui protéger et qui sacrifier.

Quel que soit son prochain geste, cela aura des conséquences dévastatrices pour son entourage – et changera John Luther pour toujours.

Luther saison 4 photo

Luther saison 4

Voici le grand retour de Luther après plus de deux ans d’absence.

Nous retrouvons Luther en congé de la police, faisant profil bas dans un cottage délabré. Une visite de ses collègues, DCI Theo Bloom et DS Emma Lane, lui apporte une information choquante qui l’attire de nouveau à Londres dans une nouvelle quête de vérité.

Au même moment, un tueur en série cannibal frappe la ville, dévorant des morceaux de corps partout où il passe.

En suivant la piste d’indices menant d’une scène de crime à l’autre, DSU Martin Schenk et son équipe doivent travailler sur la logique tordue qui relie chaque victime.

Mais cet ingénieux meurtrier met en difficulté les membres de l’équipe de Schenk et joue avec eux avec toujours un coup d’avance.

Luther fait un retour triomphant, déterminé à capturer le tueur avant qu’un autre corps mutilé ne rejoigne la liste des victimes.

Mais Luther est toujours obsédé par les fantômes de son passé et il lui faudra toutes les fibres de son être pour garder sa raison.

Lire la suite

luther-s3

Luther saison 3

Deux ans après la seconde saison, voici le grand retour de Luther pour une troisième saison sur la BBC.

John Luther, le détective de génie qui peine à gérer ses propres démons, doit enquêter sur deux crimes et gérer un ex-policier déterminé à l’abattre.

La vie de Luther révolutionne autour de travail, jusqu’à ce que l’amour croise son chemin et lui offre une chance d’être heureux.

Sienna Guillory (“Resident Evil,” “Love Actually”) est Mary, une femme qui travaille dans un magasin de vêtements vintage et qui rencontre Luther par hasard.

Mais Mary est-elle prête à accepter le passé de Luther ? Et Luther peut-il le laisser derrière lui?

Lire la suite

luther-s2

Luther saison 2

Voici la seconde saison de Luther qui est composée de 4 épisodes.

Luther est recruté dans la nouvelle Serious and Serial Unit, où on lui demande d’arrêter un violent tueur en série masqué.

Il tente également d’aider la fille d’un homme qu’il a envoyé en prison quelques années auparavant pour la sauver de la prostitution.

luther-s1

Luther saison 1

Luther est une série télévisée britannique en six épisodes de 60 minutes, créée par Neil Cross et diffusée sur BBC One. Cette série est inédite en France.

John Luther est policier à la section criminelle de Londres. Après avoir traité une affaire de tueur d’enfants, Luther a fait une dépression nerveuse qui a mis son mariage en péril.

Très impliqué dans son travail, il doit lutter contre ses démons intérieurs qui sont parfois aussi dangereux que les criminels qu’il poursuit.

Introduction to Puritanism and Expansionism photo

Introduction to Puritanism and Expansionism

Puritanism

Puritanism is a radical version of Protestantism, which is rooted in the movement called the Reformation (16th century).

American Puritanism and English Puritanism are fairly different. American Puritanism became the ultimate, most coherent of Protestantism because it grew in a virgin soil. It is an experiment in America with European roots.

The most famous characters are Luther and Calvin, who both had a great influence first in Europe and then in America.

The most radical movement was led by the Separatists. For them, the Church was hopelessly corrupted. Only the elect, “God’s invisible saints”, could be Church members. They believed in personal religious rebirth and to the regenerating experience.

This puritan version is prompted by the notion of sin: people are sinful, especially women. It is the basic corrupt notion of human nature. For Puritanism, it is impossible to reach perfection: “in Adam’s fault we sinned all”.

Puritanism is not only a matter of theology but also a matter of social organization: God also rules the collective life of the people. Man is linked up to God with a covenant. By respecting this covenant, man could get rid of his depravity (covenant of Grace).

These notions were puritan before America. Puritans were looking for a place to experiment with this system.

In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers landed in America: they were separatists and belonged to a cult (kind of sect). What they did is to sign a covenant: the “Mayflower Compact”, which is not only religious but also civic and political.

Between 1630 and 1640, 20 000 English puritans settled down in the Massachusetts colony. Many people were University trained, especially in theology. The power of the Church was so profound that some people talked about “Theocracy” (Government of God).

The puritans moved to America because they were persecuted in Europe. Theocracy was so strict that there were a growing discontent in the colonies: settlers started to criticize and question the system.

Roger Williams was for the separation of the State and the Church. In 1635, Williams was banned. He created his own colony called “Providence”, who became the heaven of religious tolerance (later known as Rhode-Island).

Anne Hutchinson arrived in America in 1634. She organized private meetings, commented on sermons, and stressed the importance of “inner light” (private experience of Grace towards genuine regeneration) stating that the Church was too formal. She had followers called Antinomians (against the laws).

In 1638, she was trialed and she had to find refuge in Providence.

How long did Puritanism last in America?

Until the late 16th century but Puritanism went on and on in American mentality. It had many factors for its decay, the most important were:

  1. the religious competition
  2. people’s belief in freedom and tolerance
  3. 1692 knew a witch hysteria in Salem. Thousands of witches were burnt in Europe in the Middle-Ages in Germany and in England (some in France). The immigrants who came to America brought with them this fear of witchcraft. In 1692, some 20 people were sentenced to death for witchcraft.

All these reasons embodied and materialized the decay of Puritanism. It can be interpreted as a desperate effort to resist change (die-hard Puritanism) and to block the emergence of a more open and tolerant society.

This is the first failure in the American system.

The link between Puritanism and Expansionism

Puritan settlements were located on the East Coast and all the rest of the territory was part of the “terra incognita”.

This was a dilemma for the puritans: the big question of that time could be resumed by ‘should I stay or should I go?”, showing the hesitation of the settlers to expand. Indeed, the wilderness was devilish and dangerous. It was a no-man’s land inhabited by nothing but Indians and animals.

But the puritans had a mission: converting the Indians and trespassing their border. This turn-over was made possible thanks to William Bradford and the propagation of the Gospel. The Puritans believed they were entitled to settle this land.

Civilization had a religious definition: “the Lord’s Gardens”. Bringing civilization to wilderness was like converting the Indians and settling God’s Gardens in the Wilderness.

The main goal was enlarging the Kingdom of Christ. Hence, expansion had a religious basis and 3 levels:

  1. hesitation
  2. the temptation to go beyond the settlement
  3. the desire to form a civilization

But most puritans refrained this idea because they were frightened. American civilization is based on FEAR.

The Reformation in the British Isles photo

The Reformation in the British Isles

The Anglo-American World is predominantly a Protestant and religious world: reformed Christianity largely influenced the culture and ideals.

But Protestantism is no British creation for it appeared in the 16th century in continental Europe.

A German monk called Martin Luther started a rebellion against the churches’ authority in 1517 and founded a new church: “the Lutheran or Evangelical Church”.

A Frenchman called Jean Calvin rose against authority and influenced indirectly the whole civilization of the English-speaking world.

For them, the only authority in the church should come from the Bible and not from priests, for else the interpretation is open to everybody: the Reformation started a real challenge against authority.

English and American Protestantism were defined by plurality: the Reformation had a tremendous influence on individual freedom and on the development of an atmosphere of tolerance.

In Britain, churches after the Reformation organized themselves as official national churches: one particular protestant church became the established Church [=> rejection & exclusion].

In Ireland, the establishment was the natural elite: that what was called the Ascendancy.

The Church of England

The Church of England was created by the top of the British society in 1534 when Henry VIII decided to separate the English Church from the Church of Rome by his own authority.

His creation took the simple name of Anglican Church (English Church). The King had 3 main reasons for the creation of the Church of England:

1. Personal reason: the King wished to divorce his wife and the Pope refused. There was a problem of power for the King did not want to be ruled by the Pope.

2. Financial reason: England was small and poor before colonization and the King needed the Church’s wealth. Hence, the King accepted Luther’s theory about the abolition of monasteries and started the Reformation.

3. Political reason: Henry VIII wanted to be free of appointing the leaders of the church, i.e. the Bishops.

The Reformation is a declaration of independence for the rest of the world (especially for France and Italy).

In terms of doctrine, Anglicanism is a political, practical, and pragmatic compromise between Roman Catholicism and continental Protestantism: several tendencies developed within the Church from the part of the Church called High Church (close to Catholicism) to the low Church (close to Calvinism).

The Church developed in a general atmosphere of tolerance. Yet, in terms of organization and discipline, the Church of England kept an elaborate hierarchy of priests, bishops, and 2 archbishops under the supremacy of the King, the official head of the Church.

Individual access to reading the Bible, which represents a characteristic of Protestantism, was made possible through the publication in 1611 of an English translation of the texts.

But, this was made under a strictly controlled version, known after the very significant name of the authorized version, which is in use nowadays in the USA: King James’s Bible.

From 1563, those who wanted to eliminate catholic survivors from the Church of England were forced to leave it: they were called the Puritans from their wish to purify the Church from popery.

They gave birth to England’s religious pluralism that found an echo in a variety of American churches’ denominations.

The Church of Scotland

In 1559, John Knox founded a popular Calvinist church in Scotland. He rejected papal authority and all kinds of hierarchy but this democratic church imposed strict moral discipline and social order on the people.

It was organized after a system called Presbyterianism in which authority was detained neither by people nor ministers but by a category of members called the Elders.

In 1560, the Scottish Parliament adopted Presbyterianism as the Church of Scotland.

The non-established churches

Contrary to the notions of uniformity and discipline, expressed by the established churches (England and Scotland), the existence and persistence of non-established denominations demonstrate the principles of diversity which is characteristic of the protestant world.

Historically, both Catholics and Protestants dissenters were first persecuted and then excluded from civic life, i.e. they had no access to professions, to trading corporations, to universities (both as students and professors), and to politics.

Protestant independents were finally tolerated in the early 18th century but the formal emancipation of those two groups of people only took place in 182X, when they were given full civil rights.

Roman Catholicism

Because of persecutions, Roman Catholicism had almost disappeared from GB in the 18th century. But in Ireland, it remained the religion of a majority of the population.

Nevertheless, like the British counterpart, until 1829, Irish Catholics were discriminated and the minority Anglican Church was established as the official church of Ireland.

Mainly because of Irish immigration from 1845 onwards, Roman Catholicism has made constant progress in GB, particularly in the big industrial centers of the Northwest (Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow).

In 1921, the major part of Ireland separated from Britain and became the Irish Free State, which later took the name of the Irish Republic or Eire. But the mainly protestant countries of Northern Ireland remained British for political and religious reasons. They formed the province of Ulster.

This close link between religion and politics, between Protestantism and unionism on the one hand and Catholicism and republicanism on the other hand is the main reason for sectarian violence in Ulster.

Other problems are typical of the religious context of Northern Ireland:

  • Absence of residential integration between Catholics and Protestants: the two communities live in separate quarters. This problem is responsible for the presence of ghettos in Belfast or Derry.
  • Persistence of job discrimination for the catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Although discrimination was formerly declared illegal in 1979, Ÿ of the jobless in Northern Ireland are Catholics.

Other protestant denominations

Several denominations still continue to be in the independent tradition that emerged in England and in Scotland against the established churches:

The Congregationalists: emerged as the old puritan separatists. In England and Wales, they have recently merged with the Presbyterians to become the united-reformed church. But this union was impossible in Scotland, where Presbyterianism is established as the official church.

The Baptists: were created in England in 1609 by John Smyth. Their action is very important in the USA (especially in the South). Famous Baptists: Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, Jimmy Carter.

The Quakers: were founded by the Englishman George Fox in 1650. They have no clergy at all and advocate pacifism (peace and love). Their influence is very important in charities and education. They played a decisive role in business and capitalism: Barclay founded an important banking company and Cadbury a chocolate company. The Quakers also founded two American states: Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, both famous for their religious tolerance and democratic institutions.

The Methodists: were created by an Englishman called John Wesley in the middle of the 18th century. Methodism started as protest against conservatism and formalism in the Church of England. Popular movement insisting on individual freedom and personal enthusiasm.

The Salvation Army: was founded by an Englishman called William Booth in 1865 in a very original protestant church without clergy, yet with a strong military organization. Church insisting on the relief of poverty as essential.

The influence of Protestantism

Protestantism and more especially Bible reading in English represent the major origins of the Anglo-American moral and intellectual traditions. It greatly influenced native traditions but it was also influenced by those different traditions.

The result of these interactions, sometimes violent, is a complex cultural melting pot that is characteristic of the contemporary English-speaking world.

Influence on politics and economics

Protestantism advocated individual freedom and more democracy in Church matters. The Anglo-American tradition emphasizes on the notion of respect for civic liberties and insists on the necessity for minimum intervention from the state in everyday life.

Therefore, both libertarianism and liberalism may be said to be the consequence of Protestantism. Parliamentary institutions were first adopted in England before the Reformation but the progressive desacralization of monarchy and the rule of pluralism through the creation of political parties are legacies of Protestantism.

The coexistence between centralism and delegation of authority was inherited from Protestantism. In Britain, the monarchy persisted as the symbol of state. In the USA, the new presidential institutions lay emphasis on a powerful head of state.

But in both cases, local authorities have their own say in political matters. The American regime is federal while the British system applies the rule of subsidiarity; i.e. decisions are taken at the lowest possible level.

Capitalism may also be attributed to Protestantism, since economic success and accumulation of capital were considered as signs of salvation.

Influence on culture and society

Because of the emphasis put on the individual by Protestantism, Anglo-American societies are strongly individualistic. They expressed the horror of collective structure, the cult of the self-made-man and are very often indifferent to poverty.

Society is also animated by a strong sense of community, in great respect for the organization, responsibility, and public spirit.

Sometimes, the state is committed to social issues: the Welfare State in GB was set up in 1945 to protect national health and social security but there is no Welfare State in the USA.

Hence, opposition of a puritan sense of economy, seriousness, work ethic, counterbalanced by a degree of relativism, distanced humor and nonsense, which are as powerful as the puritan trend.

Because of its religious diversity, the Anglo-American World inherited a great sense of compromise in a general context of striking social and cultural contrast.

Sommaire de la série From the Reformation to the birth of the American nation (1534-1776)

  1. The Reformation in the British Isles
  2. English Expansionism
  3. The Glorious Revolution of 1688
  4. The American colonies : Religion and Politics
  5. USA: Birth of a Nation