The world now has only three main religious forces: Catholicism, secular humanism, and "the Eastern religions". The Anglican Communion has been disestablished since 1929 and, like all forms of Protestantism, is almost extinct. Marxism, atheism, and secular humanism, which Templeton describes as the tools of Freemasonry, dominate culture and politics. The British Royal Family has been deposed, the House of Lords has been abolished, Oxford and Cambridge universities have been closed down, and all their professors sent into internal exile in Ireland. Since the Labour Party took control of the British Government in 1917, the British Empire has been a single party state. Templeton describes to the two priests the last century of British and world history. A Catholic and former Conservative Member of Parliament who witnessed the marginalization of his religion and the destruction of his party, Mr. In early 21st century London, two priests, the white-haired Father Percy Franklin and the younger Father John Francis, are visiting the subterranean lodgings of the elderly Mr. Like many other Catholics of the era in which he wrote, Monsignor Benson believed in Masonic conspiracy theories and shared the political and economic views of G. Benson also presumed the survival of European colonialism in Africa, the continued expansion of Imperial Japan, and that predominant travel would continue to be by railway. Benson's ideas for future technology with those of legendary French science fiction novelist Jules Verne. Writing during the pontificate of Pope Pius X and prior to the First World War, Monsignor Benson accurately predicted interstate highways, weapons of mass destruction, the use of aircraft to drop bombs on both military and civilian targets, and passenger air travel in advanced Zeppelins called "Volors". Rolfe's suggestion that he should write a book on Antichrist." įrench Utopian Socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, c. Martindale, as Benson read Saint-Simon's writings, "A vision of a dechristianised civilisation, sprung from the wrecking of the old régime, arose before him and he listened to Mr. Benson to the writings of the French Utopian Socialist Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon.Īccording to Fr. Benson by his friend and literary mentor Frederick Rolfe in December 1905. Cyril Martindale, the idea of a novel about the Antichrist was first suggested to Fr. It was during his stay at Cambridge Rectory that Lord of the World was conceived and written.Īccording to his biographer Fr. Benson had been assigned as a Catholic Chaplain at Cambridge University. He later wrote that he received considerable solace in the words that an Anglican Bishop had spoken to his mother, "Remember that he has followed his conscience after all, and what else could his father wish for him than that?" Īfter his ordination as a Catholic priest at Rome in 1904, Fr. Although he replied scrupulously to every letter, Benson was deeply hurt.
Benson found himself accused of being "a deliberate traitor", "an infatuated fool", and of bringing dishonor upon his father's name and memory. The former Vicar found himself inundated with hate mail from Anglican clergy, men, women, and even children. Īccording to Joseph Pearce, "The press made much of the story that the son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury had become a Catholic, and the revelation rocked the Anglican establishment in a way reminiscent of the days of the Oxford Movement and the conversion of Newman." After a crisis of faith described in his 1913 memoir Confessions of a Convert, however, Benson was received into the Catholic Church on September 11, 1903. He had also read the litany at his father's 1896 funeral at Canterbury Cathedral and was widely expected to one day take his father's place as the most senior clergyman in the Anglican Communion. The youngest son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, and the society hostess Mary Sidgwick Benson, Robert was descended from a very long line of Anglican clergymen. Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, a former High Church Anglican Vicar, began writing Lord of the World two years after his conversion to Catholicism rocked the Church of England in 1903. Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, at the time of Lord of the World's 1907 publication.