In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I,
a remarkable group of English women came up with their
own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At
the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and
autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Barltrop.
Her followers called her Octavia, and believed that she
was the daughter of God, sent to build the New Jerusalem
in Bedford. Proclaiming the female aspects of God,
Octavia attracted former suffragettes, middle-class
Christian women and passionate spiritual seekers to
Bedford, where they followed her in rigorous religious
practices. She appointed twelve women as her apostles,
and put the rest to work to spread her Word: that human
beings, through Panacea, could achieve immortal life on
earth. Acclaimed historian Jane Shaw found the last
living members of the Panacea Society, who revealed to
her their immense, painstakingly-preserved archives. She
discovered a utopian community that once had seventy
residents, thousands of followers, and an international
healing ministry that reached 130,000 people around the
globe.Octavia, Daughter of God is a fascinating group
biography and a revelatory work of cultural and
narrative history. Vividly told, by turns funny and
tragic, it reveals in intimate detail the complex,
out-sized personality of Octavia; the faith of her
devoted followers, who believed they would never die;
and the intricacies and intrigues of her close-knit
community. But Octavia, Daughter of God is also about a
moment at the advent of modernity, when a generation of
newly empowered women tried to re-make Christianity in
their own image. Startlingly modern in their resolve and
curiously reactionary in their social views and
politics, their story is a portrait of an age. It offers
a window into the anxieties and hopes of the interwar
years through the lives of ordinary people who believed
extraordinary things about God, this world and the
next. |
|