The chaos of the
Second English Civil War, the
execution of King Charles I, and the animosity between the Presbyterians and
Independents during the era of the
Commonwealth gave rise to many sectarian groups that attempted to make sense of their society and place within that society. The Ranters were one such group. They were regarded as
heretical by the
established Church and seem to have been regarded by the government as a threat to social order. The passage "the bishops, Charles and the Lords have had their turn, overturn, so your turn shall be next", The origin for the term "Ranter" seems to come from an anonymous pamphlet titled "A Justification of the Mad Crew", where the word 'rant' was used in reference to the enemies of those espousing this particular view, equating ranting with hypocrisy. The anonymous author calls those who would eventually be deemed Ranters "the Mad Crew" instead. There is also a confluence between the term "Ranter" with the passive verb 'rent', as in to be rent away from God. Most written evidence points to the use of "Ranter" as an insult by the enemies of the sect and not a self-designated moniker. There are few primary sources actually written by Ranters, but those that do exist give us a clearer picture of what they believed. The most famous English member,
Laurence Clarkson or Claxton, joined the Ranters after encountering them in 1649. Although he does not mention them directly, his 1650 tract called
A Single Eye is widely believed to have been inspired by this dissenting group and directly reflects their views. Other less well known members of the Ranter cohort included
Abiezer Coppe and
Joseph Salmon. Their central idea was
pantheistic, that God is essentially in every creature, including themselves. They embraced
antinomianism and believed that Christians are freed by grace from the necessity of obeying
Mosaic Law, rejecting the very notion of obedience. They held that believers are free from all traditional restraints and that sin is a product only of the imagination. The Ranters revived the Brethren of the Free Spirit's
amoralism and "stressed the desire to surpass the human condition and become godlike". They denied the authority of the church, of accepted religious practice and of Scripture. In fact, they denied the power of any authority in general.
Gerrard Winstanley, a leader of another English dissenting group called the
Diggers, characterised Ranter principles as amounting to the excessive enjoyment of "meat, drinke, pleasures, and women". However, another prominent Digger,
William Everard, was, some time after the failure of the Digger communes, imprisoned as a Ranter, and later confined to
Bethlem Hospital.
John Bunyan, author of ''
Pilgrim's Progress, wrote in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners'', that he had encountered Ranters prior to his
Baptist conversion. In England, they came into contact and even rivalry with the early
Quakers, who were often falsely accused of direct association with them. Richard L. Greaves, in a review of Davis' book, suggests that though a very radical fringe existed, it was probably never as organized as conservatives of the time suggested. In the mid-19th century, the name was often applied to the
Primitive Methodists, with reference to their crude and often noisy preaching. ==See also==