Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England

by Schlossberg,Herbert

• ISBN13: 9781412810272
• ISBN10: 1412810272
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-09-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Contrary to its popular image as dull and stodgy, theVictorian period was one of revolutionary change. In itspolitics, its art, its economic affairs, its class relationships,and in its religion, change was constant. A half-century afterQueen Victoria’s death, it was said that she was born in oneworld and died in another. The most interesting and valuablestudies of the period take the long view, as does Schlossberg,in his fascinating analysis of religious life in this period.For the Victorians, religion was not cordoned off fromthe push and shove of real life. The early evangelicals gotoff to a shaky start, beset by hostility, but the movementspread within the churches despite the suspicion in whichit was held. Evangelicals, frequently called Puritans bythose who opposed them, called for fundamental reformsin both the Church and the society; a social ethic was partof their program of religious renewal. Their moral senseexplains the social activism of both Church of EnglandEvangelicals and Dissenters, including the half-centurycrusade for the abolition of slavery.Schlossberg shows how religion in England dealt withsuch issues as science and the effect of German scholarshipon religious thinking. Church history cannot simplybe explained by its response to external forces as much asby the internal responses to those challenges. The natureof the religious enterprise itself, its theologians, clergy, laypeople-like all people and all institutions-all respondedwith alternatives. Schlossberg helps us understand theVictorian period, as well as the increasing secularity ofEnglish life today.

Table of Contents

Dedicatory Note	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Setting for the Coming Struggles	p. 21
The Decay of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England	p. 59
The Waning of the Nonconformist Spirit	p. 99
The High Church on the Way to Ascendency	p. 139
Truth, Freedom, and the Fratricide of the Orthodox	p. 175
The Diffusive Religion of the Late Victorians	p. 211
Alternatives to Christianity	p. 253
Conclusions	p. 285
Index	p. 315
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