Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:11:10.845Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Incarnation and the Christian Socialist Conscience in the Victorian Church of England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Cheryl Walsh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Among the churches of nineteenth-century Britain, the Anglican Church held a unique, and somewhat embarrassing, position. It was, of course, the established Church of England—an arm of the state, assigned the honor and duty of serving as the focus and guide of the nation's spiritual life. Its position was embarrassing by the mid-nineteenth century because it obviously was not fulfilling its ostensible role. The increasingly secular nature of industrial society on the one hand, and the Christian challenge of Nonconformity on the other, cost the Church membership among all classes of people. That loss significantly undermined the Anglican claim that the established Church served the religious needs of the whole nation, and it led to persistent Nonconformist cries for disestablishment. Furthermore, Christianity's appeal to its traditional following, the poor and lowly, seemed to evaporate in the industrial environment of the Victorian city. Not only did typical urban workers not go to church (or chapel, for that matter), they were generally rather hostile to organized religion and particularly to the Anglican Church. In the Church of governors and employers, where services and sermons often could appeal only to the educated, workers felt, not unjustly, uncomfortable and unwelcome.

There were several internal impediments to increasing the popularity (and thereby the social influence) of the Anglican Church, not the least of which was the dominant theology of early Victorian England. During what Boyd Hilton has called the “Age of Atonement” (roughly the first half of the nineteenth century), evangelical thought both shaped and justified the economic and social assumptions which underlay the policies of competitive capitalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 3: Victorian Subjects , July 1995 , pp. 351 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Compare the bishop of Bedford's, paper on “The Religious Condition of the Working Classes,” in the Official Report of the Church Congress 20 (1880): 93Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Church Congress Reports).

2 Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), p. 6Google Scholar.

3 Hilton, pp. 98–102.

4 Close, Francis, A Sermon, addressed to the Chartists of Cheltenham, Sunday, August 18th, 1839, on the occasion of their attending the parish church in a body (London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co., 1839), p. 15Google Scholar.

5 Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London: Routledge & Paul, 1963), p. 251Google Scholar.

6 Inglis, p. 259.

7 Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church (London: Black, 1966), pt. 1, p. 347Google Scholar.

8 Blomfield, Charles James, bishop of London, A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of London (London, 1847), p. 8Google Scholar, quoted in Norman, E. R., Church and Society in England 1770–1970 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), pp. 132–33Google Scholar.

9 Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, pt. 1, p. 347Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 545.

11 Maurice, F. D., Theological Essays, 3d ed. (n.p., 1871), p. xviGoogle Scholar; quoted in Vidler, Alex R., F. D. Maurice and Company (London: SCM Press, 1966), p. 40Google Scholar.

12 Maurice, , The Kingdom of Christ (2d ed., 1842; reprint, London: James Clarke & Co., 1959), 2:311Google Scholar.

13 Maurice, , Christian Socialism, Christian Social Union ed. (n.p., 1893); quoted in Inglis, p. 263Google Scholar.

14 Ibid.

15 Maurice, , On the Right and Wrong Methods of Supporting Protestantism (n.p., 1843), p. 10Google Scholar; quoted in Inglis, p. 264.

16 Maurice, quoted in Norman, Edward, The Victorian Christian Socialists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Maurice, , The Kingdom of Christ, 2:321.Google Scholar

18 Jones, Peter d'A., The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877–1914 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Maurice, , Reasons for Co-operation (London: John W. Parker, 1851), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

20 Ludlow, J. M., Fraser's Magazine (January 1850), pt. 1, p. 12Google Scholar. Quoted in Christensen, Torben, Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 1848–54 (Aarhus, Denmark: Universitetsforlaget, 1962), p. 127Google Scholar.

21 Maurice, , Reasons for Co-operation, p. 23Google Scholar; see also Maurice, , Learning and Working (Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1855), p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

22 Maurice, letter to Ludlow, J. M., March 17, 1850, in The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice Chiefly Told in His Own Letters, ed. Maurice, Frederick, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1884), 2:43–44Google Scholar.

23 Vidler, p. 177.

24 Letter to Ludlow, March 17, 1850, in The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, 2:44Google Scholar.

25 Maurice, , Reasons for Co-operation, p. 15Google Scholar.

26 Maurice, , Learning and Working, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

27 Christensen, p. 88; Norman, , The Victorian Christian Socialists (n. 16 above), p. 12Google Scholar. Compare Chadwick, , The Victorian Church (n. 16 above), pt. 1, p. 354Google Scholar: “Whereas most clergymen of the day wished to promulgate truth to the workmen, Maurice wished to learn from them. They had never met a parson like him.”

28 The phrase is Chadwick's, , from The Victorian Church, pt. 1, p. 360Google Scholar. Christensen's account of the movement illustrates some of the implications of such a characterization.

29 Wagner, D. O., The Church of England and Social Reform since 1854 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930), p. 62Google Scholar. Maurice himself was caught in some controversy and was dismissed from his professorship at King's College for his belief that God did not condemn sinners to everlasting punishment in hell.

30 Yeo, Stephen, “Thomas Hancock, 1832–1903: ‘The Banner of Christ in the Hands of the Socialists,’” in For Christ and the People: Studies of four Socialist Priests and Prophets of the Church of England between 1870 and 1930, ed. Reckitt, Maurice B. (London: S.P.C.K., 1968), p. 10Google Scholar.

31 Quoted in Hilton (n. 2 above), pp. 5–6.

32 Hilton, p. 5.

33 Church Congress Reports 3 (1863): 12.Google Scholar

34 Church Congress Reports 5 (1865): 101.Google Scholar

35 Church Congress Reports 11 (1871): 409.Google Scholar

36 Hancock, Thomas, “Christ's Ascension and Utility: The Things Above are the Things Needed on the Earth” (1873), in his Christ and the People: Sermons chiefly on the obligations of the Church to the State and to Humanity (London: Daldy, Isbister, & Co., 1875), p. 260Google Scholar.

37 Christ and the People, pp. 261–62.

38 Jones (n. 18 above), p. 158.

39 Headlam, quoted in Bettany, F. G., Stewart Headlam: A Biography (London: John Murray, 1926), p. 81Google Scholar.

40 See, e.g., Archdeacon Denison's discussion of internal divisions in the church in “Causes and Influence of Unbelief in England,” Church Congress Reports 16 (1876): 125Google Scholar.

41 Quoted in Chadwick, Owen, The Mind of the Oxford Movement (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960), p. 139Google Scholar.

42 Wakeman, Henry O., “The Tractarian Movement,” Church Congress Reports 37 (1897): 142Google Scholar.

43 Ward, W. G., The Ideal of a Christian Church Considered in Comparison with Existing Practice, 2d ed. (London: James Toovey, 1844), pp. 306, 11Google Scholar.

44 Headlam, Stewart, “The Church” (1896), in his The Meaning of the Mass (London: Brown, Langham & Co., 1905), p. 59Google Scholar.

45 Church Congress Reports 37 (1897): 143.Google Scholar

46 Headlam, Stewart, “The Secular Value of the Church Catechism” (1876), in his Priestcraft and Progress (London: John Hodges, 1878), p. 100Google Scholar.

47 Headlam, , Church Congress Reports 20 (1880): 650.Google Scholar

48 Headlam, , “The Church” (1896)Google Scholar, and “The Ethical Value of the Parables of Jesus” (1896), in The Meaning of the Mass, pp. 57, 83Google Scholar.

49 Headlam, , “The Secular Value of the Church Catechism” (1876), p. 99Google Scholar.

50 “The Ethical Value of the Parables of Jesus,” p. 73.

51 Leech, Kenneth, “Stewart Headlam and the Guild of St. Matthew,” in Reckitt, , ed. (n. 30 above), p. 69Google Scholar.

52 Bettany (n. 39 above), p. 63.

53 Headlam, “The Secular Value of the Church Catechism,„ p. 113

54 Norman, , The Victorian Christian Socialists (n. 16 above), p. 5Google Scholar.

55 Jones (n. 18 above), p. 115.

56 Norman, , The Victorian Christian Socialists, p. 103Google Scholar.

57 At the Church Congress in 1890, the Reverend M. Kaufmann denned the “Broad Church party” as that section of the Church “which regards the whole world as an object of redemption, and which is apt to emphasize the importance of Church influence in the social and political life of the nation.” In describing the “High Church party,” Kaufmann emphasized education and the importance of the priesthood in leadership (Church Congress Reports 30 [1890]: 332Google Scholar). By those definitions, Headlam and most other members of the Guild of St. Matthew would have to be considered a part of both parties.

58 Headlam, , “The Secular Value of the Church Catechism,” p. 103Google Scholar.

59 Reckitt, ed. (n. 30 above), p. xiii.

60 Hancock, , Christ and the People (n. 36 above), p. 61Google Scholar.

61 Hancock, , “The Election and the ‘Mission,’” in Christ and the People, pp. 25, 29Google Scholar. This sentiment echoes Maurice's belief that “the whole country must look for its blessing through the elevation of its Working Class, that we must all sink if that is not raised” (Learning and Working, p. vii). The same idea was expressed by the Reverend Harry Jones at the Church Congress of 1880: “There can be no rise in the social condition of a nation if [the working classes] are always content, since it is possible that they may be willing to put up with avoidable degradation.” Jones went on to say that if the proponents of complacency and passivity had always been obeyed, “we might still be clothed in skins and living on acorns” (Church Congress Reports 20 [1880]: 102Google Scholar)

62 Hancock, , “Jesus Christ the Irresistible Attractor of the People” (1869), in Christ and the People, p. 17Google Scholar.

63 Hancock, “The Election and the 'Mission,' „ in Christ and the People, pp. 25, 29. This sentiment echoes Maurice's belief that “the whole country must look for its blessing through the elevation of its Working Class, that we must all sink if that is not raised„ (Learning and Working, p. vii). The same idea was expressed by the Reverend Harry Jones at the Church Congress of 1880: “There can be no rise in the social condition of a nation if [the working classes] are always content, since it is possible that they may be willing to put up with avoidable degradation.„ Jones went on to say that if the proponents of complacency and passivity had always been obeyed, “we might still be clothed in skins and living on acorns„ (Church Congress Reports 20 [1880]: 102).

64 Hancock, “Jesus Christ the Irresistible Attractor of the People„ (1869), in Christ and the People, p. 17.

65 Hancock, “The Election and the 'Mission,' „ p. 30.