The Reactions of Church and Dissent towards the Crimean War

Olive Anderson

doi:10.1017/S0022046900054026

The Reactions of Church and Dissent towards the Crimean War

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011

Olive Anderson

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Olive Anderson: Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, Westfield College, University of London

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It is well known that the role of public opinion in England before and during the Crimean War was almost uniquely important. It is probably equally well known that in the middle of the nineteenth century church-going and clerical prestige both reached a remarkably high level, except among the working classes. There is, thus, a strong prima facie case for supposing that the churches played a significant part in forming opinion at this critical time, offering as they did to their members interpretations of public events in accordance with their own theological outlook. Certainly such interpretations were far more in demand during the Crimean War than during the wars of either the eighteenth or the twentieth century. It is a striking fact that this was the last English war to be begun with the proclamation of a General Fast, and probably the only modern war in which military disasters prompted another General Fast. The clergy's public was remarkably large and remarkably attentive. The circulation of the religious weekly press almost approached that of the serious secular weeklies (the Athenaeum apart), while the long life of the Penny Pulpit, made up exclusively of the recent sermons of the most popular preachers of the day, reveals a substantial sermon-buying public well below the social levels which the familiar bound volumes of a single preacher's sermons suggest.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , October 1965 , pp. 209 - 220

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900054026 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

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^{page 209 note 1} See Martin, B. Kingsley, The Triumph of Lord Palmerston, London 1924Google Scholar, revised edition 1963, passim.

^{page 209 note 2} Between 1845 and 1878 it could be bought in weekly or monthly parts, or single sermons could be bought for a penny.

^{page 210 note 1} B. Kingsley Martin, op. cit., 54, 206; Beales, A. C. F., The History of Peace, London 1931, 97Google Scholar; Kellett, E. E., Religion and Life in the Early Victorian Age, London 1938, 165–6Google Scholar

^{page 210 note 2} Dr. Davidson at a meeting of the Peace Society reported in the British Banner (the organ of moderate Dissent), 23 May 1855.

^{page 210 note 3} 14 July, 10 October 1853.

^{page 210 note 4} E.g., A. W. Snape, ‘On War’, and W. W. Ellis, ‘King Asa's prayer on the eve of battle’, both preached on 26 April 1854: Penny Pulpit, June and July 1854.

^{page 210 note 5} Vanderpol, A., La Doctrine Scholastique du Droit de Guerre, Paris 1919, 279Google Scholar; Stratmann, F., The Church and War, London 1928, 60, 73.Google Scholar

^{page 211 note 1} Indeed, it is the very continuity of this scholastic approach which seems striking in England. The views expressed in Jackson, F. J. (ed.), The Faith and War, London 1915Google Scholar, or in Carpenter, S. C., Faith in Time of War, London 1940Google Scholar, are not essentially different from many of those now under discussion.

^{page 211 note 2} ‘The character of the warrior a legitimate object of admiration to Christians’, preached at Lincoln's Inn, 21 November 1852.

^{page 211 note 3} The English Churchman (a High Church organ), 9 February 1854; see also the British Banner, 29 March, the Wesleyan Watchman, 5 April and the Record, 27 April 1854.

^{page 211 note 4} E.g., the British Banner and the Nonconformist (the organ of militant dissent), 29 March 1854; the Inquirer (a Unitarian organ), 1 and 29 April 1854; the Record, 13 April 1854; the Tablet, 17 February 1855.

^{page 211 note 5} In Germany, too, a leading Evangelical used these arguments to dissuade German Evangelicals from sympathising with the Western powers: Inquirer, 3 March 1855.

^{page 211 note 6} This is particularly marked in the Watchman, e.g. 15 March 1854.

^{page 212 note 1} Parliamentary debates, 3rd Series, cxxxi. 591–604, 10 March 1854. Shaftesbury went so far as to find the mainspring of the Czar's policy in his alarm at the implications of the widespread distribution of the Scriptures in Turkey-in-Europe and a firman placing Protestants on the same footing as the ancient Christian communities.

^{page 212 note 2} Cumming frequently published his views, for example in The End (1855).

^{page 212 note 3} This was urged by Dr. John Aiton, an admirer of Cumming, in The Drying up of the Euphrates, or, The downfall of Turkey prophetically considered (1853). Cumming himself believed that the war was justified, but that Russia would not be permanently checked: The War and its Issues, London 1855, 94.

^{page 213 note 1} Record, 24 October and 28 November 1853; Patriot, 24 April 1854; cf. Watchman, 19 October 1853. A. W. Snape, one of the evangelical school of preachers, told his congregation that Russia should leave it to God to get rid of Turkey: Penny Pulpit, July 1854.

^{page 213 note 2} Burn, W. L., The Age of Equipoise, London 1964, 55–6.Google Scholar

^{page 213 note 3} E.g., ‘England, Turkey and Russia’, preached on 26 February 1854: Penny Pulpit, July 1854.

^{page 213 note 4} Maurice, F. (ed.), The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, London 1884, ii. 251Google Scholar.

^{page 214 note 1} Record, October 1854. The same journal deplored the queen's profanation of the Sabbath with music, in the critical weeks after the landing in the Crimea, as ‘a daring provocation of the Almighty’ (6 November 1854).

^{page 214 note 2} 21 March 1855, Penny Pulpit (April 1855). The same theme appears in his sermon on ‘The iniquity of Ahaz’ of 20 February 1855, printed in the same volume.

^{page 215 note 1} 26 April 1854.

^{page 215 note 2} 31 October 1853.

^{page 215 note 3} From the London Gazette it appears that no fast was proclaimed in 1914.

^{page 215 note 4} In March 1832 a fast was proclaimed on account of the cholera epidemic, another in March 1847 on account of the Irish famine and one in October 1857 on account of the Indian Mutiny. On other occasions special forms of prayer were ordered, although ‘public and national acts of worship’ were many times urged in vain.

^{page 215 note 5} The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1st series, London 1907, iii. 25: 1 April 1854.

^{page 216 note 1} B.M. Add. MS. 43049, fol. 41: the queen to Aberdeen, 12 April 1854; ibid., fol. 46: Aberdeen to the queen, same day.

^{page 216 note 2} London Gazette, 15 and 24 April 1854; Reeve, Henry (ed.), The Greville Memoirs, London 1903, vii. 155Google Scholar.

^{page 216 note 3} B.M. Add.MS. 43195, fol. 144: Aberdeen to the archbishop of Canterbury, 28 November 1854; B.M. Add MS. 43069, fol. 276; Palmerston to Aberdeen, 20 September 1854.

^{page 216 note 4} E.g., Morning Chronicle, 26 and 27 April 1854; Record, 27 April 1854.

^{page 217 note 1} 20 April 1854.

^{page 217 note 2} 19 April 1854.

^{page 217 note 3} Watchman, 25 April 1854.

^{page 217 note 4} This may reflect the hesitant attitude towards the war among Irish Roman Catholic leaders, since the Roman Catholic bishops had sanctioned the fast proclaimed at the time of the Irish Famine. High Churchmen welcomed the fast, although they criticised the form of prayer prescribed (English Churchman, 27 April 1854).

^{page 217 note 5} See, e.g., Brown, J. Baldwin (the Congregationalist minister), What is to follow the Fast?, London 1855.Google Scholar

^{page 217 note 6} Nonconformist, 14 March 1855.

^{page 218 note 1} Inquirer, 29 April 1854.

^{page 218 note 2} John Forster in H.M.'s chapel of the Savoy, reported in the Morning Herald, 22 March 1855.

^{page 218 note 3} Watchman, 31 October 1855. The Almighty's ‘over-ruling disposal of times and secondary causes, and control of physical laws’ was, indeed, a favourite theme of the religious press.

^{page 218 note 4} See, e.g., the reports in the Nonconformist, 28 March 1855.

^{page 219 note 1} W. Palmer (a Baptist minister), Calm reflections on the retributive character of war, the moral government of God, and the improvement of man's condition under the millennial reign of Christ, London 1855, 13.

^{page 219 note 2} 26 March 1855.

^{page 219 note 3} 4 January 1854.

^{page 220 note 1} Les Soirées de St. Petersbourg, Paris n.d., ii. 25.

^{page 219 note 2} Brave Words to Brave Soldiers, 8.

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