Eric J. Evans

The Church in Danger? Anticlericalism in Nineteenth-Century England

Those who attacked the clergy in nineteenth-century England knew that in doing so they challenged institutions which were seen as the guardians of natural order. Some of the most contentious political issues of the period were religious in origin. Should Roman Catholics in Ireland have equal political rights with Protestants? Could nonconformists attend the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and should they be forced, along with loyal Anglicans, to pay rates for the upkeep of the Established Church? The revelation in England and Wales’s unique religious census of 1851 that approximately one half of her population did not attend religious worship astounded many of the middle and upper classes. It was inferred that the non-attenders came overwhelmingly from the lower orders and men soberly debated whether the fabric of society could withstand such lack of faith. The fervour of the passions aroused by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce’s attacks on Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1860 may be readily understood. Darwin denied the plausibility of a sudden act of creation, refuted Genesis and was thus condemned as atheistical. Wilberforce well knew the implications. A charge of atheism Was far more than a statement about belief; it implied malevolence and worthlessness on all questions of public policy. During the French wars of 1793-1815 artisan democrats were branded ’Jacobins and Atheists’ by the authorities in the hope that the latter description might nullify whatever attractions democracy might have for the lower orders. Thomas Paine’s anti-Christian tract, The Age of Reason was declared a blasphemous and seditious libel in 1797 and