­

 

2.5 Religious Societies

Moral life in England after the Restoration declined and by the turn of the century a number of religious societies had sprung up. The Societies for the restoration of Manners was formed in 1691, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701. Other societies also sprang up to spread the Christian faith and to introduce people to "primitive Christianity". They offered spiritual direction, and encouraged prayer, fasting and the like. They developed to counteract the moral decline of the age.

John and Charles Wesley's "Holy Club" was a similar society which they formed when they were undergraduates at the University of Oxford.

2.6 Pluralism and the Church of England

The quality of church life varied immensely. Many parish clergy were faithful workers. Others were notoriously immoral or just absent. One of the accepted abuses of the parish system was pluralism. This meant that one person might "have the living", that is, be the rector of more than one parish. One reason for this is that different parishes offered different amounts of income. In some the income was insufficient to provide for a man and his family. Thus those who could, acquired more than one living. Others acquired livings for the sake of status and money. One result of this was that many parishes did not have a resident minister. Furthermore because one man might have more than one parish, the actual work of providing services was done by curates who were often paid a pittance.

Thus the quality of pastoral care varied a great deal, and left many parishioners hungry for something better.

2.7 The Hanoverians

After the overthrow of the Catholic Stuart king James II, neither William and Mary (1688-1702), nor their successor Queen Anne (1702 - 1714) had any heirs. The Act of Settlement (1701) provided that in the absence of heirs to Anne or William III the crown was to pass to James I's granddaughter Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, or to her protestant descendants.  In 1714 George I the Elector of Hanover became King of Great Britain and Ireland. He did not speak English and appeared to many to favour the interests of Hanover to Britain. He was succeeded in turn by George II, III and IV, William IV and Queen Victoria.

Political life was dominated by the Whigs especially Sir Robert Walpole. They had some sympathies with the dissenters, and various Acts were repealed giving the dissenters more freedom to meet.  The Whigs had more difficulty cultivating good relations with the Church of England. Their members were more likely to criticise the bishops when church affairs were debated in parliament. However under Walpole's leadership the Church of England was brought on board. New episcopal appointments were made with a view to loyalty to the ruling political party.  In time the Church was seen by some as the ecclesiastical wing of the Whig party.

2.8 The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions

The eighteenth century saw a major revolution in agricultural practice. The open field system of strip farming was being replaced by larger fields enclosed by hedges and ditches. New methods and more efficient implements could be used. The quality of stock was improved by scientific breeding. All this resulted in improved food supply for the growing industrial workforce. However tenants who had traditional use of land and who were excluded by unilateral enclosures were severely disadvantaged. This led to strong opposition and resulted in various General Enclosure Acts in the nineteenth century to protect the rights of tenants.

In the midst of these changes in agricultural life, the Industrial revolution started to make an impact from about 1750.  Inventions in the textile industry made the production of cloths and yarns more efficient and of better quality. However the machines could not be used in a house, so manufacture moved from homes to factories. The factories were located in the first place near rivers while water power was used, and later near coalfields when steam power was available.

Factory conditions were horrific. Long hours,  poor conditions, low wages and the employment of children were some of the abuses. A political philosophy of laissez-faire meant  little or no interference in this industrial growth. Industrial towns sprang up with poor living conditions. As well, a movement from the country by people displaced by the agricultural revolution to industrial towns led to the dislocation of families and the shaking of established social traditions. New and pressing social problems arose which neither the church nor the government of the time was able to deal with.

It was amongst some of these towns and their impoverished workers that the evangelical revival had some of its greatest impact.

2.9 The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was a movement in thought during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Also called the Age of Reason, it exalted reason over traditional and authoritarian belief systems. Scientists and philosophers such as Newton, Locke, Pascal and Descartes questioned established beliefs and put forward an empirical and rational method of establishing truth. The questioning and scepticism spread throughout Europe. Voltaire in France attacked religious ideas, and Rousseau helped formulate ideas of individual liberty and equality. Ideas which were to be expressed in the French Revolution (1789).

Deism was one of the products of this ferment in thought. Churchmen reacted in different ways to the impact of the new rationalism

2.10 Deism

Deists rejected the idea of revealed religion. They appealed to reason and found sufficient truth about God revealed in nature.  The subsequent debates concerned the grounds for believing in revelation and the inadequacies of natural religion. Deism was a significant product of the enlightenment and formed one of the major goads to orthodox belief.

2.11 Latitudinarians

The Latitudinarians included prominent churchmen who tried to steer a course between the Puritan Calvinists and the High Church group. They approached Christian living in a practical non-mystical way. They valued reason and attempted to make things simple. They had a strong emphasis on ethics but their theological views were fairly minimal and not too deep. No complicated or dogmatic views for them.

They tried to help the church cope with the changes that were happening in the thought world of their day. They met the Deists on their own ground, attempting to show that Christianity was reasonable; that the religion of reason is Christianity, and that the natural world has the Christian God as its creator.

They were a party in the middle. Not enthusiastic, but moderate and cautious. They held moderate political views, were tolerant and irenical. As the century wore on, their theological views tended towards the creeping Unitarianism evident in other groups. Some veered towards Arianism, others towards Socinianism.

The Latitudinarians emerged partly in response to the changes in the intellectual world, and partly in response to the low levels of morality in the period following the Restoration.  They saw reason as the alternative to the enthusiasm of the dissenting groups and the natural way to support Christianity in the face of the new natural science.  They had a strong emphasis on common sense morality. Heirs of some of Hooker's appeal to reason, they are one of the forebears of the modern liberal and pluralistic stream in Anglicanism.

Their fear of emotion led to a dry utilitarian faith. This in turn set the scene for the expression of feeling by many as they embraced the Evangelical Awakening.

­