The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
Society has gradually risen in intelligence and general good feeling.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Bible has become an honoured book. <strong>Christian</strong>ity has secured<br />
public sentiment in its favour. <strong>The</strong> house <strong>of</strong> God was never attended<br />
as it is at present . . . Never was there so much true piety among all<br />
classes, the rich as well as the poor. 72<br />
In its first edition in 1886, the British Weekly (subtitled A Journal <strong>of</strong> Social<br />
and <strong>Christian</strong> Progress) wrote: ‘To His appearing, and to the work He<br />
planned and did, we trace all that marks the superiority <strong>of</strong> the new world<br />
to the old, and all that is pregnant with growth and improvement yet to<br />
come.’ <strong>The</strong> extension <strong>of</strong> the franchise, ‘the hour <strong>of</strong> the emancipation <strong>of</strong> the<br />
people’, it linked to moral revolution: ‘the movements for temperance and<br />
chastity are not temporary crazes, but great uprisings’. 73 This was a<br />
pr<strong>of</strong>oundly Whig view <strong>of</strong> the upward progress <strong>of</strong> man, based on the evangelisation<br />
<strong>of</strong> the world. It was a message <strong>of</strong> equality and <strong>of</strong> progress:<br />
‘Salvation is <strong>of</strong>fered to you: it is <strong>of</strong>fered to all without distinction; it is for<br />
the poor as well as the rich; the beggar as well as the king; for men <strong>of</strong> all<br />
climes, and all complexions, and all ages.’ 74 For the true evangelical, the<br />
work <strong>of</strong> mission as much as <strong>of</strong> family life was upward preparation for the<br />
second coming. For all the moral and ecclesiastical panic created (and<br />
intended) by the discourse on unholy cities, the evangelical’s ultimate view<br />
was that the salvation industry was working, and that <strong>Britain</strong> was becoming<br />
ever better prepared to be in a state <strong>of</strong> collective grace to receive the millennium<br />
<strong>of</strong> Christ’s kingdom.<br />
<strong>The</strong> salvation industry was a vast and inescapable facet <strong>of</strong> nineteenthand<br />
early twentieth-century <strong>Britain</strong>. Its perfection (and indeed innovation)<br />
<strong>of</strong> multi-media propagandisation propelled its ideas into the public domain<br />
to transcend political, regional, ideological, gender, social and class boundaries.<br />
Most importantly, it also transcended denominational boundaries.<br />
Whilst Methodist, dissenting and presbyterian churches were undoubtedly<br />
the leading edge <strong>of</strong> evangelical endeavour, the apparatus <strong>of</strong> discursive<br />
<strong>Christian</strong>ity developed also in the Anglican and Catholic churches. Though<br />
the divide between church and chapel, high and low church, and between<br />
Catholic and Protestant, were important facets <strong>of</strong> the religious landscape<br />
in nineteenth-century <strong>Britain</strong>, the historian must not exaggerate this and<br />
overlook the <strong>Christian</strong> common ground. 75 This was nowhere more observable<br />
than in the post-1850 development <strong>of</strong> Catholic devotion and mission<br />
in <strong>Britain</strong> on a parallel basis to Protestantism, incorporating voluntary<br />
organisations promoting devotion and moral coda in equal measure, and a<br />
responsiveness to revivalist impulses (including from Moody and Sankey). 76<br />
For the Protestant evangelical, to be in the ‘State <strong>of</strong> Grace’ was the goal.<br />
All humankind was to be encouraged that it was their goal too, and it was<br />
this that gave rise to the greatest evangelisation effort the world has ever<br />
seen. It was a levelling doctrine:<br />
56