Unitarians and the contradictions of liberal Protestantism in Victorian Britain: the Free Christian Union, 1867-70

Abstract

Recent research on secularization in later Victorian Britain has emphasized the proliferation of substitute religions as a compensation for the decline in the Church of England's -and by extension Christianity's -intellectual and ethical authority.This article complicates that picture by drawing attention to a group of predominantly Unitarian liberal Protestants who attempted to moderate the privatization of religious belief and the consequent decay of a theistic consensus by creating a new kind of non-dogmatic church, the Free Christian Union (1867-70), which Protestants and theists of every disposition could join without sacrifice of conscience. This article analyses the Union's history, arguing that its rapid collapse both illustrated the appeal and exposed the contradictions involved in the liberal Protestant attempt to reconcile fidelity to individual conscience with the agreement on theological principles that an effective Christian church required.Inquiring Victorians faced few dilemmas thornier than how to reconcile a deep conviction that religious institutions were vital to maintaining standards of personal and social morality with their conscientious inability to accept the doctrines of existing churches. After mid century, the 'moral revolt' against orthodoxy, coupled with the impact of inductive philosophy and continental biblical criticism, caused an increasing number of young men to avoid or abandon careers in the Church of England rather than subscribe to the thirty-nine articles or the Prayer Book. 1 Those who did 'stop' in the church were continually exhorted by those outside it to scrutinize their motives for doing so. 2 Yet while the perceived sinfulness of endorsing beliefs they no longer shared undoubtedly drove many educated people from attendance at or office in the church, the erosion of its authority raised profound moral anxieties. Only unusually bullish agnostics claimed that personal and social morality would be left unscathed by the decay of Christian churches and the theistic culture they supported. 3 Even convinced