God and the Great Reform Act: Preaching against Reform, 1831–32

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
The Church ◽  
Political Unions

AbstractThe struggle for the “Great” Reform Act was one of the most serious crises of the nineteenth century, stirring controversy not only in Parliament and the political unions but in churches and chapels across the country. For many of its supporters, reform was a holy cause; for its opponents, it was a “Satanic” measure. This article seeks to reestablish reform as a religious controversy, paying special attention to the religious press and to the hundreds of sermons preached by the Anglican clergy. Anglicans mobilized an array of scriptural authorities against the reform bill, contributing directly to the rising temperature of debate. This was a “Constitution in Church and State,” and the church possessed both an authority and an audience that few institutions could match. Restoring it to the center of debate helps us to understand what was at stake in the reform bill and why it aroused such bitter passions.

Tax Evasion in Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josef Hien
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Italian Unification ◽  
Territorial Integration ◽  
The Church

The negative perception of Italians of their state has been formed by the deep conflict between Church and state that emerged during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy and reached its peak with Italian unification in the late nineteenth century. To the Vatican, territorial integration of the Italian nation state posed an existential threat, both at the political level (loss of territory) and at the spiritual level (diffusion of liberalism). From unification onwards the Vatican did all it could to harm the legitimacy of the Italian state. This chapter analyzes the Vatican strategy to delegitimize the Italian state and its right to tax. It shows how the willingness of Italians to pay their taxes still suffers today from the Church–state conflict.

‘Standing in the old ways’: historical legitimation of Church reform in the Church of England, c. 1825–65

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
R. Arthur Burns
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Church

During the early and mid-nineteenth century the Church of England underwent a wide-ranging series of institutional reforms. These were intended to meet the pastoral challenges of industrial society, acknowledge the changing relationship of Church and State, and answer the more pertinent criticisms of its radical and dissenting antagonists. Particularly during the 1830s, the constitutional adjustments of 1828–32, the accession of a Whig administration, and widening internal divisions appeared to place the Church in a newly perilous position. The reforms were consequently enacted in a highly charged and febrile atmosphere. Each measure was closely scrutinized by concerned and sometimes panic-stricken Anglicans,’ seeking to establish whether it would strengthen the Church or was in fact a manifestation of threatening forces. In such circumstances, the legitimation of reform assumed crucial importance. As ever, the prospective reformer required a legitimation which would appeal to the widest possible constituency. Among allies, it could serve to embolden waverers, doubters, and often the reformer himself. If possible, it should engage the sympathies of potential opponents. It was also essential that the legitimation would not so constrain the reformer that the initiative’s practical effectiveness was blunted.

IV. Gladstone and the Composition of the Final Court in Ecclesiastical Causes, 1850–73

1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Stephen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Full Member ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Main Criticism ◽  
Court Of Appeal ◽  
The Church

The ‘Final Court’ of Appeal in causes ecclesiastical in this period was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as amended by 3 and 4 Viet. c. 86, s. 16, whereby every archbishop or bishop who was a Privy Councillor was made a full member of the Committee for Ecclesiastical Appeals, and one at least of them had to sit. The function of the Judicial Committee as the final arbiter of legal questions which might involve Anglican doctrine and usage was much criticized by churchmen throughout the nineteenth century. Criticism was directed mainly along two channels. It was argued that the Church's freedom to mould her own spiritual life could not be absolute while the Crown, through the Judicial Committee, might, by accident or intention, interfere in questions of doctrine. This argument aimed at removing the Church from all external judicial supervision and implied the eventual dis-solution of the constitutional bond between Church and State—a prospect which a few extreme High Churchmen regarded with equanimity. The other main criticism was that the Judicial Committee, as amended by 3 and 4 Viet, c. 86, was neither a truly civil nor a truly ecclesiastical court, but merely, as Gladstone described it in 1850, ‘pseudo-ecclesiastical’. Of this point of view, Bishop Wilberforce was the most consistent and the most powerful representative.

Crown, Mitre and People in the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical Law ◽  
The People ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Throughout the nineteenth century the relationship between the State and the Established Church of England engaged Parliament, the Church, the courts and – to an increasing degree – the people. During this period, the spectre of Disestablishment periodically loomed over these debates, in the cause – as Trollope put it – of 'the renewal of inquiry as to the connection which exists between the Crown and the Mitre'. As our own twenty-first century gathers pace, Disestablishment has still not materialised: though a very different kind of dynamic between Church and State has anyway come into being in England. Professor Evans here tells the stories of the controversies which have made such change possible – including the revival of Convocation, the Church's own parliament – as well as the many memorable characters involved. The author's lively narrative includes much valuable material about key areas of ecclesiastical law that is of relevance to the future Church of England.

The Expropriation of Pious and Corporate Properties in Costa Rica, 1805-1860: Patterns in the Consolidation of a National Elite

1983 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-303
Author(s):  
Lowell Gudmundson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Central America ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Constant Feature ◽  
The Church

Conflicts between Church and State, and between liberals and conservatives over the role of the Church, were a constant feature of nineteenth-century Mesoamerican history. These struggles eventually stripped the Church of much of its wealth, with a consequent decline in its political influence. However, the timing of this disinvestiture, the composition of liberal and conservative factions, and the role of the Church varied substantially throughout Mexico and Central America.In Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the Church survived the turmoil of the Independence period, to continue as a major holder of wealth and an important political actor. Notwithstanding repeated royal attacks upon Church prerogatives, and innumerable forced loans levied by both colonial and national authorities against Church wealth, the decisive confrontation between the Church and the Liberal-dominated State in these nations awaited the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Ecclesiastical Condition of New York at the Opening of the Eighteenth Century

1912 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 79-115
Author(s):  
Edward Tanjore Corwin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Previous History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Antecedent Conditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

The decades clustering about the year 1700 were unusually important in reference to the subsequent ecclesiastical history of New York. The previous history of the Church in that province, except during the political episode of the Leisler troubles, had been comparatively tranquil; but in the decades alluded to, new elements were introduced and complications ensued, which modified all former conditions, and caused not a little friction in ecclesiastical affairs down to the Revolution. Nevertheless, new phases of Christian activity were also thereby developed, which became very influential; and the discussions which ensued clarified the atmosphere in reference to the proper relations of Church and State and prepared the way for their separation. In order to get a proper background for the consideration of the period alluded to, permit a brief reference to some antecedent conditions.

Toleration and Repression: German States, the Law and the ‘Sects’ in the Long Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 338-361
Author(s):  
Manfred Henke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
General Law ◽  
German States ◽  
The Law ◽  
Revolution Of 1848 ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

At the beginning of the period, the Prussian General Law Code did not provide for equal rights for members of ‘churches’ and those of ‘sects’. However, the French Revolution decreed the separation of church and state and the principle of equal rights for all citizens. Between the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the revolution of 1848, Prussian monarchs pressed for the church union of Lutheran and Reformed and advocated the piety of the Evangelical Revival. The Old Lutherans felt obliged to leave the united church, thus eventually forming a ‘sect’ favoured by the king. Rationalists, who objected to biblicism and orthodoxy, were encouraged to leave, too. As Baptists, Catholic Apostolics and Methodists arrived from Britain and America, the number of ‘sects’ increased. New ways of curtailing their influence were devised, especially in Prussia and Saxony.

Developing Doctrines and Changing Beliefs

1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-292
Author(s):  
David Nicholls
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Doctrinal Development ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
The Church ◽  
Official Recognition

The notion of doctrinal development has become increasingly popular with Roman Catholic theologians in recent years, and has received official recognition in the decree of the second Vatican Council on Revelation. ‘There is’, the document maintains, a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. … As the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fulness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in her. But, if dogma develops, how can revelation be constant? This, starkly put, is the dilemma to which many Roman Catholic theologians have directed their attention in recent years. If there has been a growth in dogma, must we not say that the contemporary Church is in a better position than the early Church? How can we deny that the Church today, in which dogmas have been better understood and more fully expressed, has an advantage over the primitive Christian community? As one nineteenth-century theologian observed, If there be a difference of any sort between Augustine and Liguori (and if there be not, what becomes of Mr Newman's theory?) it must manifestly be incalculably to the advantage of the latter … to compare the catachetical schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Gaesarea, with our Irish Maynooth, would palpably be an insult to the latter, too gross even for the licensed bitterness of religious controversy.

Max Weber and the Late Modernization of Catholicism

2019 ◽  
pp. 333-351
Author(s):  
Bryan S. Turner ◽  
Rosario Forlenza
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Party System ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Political Modernization ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

While Max Weber wrote extensively on a range of religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and most extensively Protestantism—there is no fully developed sociology of Catholicism. This chapter attempts to construct Max Weber’s missing sociology of Catholicism from the various scattered comments across his works. While Weber saw Protestantism influencing the growth of capitalism (and more broadly modernization), his view of Catholicism was largely negative: it was ritualistic, magical, bureaucratic, and traditional. What would Weber have made of Catholicism in the twentieth century and twenty-first century? This chapter first examines developments in nineteenth-century Catholicism that lay behind Weber’s critical commentary. The second half asks how changes in Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council (informally known as Vatican II, 1962–1965) have brought about a modernization of Catholicism. The chapter argues for the relevance of Weber’s views today by considering the impact of Vatican II on Catholic teaching and practice, arguing that it represents the political modernization of Catholicism. Vatican II represented a radical departure from the political conservatism of the nineteenth century. In principle, the church was no longer critical of secular democracy, pluralism, the party system, and state sovereignty. This modernization, however, began to undermine the universalism of the church and pushed Catholicism toward denominationalism. However, the church did not modernize its teaching on contraception, abortion, marriage, divorce, and family life. This tension between political modernization and what we might simply call “familial conservatism” still haunts the church today.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document