The Church of England and Social Reform since 1854

1931 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 817
Author(s):  
Carl F. Brand ◽  
Donald O. Wagner
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-200
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Malay

AbstractEvelyn Underhill is mainly known for her work in mysticism and spirituality. This article explores the political dimension of her work and argues her early work in mysticism and later work in spiritual direction and retreat work underpinned her engagement with leading figures in the interwar Anglican church and their social agenda. During this period Underhill worked closely with William Temple, Charles Raven, Walter Frere and Lucy Gardner among others. In the interwar years she contributed in important ways to the Church of England Congresses, and the Conference on Christian Politics, Employment and Citizenship (COPEC) initiative. She challenged what she called the anthropocentric tendency in the Christian Social movement and insisted on the centrality of the spiritual life for any effective social reform. Underhill worked to engage the general public, as well as Christian communities, in a spiritual life that she saw as essential to the efforts of individuals and organizations seeking to alleviate contemporary social harms.


1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 855-871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Palmer

The main purpose of this paper is not so much to measure the impact of utilitarianism on American political thought as to explain why utilitarian influence was so slight. The question I am seeking to answer may be phrased as follows: How did it come about that utilitarianism, the main current in English thought for two or three generations, was little more than a series of ripples, or at most a weak cross-current, on this side of the Atlantic? The problem becomes more puzzling when one reflects that the period of the rise and growth of utilitarianism in England (the first three or four decades of the nineteenth century) was an era in which intellectual relations between the two countries were especially close and one in which movements of political and social reform ran parallel courses. Quite reasonably, too, one might suppose that the qualities of Bentham's thought which contributed to its spread in England would have insured its enthusiastic reception here. A doctrine which contemptuously rejected tradition, preached hard-headed, calculating practicality, conceived of the individual as an isolated atomistic unit, and which in all its aspects and phases appealed to the virtues and limitations of the middle-class man of affairs—such a doctrine, one might think, would have flourished on nineteenth-century American soil.As preliminary to a direct attack on the problem, some definitions or distinctions are in order. “When I mention religion,” said Parson Thwackum, “I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-115
Author(s):  
JULIA STAPLETON

This article explores the political thought of C. F. G. Masterman (1873–1927), a leading figure in the movement of New Liberalism in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article emphasizes the distinctive color his Christian beliefs and Anglican loyalties lent to his progressive Liberal ideals; this adds a new dimension to the existing historiography of the New Liberalism, which, until recently, has neglected the religious influences on its development. The article further underlines Masterman's concern to harness the cause of religious freedom and the disestablishment of the Church of England to social reform; he did so through reviving the older Gladstonian alliance between Liberalism and Nonconformity. It argues that his religiosity—focused on the Church of England—was central to his thought, and was frequently expressed in the language of prophecy he imbibed from Thomas Carlyle and other nineteenth-century seers.


Moreana ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (Number 157- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
John McConica

During the period in which these papers were given, there were great achievements on the ecumenical scene, as the quest to restore the Church’s unity was pursued enthusiastically by all the major Christiandenominations. The Papal visit of John Paul II to England in 1982 witnessed a warmth in relationships between the Church of England and the Catholic Church that had not been experienced since the early 16th century Reformation in England to which More fell victim. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was achieving considerable doctrinal consensus and revisionist scholarship was encouraging an historical review by which the faithful Catholic and the confessing Protestant could look upon each other respectfully and appreciatively. It is to this ecumenical theme that James McConica turns in his contribution.


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