Religion and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Secularism, Conservatism, and Anti-Semitism

"Over the past fifty years or so, one of the most significant shifts in the historiography of modern Britain has been the tendency among scholars to diminish the role of religion and in some cases even remove it altogether from their explanatory frameworks. In what has become-to many-a secular and 'post-Christian' age, the appreciation of religious faith as an identity, a motive force, and a basis for relationships and ideology has grown more difficult. Unquestionably, it is less fashionable than it once was. The present volume is offered as a reminder that religion really mattered. From the specific people, places, and periods studied in these essays, much can be learned about the nature and influence of religious belief in Britian;s past, with particular focus on the ways which nineteenth-century British politics were directly affected."
From the Introduction

1. Introduction, Michael J. Turner

2. "Mr. Muddlepool the Moralist": Lord Liverpool, The Church of England, and Political Stability in a Turbulent Age, William Anthony Hay

3. Anti-Semitism in the Chartist Movement: Rife or Rare?, D.G. Paz

4. Connections between English Churchmanship and American Episcopalianism during the American Civil War: Beresford Hope and the New Organization of Our Communion", Michael J. Turner

5. The Secular Foundations of the State: The Peculiar Secularism of British Liberals since 1815, William C. Lubenow

6. The Conservative Press and the Secularization of Conservative Identity, 1880-1895, James J. Sack

Notes on Contributors