Victorian Revival

Christian Reform in 19th-century England

A fragment of an unfinished study of Victorian reform.

Nineteenth-century English observers lamented a general loosening of morals and the decline of religious conviction. William Wilberforce saw that English Christians were ignorant of the faith they claimed to profess, and wrote a book, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, to raise standards. Universities scorned religious zeal. All the instructors at Eton were Anglican clergy, but they offered no religious instruction. Folk religion flourished, but exhibited a striking absence of attention to Jesus, presumably the center of Christian faith. At the other end of the social spectrum, the nobility flirted with fashionable paganisms. According to Boswell’s report, Dr. Johnson claimed that he had never met a religious clergyman. Large numbers of the clergy were non-residential, earning a living without showing their face in their parishes. Outside the church of England, Dissenters and Presbyterians adopted the heresies of Socinianism and Unitarianism.

The decline of religious fervor had effects on English society. Violence and alcohol abuse were rampant in poorer neighborhoods. Hogarth’s prints were cartoon caricatures, but captured the atmosphere of urban life. Meanwhile, the aristocracy threw off the constraints of monogamy. The scandalous flirtations and affairs dramatized on the Restoration stage were, like Hogarth’s drawings, slightly exaggerated depictions of the real lives of the rich and famous. Parliament battled the unrest by intensifying penalties. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were one hundred and fifty capital crimes on the books.

Yet by the time Victoria ascended the throne, England was a different world. Morals and habits improved, and institutions were transformed. At the heart of this transformation was a complex renewal of English religion.

The renewal began in the eighteenth century. Societies like the Society of St. Giles were formed to advance the spiritual lives of craftsmen and young people. Church of England clergymen led the meetings, which used the liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer and the Psalter. Members paid a fee for membership, and were fined if they missed a meeting. The society combined old-fashioned Puritan self-examination, biblicisim, and the expectation that faith would impact society. Dissenter William Law’s Serious Call also brought together elements of the old piety for a new England, and had a dramatic effect on many, including Jane Austen.