5HUM0271: Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain Lecture 9: Religion in an Age of Dissent

Structure of the lecture Church-state relationship Key crises Anti-Catholicism J.C.D. Clark, English Society, 1688-1832 Persistence of millenarianism Religion as cultural piety rather than theological practice Evangelicalism

William III: Protestant conqueror?

Structure of the churches in Britain and their relationship to the state: England: 1688; 1701 Act of Settlement; 1689 Toleration Act; 1828 repeal of Test and Corporation acts; 1829 Catholic emancipation Scotland: 1690 Presbyterian settlement Ireland: early 18thC penal laws; 1801 union but not emancipation

Dr Henry Sacheverell (1674-1724)

18thC religion not entirely ‘rational’ or benign – legacies of the upheavals of the 17thC : Demonstrations of anti-Catholicism: Gordon Riots in London, June 1780

persistence of a millenarian religious fervour 18thC religion not entirely ‘rational’ or benign – legacies of the upheavals of the 17thC : persistence of a millenarian religious fervour Joanna Southcott (1750-1814)

Key theme ‘Popular Anglicanism was not primarily theological…it is more helpful to define religion culturally, as a form of identity linking rich and poor in a common world-view.’ Walsh, Haydon and Taylor, The Church of England, p. 27.

3. Alternative ways of practising and organising religion: John Wesley (1703-1791)

Evangelicalism against the slave trade: ‘The Sorrows of Yamba’, c

Evangelicalism: Hannah More (1745-1833) and a Cheap Repository Tract

Unitarianism and ‘Rational Dissent’: Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and Richard Price (1723-1791)