THE BROAD CHURCH MOVEMENT, NATIONAL CULTURE, AND THE ESTABLISHED CHURCHES OF GREAT BRITAIN, C.1850–C.1900

StewartJ.Brown

This chapter explores broad church conceptions of the established Churches in Great Britain as definers of a “British” national culture and national mission dur- ing the second half of the long nineteenth century. This period marked the height of the United Kingdom’s global power and influence—when its industrial econ- omy was pre-eminent in the world, its merchant marine carried the lion’s share of world commerce and its navy dominated the seas. The United Kingdom pos- sessed the largest empire the world had seen, and it was the leading missionary country, sending out nearly as many Protestant missionaries as the rest of the world combined. In short, it was the ascendant “Christian” state in what has been described as the “great century” of Christian global expansion. The chapter will discuss how leading broad church thinkers—among them F.D. Maurice, J.R. See- ley, A.P. Stanley, Matthew Arnold, Brooke Foss Westcott, and Max Müller in the Church of England, and Norman MacLeod, John Caird, and John Tulloch in the Church of Scotland—maintained that the national Churches were to provide moral education, encourage intellectual cultivation, promote an ideal of social service, and strengthen national unity. The chapter will assess the strengths and weaknesses of broad church conceptions, and consider the waning influence of the broad church in national religion and culture from the s.

Introduction

“The church must cleanse itself from this shame, or find its existence endangered.” So wrote the moderate evangelical Christian Observer of “broad church theology” in May .1 It was referring to a movement of liberal thought within the established Church of England, a movement that had recently found expression in the publication of the controversial volume entitled Essays and Reviews. This movement managed for a time to unite the evangelical and high church parties against it, and during the next five years there were strenuous efforts by the large majority

1 ‘Broad Church Theology,’ Christian Observer (May ), quoted in J.L. Altholz, Anatomy of a Controversy: The Debate over Essays and Reviews – (Aldershot: Scolar Press, ), p. .  stewart j. brown of clergy to silence or expel the broad church thinkers. Had the clergy commanded the power to do so, the Church of England would most certainly have been “cleansed” of the broad church “shame.” North of the Tweed, meanwhile, most ministers in the established Church of Scotland had by the mid-s united to suppress the broad church movement within their church as well. For their legion of critics, the broad church thinkers were dangerous sceptics, rationalists, and non-believers, whose insistence on remaining within the Christian Church was fundamentally dishonest. For they seemed to reject the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, including the inspiration of Scripture, the miracles of Christ, the atonement, and the eternal punishment of the wicked. They would subvert the faith of simple believers and bring them to everlasting ruin. Theveteranhighchurchman,JohnKeble,likenedthebroadchurchmen to “rattlesnakes,” who first lulled their victims into a trance and then destroyed them.2 And yet, the broad church movement was not silenced, nor were the broad church thinkers expelled. On the contrary, from the mid-s the movement grew in power and influence within the established Churches; indeed, with the support of leading politicians, and especially of the Crown, the broad church clergy came to exercise a near-ascendancy in the religious establishments. During the noontide of British world influ- ence, it was largely broad church thinkers who defined the relation- ship of church and state, the ideal of the national Church, and Chris- tian Britain’s justifications for empire. Broad church thinkers played a vital role in defending the established Churches of England and Scot- land and preserving the connection of church and state in the increas- ingly liberal and democratic political order of later Victorian Britain. It was, moreover, largely broad church thinkers who provided the theo- logical and intellectual foundations for the remarkable resurgence in the established Churches in England and Scotland during the final decades of the century—a resurgence that included the building of hundreds of new established churches and schools, the spread of new methods of urban mission, a heightened appreciation of national religion, including the role of the established Churches in shaping the history and identity of the United Kingdom, and a renewed ideal of social service, at home and in the empire. Broad church thinkers were strong supporters of the

2 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms.Eng.Lett. d., fols. –. John Keble to J.T. Cole- ridge,  January , J.T. Coleridge Papers.