The Evangelical Party and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Return to the Church of England

Christopher Corbin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429638336
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

It has long been accepted that when Samuel Taylor Coleridge rejected the Unitarianism of his youth and returned to the Church of England, he did so while accepting a general Christian orthodoxy. Christopher Corbin clarifies Coleridge's religious identity and argues that while Coleridge's Christian orthodoxy may have been sui generis, it was closely aligned with moderate Anglican Evangelicalism. Approaching religious identity as a kind of culture that includes distinct forms of language and networks of affiliation in addition to beliefs and practices, this book looks for the distinguishable movements present in Coleridge's Britain to more precisely locate his religious identity than can be done by appeals to traditional denominational divisions. Coleridge's search for unity led him to desire and synthesize the "warmth" of heart religion (symbolized as Methodism) with the "light" of rationalism (symbolized as Socinianism), and the evangelicalism in the Church of England, being the most chastened of the movement, offered a fitting place from which this union of warmth and light could emerge. His religious identity not only included many of the defining Anglican Evangelical beliefs, such as an emphasis on original sin and the New Birth, but he also shared common polemical opponents, appropriated evangelical literary genres, developed a spirituality centered on the common evangelical emphases of prayer and introspection, and joined Evangelicals in rejecting baptismal regeneration. When placed in a chronological context, Coleridge's form of Christian orthodoxy developed in conversation with Anglican Evangelicals; moreover, this relationship with Anglican Evangelicalism likely helped facilitate his return to the Church of England. Corbin not only demonstrates the similarities between Coleridge's relationship to a form of evangelicalism with which most people have little familiarity, but also offers greater insight into the complexities and tensions of religious identity in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain as a whole.

1 Fanatics for Moderation

Theological and Ecclesiological Diversity at the End of Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century

This is a book about the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his relationship to early nineteenth-century Anglican Evangelicalism. However, religious identities, whether the common elements of larger movements or especially of those held by individual human beings, rarely express themselves such that they can be understood in isolation from their larger intellectual and material milieus. Such would be true even in times and places with seemingly homogenous religious cultures, and it is particularly true in the cosmopolitan world of Hanoverian Britain. Individual and group religious identities emerged in conversation not only with various and varying social, cultural, economic, and intellectual forces, but also against the backdrop of an ever increasing, if still largely Christian, pluralism. Providing a fair portrait both of early nineteenth-century evangelicalism and of Coleridge’s thought, in particular, requires locating both in the broader context of the movements that constituted British religious identity in the “religious long eighteenth century.” This approach proves particularly important for the project at hand because it clarifies those points at which Coleridge truly exhibited distinctive identity markers in common for evangelicalism rather than those commonly held by all or most Christianity of the time. The first two chapters will, therefore, map the religious landscape as it pertains to Coleridge’s distinctive religious identity, looking first to the commonalities and distinctions between the “non-evangelical” movements of the time and then turning in Chapter 2 to a more in-depth analysis of the specifics of “evangelicalism.”

We as people of the twenty-first century must, of course, approach the question of eighteenth-century British religious¹ identities with caution. First, we would do well to remember that we have inherited the Victorian historiographic tradition of approaching their immediate forbearers in a highly judgmental manner. While 75 years of very good eighteenth-century scholarship have qualified, complexified, and challenged such Victorian attitudes, the perception of an eighteenth century defined by arid rationality, spiritual sluggishness, intellectual stagnation, and moral decadence doggedly persists among many in the educated public. We would do well to avoid such caricatures. Second, many of these movements still exist in some form today, so we must be careful when making assumptions about eighteenth-century religious identities based on our knowledge or experience of their contemporary manifestations. Descriptors such as High Church, evangelical, orthodox, rationalist, moralist, etc. that a contemporary reader may consider mutually exclusive did not necessarily stand in such oppositional relationships at the time or had meanings that shifted over the course of the century. Furthermore, eighteenth-century Britons saw politics, ecclesiology, and theology as much more closely linked than many people do today, adding additional complications. Terms could slip between describing theological and political affiliations depending on the perspective and motivations of an author at a given time.²

However, the affirmation that Georgian religious identities had different boundary markers or even proved more fluid that their offspring does not mean that distinct movements and identities cannot be delineated. One may be faced with a sometimes turbulent sea of religious thought and practice, but this is still a sea with distinguishable currents. Furthermore, while we want to avoid the moral judgment inherent in many Victorian and post-Victorian treatments of the eighteenth century, we should not go to the opposite extreme and assume that these portrayals completely lacked any veracity. For instance, while it is unfair to assert that eighteenth-century Britons slavishly adhered to an “arid rationalism,” many—even among evangelicals—did have an abiding concern for demonstrating the rationality of their belief and practice that may seem excessive today. Likewise, while reading eighteenth-century religion as “spiritually sluggish” or lacking in pious fervor would be uncharitable, the eighteenth century demonstrated a strong distaste for religious “fanaticism.” It is this general eighteenth-century aversion that will prove most germane to our purposes. How religious movements sought to hold fanaticism in check probably provides the most comprehensive dividing mark between evangelicals and non-evangelicals and thus the division between religious movements discussed in this chapter and those in the next: While evangelicals protected against “fanaticism” by finding the tests to distinguish true states of exstasis brought on by the Spirit (enthusiasm) from the false (fanaticism), non-evangelicals were suspicious of or openly hostile to claims of special inspiration or displays of strong, religiously motivated emotion, and were often more than willing to elide enthusiasm and fanaticism.

The chapter begins by presenting that tradition most identified by a commitment to “rationalism.”³ While the majority in this trajectory, such as those aligned with the Unitarianism of Joseph Priestley, considered themselves wholly within the Christian tradition, this tradition sought to explain religion wholly within the bounds of reason. Next come the Latitudinarians, a group that for the most part established the dominant tone for the eighteenth-century Church of England and encompassed a broad range of thinkers defined by a set of political and social goals as much as doctrinal or intellectual commitments. A diverse range of positions can be gathered accurately under the umbrella of “Latitudinarianism” because of a shared desire for minimizing the required set of Christian beliefs needed to be included in or tolerated by the Church of England. They tended toward a common ethical vision of Christianity and the ability for such a vision to improve society, which in turn tolerated or fostered a principally moralistic approach to Christianity. This chapter concludes with the non-evangelical orthodox Christians in the Church of England, a group principally comprised of High Church Anglicans. While they embraced many of the same orthodox doctrines as the evangelicals, especially around “speculative” doctrines like the Trinity, this group was distinguished by an extremely high view of the Church as the mediator of salvation through properly administered sacraments in the context of a properly apostolic church hierarchy. This group also came, by the early nineteenth century, to identify themselves explicitly against what they saw as “Calvinism.”

The Georgian religious world was significantly tempered by, and resulted from, the material, social, and intellectual trends and events of the seventeenth century. Humans, emboldened by dramatic increases in knowledge of the natural world brought about by a post-Baconian approach to the experimental sciences, felt optimistic about freeing themselves through the exercise of reason not only from slavery to ignorance and nature but also to despotic political regimes. While numerous influences converged to create this intellectual climate, Isaac Newton, champion of the new experimental science, and John Locke, provider of the philosophical scaffolding for the new approach as well as the theoretical basis for political and social liberalism, became the symbols of intellectual authority against which eighteenth-century thought measured itself.⁴ While the British tendency toward empiricism has a history predating even Bacon and Hobbes, Locke and Newton served probably more than any other figures to establish this approach as the principle “British” style. Under the shadow of their achievements, and often invoking their authority, eighteenth-century thinkers extended this Lockean-Newtonian model to politics, economics, and even social reform.

One must also account for the significant role played by the political, religious, and social turmoil of the greater part of the seventeenth century for the development of the eighteenth-century British cultural imaginary. Granted, Britain had not experienced the same kind of devastation that the wars of religion brought to Continental Europe.⁵ Nevertheless, while not necessarily as jarring as the 30 Years War, the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the interregnum proliferation of radical religious sects and their equally radical views of society and morality profoundly unsettled vast swathes of British society, giving the impression of a “world turned upside down.” The loss of life alone in these conflicts, in which a larger percentage of the population may have died than in World War I, proved sufficient “to cause significant national trauma.”⁶ However, the attempt to rectify the situation through the draconian, and plausibly vindictive, imposition of religious and political uniformity during the Restoration proved equally unpalatable to many. Several consequences for eighteenth-century religion sprang from these events. For some, “puritanism” was the principle disruptive force, leading to an aversion to forms of piety or theology associated with “Puritans.” Others saw a problem with any attempt at uniform imposition of doctrines and practices and proposed less restrictive doctrinal systems with greater toleration for differing systems of belief, polity, and liturgical practice. The perceived increase in libertinism that accompanied James II’s policy of toleration led on the one hand to some calling for a Christianity that would serve as an agent of moral reform and others demanding a strengthened national church with a strictly enforced policy of uniformity, although the two were not mutually exclusive. The beliefs and behavior of the more radical groups left everyone with a tendency to equate “enthusiasm” with “fanaticism,” meaning that subsequent groups had to avoid—or defend—doctrines and practices associated with them.⁷

In line with Charles Taylor’s understanding that both ideal and material conditions influence one’s “social imaginary,” the most profoundly influential forces related to eighteenth-century thought were neither wholly the result of systems of thought constructed proactively and objectively, nor of a set of general nonreflexive emotional, political, and social reactions that later received intellectual support.⁸ Intellectual concerns did likely prove the primary motivations for some thinkers, although even Locke, the eighteenth century’s philosophical touchstone, seems not only to have been a cause for and architect of liberal notions of religious toleration, but was also responding to a larger social and political movement in that direction. Moreover, many, even among the “educated,” found themselves averse to “enthusiasm,” “fanaticism,” “Puritanism,” and “Popery” less from intellectual than emotional forces that rested on an unreflective sense that whatever was associated with these terms went against the emerging norms of “polite society,” undercut social or national stability, or conflicted with a proper English (or Scottish, or Welsh, or British) character and were thus treasonous.

We can now begin looking at the religious tendencies that emerged in response to these forces. The first tendency we will look at was the attempt to confine religion wholly within the bounds of human reason as manifested in Unitarianism and specifically the Unitarianism of the great English polymath Joseph Priestley, who wed the general theological outlook, themes, and disposition of the Unitarians with David Hartley’s physio-psychological philosophy. While Unitarianism was not the first eighteenth-century attempt to understand religion within reason (that honor goes to the Deists), they were by the latter part of the century the only bearers of this tradition with a popular following. Moreover, it was Priestleyan Unitarianism that Coleridge so enthusiastically embraced (albeit, as with everything he embraced, in his own idiosyncratic form) in his early adulthood and then vehemently rejected during his middle and later years.

Some historical context is owed Priestley’s Unitarianism, which means delving more deeply into how ecclesial hist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Fanatics for Moderation: Theological and Ecclesiological Diversity at the End of Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century
• 2 A World on Fire or a Glowing Hearth? British Evangelicalism’s Origins, Defining Features, and Internal Distinctions
• 3 Methodism a Stove, Socinianism the Moon
• 4 Reprobation, Redemption, and Restoration
• 5 An Imperfect Sun: Coleridge and the Culture of Anglican Evangelicalism
• 6 Biographia Christiana
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index