Description
This is the first modern, objective study of the Church of England's struggle against disestablishment in the nineteenth century, a struggle that resulted in a Church-State relationship that has remained substantially the same up to the present day. For over three decades some of the most lively minds in England were engaged in the controversy.
The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, Roman Catholic emancipation in 1829, and the Reform Bill of 1832 signified a change in the historical link of Church and State. It is shown that the response of the Church to these events was a thoroughgoing administrative reform and a program of social adaptation. The work of the Ecclesiastical Commission is examined in great detail and is viewed as a part of the general Benthamite emphasis of the age on administrative efficiency.
Emphasis is placed upon the political context in which this reshaping of the Establishment took place, and on the roles of Sir Robert Peel and Bishop Blomfield as creators and shapers of the policy. The prolonged struggle over education provides an instance of the essential ambiguity of a national church in a society whose center was no longer the Christian Church.
The changed relationship between Church and State in the post-Reform years symbolized a change in men's thinking all along the line about the Church's place an its relation to society. The Church as an Establishment, as also the Monarchy before it, went through a metamorphosis instead of dying out. In explaining how and why tis metamorphosis took place, the author analyzes not only the particular administrative changes made, but their intimate relation to the patterns of thought prevailing in the government, the Church, and society at large.
Dr. Brose is a member of the History Department of Brooklyn College.
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following original edition:
Title
Olive J. Brose
Author
Church And Parliament
Publisher
Stanford University Press
ISBN
0804705720, 9780804705721
Find more reproduction works from Stanford University Press at QOOP.com
