The Philosophy Of Religion In Nineteenth Century England And Beyond

A synoptic investigation of the underlying philosophies of twelve religious thinkers from Newman to Ratzinger. It argues that between the Oxford Movement and Vatican II, there was a profound shift, not so much in the content of religious belief, as in the way it was held. This shift, more intellectual than theological, is in the book termed the Critical Impulsion. It may be described as a change from categorically affirmed authority to critically observed method.

The nineteenth century was a turbulent period in the history of the philosophical scrutiny of religion. Major scholars - such as Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Newman, Caird and Royce - sought to construct systematic responses to the Enlightenment critiques of religion carried out by Spinoza and Hume. At the same time, new critiques of religion were launched by philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and by scholars engaged in textual criticism, such as Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Over the course of the century, the work of Marx, Freud, Darwin and Durkheim brought the revolutionary perspectives of political economy, psychoanalysis, evolutionary theory and anthropology to bear on both religion and its study. These challenges played a major role in the shaping of twentieth-century philosophical thought about religion. "Nineteenth-Century Philosophy of Religion" will be of interest to scholars and students of Philosophy and Religion, and will serve as an authoritative guide for all who are interested in the debates that took place in this seminal period in the history of philosophical thinking about religion.

Scientific and historical studies in the Nineteenth-century challenged Christian believers to restate their faith in ways which took account of new knowledge. An example of this is the influence of philosophical idealism on a generation of writers and theologians, principally centred around the University of Oxford. However, these optimistic and socially-privileged men and women failed to come to terms with the mass movements and rapid changes in fin-de-siècle England. The Church moved out of touch with national life and is reaping the consequences today.

An age of faith or an age of doubt? - the question has dominated study of Christianity in the Victorian era. This book moves debate forward by placing less emphasis on questions of quantity than on questions of kind. The authors introduce some of the most important varieties of Christianity in the 19th century and explore the diverse ways in which the tradition was radically reinterpreted under the pressure of a range of social and cultural forces.Reinventing Christianity offers a fresh analysis of the vitality and variety of Christianity in Britain and America in the Victorian era. The book draws together the work of a new generation of scholars in a wide range of disciplines including history, literary studies, gender studies, visual arts, sociology and religious studies. It opens with a comprehensive introduction by Linda Woodhead; Part One presents an overview of some of the main varieties of Christianity in the west ranging from the conservative (Protestant evangelicalism and 'fortress' Catholicism) to the radical (Theosophy, Swedenborgianism and Transcendentalism); Part Two reviews negotiations between Christianity and the wider culture, focusing on literature, gender and science. The conclusion reflects on general trends in the period, showing how many of these prefigured later developments in religion.By moving beyond a view of the Victorian era characterised primarily by a 'crisis of faith', this book highlights the creativity and diversity of 19th-century Christianity and to show how developments normally associated with the late 20th century - such as the reassertion of tradition and the rise of feminist theology and alternative spirituality - were already in train a century before.

The successful three volumes of Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West provide a fresh appraisal of the most important thinkers of that time. Soames essays centre on major figures of the period; others cover topics, trends and schools of thought between the French Revolution and the First World War.

Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay argues that, although the existence and significance of the science of religion has been barely visible to modern scholars of the Victorian period, it was a subject of lively and extensive debate among nineteenth-century readers and audiences. She shows how an earlier generation of scholars in Victorian Britain attempted to arrive at a dispassionate understanding of the psychological and social meanings of religious beliefs and practices—a topic not without contemporary resonance in a time when so many people feel both empowered and threatened by religious passion—and provides the kind of history she feels has been neglected. Wheeler-Barclay examines the lives and work of six scholars: Friedrich Max Müller, Edward B. Tylor, Andrew Lang, William Robertson Smith, James G. Frazer, and Jane Ellen Harrison. She illuminates their attempts to create a scholarly, non-apologetic study of religion and religions that drew upon several different disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, the classics, and Oriental studies, and relied upon contributions from those outside as well as within the universities. This intellectual enterprise—variously known as comparative religion, the history of religions, or the science of religion—was primarily focused on non-Christian religions. Yet in Wheeler-Barclay’s study of the history of this field within the broad contexts of Victorian cultural, intellectual, social, and political history, she traces the links between the emergence of the science of religion to debates about Christianity and to the history of British imperialism, the latter of which made possible the collection of so much of the ethnographic data on which the scholars relied and which legitimized exploration and conquest. Far from promoting an anti-religious or materialistic agenda, the science of religion opened up cultural space for an exploration of religion that was not constricted by the terms of contemporary conflicts over Darwin and the Bible and that made it possible to think in new and more flexible ways about the very definition of religion.

Examines the ways in which religion was constructed as a category and region of experience in nineteenth-century literature and culture.