English Radicals and the American Revolution by Colin Bonwick

Author:Colin Bonwick [Bonwick, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 18th Century, Great Britain Intellectual Life 18th Century, Great Britain, History, Influence, Intellectual Life, Radicalism Great Britain History, Radicalism, Revolution; 1775-1783, United States History Revolution; 1775-1783 Influence, United States, Europe, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780807812778
Google: 74TFAAAAIAAJ
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 1977-01-15T00:32:51+00:00

7

Religious Liberty

The American Revolution had particular relevance to another of the most pressing concerns of English radicals, the defense and promotion of religious liberty. To men such as Joseph Priestley religion was “the great business of life” and theological inquiry was superior to the study of all other subjects.1 But their religion was far from eremitical and did not require them to abstain from intercourse with the secular world. Rather the reverse; one vital corollary was that religious principles bore a substantial relationship to the affairs of political society, though to define the exact nature of the connection was a problem of profound complexity. In one form it was expressed in the ethical basis of political morality and behavior, and much of the radicals’ response to issues raised by the Revolution was grounded ultimately on what can be conveniently described as political theology. In another respect it was manifested through the differential political status accorded to various religious denominations, and particularly through the alliance between the state and an established church. This union of secular and spiritual authority was a central component of the eighteenth-century constitution. The state assessed loyalty to itself partly in terms of religious affiliation (assuming that Catholic Dissenters were inherently untrustworthy and Protestant Dissenters uncertain) and imposed confessional qualifications on officeholders. Refusal to conform to the established church was deemed to be evidence of seditious intent. The state acted on the premise that a gift of entrenched privileges to the dominant sect would conduce to greater social and political stability and made such a grant to the Anglican church while denying it to the dissenting sects. In return the state received substantial moral and political support from all levels of the Anglican church. This association invaded most areas of public life and was deeply insulting to many loyal citizens; its power was formidable.

These ecclesiastical arrangements were a source of bitter grievance to lay and clerical Dissenters and to many liberal Anglicans as well. They potentially infringed the individual’s right to freedom of conscience and worship and certainly reduced those who refused to conform to the condition of second-class citizens; the fact that their declared purpose was secular rather than spiritual made them all the more obnoxious. One inevitable consequence was a series of campaigns to obtain relief from the operation of offensive ecclesiastical legislation and so to restore to Nonconformists their right to full enjoyment of religious liberty. Many of the arguments deployed by Dissenters and liberal Anglicans during the successive battles were essentially theoretical in character. Partly because the grounds of establishment were prudential pragmatic evidence was offered in support of dissenting insistence that some at least of the apparatus of establishment could be safely dismantled. Here the experience derived from the reordering of church-state relations in America was of great value. A substantial extension of religious liberty had produced harmony, not disaster, as was cited frequently during the successive attempts to secure repeal of discriminatory legislation in the late 1780s. Although these campaigns were

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