“In Ten Years There Is an Increase of 450 Priests of Antichrist”: Quantification, Anti-Catholicism, and theBulwark

Abstract

AbstractThe Scottish Reformation Society'sThe Bulwark(1851–present) was the Victorian era's most influential anti-Catholic periodical, a reputation based on its self-proclaimed devotion to “facts.” Attempting to counter a unified Catholic Church in a period of pronounced intra-Protestant conflict, theBulwarksought to root religious controversy in the increasingly popular phenomenon of statistical inquiry. TheBulwark’s obsession with collating and interpreting religion-based numbers was unique not for its existence, but for its sheer extent. It thus exemplifies how “official” statistical documents, methods, and conclusions were translated into the concerns of popular religious culture. In particular, theBulwark’s ongoing surveys of Catholicism's “progress,” intended to frighten Protestants into action, weaponized statistical discourses that were used in more measured fashion elsewhere. To that end, theBulwarkargued that only Protestants had the right mindset to put religious statistics into a proper explanatory framework, whereas Catholics manipulated their own data for dishonest rhetorical purposes that theBulwarkdisclaimed. TheBulwark’s statistical turn, which bypassed the sectarianism of its theological articles, positioned it as a voice uniting the interests of all Protestant readers against Parliament's dangerously tolerant brand of liberalism.