The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730 by Brent S. Sirota

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730 by Brent S. Sirota John A. Dussinger Brent S. Sirota. The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–1730. New Haven: Yale, 2014. Pp. ix + 376. $65. Given the formidable negative historical commentary on the alleged spiritual decay of the eighteenth-century Church of England, ranging all the way from Leslie Stephen and Lewis Namier to John H. Plumb and Roy Porter, perhaps it is inevitable that some scholars welcome the challenge of finding alternative historical perspectives toward this institution. In his introduction, Mr. Sirota spells out what he does not seek to do in his account. He does not want to join the ranks of church apologists, and above all he does not want to cope with the murky issues of religious experience: “Rather than passing judgment on the spiritual life of an age, this book shows how the opposition and interaction of these competing tropes comprised the framework of ecclesiastical politics in this period.” Taking his title from John Rawlet’s very popular devotional manual of 1686, The Christian Monitor, one among scores of moral kits designated specifically for the benefit of sailors, soldiers, debtors, prisoners, the sick and dying, whatever, Mr. Sirota argues that already during the turmoil from James II’s unflinching Roman Catholic policies, Anglicans were aroused to assert themselves by reaching out to the general public in the form of such associational programs as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Society for the Reformation of Manners. With such impeccable role models as William Wake, Thomas Bray, Robert Nelson, and Thomas Secker, Mr. Sirota’s narrative of a church energetically reviving the nation as a whole is a cheerful contrast [End Page 126] to Porter’s acerbic account of those feckless time-serving younger sons of aristocratic families who wore the collar simply because there was nothing better for them to do. Mr. Sirota wants to describe the Anglican revival in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as “an ecclesiastical program of moral and religious renewal, decidedly less oriented toward the procurement of spontaneous individual conversions than the broader refurbishing of the national confession.” As he amply demonstrates, at times the coalition of clergy and laity in this reform movement was uncomfortable for the bishops and other church dignitaries, who viewed the “men in the clouds” as a threat to their profession. The SPCK was the most dynamic instrument of reform, and by being free of government control it “effectively imported the entrepreneurialism and innovation of the ‘age of projects’ into the Church of England.” By “revival,” Mr. Sirota emphasizes, he does not refer to the evangelical movement begun by the Wesleys but rather the secular development of reforms for the amelioration of society as a whole. The “age of benevolence” in the middle of the eighteenth century is the terminus ad quem for this study, when presumably more compassionate and progressive attitudes toward human suffering surmounted the old doctrinal conflicts that had resulted in the civil wars early in the previous century. In the first chapter Mr. Sirota surveys the efforts of the Church to win the hearts and minds of the people while opposing the Stuart absolutist measures. Even after William and Mary were on the throne, the second chapter argues, failures of the court initiatives resulted in increased associational “projects” to bring about social change. The third chapter focuses on the early years of the SPCK, “its dual fidelity to Anglican hegemony and ‘Revolution principles”’ demonstrating that the antinomies at the heart of the organization transformed an ostensibly bipartisan entity into a pillar of “church Whiggery.” Chapters 4 and 5 recount developments after the Revolution of 1688–1689, especially the important roles played by nonjurors and high churchmen to preserve a “distinct society” in opposition to the inclusive whiggish voluntarism. In the end, as the final chapter concludes, “The efforts of Anglican activists and associations were not only essential to the exporting of the Church of England, but to importing, as it were, a benevolence of global scope into the domestic British public sphere.” Mr...