Unitarians and the contradictions of liberal Protestantism in Victorian Britain: the Free Christian Union, 1867-70

Abstract

Recent research on secularization in later Victorian Britain has emphasized the proliferation of substitute religions as a compensation for the decline in the Church of England's – and by extension Christianity's – intellectual and ethical authority. This article complicates that picture by drawing attention to a group of predominantly Unitarian liberal Protestants who attempted to moderate the privatization of religious belief and the consequent decay of a theistic consensus by creating a new kind of non-dogmatic church, the Free Christian Union (1867–70), which Protestants and theists of every disposition could join without sacrifice of conscience. This article analyses the Union's history, arguing that its rapid collapse both illustrated the appeal and exposed the contradictions involved in the liberal Protestant attempt to reconcile fidelity to individual conscience with the agreement on theological principles that an effective Christian church required.