The State as Landowner: Neglected Evidence of State Funding of Anglican Church Extension in London in the Latter Nineteenth Century
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: The start of the nineteenth century, and particularly the twenty-year period of Anglican church reform and church extension activities between 1808 and 1828, was one of “close co-operation between Church and State.”1 As Stewart Brown highlights, “The State had taken the lead in the reform movement and had invested unprecedented amounts of public money in strengthening the established Churches.”2 This investment of public money was principally through two large grants of £1,000,000 in 1818 and £500,000 in 1824 for Anglican church building. These two sums, given to commemorate the recent victory at Waterloo, funded the so-called Waterloo churches and were superintended by the Church Building Commissioners.3 The grants were given under the justification that it was the duty of the state to financially support the nation’s church. The decades that followed, however, experienced a fracture in this close cooperation. In this period, the separation of church and state was vigorously debated, and a crucial aspect of this debate was the rationale and legitimacy of parliamentary funding of the church. Brown argues that the “confidence and sense of purpose that had characterized the established Churches in the 1820s evaporated; the balance of power in the parliamentary State seemed to be shifting away from supporters of the established Churches to religious Dissenters.”4 In the late 1820s and early 1830s, the privileges of other denominations were enhanced with the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic emancipation in 1832. However, as J. P. Ellens highlights, this gesture misfired: “rather than gracefully accepting the new civil privileges extended to them,” the Dissenters “began a concerted attack against the social and political disabilities under which they continued to live.”5 The voluntaryist movement, which was born in the wake of these new Nonconformist privileges, was centered on the principle that all forms of association should be voluntary and, specifically, that religion should not be supported by the state. As W. R. Ward summarizes, “Voluntaryism might be unpalatable, but it was unavoidable” as a response to the Church of England’s attempts to finance the spiritual needs of the burgeoning population.6 Correspondingly, various organizations lobbied, from the 1830s onwards, for a reduction in the privileges granted to the established church.
Source: Journal of Church and State
DOI: 10.1093/jcs/csw125
Author: Sarah Flew
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Crown Estate
OpenAlex ID: W2587323000