Henry March Gilbert 1846-1931: ‘Staunch Liberal and Nonconformist’ (original) (raw)
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Historians of fascism trace elements of its 'sacralised politics' to left-wing religiosity at the turn of the century. Emilio Gentile has provided detailed criteria to distinguish 'political religion' from 'civil religion' and 'politicised religion' from 'religion as politics'. This paper tries to apply this taxonomy to late Victorian and Edwardian socialism in Britain. Intellectual arguments for a 'religion of socialism' -as well as less-theorised religious behaviour -are evident within three groupings that shaped the British socialist revival: the Social Democratic Federation, The Fabian Society, and the Independent Labour Party. Surveying members of each, including Ernest Belfort Bax, the Webbs, Shaw, Wells; John Trevor, and Keir Hardie, the paper lastly turns to Edward Carpenter, who moved between the aforementioned groups during his career, and whose popular and influential writings vividly capture socialism's spiritual character. His case also illustrates the major obstacle in applying Gentile's taxonomy to this period, namely the pervasive monism of the age, which blurs concepts of the temporal and divine. In conclusion, we can see that Edwardian socialism provided good conditions for the emergence of political religion but also for the civil religion of today's centre left. A much more detailed discussion, beyond our scope here, might consider Gentile's distinctions between functionalist, manipulative, noumenal forms of religiosity; distinctions brought home to Edwardian intellectuals through new theories of charisma and crowd psychology. Their knowledge, and application, of these ideas more clearly anticipates the rise of fascism; although, in the same generation, we should note a return to dualism as a defence against totalitarian political religion.
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Mid-Nineteenth-Century Secularism as Modern Secularity
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In the early1 850s, an ew philosophical, social, and political movement evolved from the Freethought tradition of Thomas Paine, Richard Carlile, Robert Owen, and the radical periodicalp ress.T he movement was called "Secularism."¹ Its founderw as George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) (Grugel1 976, 2-3).² Holyoake was af ormer apprentice whitesmith turned Owenites ocial missionary, "moral force" Chartist,a nd radical editor and publisher.G iven his earlye xposure to Owenism and Chartism,³ Holyoake had become aF reethinker.With his involvement in Freethought publishing, he became amoral convert to atheism.However,his experiences with virulent proponents of atheism or infidelity and the hostile reactions to them on the part of the state, church, and press induced him to develop in 1851-1852 the new creed and movement he called Secularism. In retrospect,H olyoake claimed thatt he words "Secular,"" Secularist," and "Secularism" wereused for the first time in his periodical TheReasoner (founded in 1846), from 1851 through 1852, "as ageneral test of principles of conduct apart from spiritual considerations," to describe "an ew wayo ft hinking," and to define "am ovement" based on that thinking, respectively(Holyoake 1896a, The foundationalt exts of Secularismi nclude Holyoake (1854) and Holyoake(1870). In addition to Grugel'sbiography, for biographical sketchesofHolyoake,see Royle (1974,esp. at 3-6, 72-74,a nd 312); and McCabe (1908). Chartism was aw orking-class movement that emergedi n1 836a nd was most active between 1838 and 1848. The aim of the Chartists was to gainpolitical rights and influence for the working classes.C hartism goti ts name from the formal petition, or People'sC harter, that listed the six main aims of the movement.These were:1)avote for all men over twenty-one, 2) the secret ballot,3)n op roperty qualification to become an MP,4)p ayment for MPs, 5) electoral districts of equal size, 6) annual elections for Parliament. The movement presented three petitions to Parliament-in 1839,1842and 1848-but each of these was rejected. The last great Chartist petition was collected in 1848 and represented, it was claimed, six million signatories. The Chartists planned to deliverthe petition to Parliament, after ap eaceful mass meetingo nK ennington Common in London. The government sent 8,000 soldiers,b ut only2 0,000 Chartists turned up on ac oldr ainyd ay.T he demonstration was deemed af ailure, and the rejection of this final petition marked the end of Chartism. Manyexcellent works on Chartism have been published, includingC hase (2007) and Royle (1996). OpenAccess. ©2 017 Michael Rectenwald, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeC ommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Three questions concerning the contested relationship between religion and politics in the years leading up to the First World War are briefly considered. What motivated some Congregationalists to participate in politics? Which issues on the political agenda were of particular concern to them? How constrained were they in their pursuit of political objectives? In suggesting possible answers to these questions material is drawn primarily from doctoral research being undertaken to reveal something of the preoccupations and associated discourses of the Congregationalists of Edwardian Hampshire. This paper was presented at a Political History Network Symposium held at the University of Winchester on 24 June 2015.