History of Christianity in Britain
[1] Particularly from the mid-17th century, forms of Protestant nonconformity, including Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, English Presbyterians and, later, Methodists, grew outside of the established church.
[2] People in Roman Britain typically believed in a wide range of gods and goddesses, and worshipped several of them, likely selecting some local and tribal deities as well as some of the major divinities venerated across the Empire.
[4]: 6 The archaeologist Martin Henig suggested that to "sense something of the spiritual environment of Christianity at this time", one could compare it to modern India, where Hinduism, "a major polytheistic system", remains dominant, and "where churches containing images of Christ and the Virgin are in a tiny minority against the many temples of gods and goddesses".
Later medieval legends concerning the conversion of the island under King Lucius[8] or from a mission by Philip the Apostle[10] or Joseph of Arimathea[note 1] have been discredited as "pious forgeries" attempting to establish independence[12] or seniority[11] in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Norman times.
These more formal organisational structures arose from materially modest beginnings: the British delegation to the 353 Council of Ariminum had to beg for financial assistance from its fellows in order to return home.
[14] While Christianity survived continuously in the culturally Brittonic west, it was extinguished in the east with the arrival of the Saxons until it was reintroduced to eastern Britain by the Gregorian Mission, c. 600.
Owing to the importance of the Scottish missions, Northumbria initially followed the native Church in its calculation of Easter and tonsure but then aligned itself with Canterbury and Rome at the 664 Synod of Whitby.
During the reign of Henry II, the rising popularity of the Grail myth stories coincided with the increasingly central role of communion in Church rituals.
The importance of such revenues prompted the Investiture Crisis, which erupted in Britain over the fight occasioned by King John's refusal to accept Stephen Langton, Pope Innocent III's nominee, as archbishop of Canterbury.
England was placed under interdict in 1208 and John excommunicated the following year; he enjoyed the seizure of the Church's revenues but finally relented owing to domestic and foreign rivals strengthened by papal opposition.
Fear of foreign invasion was a concern until the 1588 rout of the Spanish Armada, but land sales after the Dissolution of the lesser and greater monasteries united most of the aristocracy behind the change.
James I supported the bishops of Anglicanism and the production of an authoritative English Bible while easing persecution against Catholics; several attempts against his person—including the Bye and Gunpowder Plots—finally led to harsher measures.
The failure of the pro-Catholic Jacobite rebellions and papal recognition of George III after the death of J. F. E. Stuart in 1766 permitted the gradual removal of anti-Catholic laws, a process known as the Catholic Emancipation, which included the Restoration of the English hierarchy.
John Wesley (1703–1791) and his followers preached revivalist religion, trying to convert individuals to a personal relationship with Christ through Bible reading, regular prayer, and especially the revival experience.
[36] During the New Imperialism of the 19th century, the London Missionary Society and others like it were active In the British Empire around the world, notably including the work of the Scotsman David Livingstone in Africa.
[50] Commentator D. W. Brogan reported in 1943: In the generation that has passed since the great Liberal landslide of 1906, one of the greatest changes in the English religious and social landscape has been the decline of Nonconformity.
A striking development was the surge in highly publicised conversion of intellectuals and writers including most famously G. K. Chesterton, as well as Christopher Dawson, Maurice Baring, Ronald Knox, Sheila Kaye-Smith, William E. Orchard, Alfred Noyes, Rosalind Murray, Arnold Lunn, Eric Gill, David Jones, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Manya Harari, and Frank Pakenham.
This caused difficulties for not a few pre-conciliar converts, though others have still joined the Church in recent decades (for instance, Malcolm Muggeridge and Joseph Pearce), and public figures (often descendants of the recusant families) such as Paul Johnson; Peter Ackroyd; Antonia Fraser; Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC; Michael Martin, first Catholic to hold the office of Speaker of the House of Commons since the Reformation; Chris Patten, first Catholic to hold the post of Chancellor of Oxford since the Reformation; Piers Paul Read; Helen Liddel, Britain's High Commissioner to Australia; and former Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair, have no difficulty making their Catholicism known in public life.
There are numerous prominent campaigners, academics, entertainers (like Danny Boyle the most successful Catholic in showbiz owing to his film, Slumdog Millionaire), politicians and writers.
In the earlier part of the century, the teachings of first Martin Luther and then John Calvin began to influence Scotland, particularly through Scottish scholars, often training for the priesthood, who had visited Continental universities.
The survivors, including chaplain John Knox, were condemned to be galley slaves in France, stoking resentment of the French and creating martyrs for the Protestant cause.
[71] Limited toleration and the influence of exiled Scots and Protestants in other countries, led to the expansion of Protestantism, with a group of lairds declaring themselves Lords of the Congregation in 1557 and representing their interests politically.
The collapse of the French alliance and English intervention in 1560 meant that a relatively small, but highly influential, group of Protestants were in a position to impose reform on the Scottish Church.
At this point the majority of the population was probably still Catholic in persuasion and the Kirk found it difficult to penetrate the Highlands and Islands, but began a gradual process of conversion and consolidation that, compared with reformations elsewhere, was conducted with relatively little persecution.
Thomas Aitkenhead, the son of an Edinburgh surgeon, aged 18, was indicted for blasphemy by order of the Privy Council for calling the New Testament "The History of the Imposter Christ"; he was hung in 1696.
[73] After prolonged years of struggle, in 1834 the Evangelicals gained control of the General Assembly and passed the Veto Act, which allowed congregations to reject unwanted "intrusive" presentations to livings by patrons.
Chalmers's ideals demonstrated that the Church was concerned with the problems of urban society, and they represented a real attempt to overcome the social fragmentation that took place in industrial towns and cities.
[73] Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the influx of large numbers of Irish immigrants, particularly after the famine years of the late 1840s, principally to the growing lowland centres like Glasgow, led to a transformation in the fortunes of Catholicism.
Peter Forster found that in answering pollsters the English reported an overwhelming belief in the truth of Christianity, a high respect for it, and a strong association between it and moral behaviour.
[84] Peter Hennessy argued that long-held attitudes did not stop change; by mid-century: "Britain was still a Christian country only in a vague attitudinal sense, belief generally being more a residual husk than the kernel of conviction.
