3 - GLADSTONE, HIGH CHURCHMEN AND LIBERAL CATHOLICS

Summary

Differences between them notwithstanding, whig-liberals developed a conception of ‘Liberalism’ that was primarily anti-clerical, and that valued ‘Protestantism’, the alliance of religion with the state, and the use of law in order to control ‘enthusiasm’. At a similar level of generalisation, Gladstone and most Liberal high churchmen, nonconformists and religious radicals shared a different conception of ‘liberty’. For them, the overriding political and religious problem was the corruption inherent in the exercise of authority. They directed allegations of ‘materialism’, not at the ‘enthusiasts’, but at the wealthy and complacent, the men whose influence on state and Church had failed to trigger mass spiritual awakening. They therefore tended to assert that the power of the state over the individual should be rigorously checked; and that the religious agencies, the engines of spiritual regeneration, should be untrammelled by temporal rulers who wished to use them to impose ‘erastian’ or ‘ultramontane’ perversions in a misconceived attempt to improve national morality. The groups discussed in chapters 3 and 4 believed that the spiritual power, if independent, would play a vital part in regenerating society – that it would infuse ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘direction’ where apathy and flaccidity were rife. They therefore demanded ‘free play’ for all religions, in order that the most effective would win out. Different groups believed that this open contest would produce different victors.