Introduction: Liberty of Conscience and the Light of Reason: Sara Coleridge and the Contexts of Religious Division

Summary

‘Unity of Faith amid Diversity of Opinion’: A Religious Dialogue

Writing to Sara Coleridge on 18 July 1843, the prominent theologian and future Christian Socialist Frederick Denison Maurice paid tribute to ‘the deep thought and wisdom’ of her essay ‘On Rationalism’, published earlier that year. He regards her essay as a significant achievement, despite his disagreement with some of its essential tenets. Maurice takes divergence of view as an opportunity for creative dialogue: ‘I am’, he tells her, ‘more thankful for the difference than I should have been for great agreement’. Coleridge reciprocates and embraces the occasion for productive interchange:

Nothing pleases me more than to have my notions taken up and discussed, whether for confirmation or objection, and I do as I would be done by in stating the difficulties which occur to me in the theories of others.

Over the next year, she and Maurice would engage in an impassioned and searching correspondence on the pressing and disputed religious issues of their day: in particular, baptismal regeneration; the status of the self in relation to the church; the relationship of doctrine and faith; and the characteristics of English religion. Their correspondence during 1843–44 reveals their profound mutual respect as they explore and negotiate differences in religious doctrine and faith.

On 21 November 1843, Coleridge replied to a letter in which Maurice had critiqued her ideas of baptism and the Church. Her robust yet cordial refutation of his views drew from him an immediate response: Maurice's letter of 23 November, 63 pages in length, was written, as Coleridge observes, ‘currente calens’, in a heat of intensity (SC to FDM, 27 November 1843, HRC). The urgency and substance of Maurice's response testifies to Coleridge's stature as a theologian. She replied just four days later, on 27 November. In fact, she wrote two letters to Maurice that day, the second a postscript to the first in which she seeks to clarify her definition of spiritual regeneration. This intensive exchange of letters is a remarkable moment in early Victorian religion, showing two deeply and fervently committed Anglicans, from differing but overlapping intellectual perspectives, striving towards a revitalized theology for their divided Church.