This is an important book by a historian whose monographs have previously been principally on the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Bill Jacob now offers a historical assessment of the place of religion in London between 1830 and 1900, mainly Christianity, but with some attention to other religions that were present in a very minor way in that period. The author claims, rightly in this reviewer’s opinion, that London offers an important lens through which to examine the prevailing historiography of religion in Britain and beyond throughout this century, because it was already a world city at the beginning of the 1830s and over the period of the study became the first international megalopolis. Jacob looks at five historical themes in his study: the identification of the fundamental religiosity of Victorian society; the largely successful response of the Churches to a new world of voluntary competing religion; the various initiatives that marked that successful response when compared with non or anti-religious groups; a focus on education and social welfare; and to disconnect the undoubted decline at the end of the period in organized religion from a still prevailing social religiousness.
There have been numerous studies of nineteenth-century London, but this is the first comprehensive study of the world-city, with religion as the theme of the work. Inevitably, this means bringing together numerous secondary works, and these are the substance of the first two chapters. The succeeding chapters engage with considerably more primary material. Jacob undertakes to refute the historiography of Victorian religious decline throughout the nineteenth century, and there is a considerable engagement with contemporary nineteenth-century views of this issue in Chapter 2, as well as modern scholarly historiography in the Introduction.
In Chapters 3 and 4 the author argues, effectively I believe, for the success of the Established Church’s engagement with the working class and poor of London, success measured not so much in church attendance but in reciprocal engagement between agencies of the Church and this level of society. Given the contemporary and modern scholarly concern with this portion of nineteenth-century society, Jacob provides considerable evidence to refute the prevailing view of religious failure. This is one of the strengths of the study. Some attention is also paid to the religion of the middle and upper classes, where these classes are seen to be behind much of the Church’s philanthropic and church extension projects, particularly in Nonconformist and Roman Catholic Churches.
Jacob gives some attention to more marginal religious and secularist bodies; but, in keeping with the historical reality of the period, the principal non-Christian group studied is that of immigrant Jews in London. Going beyond London’s importance within Britain, is the author’s understanding that it had become an international city for the whole of this period. So, there is an important chapter on London as a magnet for immigrants who brought their religion with them, beginning to turn London, in this period, into a multi-religious metropolis.
It is perhaps to cavil at what is a fine piece of historical writing and analysis, but I wanted to see more on how London became a centre of imperial Christianity. There was not just the geographical London engaged with here, but also the imagined and imperial London which became for many in the ‘Anglosphere’ a British centre of their religion. Colonial Nonconformist expatriates, for example, kept up with the great addresses at Exeter Hall and other nonconformist London centres, by means of London newspapers delivered to the colonies by steamship. Anglo-Catholic Anglicans emulated ritualist developments begun in London through their networks facilitated by telegraph and letters. The great Christian publishers, such as Rivingtons, disseminated London sermons and other metropolitan theology throughout the empire from their London headquarters. Many mission organizations, which constituted such a prominent part of the global extension of Victorian Christianity, had their headquarters in London.
Acknowledging my own bias in recent research, I hoped for some attention to London as a major British venue for emigration, it being one of the largest official emigrant depots in the country; such emigration helped create an Anglophone religious world in the nineteenth century. Greater attention to this imperial London would have usefully redressed the prevalent disconnection in British historiography between domestic and imperial history.
After chapters devoted to the interface of religion and philanthropy, social action, and education at all levels, Jacob brings his fine study to a conclusion. He argues that London provided an international exemplar of how Christianity (and Judaism to a lesser extent) adapted successfully to a new world of capitalist enterprise, technology, and free competition. This success involved new forms of religiosity and engagement in society and culture well beyond the boundaries of the devout and the church-going, as there was remarkably little opposition to religion and its organized forms. For this reviewer, Jacob offers here a successful challenge and body of evidence to the view that secularization, via industrialization and urbanization, resulted in a loss of faith. This is a book that should be required reading for all interested or engaged in the history of the nineteenth century and religion, a focus which poses questions to all seeking to understand the place of religion in modern urban society.
