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In Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology, Timothy Larsen, professor of Theology at Wheaton College, has brought together nine journal articles and three previously unpublished pieces to show how it is "only by drawing close enough in to see [the] very human struggles between beliefs and practices that one can gain a truer understanding of the nature of Victorian Britain's contested Christianity." Apropos that contest, Larsen makes a persuasive point when he says that if one were to credit most accounts of Victorian Christianity, "no free Churchmen ever had a theological thought… worthy of a second look." The essays in his book demonstrate otherwise. Well-researched and provocatively argued, his book deserves a wide readership. Some of the dissenting figures he covers include D. F. Strauss, Bishop Colenso, Joseph Barker, Charles Bradlaugh, and Thomas Cooper. Since none is exactly a household name, some background may be in order before considering what Larsen makes of them.
Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology
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David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) was a German theologian and disciple of Hegel. In Leben Jesu (1835), which George Eliot translated into English in 1846, he set out to show that the New Testament was a tissue of myths, which might yield historical but not supernatural truth. The book caused a good deal of controversy when it first appeared in English and is now seen as a milestone in New Testament criticism. Strauss may have willy-nilly introduced the notion that the Christian religion is based on myth, but it is worth noting that in the book's preface he assured his readers that "the author is aware that the essence of Christian faith is perfectly independent of his criticism. The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast on their reality as historical facts." One cannot divorce the miraculous from the historical. Still, this was a sensible qualification, even if he repudiated it as he grew older. In his second work, Die christliche Glaubenslehre (1840-41), Strauss passed in review the whole history of Christian dogma only to attempt to demolish it with the aid of various Hegelian wrecking tools. In his last work, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872), he concluded that Christianity as a belief system was kaput and that a new and improved faith was required, which he suggested might be cobbled together out of art and the scientific knowledge of nature. Echoes of this theory can be heard in one of H. G. Wells' favorite philosophers, Winwood Reade, who wrote in The Martyrdom of Man (1872): "A season of mental anguish is at hand.… The soul must be sacrificed; the hope in immortality must die. A sweet and charming illusion must be taken away from the human race, as youth and beauty vanish never to return." Interestingly enough, Strauss married an opera singer, the famous Agnese Schebest, who tired of his theories and left him. It is a pity that not more is known about this failed marriage: it might shed light on the "beliefs and practices" of Strauss' career. In all events, in 1851, Strauss did the responsible thing by taking charge of his two children, Fritz and Georgine. He died in 1874 on February 8, the feast of St. Jerome of Emiliani, the patron saint of orphans, who wrote the first catechism, an aid to understanding the eternal truths of God and man that might have helped Strauss disentangle reality from myth.
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