Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T04:10:42.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘In a Peculiar Relation to Christianity’: Anglican Attitudes to Judaism in the Era of Political Emancipation, 1830-1858

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Sean Gill
Sean Gill*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Between 1830 and 1858 fourteen attempts were made to remove the words ‘on the true faith of a Christian’ from the oath required of new Members and thereby to allow Jews to gain admission to Parliament. After 1833, when a bill was passed in the Commons, all proposals for reform foundered on opposition in the Lords. Speaking against Jewish emancipation in the Upper House on 1 August 1833, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Howley, made it clear that the issue was not one on which the Church of England could remain indifferent. In contrast to other religions, he argued, Judaism stood ‘in a peculiar relation to Christianity’, for its very existence was ‘not simply a negative but a positive contradiction of Christianity’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 29: Christianity and Judaism , 1992 , pp. 399 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hansard, ser. 3, 20, cols 225-6.

2 For example, Henriques, Ursula, ‘The Jewish emancipation controversy in nineteenth-century Britain’, PaP, 40 (1968), pp. 126–46 Google Scholar; also Salbstein, M., The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain (London, 1982).Google Scholar

3 Alderman, G., The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford, 1983), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

4 The Society became exclusively Anglican in 1815. For its early history see Roger Martin, H., Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795-1830 (London, 1983), pp. 174–91.Google Scholar

5 Pinsker, Polly, ‘English Opinion and Jewish Emancipation (1830-1860’), Jewish Social Studies, 14 (1952). p. 61.Google Scholar

6 Hansard, ser. 3, 98, cols 1351-2.

7 Ibid., 95, col. 1253.

8 Ibid., col. 1278.

9 Birks, T. R., The Christian State: Or the First Principles of National Religion (London, 1847), pp. 24–5.Google Scholar Birks framed his argument to meet the objection that a confessional state was an oppressive imposition on ‘the Deist or the Jew’.

10 Hansard, ser. 3, 106, col. 902.

11 Stanley, A. P., The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 10th edn, 2 vols (London, 1877), 2, p. 28.Google Scholar

12 Hansard, ser. 2, 23, col. 1299.

13 Whately, E.J., The Life And Correspondence Of Richard Whately, 2 vols (London, 1866), 2, pp. 149–51.Google Scholar

14 Gladstone, W. E., Gleanings of Past Years, 7 vols (London, 1879), 7, pp. 104–15.Google Scholar

15 Hansard, ser. 3, 95, cols 1282-1304.

16 Ornsby, R., Memoirs of James Roben Hope-Scott, 2 vols (London, 1884), 2, p. 78.Google Scholar The Gorham Judgement proved the last straw, and he was received into the Roman Catholic Church with Manning in 1850.

17 Jewish Emancipation a Christian Duty. By a Country Vicar (London, 1853), p. 4.

18 Hansard, ser. 2, 23, col. 1289.

19 A Jubilee Memorial; Or Record of Proceedings of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (London, 1867), p. 3.

20 For one approach to this subject see Naman, A. A., The Jew in the Victorian Novel (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

21 Hansard, ser. 3, 16, cols 11-17.

22 Ibid., ser. 2, 23, col. 1305.

23 Ibid., ser. 3, 98, col. 1374.

24 Ibid., 23, col. 1292.

25 Ibid., 95, col. 1282.

26 Ibid., 25, col. 869.

27 Quoted in Parsons, Gerald, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain, 4 vols (Manchester, 1988), 3, p. 497.Google Scholar The choice of documents gives a somewhat unnuanced view of Anglican attitudes to Judaism.

28 Hansard, ser. 3, 93, col. 1380.

29 For Thirlwall’s career see Perowne, J. L., ed., Letters Literary and Theological of Connop Thirlwall Late Bishop of St. David’s (London, 1881).Google Scholar

30 Hansard, ser. 3, 93, cols 1361-4.

31 Disraeli, B., Lord George Bentinck (London, 1852), p. 507.Google Scholar

32 Hansard, ser. 3, 20, col. 238.

33 Jewish Intelligence, and Monthly Account of the Proceedings of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (London, 1838), 4, p. 38.

34 Gidney, W. T., The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews from 1808 to 1908 (London, 1908), p. 211.Google Scholar

35 See Bebbington, D. W., Evangelicalism in Modem Britain (London, 1989), pp. 81–6 Google Scholar; and Oliver, W. H., Prophets and Millenialists (Auckland, 1978)Google Scholar, for a fuller treatment of this theme.

36 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS C.M.J. c. 11, fols 60-1. I am grateful to the General Director of the Church’s Ministry among the Jews for permission to quote from the Society’s archives.

37 See C.M.J. e.38, 44-5, for bound volumes of the annual sermons.

38 Dalton, W., A Sermon Preached at the parish Church of the united parishes of Christ Church, Newgate Street, and St. Leonard, Foster Lane (London, 1847), p. 5.Google Scholar

39 Salbstein, Emancipation, p. 147.

40 Birks, T. R., Memoir of the Revd Edward Bickersteth, 2 vols (London, 1852), 2, p. 173.Google Scholar

41 Bickersteth, , The Restoration of the Jews to their own Land (London, 1841), p. 90.Google Scholar

42 Powell, Baden, Christianity without Judaism (London, 1857), pp. 211–19.Google Scholar For similar developments in nineteenth-century German Liberal Protestantism, see Tal, U., Christians and Jews in Germany (London, 1975), pp. 160–222.Google Scholar