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Party, Piety, and the Press: The Church of England and the Baptist Churches of London in the British Public Sphere 1715-1750
Harris, Keryn
Harris, Keryn
Abstract
In 1715, the Church of England published and distributed a revised Book of Common Prayer to the subjects of London, establishing the prayers and sacraments to be practiced in Anglican churches throughout England. In the preface of the prayer book, the Church professes:
“It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England ever since the First publishing of her publick liturgy, to keep the mean between two extremes, of too much stiffness in refuting, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it…Our general aim therefore in this undertaking was not to gratify this or that party in any their unreasonable demands; but to do that, which to our best understandings we conceived might most tent to the preservation of peace and unity of the Church; the procuring of reverence, and exciting of piety and devotion in the publick worship of God.”
The Church of England sought to obtain a balance between strictly enforcing practices of the Anglican faith on the subjects of England and permitting too much lenience in dissenting from traditional Protestant beliefs. In the eighteenth century, the church struggled to reconcile differing religious and political agendas among bishops, subjects, and ministers in parliament. The church desired to maintain unity among Protestants, though the emerging party system perpetuated a series of divisions that affected how leaders related to their church communities and governing institutions.
At this time, print culture and the press became a focal point of communication and information distribution, and society was structured around communities taking part in discourse on the religious and political issues of the time. The press and places of social interaction like clubs and meeting houses, grew in voluntary association, generating spaces of expression separate from the church and state that scholars like Jürgen Habermas called the public sphere. This public sphere, while providing a new outlet for discourse, was occupied both by participants and topics of religious and political significance in eighteenth-century England. My thesis examines how the British public sphere was utilized by religious leaders to further their political agendas and express the social values of individual ministers and parliament members.
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Date
2025
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Publisher
William & Mary