Christianity - The First Three Thousand Years Part 14

It was a sign of a serious ident.i.ty crisis in British Anglicanism that an Oxford sermon of 1833 protesting against this eminently sensible measure became a national sensation. A local High Church clergyman, John Keble, had been invited to give this customary sermon for the opening of the Oxford a.s.sizes, the biannual session of the judges from Westminster. He seized the chance to alarm the a.s.size judges and a large audience of university and local worthies with an attack on 'National Apostasy'. Keble saw the suppression of a crop of Irish Anglican bishoprics as a deliberate attack on the Church by the State, breaking the unity they had formerly enjoyed. The Whig government's disregard for Irish bishops was no less than 'enmity to Him who gave them their commission at first'.54 Clearly many of Keble's fellow clergy agreed. Keble was enthusiastically supported by the vicar of the University Church, John Henry Newman, who had jettisoned the Evangelicalism in which he had been raised and was now embracing Anglican High Churchmans.h.i.+p with the zeal of a convert, to the point of rapidly rethinking its nature, in ways which only gradually became apparent. Newman was himself a preacher of unusual charisma, whose sermons packed his stately church with young admirers. The power of his oratory can still be felt through the very considerable quant.i.ties of resonant prose which he produced in his long life. Clearly many of Keble's fellow clergy agreed. Keble was enthusiastically supported by the vicar of the University Church, John Henry Newman, who had jettisoned the Evangelicalism in which he had been raised and was now embracing Anglican High Churchmans.h.i.+p with the zeal of a convert, to the point of rapidly rethinking its nature, in ways which only gradually became apparent. Newman was himself a preacher of unusual charisma, whose sermons packed his stately church with young admirers. The power of his oratory can still be felt through the very considerable quant.i.ties of resonant prose which he produced in his long life.55 Throughout the rest of the 1830s, Keble, Newman and a number of friends mostly a.s.sociated with Oxford University put forward a new vision of the Church of England in a series of Tracts for the Times Tracts for the Times (hence the activity they inspired has been called either the Oxford Movement or Tractarianism). Their project was to minimize the Church of England's debt to the Reformation which had actually created it as a State Church; to restore a sense of Catholicity to it and to its worldwide offshoots, emphasizing its apostolic succession of bishops across the Reformation divide, its distinctive spirituality and the sacramental beauty of its liturgy. It was thanks to the Tractarians in the 1830s that the word 'Anglican', that casual and unflattering coinage of King James VI (see p. 648), gained its first real currency. 'Anglicanism' had a pleasing echo of that French variant on Catholic ident.i.ty, 'Gallicanism', and thus suggested a Church which combined a truly Catholic character with a national focus, and which might - just might - acknowledge the primacy of a properly ordered papacy. Tractarians also tried out a new coinage, calling themselves 'Anglo-Catholics'. (hence the activity they inspired has been called either the Oxford Movement or Tractarianism). Their project was to minimize the Church of England's debt to the Reformation which had actually created it as a State Church; to restore a sense of Catholicity to it and to its worldwide offshoots, emphasizing its apostolic succession of bishops across the Reformation divide, its distinctive spirituality and the sacramental beauty of its liturgy. It was thanks to the Tractarians in the 1830s that the word 'Anglican', that casual and unflattering coinage of King James VI (see p. 648), gained its first real currency. 'Anglicanism' had a pleasing echo of that French variant on Catholic ident.i.ty, 'Gallicanism', and thus suggested a Church which combined a truly Catholic character with a national focus, and which might - just might - acknowledge the primacy of a properly ordered papacy. Tractarians also tried out a new coinage, calling themselves 'Anglo-Catholics'.

Much of what the Tractarians were saying amounted to a restatement of the rebranding of the Church of England attempted by Archbishop Laud and his a.s.sociates in the early seventeenth century (see pp. 649- 50), but there were other important elements. If the State was apparently no longer going to support the Church of England, then the Church would have to look to its own devices - and the only English precedent for that was to be found in that group of High Church refuseniks who, in impressively perverse loyalty to an ungrateful James II, had formed the 'Non-Juring' Church in 1689. Freed from the imperatives to discretion which establishment brings, and including in their ranks some formidable intellects, the Non-Jurors had ranged freely in their thoughts about the shape of an authentically Catholic Church of England, possessing an episcopate continuous with the Church of the Apostles, uncorrupted by Roman error and unshackled from the State. A large dose of their radical conclusions in both liturgy and ecclesiology (that is, their theology of the nature of the Church), together with their interest in Eastern Orthodoxy and their frequent open rudeness about the Reformation, now enriched the spiritual explorations of the Tractarians. That separated them from older High Churchmen, who had not shown much sympathy with the eventually expiring Non-Juring Church.56 Tractarianism was thus a movement with a good many opinions, as well as a good opinion of itself - perhaps not surprisingly, given the large number of young and single Oxford dons among its leaders.h.i.+p.57 The Tractarians' problem was that this good opinion was not shared by the bishops whose government in the Church they theoretically exalted. In 1841 Newman produced the ninetieth of their tracts, arguing, with more ingenuity than was sensible, that England's Reformed Protestant doctrinal statement, the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563, was not directed against the doctrines which made the Church of Rome distinct from those of the Church of England. He seemed genuinely surprised at the uproar which followed, including his own bishop's urgent requirement that the tract should be withdrawn. The Tractarians' problem was that this good opinion was not shared by the bishops whose government in the Church they theoretically exalted. In 1841 Newman produced the ninetieth of their tracts, arguing, with more ingenuity than was sensible, that England's Reformed Protestant doctrinal statement, the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563, was not directed against the doctrines which made the Church of Rome distinct from those of the Church of England. He seemed genuinely surprised at the uproar which followed, including his own bishop's urgent requirement that the tract should be withdrawn.58 Later in the year came the hammer blow (as far as Newman and his sympathizers were concerned) of the project for the Anglo-Prussian bishopric of Jerusalem. Their fears for the Catholic integrity of the English Church were blended with a refined disdain for Michael Solomon Alexander, the first bishop appointed under the scheme, and for the fact that Evangelicals celebrated his Jewish ancestry. In retrospect, Newman reflected with not untypical feline sarcasm about the Jerusalem bishopric, 'I never heard of any good or harm it has ever done, except what it has done for me; which many think a great misfortune, and I one of the greatest of mercies. It brought me on to the beginning of the end.' Later in the year came the hammer blow (as far as Newman and his sympathizers were concerned) of the project for the Anglo-Prussian bishopric of Jerusalem. Their fears for the Catholic integrity of the English Church were blended with a refined disdain for Michael Solomon Alexander, the first bishop appointed under the scheme, and for the fact that Evangelicals celebrated his Jewish ancestry. In retrospect, Newman reflected with not untypical feline sarcasm about the Jerusalem bishopric, 'I never heard of any good or harm it has ever done, except what it has done for me; which many think a great misfortune, and I one of the greatest of mercies. It brought me on to the beginning of the end.'59 What Newman meant was that he could no longer escape the instability of the view of Anglicanism which he had constructed for himself. Behind Laud and the Non-Jurors loomed the far simpler ident.i.ty of the Roman Catholic Church, towards which Newman was swept by a tide of doubt, which had gathered strength in him for some years as he contemplated the history of the early Church. Lutheranism and Calvinism were heresies, and he denounced them bluntly in a letter of protest about the Jerusalem bishopric, solemnly sent to his bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury; but two years before that, he had already privately come to see the Church of England as nothing better than the Monophysites of the fifth century: no Church at all.60 His piecemeal withdrawal from Anglicanism was completed in 1845, to general dismay (except among those on all sides who saw it with gloomy relish as the natural result of Tractarianism). A further crisis for many High Churchmen was provoked by a legal judgement from the Privy Council in a case between two exceptionally obstreperous clergy, whose theological clash paralleled their combative personalities: the Evangelical Rev. George Cornelius Gorham and Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, one of very few High Churchmen then on the episcopal bench. Phillpotts had refused to accept Gorham's promotion to a new parish because he thought Gorham 'Calvinist' in his theology of baptism. Gorham appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury's highest court, the Court of Arches, which found in favour of the bishop. Gorham then appealed to the Privy Council, which with some hesitation, unsure of its ground in a matter of some theological intricacy, found in his favour. His piecemeal withdrawal from Anglicanism was completed in 1845, to general dismay (except among those on all sides who saw it with gloomy relish as the natural result of Tractarianism). A further crisis for many High Churchmen was provoked by a legal judgement from the Privy Council in a case between two exceptionally obstreperous clergy, whose theological clash paralleled their combative personalities: the Evangelical Rev. George Cornelius Gorham and Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, one of very few High Churchmen then on the episcopal bench. Phillpotts had refused to accept Gorham's promotion to a new parish because he thought Gorham 'Calvinist' in his theology of baptism. Gorham appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury's highest court, the Court of Arches, which found in favour of the bishop. Gorham then appealed to the Privy Council, which with some hesitation, unsure of its ground in a matter of some theological intricacy, found in his favour.61 There was widespread High Church outrage that a secular court should thus interfere in a strictly ecclesiastical dispute. As a result, Newman was followed to Rome by several like-minded clergy and prominent laity, including the man whom many had regarded as his replacement in leaders.h.i.+p of the Oxford Movement, Archdeacon Henry Manning, whose talents were such that he was to end his career as a distinguished Cardinal-Archishop of Westminster.62 This journey, virtually unknown among Laudians and Non-Jurors, has been a recurrent pattern among Anglo-Catholics ever since; yet by no means all followed suit. Newman's background in intense Evangelical religiosity meant that his years as a Tractarian were a staging post on an unstable lurch away from his roots, but the existing High Church party, much caricatured by callow Tractarians as 'High and Dry', was not so easily tipped towards Rome, and beyond the sh.o.r.es of Britain there were other sources of strength. This journey, virtually unknown among Laudians and Non-Jurors, has been a recurrent pattern among Anglo-Catholics ever since; yet by no means all followed suit. Newman's background in intense Evangelical religiosity meant that his years as a Tractarian were a staging post on an unstable lurch away from his roots, but the existing High Church party, much caricatured by callow Tractarians as 'High and Dry', was not so easily tipped towards Rome, and beyond the sh.o.r.es of Britain there were other sources of strength.

In the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, High Churchmen had already with a good deal less fuss faced up to the reality of being a disestablished Church whose very existence was centred on a sacramental life and episcopal government. In John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York from 1811, they had what one of the doyens of American Church history has called 'perhaps the greatest religious leader the American Episcopal Church ever produced'.63 Hobart had a dramatic preaching style worthy of the Methodists, and he was the inspiration in founding in New York the General Theological Seminary, the first Anglican equivalent of the Catholic Tridentine seminary. This was a vital springboard for the world mission which the Episcopal Church launched alongside its English counterpart. Yet what was especially significant about Hobart, besides his exceptional practical abilities, was the reasoning behind his vigorous defence of episcopacy. He saw it as the surest foundation for proper continuity with the earliest Christians: those who had struggled for their faith in a hostile empire before Constantine had favoured the Church. This was an example for the Episcopal Church in his own day, its established status gone, coming to terms with its role as a minority in the new republic. For Hobart, his Episcopal Church had a very different destiny from that of the United Church of England and Ireland as by Law Established. Hobart had a dramatic preaching style worthy of the Methodists, and he was the inspiration in founding in New York the General Theological Seminary, the first Anglican equivalent of the Catholic Tridentine seminary. This was a vital springboard for the world mission which the Episcopal Church launched alongside its English counterpart. Yet what was especially significant about Hobart, besides his exceptional practical abilities, was the reasoning behind his vigorous defence of episcopacy. He saw it as the surest foundation for proper continuity with the earliest Christians: those who had struggled for their faith in a hostile empire before Constantine had favoured the Church. This was an example for the Episcopal Church in his own day, its established status gone, coming to terms with its role as a minority in the new republic. For Hobart, his Episcopal Church had a very different destiny from that of the United Church of England and Ireland as by Law Established.64 What the Americans first experienced and both the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland then had to face up to was the discovery that a Church needs to make decisions for itself, whether or not it clings in some form to establishment - something obvious to European Protestant Radicals and English Dissenters from their earliest sixteenth-century stirrings. In that respect, the Oxford Movement could integrate successfully in an initially hostile Church, because it offered a positive answer to a problem more widely felt. With its insistence on the continuity in succession of bishops right back to the Apostles, and the role of the bishop as guardian of the sacraments, it provided a coherent view of what a bishop was and what he should do (although High Churchpeople's view of episcopacy tended to become more nuanced if a bishop forbade them to do what they wanted). Even those who were not High Churchpeople approved of the Church gradually gaining a forum for its own debate, first in the revival of the Convocations of Canterbury and York in 1852 and 1861, and then in the creation of a series of Church a.s.semblies which paid steadily more attention to the opinions of laypeople.

It was also clear that the High Church commitment to liturgy and episcopal government gave coherence to the worldwide and hitherto unlabelled Church which was emerging from British imperial conquest and American Revolution. In fact it was in New Zealand, under the guidance of a notable High Churchman who later returned to an English diocese, Bishop George Selwyn, that the first Anglican experiments in lay partic.i.p.ation in Church government took place, furnis.h.i.+ng precedents to the Church of England.65 The term which Tractarians had revived for their own party purposes, 'Anglicanism', was now conveniently appropriated to describe a new beast with a reach across the globe: 'the Anglican Communion'. Its bishops worldwide first met after an informal invitation to Lambeth Palace in 1867, hoping to solve the problem of the South African bishop John William Colenso, who had made the mistake of challenging the comfortable consensus of the English Church on interpreting the Bible. The term which Tractarians had revived for their own party purposes, 'Anglicanism', was now conveniently appropriated to describe a new beast with a reach across the globe: 'the Anglican Communion'. Its bishops worldwide first met after an informal invitation to Lambeth Palace in 1867, hoping to solve the problem of the South African bishop John William Colenso, who had made the mistake of challenging the comfortable consensus of the English Church on interpreting the Bible.66 The mood of ecclesiastical self-a.s.sertion encompa.s.sed the other established Church in the British Isles, in Scotland, and there it had far more catastrophic effects than the Tractarians achieved in England. Devout members of the Church of Scotland who valued their Reformed heritage, and the theology of Presbyterian Church order within it, had grown increasingly outraged that, thanks to past compromises with the English government, parish congregations could not choose their own ministers, and were forced to accept the decisions of patrons who treated that right as a piece of property. Evangelicals found this particularly offensive. In protest at the lack of reform of this scandal after years of agitation, in 1843 no fewer than a third of the parish ministers walked out of the Church of Scotland and took most of their congregations with them. Providing one of the most remarkable demonstrations of Protestant energy in nineteenth-century Europe, they founded a complete alternative 'Free Church of Scotland' - not a dissenting Church, but an essay at an alternative established Church in waiting. They covered Scotland with a network of new parish churches, clergy houses and organizations alongside the old ones - a tribute not merely to Scotland's continuing consciousness of its Reformation principles, but to the large amount of surplus wealth which its industrial revolution had generated. The schism was not healed until a reuniting of most of the parties concerned in 1929, by which time the problem of patronage had long been solved in the old established Church. Now it seems incredible that such an issue could have so dominated a major national Church and split it down the middle. Christian preoccupations move on.

In England, the Oxford Movement had aesthetic and emotional advantages to sustain it. The Church of England commanded a heritage of thousands of beautiful medieval church buildings inherited from the pre-Reformation Church, over three centuries much altered in cheerfully miscellaneous ways to adapt them to Protestant use. In a society still saturated with Romantic love of the medieval, the impulse to restore their architectural beauty could combine with a High Church desire to develop a liturgy drawing on the buildings' medieval functions. That endeavour might not lead straight to Rome, but to an enhanced dignity and solemnity in Anglican wors.h.i.+p, which even those not styling themselves Anglo-Catholics might savour in moderate measure.

And after initial wide public disapproval - even riots against the 'Popery' of Anglo-Catholic liturgy - there came the realization that High Church clergy genuinely did care for the Church's mission to save souls. One of the most important ways in which the movement gained respect in the Church from the 1860s was to launch public missions, especially in settings of urban squalor: Anglo-Catholics took as their model not the emotionalism of Methodist or Evangelical mission but, appropriately, the dramatic missions conducted by various religious orders in Roman Catholic Europe on the cla.s.sic Jesuit model (see pp. 682-3). Their strategy proved successful. The urban poor may not have been that impressed by Catholic ritual, but what they did appreciate was being taken seriously, and being shown love and consideration by well-educated Christian gentlemen. Many inner-city strongholds of Anglo-Catholic practice were established as a result, and remain even when their settings are now socially very different: in London, for instance, St Alban's Holborn or St Mary's Somers Town.67 As a result of these early Victorian excitements, the Church of England, and the Anglican world generally, developed two self-conscious groupings of Anglo-Catholicism and Evangelicalism, plus a 'Broad Church' middle ground whose adherents were more than a little impatient with the extremes (see Plate 63). The fact that the nineteenth-century Church of England never managed to provide any centrally planned system of clergy training, in the fas.h.i.+on of Roman Catholic seminaries, afforded each of the three 'parties' the chance to found their own theological colleges. These colleges proved the most effective agent possible in perpetuating the party spirit, which in Anglican circles can sometimes resemble the pa.s.sions others devote to compet.i.tive team sports. The contrast with British Methodism, which from the earliest days of its clergy training planned its provision centrally, is instructive; Methodists are still much less inclined to fall into party camps.

Not even the rather hasty condemnation of Anglican clerical orders by Leo XIII in a bull, Apostolicae Curae Apostolicae Curae, in 1896 could discourage High Church Anglicans from continuing to puzzle away at the conundrum of Catholic Anglicanism - much as their Evangelical fellow Anglicans might disapprove of their even trying. They developed a spectrum of solutions, stretching between a moderate style which became known as 'Central' Churchmans.h.i.+p and an extreme Anglo-Catholicism which delighted in being more Roman than the pope.68 That spectrum has been one of the most fruitful products of that always tense structure, the Anglican Communion. It demands that its adherents use their brains to understand what Anglicanism might be, as well as their aesthetic sense to appreciate how it might reach out to the beauty of divine presence. It encourages a strong sense of paradox and uncertainty, of which Kierkegaard might well have grudgingly approved. It is one of the engaging features of the Oxford Movement and its offshoots, so apparently backward-looking and medievalizing in both their origins and some of their later posturing, that they have found it much easier to cope with the Enlightenment than has Anglican Evangelicalism. That spectrum has been one of the most fruitful products of that always tense structure, the Anglican Communion. It demands that its adherents use their brains to understand what Anglicanism might be, as well as their aesthetic sense to appreciate how it might reach out to the beauty of divine presence. It encourages a strong sense of paradox and uncertainty, of which Kierkegaard might well have grudgingly approved. It is one of the engaging features of the Oxford Movement and its offshoots, so apparently backward-looking and medievalizing in both their origins and some of their later posturing, that they have found it much easier to cope with the Enlightenment than has Anglican Evangelicalism.

Moreover, there is an often camp mischief about High Church Anglicanism. Many Anglo-Catholic clergy and laity have relished shocking bishops by their extravagant borrowings from Roman Catholic ritual. Since Anglo-Catholicism also borrowed from Rome an emphasis on clerical celibacy new to the Anglican tradition, celibate vocation to the priesthood created Victorian England's only profession which did not raise an eyebrow at lifelong abstention from marriage. That frequently aroused the fears of the Victorian paterfamilias, paralleling the neurosis of the Catholic layman since the High Middle Ages that his wife or daughter would be seduced in the confessional by l.u.s.tful celibate priests. The worries were generally groundless, partly because the unprecedented singleness of many Anglo-Catholic clergy had a rather different dimension. From its earliest phases in its eponymous university, the Oxford Movement came to host a male h.o.m.os.e.xual subculture which even the s.e.xual liberation movements from the 1970s did not entirely absorb or supplant.69

ORTHODOXY: RUSSIA AND OTTOMAN DECAY.

While the nineteenth century saw victory for new centripetal forces in Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy's renewal took place against the background of two very different experiences: in Russia, within an already monolithic Russian Church, and to the south, amid much inst.i.tutional fragmentation caused by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. From the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74, the victorious Russian tsars claimed to be protectors of all Orthodox Christians under the sultan's rule, and Catherine the Great extended Russian control over the kingdom of Georgia in the 1780s, taking care to leave intact its ancient independent Church, while bringing it under her control with a seat on the Holy Synod. As the Ottoman Empire further decayed, an exhilarating prospect emerged that an Orthodox tsar might ultimately take the sultan's place and outdo the sway which Byzantine emperors once enjoyed in Orthodoxy; or that an a.s.sortment of Christian monarchs would once more rule Orthodox lands still under Ottoman control.

Both these alternatives nevertheless pointed to a steep decline in the power which the Oec.u.menical Patriarch exercised among the various nationalities const.i.tuting Orthodoxy. He had long been so identified with the privilege and influence enjoyed by his Greek entourage in their Phanar enclave in Constantinople that the inst.i.tutions of the patriarchate were often known, without any sense of compliment, as 'the Phanar'. The Phanar's decline proceeded in step with the decay of the Ottoman Empire which had so promoted the patriarch after the seizure of the city (see pp. 497-8). Given this ongoing home-grown crisis, the memories of 1789 which so agitated the Western Church were only one compet.i.tor for Orthodox attention. It was difficult for the embattled Greek Orthodox to look past their ancient grievances against Catholic aggression from 1204 onwards. So when Napoleon invaded Ottoman Egypt in 1798, intent on pursuing the British to India, but also proclaiming the rhetoric of liberty, equality and fraternity, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem published a book in Constantinople which argued that G.o.d had created the Ottoman Empire to defend his Church from Latin heresy, let alone French Revolutionaries, so G.o.d required loyalty to the sultan from all good Christians.70 Equally, the Russian tsar continued to expect G.o.d to deliver him the loyalty of his subjects. In Russia, the shackling of Church inst.i.tutions to the tsar's centralizing bureaucracy (see pp. 542-3) caused many thoughtful Orthodox discomfort, but few had any objection to the steady expansion of Orthodox culture which accompanied the tsar's conquests south, east and west from the eighteenth century. Given Russia's absorption of much of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its moves eastwards, Russian Orthodoxy was always also going to be conscious of both its European and its Asian neighbours. During the early nineteenth century, its armies had marched to Paris, as well as in striking distance of Constantinople and Teheran. In central Asia, the Tsaritsa Catherine and her successors controlled Islam by a policy straightforwardly borrowed from their existing control of official Orthodox Christianity: a central 'Muhammadan a.s.sembly' of mullahs, and even a system of parishes. In the 1820s and 1830s they issued regulations for Muslim burials in the interests of bureaucratic record-keeping which bore all the cavalier disregard for ritual propriety that Peter the Great had shown to the Christian inst.i.tution of sacramental confession.71 The tsars who succeeded Catherine the Great parted with her fascination for Enlightenment values, but they did not find it a problem to combine Tsar Peter's bureaucratic shackling of the Church with their intense commitment to a role as Christian absolute ruler. Tsar Alexander I (reigned 1801-25) was in thrall to a mysticism which once made him entertain the great Austrian politician Prince Metternich at a table laid for four: the other guest present was a n.o.blewoman from the Baltic who had taken up a career as a prophetess, and the absentee was Jesus Christ. Tsar Alexander was fascinated by p.r.o.nouncements from the Baroness Juliane von Krudener which seemed to be an accurate prediction of his own pivotal role in defeating the Emperor Napoleon; he was less impressed by her advocacy of Greek revolutionary independence, which triggered an irreparable breach between them.72 For Alexander, religion was a necessary component of absolute power. That led him in 1815 to conclude a so-called 'Holy Alliance' with the Catholic Emperor of Austria and the Protestant King Friedrich William III of Prussia - the British government kept its distance from any public commitment to this unprecedented exploration of ec.u.menical despotism. The alliance formally died with Tsar Alexander, but his successor, Nicholas I, possessing not a mystical bone in his body, nevertheless saw the usefulness of the principles that his elder brother had established. Russian ident.i.ty was to be founded on a triangle of Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. Whatever the personal religious quirks of Nicholas's successors, that threefold foundation remained up to 1917. It was liable to stigmatize any subject of the tsar not included within it, particularly in European Russia, where alternative religious ident.i.ties might be identified with nationalist dissidence. For Alexander, religion was a necessary component of absolute power. That led him in 1815 to conclude a so-called 'Holy Alliance' with the Catholic Emperor of Austria and the Protestant King Friedrich William III of Prussia - the British government kept its distance from any public commitment to this unprecedented exploration of ec.u.menical despotism. The alliance formally died with Tsar Alexander, but his successor, Nicholas I, possessing not a mystical bone in his body, nevertheless saw the usefulness of the principles that his elder brother had established. Russian ident.i.ty was to be founded on a triangle of Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. Whatever the personal religious quirks of Nicholas's successors, that threefold foundation remained up to 1917. It was liable to stigmatize any subject of the tsar not included within it, particularly in European Russia, where alternative religious ident.i.ties might be identified with nationalist dissidence.

Jews and Greek Catholics suffered the worst from this att.i.tude, the latter losing the legal existence and property of their Church to the Orthodox Church in 1839, and the former undergoing repeated bouts of murderous persecution, tolerated and often encouraged by the tsarist government. One of the most pernicious offshoots of official Russian anti-Semitism was a work of propaganda published in 1903, the brain-child of an agent of the tsarist secret police based in France, Matvei Golovinskii: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This picture of an imaginary worldwide Jewish conspiracy has sustained a malign life among the worst sort of conspiracy theorists down to the present. It was one of three books found in the room of the last tsarina in Ekaterinburg, just after her murder by the Bolsheviks in 1918.73 Beyond Jews and Greek Catholics, a host of Old Believers and sects of undoubtedly foreign inspiration provoked constant official suspicion and fitful hara.s.sment; in turn, they built up a head of anger against the regime, which fed into its eventual collapse. Beyond Jews and Greek Catholics, a host of Old Believers and sects of undoubtedly foreign inspiration provoked constant official suspicion and fitful hara.s.sment; in turn, they built up a head of anger against the regime, which fed into its eventual collapse.74 The autocracy was increasingly despised even by some of the best and most conscientious Orthodox laypeople and clergy. A deeply symbolic issue after 1896 was temperance, that preoccupation alike of Eastern and Western nineteenth-century Christian reformers. The Orthodox Church was at the forefront of a powerful temperance movement throughout the empire, yet it was well aware that the state made polite noises in support of such efforts while squeezing maximum profits out of a newly proclaimed imperial monopoly on the sale of alcohol. The autocracy was increasingly despised even by some of the best and most conscientious Orthodox laypeople and clergy. A deeply symbolic issue after 1896 was temperance, that preoccupation alike of Eastern and Western nineteenth-century Christian reformers. The Orthodox Church was at the forefront of a powerful temperance movement throughout the empire, yet it was well aware that the state made polite noises in support of such efforts while squeezing maximum profits out of a newly proclaimed imperial monopoly on the sale of alcohol.75 At many different levels, despite the moral and political damage wrought by the tsars' jealousy of its power, the Russian Church did its best to guide its flock through the social revolution percolating the vast expanses of the empire from the West. An incentive for enthusiastic pastoral care was the extraordinarily high level of churchgoing, which contrasted with the perceptible declines in the West: in 1900, 87 per cent of male and 91 per cent of female believers were recorded at confession and communion, marginally higher figures than in 1797.76 It was Filaret, the Metropolitan of Moscow, a churchman whose liberal reputation led to his complete exclusion from meetings of the Holy Synod between 1836 and 1855, who drafted one of the most idealistic reforming measures of the century to originate with a tsar, Alexander II's decree freeing the serfs of Russia in 1861. It was Filaret, the Metropolitan of Moscow, a churchman whose liberal reputation led to his complete exclusion from meetings of the Holy Synod between 1836 and 1855, who drafted one of the most idealistic reforming measures of the century to originate with a tsar, Alexander II's decree freeing the serfs of Russia in 1861.77 As social misery exceeded the capacity of traditional monastic charity, Orthodoxy creatively revived an inst.i.tution which had served it well in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the crisis years around the Union of Brest (see p. 538): confraternities which would organize charity in the worst areas of deprivation in Russian cities. As social misery exceeded the capacity of traditional monastic charity, Orthodoxy creatively revived an inst.i.tution which had served it well in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the crisis years around the Union of Brest (see p. 538): confraternities which would organize charity in the worst areas of deprivation in Russian cities.

The secular clergy of nineteenth-century Russia, in contrast to its monks, have traditionally had a bad press, but that is at least in part because they have most commonly been viewed through the eyes of Russian novelists and writers who had little sympathy for the realities of life in the thousands of rural parishes through the empire. It is possible to tell a different story from the autobiographies of sons of the clergy. Even if they were idealizing their backgrounds, their accounts reveal a world of high-minded austerity, pride in vocation, admiration for learning and concern for paris.h.i.+oners which is remarkably reminiscent of the standards aspired to in the Western Protestant manse.78 There was another similarity to the West: amid a welter of initiatives for social welfare, education, mission at home and in the furthest corners of the empire, Orthodoxy experienced that new phenomenon, the general rise of women's activism in Christian practice. Here it was seen most clearly in monasticism, now undergoing a major revival after Catherine the Great's Enlightenment-inspired government had sorely restricted it. While the number of male religious slightly more than doubled between 1850 and 1912 to just over 21,000, the number of women in monastic life had risen astonis.h.i.+ngly from 8,533 to 70,453. There was another similarity to the West: amid a welter of initiatives for social welfare, education, mission at home and in the furthest corners of the empire, Orthodoxy experienced that new phenomenon, the general rise of women's activism in Christian practice. Here it was seen most clearly in monasticism, now undergoing a major revival after Catherine the Great's Enlightenment-inspired government had sorely restricted it. While the number of male religious slightly more than doubled between 1850 and 1912 to just over 21,000, the number of women in monastic life had risen astonis.h.i.+ngly from 8,533 to 70,453.79 The problem for an inst.i.tution which was inextricably part of the everyday life of a great imperial society was how to minister to a society in sharp debate about its ident.i.ty. Alexander II was an autocrat who in 1861 had borrowed the great principle of 1789, to give the bulk of his subjects their personal freedom: was he the only person in Russia ent.i.tled to have liberal ideals? The spread of higher education created a caste of articulate and ambitious young men with little precedent for their position in Russian society; they were as awkwardly placed as the surplus of seminary-educated clergy children. In their attempts to find a role for themselves, many were completely alienated from the Church, while others turned their aspirations on to its ident.i.ty: at one end of a polarity, absorbed by Slavophile insistence on the self-sufficiency of Russian ident.i.ty and by a fierce hatred of everything defined as opposing it; at the other, possessed by a revolutionary nihilism which (encouraged by sporadically savage official reprisals) turned to crime or political a.s.sa.s.sination, as a symbol that there was nothing worthwhile or sacred in contemporary society. The first successful suicide bombers in human history were anarchists responsible for the murder of Alexander II in 1881.80 The Church shared in this self-examination. How far could it look beyond itself for its spiritual resources? The problem was not new: in the perceptive words of one Orthodox priestly theologian born in post-1917 exile, 'if there is a feature of "Russian" Orthodoxy which can be seen as a contrast to the Byzantine perception of Christianity, it is the nervous concern of the Russians in preserving the very letter very letter of the tradition received "from the Greeks" '. of the tradition received "from the Greeks" '.81 It is an irony that this yearning to be faithful to a tradition beyond Russia led many churchmen to play a prominent role in the Slavophile movement. Slavophilism was itself a modern invention influenced by external forces: Aleksei Khomiakov, a n.o.bleman who was one of its first exponents and also one of Russian Orthodoxy's first ever lay theologians, was profoundly learned in Western history and culture and much influenced by German Romanticism. He also defiantly grew his beard when it was frowned on in upper-cla.s.s society, and urged his fellow Slavs to keep their distinctive clothing rather than adopt Western fas.h.i.+ons. Key to his thought was a concept which has become central to modern Russian Orthodox thinking, It is an irony that this yearning to be faithful to a tradition beyond Russia led many churchmen to play a prominent role in the Slavophile movement. Slavophilism was itself a modern invention influenced by external forces: Aleksei Khomiakov, a n.o.bleman who was one of its first exponents and also one of Russian Orthodoxy's first ever lay theologians, was profoundly learned in Western history and culture and much influenced by German Romanticism. He also defiantly grew his beard when it was frowned on in upper-cla.s.s society, and urged his fellow Slavs to keep their distinctive clothing rather than adopt Western fas.h.i.+ons. Key to his thought was a concept which has become central to modern Russian Orthodox thinking, Sobornost' Sobornost', the proposition that freedom is inseparable from unity, communion or community. In Khomiakov's view, the concept contained a critique of both halves of Western Christianity, as Catholicism presented unity without freedom and Protestantism freedom without unity. It was within a pan-Slav community that the Orthodox Church would carry out the divine commission entrusted to it, but (in ways which Khomiakov did not clearly specify) its historic destiny was also to bring the whole world under its 'roof'.82 For others in the Church, there was less inhibition about looking to Western liberalism or socialism. In St Petersburg, that most cosmopolitan of Russian cities, where the main streets were hospitable to an extraordinary spectrum of churches representing the variety of European Christianity, many Orthodox parish clergy spoke of social progress and questioned tsarist autocracy, in a fas.h.i.+on which had more in common than might be expected with the reformist mood of American Evangelical Protestantism. The ultimate fruit of this was the large part played by clergy in the reformist upheavals of 1905. It was then that Fr Georgii Gapon, a popular and charismatic (one might say headstrong) young St Petersburg parish priest, led a ma.s.s demonstration of unarmed workers in the city, demanding political and social reforms. The reaction of the government was to shoot them down, a piece of brutal stupidity which turned demonstrations into attempted revolution. The outburst of popular fury nearly destroyed the regime twelve years before its eventual fall, and left a lasting legacy of mistrust and contempt for imperial rule. It was remarkable how much support Fr Gapon had received from the Church authorities during his outspoken campaigns, but the b.l.o.o.d.y end to the events of 1905 left the Church bitterly divided as to how to proceed in an atmosphere of repression and censors.h.i.+p. A radical wing among its clergy, the Renovationists, would continue to seek ways of reconciling Christianity with the increasingly militant stance of angry workers in Russian cities.83 The dynamism and questioning of Russian Orthodoxy were paralleled by those experienced by Churches seeking to escape four centuries of second-cla.s.s status under Ottoman rule. Serbia and Greece were the first two regions to seize their freedom, and their different trajectories away from Constantinople were to cast long shadows into modern European politics. Serbia had little external help in its successful fight between 1815 and 1817 for independence, which was only acknowledged and given international recognition in 1878. Successive native dynasties were closely a.s.sociated with the creation of a Serbian Orthodox Church which was autocephalous (independent of the Oec.u.menical Patriarch). That new establishment followed historic precedents, and so the patriarch could regard it as a restoration of former independence; a deal was carefully negotiated with Constantinople. The Orthodox Church had been vital to the survival of a Serb consciousness over the centuries of occupation. Now it had little hesitation in identifying with an expansionist Serbian nationalism, fuelled by a view of history shot through with consciousness of heroic suffering, and inclined to look for support to Russia, which was formal guarantor of Serbian independence from 1830.

By contrast, when an independent state took shape in the Greek peninsula, the fascination of Western Europeans with the Cla.s.sical past complicated Greece's a.s.sertion of Orthodox values with a strong dose of Western liberalism. Greeks had in any case long enjoyed more commercial and travel contacts with the West than most other Orthodox, and it was noticeable that it was in Greece that Orthodoxy was faced with one of its own who had turned to expounding Enlightenment ideas in his own language. Christodoulos Pamblekis had been excommunicated in 1793: perhaps a resonant year even for churchmen far from Paris.84 The Church hierarchy was initially hostile to the Greek nationalist uprising because of the rebels' Western liberal rhetoric. The hostility was ended by the savagery of Ottoman reprisals for Greek ma.s.sacres of Turks in the peninsula in the 1820s, when thousands of clergy were killed, beginning with the Oec.u.menical Patriarch himself, hanged from his own palace gateway in the Phanar district. Ottoman violence outraged all Christian Europe, and military intervention by Britain, France and Russia eventually forced the Sultan to recognize an independent Greek state. The Church hierarchy was initially hostile to the Greek nationalist uprising because of the rebels' Western liberal rhetoric. The hostility was ended by the savagery of Ottoman reprisals for Greek ma.s.sacres of Turks in the peninsula in the 1820s, when thousands of clergy were killed, beginning with the Oec.u.menical Patriarch himself, hanged from his own palace gateway in the Phanar district. Ottoman violence outraged all Christian Europe, and military intervention by Britain, France and Russia eventually forced the Sultan to recognize an independent Greek state.85 The first head of what was planned as a republic, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was devoutly Orthodox, and he succeeded in winning over the new Oec.u.menical Patriarch, who recognized his innovative state in 1830. Chaos descended after Kapodistrias's a.s.sa.s.sination the following year. The three European great powers then adopted an expedient employed in the newly independent Belgium. In 1833 they imported a German prince to be monarch (there would be other such royal implants in newly independent Orthodox nations later in the century, with varying fortunes). Otto of Bavaria was a Catholic with Lutheran advisers, and his regime infuriated the Oec.u.menical Patriarch by unilaterally creating an unprecedented autocephalous state Church, with Otto as head. There was no historical precedent for this independent Church in Greece, unlike the Serbian situation. It was not until 1850 that the patriarch gave recognition to this miniature version of Peter the Great's ecclesiastical system in Russia (which, as we have seen, had itself derived from Lutheran models).

One reason that the Greek bishops eventually found this arrangement acceptable was that, although the monarchy might seem an alien graft, it backed the aspiration of the initially small-scale territorial state to expand and encompa.s.s Greeks scattered through the southern Balkans and Anatolia. The Greek State Church's new-found freedom and privilege were exhilarating after four centuries of humiliation, and not surprisingly it became vigorously nationalist. That brought its own tensions with other Orthodox national groupings, Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians, who had long resented the Greek domination of the patriarchate in Constantinople. Although the Ottoman Empire's decay did lead to enlargement of the kingdom of Greece in later wars, the ambition of Greeks for even greater gains was a catastrophe in the making for all Eastern Christians.

A different situation shaped first independent Church and then monarchy in Bulgaria. The delays in political independence, which the Bulgars did not formally achieve in full until 1909, threw all the greater attention on the status of their Church. That was tangled up with long-standing hostility between Greeks and Bulgarian-speakers, who resented the continuing favour shown to Greeks by the Oec.u.menical Patriarch. Matters came to a head in 1860 when one leading bishop announced the creation of an independent Bulgarian Church. The Ottoman authorities were only too happy to encourage Christian divisions: ten years later they formally recognized a Bulgarian exarch (a bishop whose authority over other bishops was similar to that of the six ancient patriarchates). It took until 1961 for the Oec.u.menical Patriarch to recognize the exarch's successors. The struggle between the exarchate and the Phanar was unusually bitter, and it produced a notable a.s.sertion of principle from the Oec.u.menical Patriarch. Faced with a situation where congregations and whole dioceses were declaring for the exarch on the basis of their common Bulgarian language and culture, in 1872 the Patriarch led a synod in Constantinople that condemned this as 'ethnophyletism', declaring it a heresy. The argument ran that there was no justification for an independent Church in Bulgaria, since it was still a territory under Ottoman suzerainty and with no other sovereign, unlike the Churches in the independent states of Serbia and Greece.

The denunciation of 'ethnophyletism' was a commitment to a vision of Orthodoxy which affirmed that it must never simply be an expression of nationalism or even of a single national culture. Despite the fact that from its first expansion into the Balkans, Orthodoxy has often become precisely such particular expressions, the affirmation of 1872 is likely to prove of great importance to Orthodoxy in the future. In practical and immediate terms, it did not prevent either the continuing de facto independence of the Bulgarian exarchate or the eventual development of a kingdom of Bulgaria which reflected the exarchate's boundaries. This was an unusually intimate melding of nationalism with the Church, which was treated by the monarchy rather in the fas.h.i.+on of Tsar Peter the Great and his successors in Russia (indeed, from 1908 until 1944, the monarchs of Bulgaria also styled themselves tsars). Ultimately this led to a routine politicization of Bulgarian Church leaders.h.i.+p which antagonized many laypeople, and that has been seen as one of the reasons for the eventual weakening of Bulgarian Orthodox practice in the twentieth century. Despite the Church's crucial role in creating modern Bulgaria, the post-Communist republic now has one of the lowest rates of partic.i.p.ation in Church life of any Orthodox country in Eastern Europe.86 As the Ottoman authorities suffered humiliating losses of territory to new Christian polities which justified independence precisely by their Christian ident.i.ty, it was not surprising that sultans were increasingly inclined to see their remaining Christian subjects as a threat to their survival, and emphasize their authority with reference to their Muslim ident.i.ty. Since their sixteenth-century conquest of Egypt with its Abbasid caliphate, Ottoman sultans had a.s.serted their claim to be caliph, but it was only in the reign of Abdul Hamid II at the end of the nineteenth century that a sultan (in turns reformist and arbitrarily violent) chose to emphasize his role as protector of all Muslims. This was a desperate grab for enhanced spiritual authority by a monarchy losing control, rather like the pope's claim of infallibility at the moment of the loss of the Papal States.87 By the end of the nineteenth century, the sultan presided over an empire still multinational and multi-confessional, but in which the traditional mesh of understandings between faith groups was being much eroded, and much more was being said about the Islamic character of Ottoman rule. By the end of the nineteenth century, the sultan presided over an empire still multinational and multi-confessional, but in which the traditional mesh of understandings between faith groups was being much eroded, and much more was being said about the Islamic character of Ottoman rule.

Earlier in the century, the Ottoman rulers' pursuit of Tanzimat Tanzimat ('reorganization') brought modernizing reforms in edicts of 1839 and 1856 which dismantled the ('reorganization') brought modernizing reforms in edicts of 1839 and 1856 which dismantled the millet millet system of separate religious communities. This provoked a good deal of resentment from Muslims, who now saw former second-cla.s.s status groups claim equality with themselves - and more than that, gain favour and economic preference from a variety of Christian European powers who were interesting themselves in the affairs of the Middle East. These were developments fraught with danger for Christian minorities. There was little inter-communal trouble in the Arab portions of the empire, where after one bad outburst of violence in 1860 in Lebanon and Syria, Muslims, Christians and Jews tended to develop a sense of common Arab ident.i.ty under Ottoman auspices. The problem was further north, where Russian imperial religious intolerance sent hundreds of thousands of Muslims fleeing for refuge over the Russo-Ottoman border into Ottoman territories, decade on decade. There seemed good reason to distrust and envy Christians. system of separate religious communities. This provoked a good deal of resentment from Muslims, who now saw former second-cla.s.s status groups claim equality with themselves - and more than that, gain favour and economic preference from a variety of Christian European powers who were interesting themselves in the affairs of the Middle East. These were developments fraught with danger for Christian minorities. There was little inter-communal trouble in the Arab portions of the empire, where after one bad outburst of violence in 1860 in Lebanon and Syria, Muslims, Christians and Jews tended to develop a sense of common Arab ident.i.ty under Ottoman auspices. The problem was further north, where Russian imperial religious intolerance sent hundreds of thousands of Muslims fleeing for refuge over the Russo-Ottoman border into Ottoman territories, decade on decade. There seemed good reason to distrust and envy Christians.88 In 1843 came a grim precedent: a series of ma.s.sacres of Dyophysite Christian mountain communities by Kurds in what is now Iranian Azerbaijan, provoked by anger at Western missionary activity and Russian military advances. Equally ghastly were a series of ma.s.sacres of Armenians in the Caucasus and further south during the 1890s, which included the burning alive in 1895 of several thousand Armenians in their cathedral in Urfa - once that venerable Christian centre, Edessa. In 1843 came a grim precedent: a series of ma.s.sacres of Dyophysite Christian mountain communities by Kurds in what is now Iranian Azerbaijan, provoked by anger at Western missionary activity and Russian military advances. Equally ghastly were a series of ma.s.sacres of Armenians in the Caucasus and further south during the 1890s, which included the burning alive in 1895 of several thousand Armenians in their cathedral in Urfa - once that venerable Christian centre, Edessa.89 All this heralded even worse times to come, whose lasting effects threaten Christianity's ability to survive in the lands of its origin. All this heralded even worse times to come, whose lasting effects threaten Christianity's ability to survive in the lands of its origin.

MASTERS OF SUSPICION: GEOLOGY, BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND ATHEISM.

While in Ottoman lands Christianity found itself under one form of attack, developments that had started with the Enlightenment led to another, asking whether the Christian picture of G.o.d was believable. During the eighteenth century, the Newtonian system of mechanics and the deism a.s.sociated with it seemed to safeguard the place of G.o.d as creator, and little in scientific discoveries seemed to suggest a denial of the biblical idea of a benevolent maker of the universe. Indeed, the mood of intelligent Christians was symbolized by the immense popularity in England of an apologetic book by the Cambridge mathematician and theologian William Paley, his View of the Evidences of Christianity View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). This was the work which made much of 'G.o.d the watchmaker', an image whose antecedents could already be found in pre-Christian philosophy: its argument for G.o.d's existence was based on the evidences for design in creation. The intricate structure of a watch could never have come about by chance, and neither could the intricacy or even adaptation and change in nature. (1794). This was the work which made much of 'G.o.d the watchmaker', an image whose antecedents could already be found in pre-Christian philosophy: its argument for G.o.d's existence was based on the evidences for design in creation. The intricate structure of a watch could never have come about by chance, and neither could the intricacy or even adaptation and change in nature.90 Against this background, there developed an enthusiasm for a systematic physical exploration of the landscape, described by a new word-coinage, 'geology'. This made it clear that traditional estimates of the date of biblical creation such as Ussher's 4004 BCE bore no relation to the reality of the huge epochs of the earth's existence. From the late eighteenth century, investigations in France laid down the way to proceed. The pioneer zoologist Georges Cuvier patiently mapped out the strata of the Paris river-basin even as the French Revolution raged about him; he showed that there could be a history of rocks and extinct creatures, just as there was a history of human empires.91 When English scholars added their contributions to this work, many of them were devout and orthodox Anglican clergy, led by the cheerfully learned and multifariously curious William Buckland, who kept a hyena at home as much for the enjoyment of its company as for research, and announced his intention of eating his way through the whole range of created animals. Geological work offered no problem to faith for such scholars; for them, creation stories in Genesis merely spoke figuratively of the time-spans involved in G.o.d's plan. When Buckland recognized extinct fossil species, apparently changing in regular fas.h.i.+on over time, this was an additional proof of G.o.d's providence: all earthly things have a tendency to decay, given the fallenness of creation, but G.o.d had provided for their replacement by creating new species. 'Erratic' rocks traceable to some rockbed large distances away after age-old glacial movements in ice ages seemed satisfying proof of the Flood's universal reach. When English scholars added their contributions to this work, many of them were devout and orthodox Anglican clergy, led by the cheerfully learned and multifariously curious William Buckland, who kept a hyena at home as much for the enjoyment of its company as for research, and announced his intention of eating his way through the whole range of created animals. Geological work offered no problem to faith for such scholars; for them, creation stories in Genesis merely spoke figuratively of the time-spans involved in G.o.d's plan. When Buckland recognized extinct fossil species, apparently changing in regular fas.h.i.+on over time, this was an additional proof of G.o.d's providence: all earthly things have a tendency to decay, given the fallenness of creation, but G.o.d had provided for their replacement by creating new species. 'Erratic' rocks traceable to some rockbed large distances away after age-old glacial movements in ice ages seemed satisfying proof of the Flood's universal reach.

This picture was abruptly made less comforting by the work of Charles Darwin, once a prospective clergyman, who in 1835 turned from an early and not especially fruitful interest in geology to observing natural phenomena on the remote Pacific islands of the Galapagos, during a voyage which was actually launched with the main purpose of expanding Christian missionary work. He noted the remarkable differences in animal and plant species here from anywhere else, and indeed from island to island, and at first he marvelled at the insight which this gave into what G.o.d's creation had originally been like. But in 1837, reflecting on what he had seen, a wholly new idea came to him: perhaps these new species were not relics of Eden, but instead the end product of an immensely long chain of development in isolation from the rest of the world. Over the next two years, he worked from this perception to produce a theory of evolution which totally contradicted the world view of Paley (previously among his most treasured authorities). The only way in which Darwin's data made sense was to suppose that species battled for survival, and that evolution came when one slight adaptation of a species proved more successful than another in the battle: a process which he named 'natural selection'. There was nothing benevolent about the providence which watched over the process. Reason was served her notice as the handmaid of Christian revelation.

Darwin was by no means the first to popularize evolution. In 1844 the Scottish publisher and amateur geologist Robert Chambers presented the idea in his anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, in many ways an eccentric and credulous book, despite the elegance of Chambers's literary style, but hugely popular. Chambers was himself an interesting product of evolution, since he possessed twin sets of six fingers and six toes. It was easier to rebut him than Darwin, who in contrast to the apparent atheism of Chambers's work (Chambers was in reality a deist) ended On the Origin of Species On the Origin of Species in 1859 with a lyrical reference to the 'grandeur' breathed into life by the Creator 'from so simple a beginning'. in 1859 with a lyrical reference to the 'grandeur' breathed into life by the Creator 'from so simple a beginning'.92 Between that much-revised work and his later major book Between that much-revised work and his later major book The Descent of Man The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin retreated from his insistence on natural selection; subsequent work on genetics stemming from the observations of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel shows that he should have stuck to his earlier insight. Yet he remained unmoved in his central contention that humankind was not a special creation of G.o.d, but part of the chain of evolution. His family in its various ramifications had been at the heart of William Wilberforce's and Thomas Clarkson's fight against slavery since the 1780s (see pp. 870-73), and Darwin was no exception to that general enthusiasm, even if he left behind the Evangelical Christianity which had inspired so many of his relatives. He saw his experimental demonstrations of the essential unity of all life as affirmations of the unity of all humankind across racial divides. Whatever uses so-called 'scientific' racists have made of the theory of evolution are perpetrated in the face of Darwin's ringing affirmations in in 1871, Darwin retreated from his insistence on natural selection; subsequent work on genetics stemming from the observations of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel shows that he should have stuck to his earlier insight. Yet he remained unmoved in his central contention that humankind was not a special creation of G.o.d, but part of the chain of evolution. His family in its various ramifications had been at the heart of William Wilberforce's and Thomas Clarkson's fight against slavery since the 1780s (see pp. 870-73), and Darwin was no exception to that general enthusiasm, even if he left behind the Evangelical Christianity which had inspired so many of his relatives. He saw his experimental demonstrations of the essential unity of all life as affirmations of the unity of all humankind across racial divides. Whatever uses so-called 'scientific' racists have made of the theory of evolution are perpetrated in the face of Darwin's ringing affirmations in The Descent of Man The Descent of Man: all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities, that these can be accounted for only through inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterized would probably have deserved to rank as man.93 There has been no intellectually serious scientific challenge to Darwin's general propositions since his time. The modern conservative Christian (and Islamic) fas.h.i.+on for Creationism is no more than a set of circular logical arguments, and Creationist 'science' has been unique among modern aspirations to scientific systems in producing no original discoveries at all. From the 1860s, the idea of evolution gained wide acceptance among the educated public of the Western world, which was still overwhelmingly Christian in outlook and belief. Darwinian theory fitted the Hegelian scheme of an evolutionary univers