We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2015
“Rationalism” became the subject of intense debate in nineteenth-century Britain. This article asks why this was so, by focusing on the usage and implications of the term in contemporary argument. Rationalism was successively defined and redefined in ways that reached to the heart of Victorian epistemological and religious discussion. By treating rationalism as a contextually specific term, and examining how its implications changed between the 1820s and the early twentieth century, the article brings new perspectives to bear on the development of nineteenth-century freethought and countervailing religious apologetic. It underlines the importance of history, and constructions of intellectual lineage, as ways of establishing the relationship between rationality and religion in a progressively wider-ranging Victorian debate about the sources of knowledge and value.
1 Rose, Hugh James, The State of the Protestant Religion in Germany; in a Series of Discourses Preached before the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1825), 6 Google Scholar.
2 Harrison, Jane E., Rationalism and Religious Reaction: Delivered at South Place Institute on March 6, 1919 (London, 1919), 16–17 Google Scholar.
3 Benn, Alfred William, The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1906), 1: 1–3Google Scholar.
4 “The empirical philosophers are like to pismires . . . the rationalists are like the spiders,” Francis Bacon wrote in his Apophthegmes. In the eighteenth century, the Church of Scotland divine Thomas Boston complained of the “rationalism” subverting Christ's gospel: “rationalist, n. and adj.,” and “rationalism, n.,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, 13 Sept. 2015.
5 I.e. “rationalist,” “rationalistic,” and “rationalizing.”
6 Anglophone intellectual historians have sometimes expressed reservations towards Begriffsgeschichte on the grounds that writing the history of a determinate concept, if this is indeed what the approach involves, is inherently presentist. To avoid this problem—which partly stems from the difficulty of rendering Begriff into English—I will use a semantic focus on the usage of the term “rationalism” as a means of uncovering the often distinct concepts with which it was invested. Begriffsgeschichte's guiding idea is blamelessly Kantian: “keine Erfahrungen ohne Begriffe und keine Begriffe ohne Erfahrungen”: Koselleck, Reinhart, “Die Geschichte der Begriffe und Begriffe der Geschichte,” in Dutt, Carsten, ed., Herausforderungen der Begriffsgeschichte (Heidelberg, 2003), 3–16, at 3Google Scholar. For discussions of Begriffsgeschichte see Koselleck, , “ Begriffsgeschichte and social history,” in Koselleck, , Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York, 2004), [75]–92Google Scholar; Richter, Melvin, “Pocock, Skinner, and Begriffsgeschichte ,” in Richter, , The History of Social and Political Concepts: An Introduction (New York, 1995), 124–42Google Scholar; the discussion in Dixon, Thomas's The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2008), 33–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is especially suggestive. Rationalism apparently does not pass muster as a historical Grundbegriff: Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner and Koselleck, Reinhart, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprachen in Deutschland, 8 vols. (Stuttgart, 1972–97)Google Scholar.
7 Schwartz, Laura, Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women's Emancipation, England 1830–1914 (Manchester and New York, 2013), 12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Royle, Edward, Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement 1791–1866 (Manchester, 1974), 126–45Google Scholar; Royle, , “Secularists and Rationalists, 1800–1940,” in Gilley, Sheridan and Sheils, W. J., eds., A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the Present (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1994), 406–22Google Scholar. Bill Cooke's history of the Rationalist Press Association recognizes that the term “rationalist” was seen to be more capacious than that, but does not consider its longer-term history. Cooke, Bill, The Blasphemy Depot: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association (Oldham, 2003), 23–6Google Scholar.
9 Turner, Frank M., “The Victorian Crisis of Faith and the Faith That Was Lost,” in Helmstadter, Richard J., ed., Victorian Faith in crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief (Basingstoke and London, 1990), 9–38, at 9Google Scholar; Chadwick, Owen, “The Mind of the Oxford Movement,” in Chadwick, , The Spirit of the Oxford Movement: Tractarian Essays (Cambridge, 1990), 1–53, at 2 Google Scholar. Chadwick has recently been quoted by Rowell, Geoffrey, “Europe and the Oxford Movement,” in Brown, Stewart J. and Nockles, Peter B., eds., The Oxford Movement: Europe and the Wider World 1830–1930 (Cambridge, 2012), 153–67, at 154 Google Scholar.
10 Hinchliff, Peter, God and History: Aspects of British Theology 1875–1914 (Oxford, 1992), 21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reardon, Bernard M. G., Religious Thought in the Victorian Age: A Survey from Coleridge to Gore, 2nd edn (Harlow, 1995), 4, 180Google Scholar; Barbeau, Jeffrey W., Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion (New York and Basingstoke, 2008), 63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larsen, Timothy, Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology (Waco, TX, 2004), 50 Google Scholar.
11 Cf. Mee, John, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford, 1992), 1–18 Google Scholar.
12 Dixon, The Invention of Altruism; Lightman, Bernard, The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge (Baltimore, 1987)Google Scholar; Lightman, Bernard and Reidy, Michael S., eds., The Age of Scientific Naturalism: Tyndall and His Contemporaries (London, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cashdollar, Charles, The Transformation of Theology, 1830–1890: Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America (Princeton, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, T. R., The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Turner, Frank M., Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar. Bowler treats rationalism as a radicalization of scientific naturalism, but without entering into the full connotations of the word. Bowler, Peter J., “From Agnosticism to Rationalism: Evolutionary Biologists, the Rationalist Press Association, and Early Twentieth-Century Scientific Naturalism,” in Dawson, Gowan and Lightman, Bernard, eds., Victorian Scientific Naturalism: Community, Identity, Continuity (Chicago and London, 2014), 309–26Google Scholar.
13 For example, Bivins, Roberta E. and Pickstone, John V., eds., Medicine, Madness and Social History: Essays in Honour of Roy Porter (Basingstoke, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scull, Andrew, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain 1700–1900 (New Haven and London, 1993)Google Scholar; Bynum, W. F., Porter, Roy and Shepherd, Michael, eds., The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, 3 vols. (London and New York, 1985–8)Google Scholar; Skultans, Vieda, Madness and Morals: Ideas on Insanity in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1975)Google Scholar. The history of modern psychology has offered a different route into the problem of mind: Rylance, Rick, Victorian Psychology and British Culture 1850–1880 (Oxford, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomson, Mathew, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 For example, Yeo, Richard R., Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge, and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porter, Theodore M., “Reason, Faith, and Alienation in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle,” in Bödeker, Hans Erich, Reill, Peter Hanns and Schlumbohm, Jürgen, eds., Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis, 1750–1900 (Göttingen, 1999), 401–13 Google Scholar; Ruse, Michael, “William Whewell: Omniscientist,” in Fisch, Menachem and Schaffer, Simon, eds., William Whewell: A Composite Portrait (Oxford, 1991), [87]–116Google Scholar.
15 Cf. Young, Brian W., The Victorian Eighteenth Century: An Intellectual History (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Cf. Forbes, Duncan, The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (Cambridge, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ashton, Rosemary, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar; Wende, Peter and Stuchtey, Benedikt, eds., British and German Historiography, 1750–1950: Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar. A thematic history of British engagement with German biblical criticism remains to be written; Larsen, Timothy, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, largely omits the question. But there have been promising beginnings: Rogerson, John, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Paget, J. C., “The Reception of Baur in Britain,” in Bauspiess, M., Landmesser, Christof and Lincicum, D., eds., Ferdinand Christian Baur und die Geschichte des frühen Christentums (Tübingen, 2014), 335–86Google Scholar.
17 Nockles, Peter B., “Rose, Hugh James (1795–1838),” in Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), hereafter ODNB Google Scholar.
18 Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, “Protestantische Theologie und die Formierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft,” in Graf, , ed., Profile des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus, 2 vols. (Gütersloh, 1990–1992), 1: 16–29 Google Scholar.
19 Farrar, Adam Storey, A Critical History of Freethought in Reference to the Christian Religion (London, 1862), 589–91Google Scholar.
20 Stephan, Horst and Schmidt, Martin, Geschichte der evangelischen Theologie in Deutschland seit dem Idealismus, 3rd edn (Berlin and New York, 1973), 74–83 Google Scholar.
21 G. Frank, “Wegscheider, Julius August Ludwig,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1896), 427–32, online edn, at www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd119540347.html?anchor=adb, accessed 15 Sept. 2015; Wegscheider's chief work was his Institutiones Theologiae Christianae Dogmaticae (Halle, 1815).
22 Hagel, Maurus, Der Rationalismus im Gegensatze zu dem Christenthume (Sulzbach, 1835), 4–5 Google Scholar; Neander, A., “Christliche Dogmengeschichte,” ed. Jacobi, J. L., in Neander, Theologische Vorlesungen, ed. J. Müller, 5 parts (Berlin, 1864), Part I, 229–30Google Scholar.
23 Harris, Horton, The Tübingen School: A Historical and Theological Investigation of the School of F. C. Baur, 2nd edn (Leicester, 1990), 1–2 Google Scholar; Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, 28–49, 63–9. For a synoptic account of the development of theology in nineteenth-century Germany see Zachhuber, Johannes, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany: From F. C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Zachhuber, Theology as Science, 1–23.
25 Valone, David A., “Hugh James Rose's Anglican Critique of Cambridge: Science, Antirationalism, and Coleridgean Idealism in Late Georgian England,” Albion, 33/2 (2001), 218–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Rose, The State of the Protestant Religion, 39–53, 67–9, 82–3, 113, 126, 141; Rose, , The State of Protestantism in Germany Described; Being the Substance of Four Discourses Preached before the University of Cambridge in 1825, 2nd edn (London, 1829), ix–x, xvii–xxiv, 182–5Google Scholar.
27 Rose, The State of the Protestant Religion, xii–xiii, 1, 6.
28 Peter G. Cobb, “Pusey, Edward Bouverie (1800–1882),” ODNB; Pusey, Edward Bouverie, An Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in Germany (London, 1828)Google Scholar.
29 On the place of this essay in Pusey's development see Frappell, Leighton, “‘Science’ in the Service of Orthodoxy: The Early Intellectual Development of E. B. Pusey,” in Butler, Perry, ed., Pusey Rediscovered (London, 1983), 1–33 Google Scholar.
30 Pusey, Historical Enquiry, vii–xii, 3–5.
31 Ibid., 127–30, 137–43.
32 Ibid., 115 n., 155–71.
33 Rose, The State of the Protestant Religion, 8–10, 93–9.
34 Myfanwy J. Lloyd, “The Historical Thought of S. T. Coleridge: The Later Prose Works” (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1998), 44–94, 168–240.
35 Hare, Julius Charles, The Mission of the Comforter and Other Sermons with Notes, 2 vols. (London, 1846), 1: xii–xivGoogle Scholar.
36 Schleiermacher, F. D. E., A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke [trans. Connop Thirlwall] (London, 1825)Google Scholar; Milman, Henry Hart, The History of the Jews, 3 vols. (London, 1829)Google Scholar; cf. [Anon.], “Milman's History of the Jews,” Eclectic Review, 4 (1830), 50–58, at 55; [Anon.], “Rose and Pusey—on Rationalism,” British Critic, Quarterly Review and Ecclesiastical Record, 6/12 (1829), 469–85, at 469, 485.
37 For example, McCaul, Alexander, Rationalism and Deistic Infidelity: Three Letters to the Editor of “The Record” Newspaper (London, 1861), 3–10, 12, 29Google Scholar; [Pattison, Mark], “Learning in the Church of England,” National Review, 16/31 (1863), 187–220, at 198 Google Scholar. On this text and its reception see Whitla, William and Shea, Victor, eds., Essays and Reviews: The 1860 Text and Its Reading (Charlottesville and London, 2000)Google Scholar.
38 Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols. (London, 1865)Google Scholar.
39 T. W. Bayne, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, “Tulloch, John (1823–1886),” ODNB.
40 Tulloch, John, Theological Tendencies of the Age: An Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Opening of St Mary's College on Tuesday, the 28th November 1854 (Edinburgh, 1855), 5–12 Google Scholar.
41 Ibid., 14–16.
42 Ibid., 18, original emphasis.
43 Newman, Francis William, Phases of Faith; or, Passages from the History of my Creed (London, 1850)Google Scholar.
44 Tulloch, Theological Tendencies, 20–28.
45 Mansel, Henry Longueville, The Limits of Religious Thought Examined in Eight Lectures, Preached before the University of Oxford, in the Year M.DCCC.LVIII (Oxford, 1858)Google Scholar.
46 Lightman, The Origins of Agnosticism, 32–67.
47 Mansel, The Limits of Religious Thought, 4–5, original emphasis.
48 Ibid., 273–8.
49 Lightman, Bernard, “Henry Longueville Mansel and the Origins of Agnosticism,” History of European Ideas, 5/1 (1984), 45–64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50 Cobbe, Frances Power, Broken Lights: An Inquiry into the Present Condition & Future Prospects of Religious Faith, 2nd edn (London, 1865 Google Scholar; first published 1864), 6–7, 139–92; Cobbe, , An Essay on Intuitive Morals, Being an Attempt to Popularise Ethical Science, 2 vols. (London, 1855–7), 1: vi–xii, 55–68, 2: xi, 20–21 Google Scholar; Barbara Caine, “Cobbe, Frances Power (1822–1904),” ODNB; Schwartz, Infidel Feminism, 61–86.
51 Beard, Charles, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge: Lectures Delivered at Oxford and in London, in April, May, and June, 1883 (London and Edinburgh, 1883), 377 Google Scholar.
52 Joseph Spence, “Lecky, (William) Edward Hartpole (1838–1903),” ODNB.
53 Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism, 1: 182.
54 Ibid., 1: xviii–xix.
55 Ibid., 1: 317–18.
56 Ibid., 1: xxi.
57 Ibid., 1: 177–9, 194 and n. 1.
58 Ibid., 1: 182.
59 Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, 2 vols. (London, 1869), 1: 1–158CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism, 2: 404, 405. On Lecky's ambivalent view of progress see von Arx, Jeffrey Paul, Progress and Pessimism: Religion, Politics, and History in Late Nineteenth Century Britain (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985), 64–123 Google Scholar.
61 Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism, 1: vii.
62 Ibid., 1: xxi.
63 John Tulloch, “Rationalism,” Contemporary Review, 1 (1866), 361–84, at 364–6. Tulloch's own thought along these lines reached fruition in Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1872).
64 [Henry Reeve], “Lecky's Influence of Rationalism,” Edinburgh Review, 121/248 (1865), 426–55, at 427–8; Trev Lynn Broughton, “Reeve, Henry (1813–1895),” ODNB.
65 [James Fitzjames Stephen], “Mr. Lecky on Rationalism,” Fraser's Magazine, 72/431 (1865), 537–64, at 541.
66 Ibid., 560–61; cf. Smith, K. J. M., James Fitzjames Stephen: Portrait of a Victorian Rationalist (Cambridge, 1988), 229–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 George Eliot, “The Influence of Rationalism,” Fortnightly Review, 15 May 1865, 43–55, at 55.
68 Royle, Victorian Infidels, 126–45, does not extend his consideration of Victorian rationalism beyond these limits.
69 Holyoake, G. Jacob, Rationalism: A Treatise for the Times (London, 1845), 30–31, original emphasisGoogle Scholar.
70 Wheeler, J. M., “Biographical Sketch,” in Newman, Charles Robert, Essays in Rationalism (London, 1891), 7–16, at 7 Google Scholar.
71 Newman, Essays, 50–55.
72 Ibid., 58.
73 Gould, Frederick James, The Pioneers of Johnson's Court: A History of the Rationalist Press Association from 1899 Onwards, rev. edn (London, 1935), 23 Google Scholar.
74 Cooke, The Blasphemy Depot, 23–6; cf. Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 1: 12–15.
75 McCabe, Joseph, Modern Rationalism, rev. edn (London, 1909), 7, original emphasisGoogle Scholar.
76 Ibid., 9–12; cf. Robertson, , A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (London, 1899), 224–34Google Scholar.
77 McCabe, Modern Rationalism, 149–81; on the origin of the idea of “warfare” between science and religion see Moore, James R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 McCabe, Modern Rationalism, 149–81, 188–9. On altruism and evolution see Dixon, The Invention of Altruism, 273–320.
79 McCabe, Modern Rationalism, p. 144.
80 Henslow, George, Present-Day Rationalism Critically Examined (London, 1904), v–vi, 17–27, 221Google Scholar.
81 Henson, Herbert Hensley, Notes on Popular Rationalism (London, 1904), 1, 5 Google Scholar.
82 Robertson, J. M., The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions (London, 1916), 201–10Google Scholar; on Robertson's New Testament views see Schweitzer, A., The Quest of the Historical Jesus, ed. Bowden, J. (London, 2000), 355–90Google Scholar.
83 Robertson, J. M., Rationalism (London, 1912), 33–4Google Scholar.
84 Ibid., 75.
85 McCabe, Modern Rationalism, 17–103.
86 Ibid., 16.
87 Robertson, Rationalism, 80–81; Robertson, Short History of Freethought, 385–6; Robertson, , “Rationalism and Religion,” in Robertson, , Spoken Essays (London, 1925), 192 Google Scholar. On the afterlives of Paine in nineteenth-century secularism see Royle, Edward, Thomas Paine and Nineteenth Century Freethought (Nottingham, 2003)Google Scholar.
88 Robertson, J. M., Buckle and His Critics: A Study in Sociology (London, 1895), 7–8 Google Scholar; Buckle, Henry Thomas, History of Civilization in England, 2 vols. (London, 1857–1861)Google Scholar; it may be revealing, in the light of how contemporaries were arguing about rationalism at the time of publication, that Buckle did not coopt the term for his purposes.
89 Robertson, Historical Jesus, 204 n. 1; Robertson, Rationalism, 62–3.
90 Robertson, Rationalism, 44–6; Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 1: 284.
91 Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 2: 405–10.
92 Ibid., 186.
93 Robertson, J. M., A History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1929)Google Scholar.
94 Robertson, Rationalism, 76–7.
95 Robertson, , A Short History of Christianity (London, 1902), 390–99Google Scholar.
96 Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 1: 285–95.
97 Henson, Popular Rationalism, 95.
98 McCabe, Joseph, From Rome to Rationalism or Why I Left the Church (London, 1905), 5–6 Google Scholar.
99 Robertson, J. M., Letters on Reasoning, 2nd edn (London, 1905), 93 Google Scholar.
100 Ibid., 6–8, original emphasis.
101 Wheeler, “Biographical Sketch,” 15–16.
102 Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 1: 262–3.
103 [Anon.], Constructive Rationalism (London, 1876), 5.
104 Russell, John, The Task of Rationalism in Retrospect and Prospect (London, 1910), 23–49 Google Scholar; for identification see frontispiece to Russell, , A History of the Nottingham Subscription Library More Generally Known as Bromley House Library (Nottingham, 1916)Google Scholar.
105 Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 2: 186.
106 Ibid., 1: 6.
107 Robertson, “Rationalism and Religion,” 190–222.
108 Cf. Eisen, Sydney, “Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer: Embattled Unbelievers,” Victorian Studies, 12 (1968), 33–56 Google Scholar.
109 Balfour, Arthur James, The Foundations of Belief: Being Notes Introductory to the Study of Theology (London, 1895)Google Scholar.
110 Robertson, Rationalism, 47–9.
111 Henslow, Present-Day Rationalism, 3–4; McCabe's praise for Alexander Bain in Modern Rationalism, 15; cf. Rylance, Victorian Psychology, 55–109.
112 Turner, Between Science and Religion, 104–33.
113 Rylance, Victorian Psychology, 101–2.
114 James, William, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York, London and Bombay, 1897), viiiGoogle Scholar; James, , The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London and New York, 1902)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
115 William James, “The sentiment of rationality,” in James, The Will to Believe, 63–110.
116 Robertson, Short History of Freethought, 9 and n.
117 Benn, The History of English Rationalism, 1: 19–20.
118 Gilbert Murray, “Chairman's Introductory Address,” in Harrison, Rationalism, 6–7.
119 Harrison, Rationalism, 16–17.
120 Harrison, Rationalism, 16–17, original emphasis. On the sources of Harrison's interest in Greek ritual see Beard, Mary, The Invention of Jane Harrison (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2000), 109–28Google Scholar; Ackerman, Robert, The Myth and Ritual School: J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists (New York and London, 1991)Google Scholar.
121 Nash, David, Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History (Oxford, 2007), 233 Google Scholar.
122 On this interface between past and present in particular fields see, for example, Hadden, Jeffrey K., “Towards Desacralizing Secularization Theory,” Social Forces, 65 (1987), 587–611 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borutta, M., Antikatholizismus: Deutschland und Italien im Zeitalter der europäischen Kulturkämpfe (Göttingen, 2010)Google Scholar; Adamson, J. S. A., “Eminent Victorians: S. R. Gardiner and the Liberal as Hero,” Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 641–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bentley, Michael, Modernizing England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870–1970 (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar.
