Episode 34. Liberalism and the Non-Conformist Conscience

SYNOPSIS

Buoyed by their participation in the successful anti-slavery campaigns, the Christian denominations which had been historically excluded by the British State and Church began a slow process of re-engagement with politics.

The Episode explores how sects derived from the Old Dissent (Independents, Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitarians and Quakers) and the new Dissent (various strands of Methodism) came together under the banner of non-conformity. With the exception of the Unitarians and some Quakers, these chapel goers were influenced by the Evangelical Revival and formed political and cultural partnerships which transcended their denominations.

Linked historically to land patterns where Anglicanism was weakest, dissenters and non-conformists joined nineteenth campaigns for reform, retrenchment and international peace. These encompassed free trade, the advocacy of religious tolerance internationally, disestablishment of the state church, temperance, Irish Home Rule, education and high ethical standards in public life. William Ewart Gladstone was the politician who most closely embodied these values, and many non-conformist hitched their political aspirations to the Liberal Party.

The Liberal Administration from 1906 to 1914 represented the high watermark of non-conformist influence under the leadership from 1908 of Herbert Asquith, an establishment figure who had shed his childhood non-conformist roots. The House of Lord’s fiscal teeth were drawn, early welfare measures (such as free school meals and pensions) introduced and the Welsh Church Act passed, terminating the Church of England in Wales. Only the First World War and the emergence of the Labour Party saw the diffusion of Liberal and non-conformist influence.

GUEST

Raised in non-conformist circles in Nottingham, Professor David Bebbington is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Stirling. and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is widely known for his definition of evangelicalism, referred to as the Bebbington Quadrilateral, which was first delineated in his 1989 classic, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. These four characteristics are the Bible, the Cross, Conversion and Activism.

David’s interview with Simon Machin was recorded at Westminster College, Cambridge on 16 October 2023.