General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

2. EXPANSION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF RELIGIOUS EQUALITY.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND RELIGIOUS EQUALITY.—Alongside the political movement traced in the preceding section has run a similar one in the religious realm. This is a growing recognition by the English people of the true principle of religious toleration.

At the opening of the nineteenth century there was in England religious freedom, but no religious equality. That is to say, one might be a Catholic or a dissenter, if he chose to be, without fear of persecution. Dissent from the Established Church was not unlawful. But one's being a dissenter disqualified him from holding certain public offices. Where there exists such discrimination against any religious sect, or where any one sect is favored or sustained by the government, there of course is no religious equality, although there may be religious freedom. Progress in this direction, then, has consisted in the growth of a really tolerant spirit, which has led to the removal from Catholics, Protestant dissenters, and Jews all civil disabilities, and the placing of all sects on an absolute equality before the law. This is but a completion of the work of the Protestant Reformation.

METHODISM AND ITS EFFECTS UPON TOLERATION.—One thing that helped to bring prominently forward the question of emancipating non-conformists from the civil disabilities under which they were placed, was the great religious movement known as Methodism, which during the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century revolutionized the religious life of England. [Footnote: The leaders of the movement were George Whitefield (1714-1770) and John Wesley (1703-1791). Whitefield became the leader of the Calvinistic Methodists, and Wesley the founder of the sect known as Wesleyans. The Methodists at first had no thought of establishing a church distinct from the Anglican, but simply aimed to form within the Established Church a society of earnest, devout laymen, somewhat like that of the Young Men's Christian Association in our present churches. Petty persecution, however, eventually constrained them to go out from the established organization and form a Church of their own. This of course constituted them dissenters.] By vastly increasing the body of Protestant dissenters, Methodism gave new strength to the agitation for the repeal of the laws which bore so heavily upon them.

DISABILITIES REMOVED FROM PROTESTANT DISSENTERS (1828).—One of the earliest and most important of the acts of Parliament in this century in recognition of the principle of religious equality, was the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, in so far as they bore upon Protestant dissenters. These were acts passed in the reign of Charles II., which required every officer of a corporation, and all persons holding civil and military positions, to take certain oaths, and partake of the communion according to the rites of the Anglican Church. It is true that these laws were not now strictly enforced; nevertheless, the laws were invidious and vexatious, and the Protestant dissenters demanded their repeal. The result of the debate in Parliament was the repeal of such parts of the ancient acts as it was necessary to rescind in order to relieve Protestant dissenters,—that is, the provision requiring persons holding office to be communicants of the Anglican Church.

DISABILITIES REMOVED FROM THE CATHOLICS (1829).—The bill of 1828 gave no relief to Catholics. They were still excluded from Parliament and various civil offices by the declarations of belief and the oaths required of office-holders,—declarations and oaths which no good Catholic could conscientiously make. They now demanded that the same concessions be made them that had been granted Protestant dissenters. The ablest champion of Catholic emancipation was the eloquent Daniel O'Connell, an Irish patriot.

A threatened revolt on the part of the Irish Catholics hurried the progress of what was known as the Catholic Emancipation Act through Parliament. This law opened all the offices of the kingdom, below the crown,—save that of Lord Chancellor of England and Ireland, the Viceroyalty of Ireland, and a few others,—to the Catholic subjects of the realm.

DISABILITIES REMOVED FROM THE JEWS.—The Jews were still laboring under all the disabilities which had now been removed from Protestant dissenters and Catholics. In 1845 an act was passed by Parliament which so changed the oath required for admission to corporate offices—the oath contained the words "on the faith of a Christian"—as to open them to Jews.

In 1858, after a long and unseemly struggle, the House of Commons was opened to the long-proscribed race; and about a quarter of a century later, the House of Lords admitted to a seat Baron Rothschild, the first peer of Hebrew faith that had ever sat in that body.

DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE IRISH CHURCH (1869).—Forty years after the
Catholic Emancipation Act, the English government took another great step
in the direction of religious equality, by the disestablishment of the
State Church in Ireland.

The Irish have always and steadily refused to accept the religion which their English conquerors have somehow felt constrained to force upon them. The vast majority of the people are to-day and ever have been Catholics; yet up to the time where we have now arrived these Irish Catholics had been compelled to pay tithes and fees for the maintenance among them of the Anglican Church worship. Meanwhile their own churches, in which the great masses were instructed and cared for spiritually, had to be kept up by voluntary contributions. The proposition to do away with this grievance by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland was bitterly opposed by the Conservatives; but at length, after a memorable debate, the Liberals, under the lead of Bright and Gladstone, the latter then prime minister, carried the measure. This was in 1869, but the actual disestablishment was not to take place until the year 1871, at which time the Irish State Church, ceasing to exist as a state institution, became a free Episcopal Church. The historian May pronounces this "the most important ecclesiastical matter since the Reformation."

PROPOSED DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE CHURCH IN ENGLAND AND IN SCOTLAND. —The perfect application of the principle of religious equality demands, in the opinion of many English Liberals, the disestablishment of the State Church in England and in Scotland. [Footnote: The Established Church in Scotland is the Presbyterian.] They feel that for the government to maintain any particular sect, is to give the State a monopoly in religion. They would have the churches of all denominations placed on an absolute equality. Especially in Scotland is the sentiment in favor of disestablishment very strong.