Religion In The Victorian Era

At the beginning of the Victorian era, the official religion of England was that of the Anglican Church, also known as the Church of England, which was established by Henry VIII to separate and dissociate himself with the Catholic Church so that he could divorce his first wife. Until the time of Queen Victoria’s death, there was a lot of religious confusion due to the rise of many movements and new beliefs. The Church of England was a big influence in not only religion, but in politics too. This caused conflict with people of other faith, like the Catholics who had been deprived of their rights. Not only did the tension between the Catholics and the Anglicans increase, it caused new groups to develop such as Baptism, Presbyterianism, and

Old religious beliefs were being questioned due to the advances made in technology and science. The industrial development of the country led to an increase in the amount of people that wanted an education, as well as an increase in the amount of people who worked in the city for factories and no longer farming. People began getting comfortable to the easiness of the new lifestyle and started to gradually deviate from usual standards of religion and life. Biology was another factor that decreased individuals’ confidence in their religious concepts. Prior to this, in the life of a common citizen in the Victorian era, religion controlled and dictated his entire viewpoint on life and its purpose. Many visited the church regularly and read the bible faithfully. They feared God. After people began reading The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, some realized that the theory of natural selection differed from the convictions made about the formation of human existence as stated in the Bible. This challenged the faith that people had always believed and thought to be true because it was passed down from many generations before them. “Charles Kingsley wrote, ‘The young men and women of our day are fast parting from their parents and each other; the more thoughtful are wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism’” (Greenblatt