8

The negotiation of belief

When modern spiritualism arrived in England with Maria Hayden in 1852, it

quickly became popular among people from all levels of society. So much so
that by 1857 The Times noted that its ‘forms, nomenclature and rules’ had
been absorbed into the common culture and it was ‘all around’.1 It provided
fascination for society ladies, servants and Yorkshire radicals alike. In 1919
George Bernard Shaw wrote of the second half of the nineteenth century as
being a time when the leisured classes were
addicted to table-rapping, materialization séances, clairvoyance,
palmistry, crystal-gazing and the like to such an extent that it may be
doubted whether ever before in the history of the world did sooth-
sayers, astrologers, and unregistered therapeutic specialists of all
sorts flourish as they did during this half century of the drift to the
abyss.2
Through séances and spiritualist lectures, the ideas and images of spiritu-
alism were absorbed into the common culture and a new landscape of the
afterlife was imagined. The ‘spirits’ and spiritualists told people that the after-
life was a place where spiritual progress was not only possible but expected;
where individuals were assisted in their progress by helpful higher spirits; and
where there was no hell or eternal torment. These communications were
wrapped in a language of sunshine, flowers and play, and they appealed to
many.
One year after Maria Hayden’s arrival, in 1853, F. D. Maurice published
his Theological Essays. Maurice’s theology of post-mortem progress and his
denial of everlasting torment for the wicked met with criticism from the
Church hierarchy and widespread public disapproval. Maurice’s Theological

1 The Times, 5 May 1857, pg. 6, col. C.

2 George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House (London, 1919), xiv.

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Essays were welcomed by others, however, and fostered a development in

Church of England teaching about the afterlife that would lead in 1915 to
Hastings Rashdall comfortably describing Jesus’ own teaching as ‘latent
Universalism’.3 The 1938 report Doctrine in the Church of England suggest-
ed that post-mortem development was possible, and even that there were hints
of universal salvation in the Bible.4 The official nature of this report, and the
fact that its production represented a deliberate attempt to find theological
coherence among diverse theological opinions in the Church, suggest that
such ideas about the afterlife were, by 1938, part of the mainstream of Church
teaching.
As it endeavoured to find ways to express these theological developments,
the Church made use of the language and imagery of spiritualism. In some
cases this was explicit: churchmen like Davies, Moses, Owen and Tweedale
openly used the teaching of the ‘spirits’ and the ideas and images of spiritu-
alism to embellish their sermons and spiritual writing. In most cases,
however, it was implicit, and is therefore more difficult to discern. It cannot
be said that the clergy of the Church of England simply ‘borrowed’ the teach-
ings of spiritualism to refresh their own teaching about the afterlife. Neverthe-
less, when Winnington Ingram, a avowed critic of spiritualism, used phrases
such as ‘sunny land’ and ‘passed over’ in sermons to bereaved families during
the war, he drew on a discourse with which his hearers were familiar – but one
which was unconventional for Church teaching. When Burnett Streeter
decided that the Church’s imagery of the afterlife needed re-framing, he chose
‘progress’ as his model, and his visions of heaven bore more of the hallmarks
of spiritualist domesticity than the biblical splendour of Revelation, or Chris-
tian hymnody. Mossy nooks and small flowers took the place of the azure-
clad heavenly city in his imagination.5 The next world, in the hopes of many
churchmen, bore strong similarities to the world they already knew – and in
sermons, broadcasts and books they shared the fruits of their imaginings with
people who already expected that this would be the case.
From the mid nineteenth century onwards there was an ever-widening gap
between the theological developments led by Maurice, Wilson, Birks and
Farrar, and the ‘traditional’ language of the Prayer Book and the sermons of
the time. To the general public, the Church still taught that at death an indi-
vidual was judged and either condemned to hell or allowed into heaven. After

3 Rashdall, The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, 19.

4 Doctrine in the Church of England, 213, 217.
5 Streeter et al., Immortality, 154.

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a time of sleep, or conscious rest, where repentance and spiritual change were
impossible, the individual was translated to the appropriate landscape for eter-
nity. Eternity meant, straightforwardly, for ever. This traditional framework,
increasingly, did not fit the emerging theology; some clergy clearly felt this
dissonance and shied away from saying anything much about heaven and hell.
Thus Dr Thornton of Notting Hill, addressing the Church Congress in 1881,
thought that the Church was ‘afraid’ of speaking about the afterlife: ‘the
trumpet has an uncertain sound’.6
This dissonance grew more pronounced at the time of the Great War. Faced
with the sheer numbers of young men killed in the war, the preachers in the
Church were compelled not just to accept the new theology, but to frame it in a
language that was already understood by the thousands of grieving people.
The language of progress, certainty, domesticity, sunshine and rewards for
good actions was already available in the common culture. The Church
simply made use of it to clothe its own new theology.
Intriguingly, clergymen did so in two ways. Some maintained a ‘tradi-
tional’ or commonly held theology: that at death an individual was either
immediately in heaven or hell, and they clothed this in the language of the
‘sunny land’. The dead soldiers were understood to be immediately among the
saints, and surrounded by joy and light. Others embraced the new theology of
post-mortem forgiveness and the possibility of universal salvation, and added
to this the language of progress and light. Thus the official Forms of Prayer,
rather than suggesting an instant recompense for soldiers at the point of death,
conveyed instead a sense of hope and growth and an ever-clearer under-
standing of God.
After the war the official doctrine of the Church, while allowing that ‘tradi-
tional’ teaching could be maintained, moved decisively towards the vision of
post-mortem progress and away from the language of judgement, sin and
eternal torment. In the liturgy of the revised Prayer Book not only was the
afterlife presented now as a dynamic realm; it was also possible for the living
to consider the departed – and even to pray for them. Exactly why the living
were to pray, and what the dead would gain from it, however, was not spelled
out. Nevertheless, communication of a prayerful sort was gently supported
and, given that this period saw the rising influence of Anglo-catholicism, in
some quarters it was actively encouraged as a revival of the Church’s teaching
on the communion of the saints.
Church of England clergy appeared to prefer the language of progress to

6 Church Congress at Newcastle, 52.

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that of purgatory. Some were at pains to point out that the post-mortem prog-
ress they envisaged was definitely not purgatory. Ernest Barnes, for example,
was keen to stress this fact even as he described the likelihood of some sort of
purgation beyond death.7 This is interesting, but not altogether surprising.
There was, in the Church of England, a deep suspicion of Roman Catholicism,
and of the Roman doctrine of purgatory that had been so decisively expunged
from the Church of England at the time of the Reformation (Article XXII).
Thus groups holding requiem masses, such as those detailed by the Royal
Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, were frowned upon, borrowing
heavily as they did from the language of the Roman Church, and speaking
openly of purgatory. The cultural stigma associated with Roman Catholicism
was such that, even in 1927, it was possible for a charge of ‘papism’ made in
the House of Commons to derail what were, after all, fairly minor liturgical
changes to the Prayer Book.8
The Roman Catholic Church itself was deeply opposed to spiritualism,
condemning spiritualist practices in 1898, having reaffirmed the existence of
the Devil and a literal hell by a pronouncement from Leo XIII in 1879.9 It is
also fair to argue that the Roman Catholic Church of the late nineteenth
century was troubled by ideas of ‘progress’ more generally, as the Syllabus of
Errors issued in 1864 by Pius IX so aptly demonstrated. Jenny Hazelgrove has
argued that spiritualism was influenced by the ideas and spirituality within
Catholicism, emphasising the sentimentality and sensuous nature of the spiri-
tualist experience.10 Yet the images and ideas of spiritualism were too far
couched in progress and individualistic growth for this to be true. The Roman
Catholic Church certainly could not see much convergence. The Church of
England, by contrast, sat a little more comfortably with the ideas within spiri-
tualism precisely because they offered a way of speaking about post-mortem
progress that did not sound Roman.
The Anglican clergy who became committed to spiritualism did not come
from any one Church background, and none of them made connections
between spiritualism and a particular tradition. However, it is easy to see how
the language of self-determination and the possibility of progress would
appeal to liberal-minded clergy. The repentance for sins and consequent
ascent through the spheres could be thought to sound enough like an ascent

7 Barnes, Spiritualism and the Christian Faith, 3.

8 Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920–1985, 3rd edn. (London, 1991),
205–6. See also Maiden, National Religion and the Prayer Book Controversy, 173–85.
9 Alice K. Turner, The History of Hell (London, 1996), 235.
10 Hazelgrove, Spiritualism and British Society, 53.

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through purgatory to appeal to Anglo-catholic sensibilities. The appeal to

morality of life, the seriousness of each action and the responsibility of the
individual to lead a righteousness life were there for evangelicals in spiritu-
alism. There was, however, no ‘Anglican’ spiritualism, as such, and no one
tradition alone that embraced it. Conrad Noel claimed instead that spiritu-
alism appealed most to those who had been brought up in a ‘narrow’ faith –
regardless of their tradition. For many, although it did not offer profound
teaching, it had proved a ‘generous and liberating gospel’.11
Spiritualism certainly had a broad appeal, and as the ideas and images of
spiritualism became embedded in the common culture, they connected, as we
have seen, with pre-existing tropes. The discourses of health, science, magic,
folk-lore and preternaturalism were already a part of the common culture
when spiritualism arrived in England, not confined to particular social groups
but pervading all areas of society. Over the course of the period spiritualism
engaged with common culture, mixing further with familiar late-Victorian
tropes. For example, although highly individualistic in some respects, spiritu-
alism also made much of the importance of family ties, friendships and the
possibility of maintaining connections with loved ones beyond the grave. The
‘appearance’ of departed family members in séance was, according to spiritu-
alists, intended to give comfort to the bereaved and maintain the family
connections. Oliver Lodge, for example, was assured that Raymond, along
with other departed soldiers, wanted to make contact with living family
members.12 Such concerns were a reflection of the importance of family life
and resonate with images of family and domesticity in the Victorian period.
By contrast, the organic growth and progress of the individual inherent in
spiritualism fitted with ideas from across the political spectrum, ranging from
competitive individualism of the ‘God helps those who help themselves’
variety, to the sort of progressive community life envisaged by Robert Owen.
Spiritualism also managed to maintain a degree of class distinction. There
were, as has been noted, essentially three ‘realms’, subdivided, through which
an individual could progress. It is telling that the most communicative spirits
were those in the middle rank, or ‘class’.
By the twentieth century, and certainly during the period of post-war
memorialisation, the gentle landscapes of the sunny land, like the possibilities
of education and growth beyond death, also connected with what some have
seen as the reaction against harsh modernism, as, in need of consolation, the

11 Noel, Byways of Belief, 151.

12 Lodge, Raymond Revised, 194.

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bereaved turned to tradition for comfort.13 In the war cemeteries, for example,
it was suggested to the Imperial War Graves Commission that English trees
‘from English soil’ be planted, and monuments reflect designs from the
‘country church yard’.14 The domestic ordinariness of Raymond’s whisky
sodas and cigars, and the vivid imagery of flowers and the ‘English summer
days’15 resonated with the widespread yearning for images of home and
comfort in time of national grief. Such imagery was perhaps more nostalgic
than explicitly ‘traditional’, but it was clearly present within spiritualism, as
well as in the wider common culture.
The relationship between spiritualism as a movement and the Church of
England can, on the one hand, be easily discerned and described. The
responses of clergy and Church members towards modern spiritualism
ranged, as has been seen, from negative criticism to positive commendation.
The relationship between the Church’s teaching and the teaching of spiritu-
alism is harder to define. The direct influence of the imagery and ideas of spir-
itualism on the teaching of some clergy has been noted. It has also been
recognised that many Church members, as well as some clergy, felt able to
maintain their churchgoing alongside visits to mediums, membership of the
SPR and engagement with spiritualist writings.16 The subtle influence of spir-
itualism, the way in which its images became mixed into the common culture
and helped to shape the teaching of the Church, is more difficult to discern,
but is certainly apparent in the language and imagery employed by clergymen
who sought to clothe their teaching in words familiar to their hearers. In order
to notice it, though, we need to be prepared to look carefully at how
churchmen spoke to the general public through the means of sermons, hymns,
memorial services and popular writings, as well as how they engaged with
one another in academic theological circles.
The chief benefit of exploring one aspect of the Church’s doctrine next to
the teaching of an alternative theological system is that it does become
possible to notice how the Church adapted its own ideas by engaging with,
and drawing on, ideas and images beyond itself. In the elusive interface
between the Church and the common culture, religious belief was negotiated

13 See, for example, Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 115.

14 F. Kenyon, War Graves. How the cemeteries abroad will be designed. Report to the Imperi-
al War Graves Commission (London, 1918), 11, 13.
15 Davies, London Sermons, 225.
16 Gladstone did not see any conflict and, as has been noted, Georgiana Houghton and Mabel
St Clair Stobart continued to attend church, at least for a time. The archbishop’s report on spiri-
tualism also noted how Church members used spiritualism to ‘supplement’ their religious ex-
perience. Report on Spiritualism, 4.

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and redefined: meaning that, for example, over the course of the period
observed in this study, ideas such as universal salvation and post-mortem
progress at some point ceased to cause controversy and instead became main-
stream religious belief. Observing and describing the importance of common
culture to religious belief is not as straightforward as monitoring church atten-
dance, or even assessing the value of contributions made by churches to the
social life of local communities. However, although untidy and imprecise,
this approach allows us to take religious belief seriously, and to take seriously
the shared ideas within common culture, their importance for the develop-
ment of Church teaching and the shaping of religious belief within the Church
and beyond it.
There are intriguing possibilities available to those willing to adopt this
untidy approach: placing Church teaching alongside ideas circulating in the
common culture and observing how they interact. This study has placed the
Church’s teaching on the afterlife over and against modern spiritualism. It
might also be possible to note, for example, how changing attitudes to the
punishment of criminals coloured the language used in relation to God’s
punishment of the wicked, or how the development of democracy and the
widening of the franchise played a part in the slow acceptance of the universal
salvation of all people as a legitimate doctrine.
Even further, it might be observed that significant cultural developments,
such as the advances in communication and broadcasting, played a significant
role in shaping the Church’s presentation of itself. It might be interesting to
place the widespread reaction to the horrors of the Second World War along-
side the emerging theology of the suffering of God, or the language of the
women’s movement in the second half of the twentieth century next to the
development of feminist theology. By engaging with common culture the
Church refreshes its own teaching, and religious belief is redefined.
The implication of this approach for historians is a significant one. Reli-
gious belief emerges as something more elusive than measurable; dynamic
and fluid, located within the ongoing process of negotiation between Church
teaching and common culture. Belief within the institutional Church, as well
as outside it, therefore changes and fluctuates. Church members move from
confidently articulated belief to crisis of faith, and back again. Belief cannot
be measured; it can only be observed and described. It becomes difficult,
therefore, to say that religious belief has ‘declined’ in any period; only that it
has changed as a result of the interaction of Church and common culture,
albeit that, although we can’t measure it, this change might include a sense of
loss or decline.
Something of the negotiation of religious belief has been observed in this

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study. Spiritualism arrived in England at a time when the Church was, inter-
nally, rethinking its theology of the afterlife, but when its public teaching was
still held within a ‘traditional’ frame. Spiritualism offered an alternative
teaching that was appealing: rooted in post-mortem progress, an attractive,
vivid, afterlife and, most importantly, the possibility of continued communi-
cation between the living and the dead. By the late 1920s, the Church,
although in less flowery language, was also teaching that the afterlife was
dynamic, that progress was not unbiblical, and that it was permissible for the
living to communicate their love and affection for the departed through the
appropriate medium of prayer.
Thus, far from being a static, monolithic institution, unable to comprehend
a vibrant working-class belief or the popularity of spiritualism among alien-
ated ‘fringe’ groups, the Church is revealed as susceptible to ideas within the
much broader arena of what we have called the ‘common culture’ – even
when these ideas originated in an alternative system of belief. As we have
seen, the Church did not embrace spiritualism per se but, seeking fresh ways
to express new theological developments, found that appropriate tropes had
already become embedded in the common culture. In order to communicate
the new teaching about the afterlife, the Church of England, over time and
sometimes unconsciously, made use of the language and ideas of spiritualism,
which, because they were circulating in this common culture, were already
very familiar to most people. Religious belief, elusive, hovering on the
borderland between Church teaching and common culture, within Church but
not bounded by it, did not decline: it was simply redefined.

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