Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. Volume III: Accommodations (review)

For scholars and intellectuals who take religion seriously, perhaps the most important topic in the history of modern western civilization has been the decline in the status and influence of religious thought—that is, the process of secularization that has de-Christianized public thought and culture over the last 200 years. If that is the case, Maurice Cowling has written a masterpiece not to be ignored by the religious-minded. The broad theme of his three-volume work, twenty years in the making, is "to show that secularization, and de-Christianization, are intellectual and religious rather than mechanical, inevitable, or sociological processes; to describe the lines of argument by which they have established their hold on the English public mind; and to establish that they have often arrived so innocently and surreptitiously that their coming has passed unnoticed" (p. x). Unfortunately, the confusing organization and idiosyncratic judgments of this massive work often detract from the wisdom of Cowling's central assertions.

Cowling offers a brief summary of his earlier work in the preface to Volume III. The first volume, published in 1980, he describes as an intellectual autobiography that reviews the ideas of the thinkers who most influenced him in his formative years, including Eliot, Waugh, Churchill, Toynbee, Collingwood, and Oakeshott. The second volume, published in 1985, describes the conflict between orthodox religious thinkers and modern secularists over the past 200 years, focusing on the works of Christian thinkers like Newman, Gladstone, Keble, Pusey, Manning, Chesterton, and Belloc and secular critics like Spencer, Tyndall, Wells, and Shaw.

These early volumes, Cowling acknowledges, offered a simplistic view of the intellectual process of secularization, following the normal textbook approach of highlighting conflicts between starkly contrasting rivals. Volume III proposes a more subtle approach, distinguishing among three varieties of modern thinkers—latitudinarians who sought to accommodate religious thought to modern trends, orthodox Christians who tried to uphold traditional religious ideas, and post-Christian thinkers who professed the irrelevance of religious thought entirely. The vast majority of figures reviewed in Volume III are of the latitudinarian variety (hence the title of the book). Indeed, Cowling's main argument centers on the problems of this group, who turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing in the Christian camp.

Cowling's central argument—that the modern mind cannot escape from religion, that "Christianity's retreat has not entailed the retreat of religion," and that "religion will still be found in the crevices of thought wherever investigation looks for it" (p. xvi)—is pursued in seemingly exhaustive fashion as he summarizes the thought of well over 100 prominent English intellectuals in the three volumes. Prominent subthemes in the work include an assertion that latitudinarians contributed as much as secularists to the decline of Christian influence on public life and an overriding criticism of the moral confusion of contemporary English culture.

Cowling recognizes that his arguments and methods will be considered outdated by modern sociologists and structuralists. He defends his essential conservatism, reflected in his uncompromising emphasis on individuals and his acceptance of the vitality of ideas, and reiterates his notion of the fundamental task of the historian as interpreter and cultural critic. Cowling is at his most poetic when describing the essential tragedy of his theme and his defense of orthodox Christian thought. Orthodoxy does not represent an archaic surrender to barbarism but recognition of the demands of "dignified public behavior" and "social respectability." More importantly, orthodoxy constantly "requires a silent effort of the will, and acceptance of mysteries (or presuppositions) which, though they do not have to be explained, do have to be related to conduct, belief and understanding" (p. 699).

However much traditionalists may admire Cowling's stout defense of the relevance and influence of religious thought, his work remains problematic. The very breadth of the survey can be overwhelming...