Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century. Thomas Secker and the Church of England by Robert G. Ingram (review)

279 The proofreading of this valuable volume is much improved over volume 3. Regina Janes Skidmore College ROBERT G. INGRAM. Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century . Thomas Secker and the Church of England. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer; 2007. Pp. xvii ⫹ 310. $90. This well-written and well-structured study is important, not least because it is almost two books in one. At its heart, it is about Thomas Secker, one of the most neglected, but arguably the most significant archbishop of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Mr. Ingram terms him the Cranmer or Laud of his age). In writing Secker’s life, Mr. Ingram has an unrivalled knowledge of the rich and voluminous archive left by the archbishop, as well as his publications , the result of painstaking studies in libraries and archives in the United Kingdom. But second, this is an attempt to define and characterize the period in which Secker lived, and in doing so Mr. Ingram tells us as much about the eighteenth century as a period as he does about the archbishop who is the book’s principal player. Arguing against the historiographical position that the period saw the birth of modernity and secularization, Mr. Ingram emphasizes (correctly, in my opinion), the central role of religion and tradition in shaping the age. As Mr. Ingram’s superbly researched study makes clear, Secker is significant. A dissenter by upbringing , Secker’s journey to become a leading insider within what J. C. D. Clark has characterized as a confessional state is in itself an intriguing story , telling us as much about the nature of England’s ancien regime as it does of Secker’s own theological and intellectual trajectory, which, as Mr. Ingram shows, embraced both principle and pragmatism. Two chapters explore why and how Secker became an Anglican and his rise to prominence within the state church. Five powerful chapters then use Secker ’s life and works to examine the Church and the Enlightenment; the pastoral role of the Church (where Mr. Ingram rightly sees Secker’s use of the visitation system as the gold standard for the century); the relationship between Church and State; the Church and America; and the Church’s relations with foreign protestants. All these add a great deal to our knowledge both of Secker’s own views and of the period. Mr. Ingram is particularly concerned to argue that war was the main agent of change in the century, and this, rather than any secularizing modernity, explains why the state could not deliver on its commitment to the church, why no bishop was provided for America, and why relations were complicated with protestant churches abroad, where Secker was worried that these churches would encourage both heterodoxy and an undermining of the Church-State establishment . However, there are areas where greater clarification or exploration might have been helpful. The core concept, linking all the chapters, and providing an overarching label for Secker’s aims and aspirations, is what Mr. Ingram calls ‘‘orthodox reform.’’ While he does define the term one wonders, nevertheless, how far the two words in this categorization could point in opposite directions (leading it to be, at the most extreme, an oxymoron, or, in the world of Dr. Do- 280 little, a push-me-pull-you). Furthermore, signaling a commitment to traditional Christian principles, the label also indicates a desire to change and improve, and as such might suggest a Christian modernity as opposed to the secularized modernity that Ingram eschews. Related to this, the chapter on the Enlightenment suggests that Mr. Ingram is dealing with a particular, and perhaps rather old-fashioned, view of the Enlightenment . He is clearly right to portray Secker as a staunch defender of orthodox Christianity against heterodoxy, and he convincingly shows how he promoted orthodox scholarship. Nevertheless , Secker himself, with his medical training and his willingness to work, at times, with dissenters and even Catholics , would not have been out of place in parts of Roy Porter’s understanding of the Enlightenment, and the theologically literate so favored by Secker were, as Ingram himself acknowledges, often part of a clerical Enlightenment. In other ways, Secker’s obsession with accurate information has affinities...