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Preaching at the British Association for the Advancement of Science: sermons, secularization and the rhetoric of conflict in the 1870s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2011

CIARAN TOAL
CIARAN TOAL*
Affiliation:
School of Geography, Archaeology and Paleoecology, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Much attention has been given to the science–religion controversies attached to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, from the infamous 1860 Huxley–Wilberforce debate at Oxford to John Tyndall's 1874 ‘Belfast Address’. Despite this, almost no attention has been given to the vast homiletic literature preached during the British Association meetings throughout the nineteenth century. During an association meeting the surrounding churches and halls were packed with men of science, as local and visiting preachers sermonized on the relationship between science and religion. These sermons are revealing, particularly in the 1870s when the ‘conflict thesis’ gained momentum. In this context, this paper analyses the rhetoric of conflict in the sermons preached during the meetings of the association, exploring how science–religion conflict was framed and understood through time. Moreover, it is argued that attention to the geography of the Sunday activities of the British Association provides insight into the complex dynamic of nineteenth-century secularization.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 75 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2011

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References

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40 The warrant for using ‘sermons preached at the British Association’ comes from William Allingham's commentary on the 1871 Edinburgh meeting, in which he notes, ‘A somewhat questionable fashion has sprung up of preaching special sermons at the British Association in every town which they honour with their presence.’ See Walker, Patricuis [Allingham, William], ‘Rambles’, Frasier's Magazine, October 1871, pp. 458–480, 469Google Scholar.

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45 Tyndall, John, Address Delivered before the British Association Assembled at Belfast: With Additions, London: Longman, 1874, p. 61Google Scholar.

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47 Brooke, John and Cantor, Geoffrey, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1998, pp. 26–27Google Scholar. See also Holmes, Andrew, ‘Presbyterians and science in the north of Ireland before 1874’, BJHS (2008) 41, pp. 541–565CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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49 Brooke, op. cit. (48), p. 15.

50 D'Haussy, op. cit. (20), pp. 22–24.

51 Wolffe, op. cit. (14), p. 288.

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66 Brooke, op. cit. (9), p. 57.

67 Potter, Samuel George, Religion and Science: Being a Sermon [1st Cor. i. 20.] Delivered in St. Luke's Church, Sheffield, on the Occasion of the Meeting of the British Association, August, 1879, Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford, 1879, p. 9Google Scholar. For a review of Potter's sermon see ‘Philosophy and religion’, Church Portrait Journal, October 1879, pp. 94–95Google Scholar.

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70 ‘St Mary's’, Brighton Daily News, Tuesday 20 August 1872, p. 15Google Scholar; ‘London Road Congregational Chapel’, Brighton Daily News, Tuesday 20 August 1872, pp. 15–16Google Scholar. For additional sermons preached during the Brighton meeting see the same issue, pp. 15–16.

71 Brooke, op. cit. (48), pp. 26–27.

72 Main, op. cit. (69), p. 6.

73 ‘St Peter's’, Brighton Daily News, Tuesday 20 August 1872, p. 15Google Scholar.

74 Main, op. cit. (69), p. 9. The Lord Bishop of Chichester, speaking at St Peter's, Brighton, iterated this point; see St Peter's, op. cit. (73).

75 On scientific naturalists and ontology see Lightman, op. cit. (59), pp. 344–346, although he focuses on Huxley.

76 Crosskey, op. cit. (63), p. 7.

77 Leach, op. cit. (57), p. 11.

78 Livingstone, op. cit. (9), pp. 408–428; idem, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 109.

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86 Charles Wicksteed, op. cit. (61), p. 13.

87 ‘Queen Square Congregational Chapel’, Brighton Daily News, Tuesday 20 August 1872, p. 16Google Scholar.

88 On the term ‘scientific naturalism’ see Turner, op. cit. (3), especially Chapter 1.

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90 ‘Religion and science’, Daily Bristol Times and Mirror, 30 August 1875, p. 4Google Scholar.

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94 Reichel, op. cit. (69), p. 38.

95 Reichel, op. cit. (69), pp. 37–38.

96 Reichel, op. cit. (69), p. 37.

97 Pearson, J.B., Nature and Man: A Sermon, Preached in St. Mark's Church, Sheffield, on Sunday, August 24, 1879, on the Occasion of the Visit to the Town of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sheffield: Widdison, 1879, p. 11Google Scholar.

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99 Pearson, op. cit. (97), p. 14.

100 Potter, op. cit. (67), p. 9.

101 Coombe, op. cit. (54), p. 10.

102 Coombe, op. cit. (54), p. 11.

103 Fay, op. cit. (63), pp. 7–10, p. 20.

104 For ‘dogmatic scientists’, for example, see Pearson, op. cit. (97), p. 7. For ‘materialists’ see Main, op. cit. (69), p. 14; Reichel, op. cit. (69), p. 37; Pearson, op. cit. (97), p. 11. For ‘atheists’ see Coombe, op. cit. (54), p. 10. For ‘agnostics’ see Potter, op. cit. (67), p. 8. On the use of the term ‘agnostic’ in the 1870s see Lightman, Bernard, ‘Huxley and scientific agnosticism: the strange history of a failed rhetorical strategy’, BJHS (2002) 35, pp. 271–289CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. As just one example, see Witherby, , ‘The Bible and science’, Bristol Daily Post, 6 September 1875Google Scholar, for discussion of scientific naturalists.

105 Pope, op. cit. (68), p. 11.

106 Pope, op. cit. (68), p. 10.

107 Hopper, op. cit. (4).

108 Hume, op. cit. (52), p. 22.

109 The Times, 30 March 1883, p. 9.

110 Hume, op. cit. (52), p. 22.

111 ‘St Mary's’, op. cit. (70), pp. 15–16; ‘London Road Congregational Chapel’, op. cit. (70), pp. 15–16.

112 Fay, op. cit. (63); Potter, op. cit. (67); Sharman, op. cit. (62); Charles Wicksteed, op. cit. (61); and see Wood in ‘Yesterday's sermons’, Western Daily Press, 30 August 1875, p. 7Google Scholar.

113 Pope, op. cit. (68), p. 22.

114 Pope, op. cit. (68), p. 22.

115 Morrell and Thackray, op. cit. (1), pp. 225–245; Orange, A., ‘The idols of the theatre: the British Association and its early critics’, Annals of Science (1975) 32, pp. 277–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Cantor, op. cit. (2).

117 Lightman, op. cit. (46); Turner, op. cit. (3).

118 Hopper, op. cit. (4), pp. 478–488.

119 John Hedley Brooke, ‘That modern science has secularized Western culture’, in Ronald Numbers (ed.), Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 224–232.

120 Turner, op. cit. (3), p. 34.

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122 Lightman, op. cit. (59), p. 352. Also see Smith, Crosbie, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998Google Scholar.

123 See David N. Livingstone, ‘Darwin in Belfast’, in John Foster and Helena Chesney (eds.), Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History, Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1997, pp. 387–409.

124 This is based on an extensive collection of sermons preached at the association gathered over the last two years. For each decade the following numbers of sermons are available: 1850s, four; 1860s, twenty-six; 1870s, thirty-five; and 1880s, twenty.

125 Turner, op. cit. (3), pp. 3–37.

126 Brooke has alluded to the potentially limited role science plays in the secularizing dynamic, emphasizing instead the ‘ironic pattern’ that apologetic strategies – from methodological naturalism to natural theology – may have been more powerful agents of secularization. See John Hedley Brooke, ‘Science and secularization’, in Peter Harrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 103–125, 120.