Timothy Larsen, professor of Theology at Wheaton College, offers a reassessment of an old historiographical shibboleth, namely, that a ubiquitous “crisis of faith,” most notable among the cultural and intellectual elite, had marked late nineteenth-century English society. In a humanistic fashion, he takes issue with the sociological theory of “secularization,” while claiming to challenge the ingrained or unconscious “secularist” prejudices of historians of the period themselves. The work, while carefully and compellingly argued, and very well researched, seems tendentious as a result, although this remains confined largely to the introductory and concluding sections.
Larsen engagingly defends the alternative thesis that a trend toward “re-conversion” to Christianity among secularists of the later nineteenth century was not only a significant phenomenon, but probably dwarfed in magnitude any broader social trend toward secularization. Larsen focuses on a sample of secularist leaders, largely of plebeian origin, who first abandoned the Christianity of their childhood for free-thinking and secularist ideologies. He describes the cases of Thomas Cooper and Joseph Barker, who had embraced such ideologies, which made them radical Chartists, only to eventually become disillusioned with the secularist movement and to work their way back to Christian orthodoxy—indeed, to emerge as publicly active Christian apologists, reversing their previous roles as secularist propagandists. Invariably, the transition to free-thinking secularism was undertaken by a rigorous and impressive program of self-education, which included the reading of d’Holbach and Strauss's Life of Jesus. The way back to Christianity was also marked by strenuous intellectual reappraisal; and Larsen gives primacy to such intellectual struggles in explaining both transitions, while minimizing nonintellectual factors or motivations.
Larsen's paradigm of dual transformation seems tantalizingly incomplete, however, with nonintellectual factors appearing to lurk just beneath the surface of a fully rounded explanation. As it stands, the book describes more than explains the various metamorphoses of its subjects and seems to accept at face value their self-proclaimed reasons for changing. The way back to Christianity, for instance, was invariably occasioned by a revulsion against perceived secularist amoralism, both in theory and in practice, and a rediscovery of the person of Jesus as a model of behavior, accompanied by a newfound appreciation of the purity of the Gospels, views that constituted a radical reversal of previously held positions. But any precipitating factor beyond something like Charles Bradlaugh's embracing of George Drysdale's Elements of Social Science, which seemed to legitimate “promiscuity,” appears absent. George Sexton, for instance, had been a close associate of Marx and Engels, serving as a delegate to the First [Communist] International. He began to embrace spiritualism as he repudiated materialism, which served him also as a bridge back to Christianity (he ended his days as a Presbyterian minister). But one is left wondering whether Sexton's break from Marx and Engels had been initially political in nature and his repudiation of materialism an ex post facto justification of his drift away from the Communist movement: Was it a reflection of some lost political battle? Were these reconverts, in turning about as quickly as they seem to have done (never more than two years in the reversal) seeking an alternative public platform from which to exercise power and authority, having perhaps failed in some leadership struggle within the secularist movement? There is just enough of a hint of this possibility to create in the reader's mind doubt about the complete authenticity of their reconversions despite Larsen's often persuasive efforts to defend them against particularly outrageous secularist charges of treason (e.g., that they sought pecuniary advantage by reconverting). I find it curious that only one reconvert in the sample retreated into private life following his return to Christianity, while the others, in one form or another, actively pursued a public reputation, hardly an expression of a newfound Christian humility. Was there, in other words, more of a material foundation to their respective metamorphoses than Larsen seems willing to explore?
Larsen chose to confine his study to prominent secularists who reconverted, partly to dramatize the importance of the thesis he argues. He suggests, largely on the basis of anecdotal evidence, that probably hundreds had reconverted if so many prominent figures did. There is no way to prove this assertion, however, without quantifying the numbers of reconverts and the proportion of the secularist membership they represented. This methodology Larsen eschews, arguing lamely that proponents of the “crisis of faith” thesis have never bothered to concern themselves with the problem of “representativeness,” so why should he. Perhaps they hadn’t, but they should have, and so should have he. The secularist movement appears incidentally in this study as a broad, vibrant, popular mass movement, with deep roots in industrial working-class communities (implying that industrialization may indeed have had something to do with secularization). The prominent reconverts Larsen studies may have been the exception, notwithstanding the fears of a crisis in their ranks voiced by the leaders of secularism. And for every ordinary reconvert, there may have been two who lost their faith. Only the numbers can tell us for sure.
