Warren Johnston's National Thanksgivings and Ideas of Britain, 1689–1816 is a case study of the negotiations of faith and national identity in eighteenth-century Britain through thanksgiving sermons. Johnston also provides an assessment of the interaction between personal belief and communal religious identity by way of sermons. Britishness, he argues, was tailored, crafted, and publicized by these thanksgiving sermons, for Anglicanism was strongly tied to the British identity that was promoted in these sermons. Through these sermons, Anglican preachers justified a belief that Britain was a nation chosen by God. The political nature of these sermons also is a testimony to the church's relationship with the political establishment in eighteenth-century Britain.
As Johnston argues, “Thanksgiving days were meant to tie the country together as a community in celebration and gratitude” (116). In order to emphasize national unity, preachers used the argument of religious unity, which testifies to the entanglement of political, religious, and social identities in eighteenth-century Britain. The sermons were also sometimes used as vehicles for expressing discontent with political authority—critiques of the monarchy, for example (not necessarily directed against the person of the monarch but against government ministers). However, disunity was also seen as a dangerous thing. Preachers were acutely aware of the political battle lines in the eighteenth century, and this awareness came across in the sermons as a critique of political division, especially that of Whig and Tory.
As an integral part of creating and disseminating a united British identity, thanksgiving sermons drew upon wars, victories, and heroes. The human cost of war was also sometimes mentioned in the sermons, though less frequently, which also suggests that preachers used sermons as a means of social critique during difficult times, sometimes expressing discontent with war, sometimes expressing discontent with peace.
One popular subject was British trade. Preaching about the strength of British commerce in times of peace and war was also tied to identity formation, as Johnston posits: “There was a common feeling about the widespread gains coming to British society from lively and expansive commercial pursuits” (210).
Religious unity was the overarching theme in the sermons, as Johnston suggests, so dissent from the Anglican ranks was frowned upon. Johnston also notes examples of anti-Catholic sentiment in thanksgiving sermons in the eighteenth century: “Prominent themes included the religious and political characteristics of ‘popery’, the association between Roman Catholicism and fears of persecution for non-Catholics, the doctrinal criticisms of Catholic beliefs and worship, and a clear connection—in British minds—between Catholic motives and the French” (250).
In the chapter titled “Britishness and the Empire,” Johnston illustrates that thanksgiving sermons provided a critique of colonial rule, even questioning the merits of it. The most hauntingly interesting chapter is the last one, “Others and Britons” where Johnston talks about the concept of the Other in the thanksgiving sermons, with various examples ranging from the French to Native Americans and Africans. This is a valuable contribution, for British religious and national identities were also crafted vis-à-vis Others, from both within and without.
Johnston's assessment of thanksgiving sermons is a valuable contribution to a fuller understanding of the early modern British agenda. It highlights the importance of religious ceremonies as indicators of British psyche. Thanksgiving sermons were not just about thanksgiving: they were indicators of a multifaceted political and cultural agenda of the church in the ancien régime.
