The “crisis of faith” in mid-Victorian Britain has been the subject of a vast literature—mainly, no doubt, because the further advance of agnosticism and atheism in the twentieth century has led to a search for origins. Yet, as Larsen suggests, in his well-written and carefully argued book, this has led to a distorted view of nineteenth-century religion. The numbers and contemporary influence of Victorian agnostics have been exaggerated, and other developments that had a bigger impact at the time have been correspondingly neglected. Larsen begins with a powerful critique of the “crisis of faith” literature, and some of the misrepresentations that he uncovers are indeed grotesque. Moreover, while it is well-known that several leading writers, most famously George Eliot, moved from devout Christianity to unbelief, it is generally overlooked that many devout Secularists subsequently converted to Christianity. It is this “crisis of doubt” that is the subject of Larsen's book. At its core are the biographies of leaders of the Secularist movement who went on to renounce Freethought. Most came from the working class or lower middle class and were active in radical politics. Nearly all were auto-didacts. Typically they had been brought up in a Dissenting chapel, sometimes even becoming lay preachers. Growing doubts about the credibility of the Bible or the moral acceptability of Christian doctrines then led to skepticism, and eventually to the rejection of Christianity. Having been active Christians, they became equally active in the Secularist movement, and in several cases they took the freethinking gospel across the Atlantic. They often established their reputation as Secularist champions in the public debates with Christians that attracted large audiences in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. But then they began to experience new kinds of doubt. Sometimes the return to Christianity was a step-by-step process; sometimes it was very sudden. Invariably they were subjected to a volley of abuse in the Secularist press, usually including the charge that their apostasy was motivated by financial considerations. An important point is that most continued as Christians to be active political radicals. The best known of these figures were Joseph Barker, who before turning to Secularism had founded his own sect, the “Barkerites,” and Thomas Cooper, a leading Chartist jailed for sedition who was also a poet. Some of the other figures discussed are now forgotten, even by most specialists in Victorian history, but Larsen stresses that all were highly respected propagandists for Secularism and all were impressively well read.

Dismissing the patronizing judgments both of some historians and of some contemporaries, Larsen stresses that these men were often fully up to date with the most recent scientific literature or German biblical criticism. For instance, Cooper was probably the first person in Britain to have an in-depth knowledge of the work of Strauss. Their conversion to Christianity—or “reconversion” as Larsen terms it, since all had received some kind of Christian upbringing—was as carefully considered as the conversions of those such as Eliot to agnosticism. Three factors seem to have influenced many of these reconversions. One was the fear that Secularism did not provide an adequate basis for morality—and indeed some of the reconverts alleged that immorality was rife within the Secularist movement. A second was fascination with the figure of Jesus. A third was the belief that the overriding stress of Secularists on reason excluded other equally important sources of knowledge and provided too narrow a basis for the understanding of life. As Larsen shows, in the 1850s and '60s especially, the Secularist movement suffered serious losses. An appendix that provides briefer biographical details on other Secularists whose reconversions were less well-documented demonstrates that figures like Barker and Cooper were in no way untypical. In a useful, though brief, final chapter, Larsen compares this crisis of Victorian Secularism to the movements of conversion to Christianity among French intellectuals about 1910 or among British intellectuals in the 1930s and '40s.

Larsen's argument seems to me both convincing and important. My one reservation is that he does not sufficiently explore the social and political context within which these reconversions took place. The 1830s and '40s were a difficult time to be both a Christian and a political radical in Britain. The majority of clergy opposed Chartism, and the most influential radical ideology of the time, Owenite Socialism, was overtly anti-Christian. After 1848 it became easier. First there was Christian Socialism, which attracted a number of former infidels. Then radical Liberalism, often rooted in religious Nonconformity, emerged as the most attractive option for working-class political activists. Larsen very effectively analyzes the long quest for truth of these heroic auto-didacts, but the changing external context of their internal struggles is also part of the story.