Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England

Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England.

By Timothy Larsen. Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $110.00.

We all know the thesis: country kid goes off to university and sheds Christian belief en route to brilliant literary career. Advocates of secularization point to stories of famous 19th-century Brits like George Eliot, Matthew Arnold and J. s. Mill as evidence that acquisition of knowledge was then (and, implicitly, has been ever since) a short step from abandonment of religion. Larsen has an antithesis: lots of converts to atheism reverted to Christianity, and indeed became leading church lights of their day. Larsen is a learned guide to the world of Victorian British church and academe; prodigious learning is here leavened with frequent humor and readable prose. His thesis, like his opponents', is not merely historical: it is that the much trumpeted rise of atheism in general is less pervasive than often thought, since atheists can grow unsure of their deeply held beliefs as much as Christians can.

COPYRIGHT 2007 The Christian Century Foundation
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