The Church Crisis and Erastianism

According to historian Jonathan Parry, “The agitation against ritualism and its supposedly Catholicizing influence on the church was at its height in the early 1870s.” ¹ While the 1870s certainly were a time of intense anti-Ritualist agitation, Parry’s conclusion downplays the equally, if not more, intense period from roughly 1898 until 1906. It is natural for historians to see their period of specialization as especially unique, but Parry’s emphasis more likely derives from the tacit assumption among historians that the late Victorian and early Edwardian period constituted something of a “dead-zone” in British religious history. The Church Crisis and its political impact demonstrate that assumption is far from the truth.