Dissent and Disestablishment

In another chapter of the same book, Larsen argues that British secularization promoted by Dissenters within England, and on specifically theological grounds. According to the “Protestant Dissenters’ Catechism” (published 1772, by Samuel Palmer), a church is “a congregation, or voluntary soceity of Christians, who meet together to attend gospel ordinances in the same place. And they think every such society has a right to transact its own affairs according to the judgment and conscience of the members thereof, independently of any other society whatsoever, or without being accountable to any but Jesus Christ, or restrained by any laws but his.”

Employing Bryan Wilson’s definition of secularization as “the diminishing social significance of religion,” Larsen argues that the Dissenters were “sincerely religious people” who “were also actively campaigning to diminish the social significance of religion” and thus quality as “prime agents of secularization.” The goal was not to create “a godless government,” but, in the words of the Anti-State Church Association, “the disenthralment of religion from the secularizing influence of state control.” Contrary to most accounts that see the diminishing social control of the Church of England and the growing influence of Catholics, Jews and atheists as a function of “‘secularization,’ liberal currents in thought and society that discounted faith claims, a dechristianizing populace, and the like,” Larsen shows that “these changes were all championed, for theological reasons, by a large number of devout Christians.”