Church, State and Schools

James Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134532865
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published 1971, this volume unravels the complicated history of the religious question in British education. The background of the key Acts of Parliament which established the "dual" system – of Church and Local Authority school – is examined. The changing policies of different religious groupings are analyzed, and their outcome in legislation brought out.

1

The forces at work

The state and the Established Church

When the state assumed supreme control of the Anglican church in the sixteenth century it became imperative that both should work together, not least because whoever sought to change the national religion might well seek to change also the organization of the state (and vice versa), so that heterodoxy in religion might be allied to disloyalty or treason in politics. Thus, quite apart from the importance attached to religious instruction as an essential part of education, it seemed logical that schools and universities should be prevented from producing potential enemies of both church and state, and that the government should decree that the licensing of teachers and the provision and oversight of education should be under ‘the control and auspices’ of ‘the established Church of the Realm’.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the ‘special relationship’ between the state and the Established Church remained extremely close. The head of the state was the head of that church; bishops were nominated by the state, often to reward or to ensure political support; changes in the church’s liturgy and laws were controlled by parliament; its prelates sat in the House of Lords. Not only were most church appointments at the disposal of the Crown or of the ruling class, who could appoint congenial clergymen to them, but the prevailing admiration in the highest church circles for ‘rational’ religion, the scorn felt for ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘visionary’ fervour, made it easy for leading Anglican clergymen to move socially among influential laymen not remarkable for their piety; and, indeed, for numbers of such laymen, or their nominees, to become Anglican ministers, especially since ‘England was probably the sole country in Christendom where no proof of theological knowledge was exacted from candidates for ordination’ (Halé.vy, 1949, I, 391-2).

It was widely agreed that the church must hold a privileged position in the state. The Anglican parish priest remained legally the pastor of all those living within his parish. Nonconformists, equally with Anglicans, could be obliged to pay tithes (often to lay patrons of benefices) and to contribute towards any church-rate levied for the repair of the nave of the parish church and the upkeep of the churchyard. No one (apart from Quakers and Jews) could be legally married except by an Anglican clergyman, and where, as usually was the case, the only graveyard available was that attached to the parish church, Nonconformists were buried according to Anglican rites or with none at all. No one could be awarded a degree at Cambridge, or even be admitted to Oxford, without subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and all senior members of the universities had to conform to the liturgy of the church.

But serious disadvantages for the church flowed from its close association with the state. Among politicians easy social familiarity with the clergy often bred, if not contempt, at least a certain genial irreverence, and a disposition to suspect that demands made in the name of the church were inspired by a desire for perquisites or influence. In other ways the sources of the church’s strength were also sources of weakness; as when, later in the century, the state delayed the establishment of necessary new bishoprics so as to prevent any increase in the church’s representation in the Lords; or when needed reforms were opposed by churchmen who felt obliged to deny the state’s right to effect them, or else were rejected by legislators anxious to protect their interests and patronage. Much criticism was aroused by nepotism, the wealth enjoyed by many clergymen (although others were desperately poor), non-residence and sinecures; and there was bitter resentment that many of the clergy were led by political and social sympathies to become agents and allies of unpopular administrations, to be ‘ministers of the government rather than ministers of the gospel’, as one contemporary critic complained (quoted Bowen, 1968, 5).

Moreover, by the beginning of the nineteenth century the need for an alliance between church and state, in the field of education or elsewhere, had much diminished. Society had become much more secular in outlook. The Industrial Revolution and the requirements of commerce and science were creating a need for studies far beyond the purview of most of the clergy : and if the traditional public schools and grammar schools had become outdated in the eyes of many middle-class parents, they offered still less to the illiterate poor. The growth and movement of population were making the church’s parochial organization and geographical distribution inadequate. Again, experience had shown that differences in religious belief, though still capable of arousing considerable suspicion and hostility in many quarters, need no longer lead to disaffection and civil strife.

The state was confronted not with one church but with several, for most Scotsmen were Presbyterians, most Irishmen Roman Catholics; in England and Wales Nonconformity had been greatly strengthened by the rise of Methodism, and there were considerable numbers of Baptists and Congregationalists, with influential groups of Quakers, Unitarians and Presbyterians. It has been claimed that in 1811, ‘while the nominal members of the Establishment still constituted an enormous majority, the Nonconformists already equalled, if they did not exceed, the Anglicans who practised their religion’ (Halévy, 1949, I, 428). The laws prohibiting Protestant Dissenters from teaching had been repealed in 1779, and had fallen into disuse earlier. Similar freedom had been extended to Roman Catholics in 1778 and 1791. Moreover the Evangelical revival which had strengthened and revitalized Non-conformity had led to the development of an Evangelical group within the Anglican church, remarkable for its piety, philanthropy and devotion to the Protestant religion – and therefore able to work readily with Nonconformists. The first Evangelical bishop was not appointed until 1815, but by that time the influence of the group was considerable, and it was destined to increase.

But in the meantime the lack of religious zeal and the admiration for ‘practical Christianity’ to be found among leading Anglicans made it the easier for ‘reasons of state’ to prevail. Thus, in the hope of increasing political stability in Ireland, parliament in 1795 established a seminary to train Irish Roman Catholic priests at Maynooth, the same grant being made annually for maintenance; in 1799 the government even planned to pay both the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, ten of the Roman Catholic prelates agreeing, in return, that no one of whom the state disapproved would be appointed a bishop, none who had not taken an oath of allegiance a parish priest. The proposals were dropped only when Roman Catholics were refused entry to the Westminster parliament following the Act of Union (1800).

In 1807 parliament debated, and the Lords rejected, Samuel Whitbread’s proposal that local rates might be levied in England and Wales by vestries or magistrates to provide elementary education for poor children. The Archbishop of Canterbury complained that the Bill, if passed, would ‘subvert the first principles of education in this country’, since education should be ‘under the control and auspices’ of the Church of England; but one speaker, Earl Stanhope, opposed what he called ‘the abominable principle that no part of the population of this country ought to receive education unless in the tenets of the established church’. He asked a question which was ignored at the time but which would eventually have to be answered :

Was it reasonable or just to say that the children of catholics, presbyterians, quakers, and all the innumerable sects of dissenters from the established church in this country, were to be barred all sources of public education, supplied by public benevolence, unless they were to become converts to our established religion ? (Hansard, IX, 1177).

Churches, schools and political alignments

Whatever the reply might be, there was still very general agreement that the education of the poor should be provided by the churches and be primarily concerned with religious instruction. From the 1780s the Sunday schools spread rapidly. At first some efforts were made (as in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Stockport and elsewhere) to provide Sunday schools on a nonsectarian basis, but the desire of the religious bodies to teach their particular doctrines, or to guard against proselytism by others, proved too strong almost everywhere. Relatively few schools taught more than religion and reading, it being frequently objected that writing and arithmetic were servile pursuits unsuited to the Sabbath. But the development of the cheap monitorial system by the Quaker Joseph Lancaster and the Anglican Andrew Bell during the early years of the nineteenth century made it possible for the churches to establish considerable numbers of day schools providing instruction in religion but also in the three R’s.

Nonconformists in the larger towns established many schools in which their own particular beliefs were taught, but many others supported the schools assisted by the British and Foreign School Society (founded, in its embryonic form, in 1808), the aim of which was to promote ‘the Education of the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of every Religious Persuasion’. It was one of the Society’s original rules that ‘the lessons for reading shall consist of extracts from the Holy Scriptures; no catechism or peculiar religious tenets shall be taught in the schools, but every child shall be enjoined to attend regularly the place of worship to which its parents belong’. In view of claims made later regarding the Society’s success in providing an acceptable form of ‘non-sectarian education’, two facts should be noted:

(a) The rules did not forbid explanation of the Scripture extracts read: in 1838 the secretary of the Society informed a ‘Select Committee on the Education of the Poorer Classes’ that children were interrogated and explanations given in accordance with ‘the plain and obvious meaning of the text’. Whilst proselytism was forbidden, he admitted it to be ‘very possible that in all cases, to a great extent, the opinions of the master will colour any explanations of the master, however simple those explanations may be’. The Society received for training as teachers every year ‘probably equal proportions from the Church of England, Wesleyans, Congregationalists and Baptists’, and ‘no practical difficulty’ arose except that ‘a small proportion’ of the Unitarians objected (Qq. 524, 508);

(b) the official historian of the Society has recorded that ‘from the beginning there was no attempt to conceal the evangelical tendency of the instruction given. Doctrines like those of the Trinity and Atonement were plainly taught; though the main causes of offence, as between the various sects, were carefully avoided’ (Binns, 1908, 113).

The Church of England set up in 1811 a rival association with the significant title ‘The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Church of England’. Again, not all Anglican schools were affiliated to the Society, and, of those which were, by no means all were assisted by it. In the schools in union with the National Society (as it came briefly to be called) definite rules were laid down which became important in later conflicts : the teachers must be Anglicans, though children of all sects were admitted; all pupils must not only read the Authorized Version of the Bible but be taught the church liturgy and catechism; and all must attend an Anglican church on Sundays.

The provision of schools for Roman Catholic children was particularly inadequate because of the relatively small numbers of middle-class subscribers and the constant influx of miserably poor immigrants from Ireland : thus in Liverpool in 1824, though the ratio of Roman Catholics to others was probably about one to four, the proportion of children in Roman Catholic schools was less than one-fifteenth (Murphy, 1966 (2), 114). The children were forbidden by their priests to attend schools (even such as those of the British Society) where the reading of the Authorized Version was insisted upon, though they were permitted to attend for secular instruction where no attempt was made to influence belief, as in some Unitarian and other schools (ibid., 114 n.).

It must be emphasized that the division of opinion about school provision was not always rigid. Children of different persuasions were often to be found in one school. Many Anglicans and others of different denominations, and of none, supported the schools of the British Society. Clergymen and others of all creeds sometimes established schools out of sheer kindness towards poor children, not troubling about doctrinal differences. But, generally speaking, such differences were considered highly important among the clergy and their more committed followers, including many politicians – though some of these were, of course, ready to exploit prevailing prejudices. Moreover, even when the immediate cause of dispute was a policy regarding schools, the antagonism often arose from a deep underlying hostility not primarily dependent on educational or even theological opinions. Among the clergy the contest often took on that special degree of bitterness to be found when members of a profession criticize each other’s ministrations as inadequate, heretical and positively harmful, and therefore deny to each other recognition as qualified practitioners, or even socially acceptable colleagues. An Anglican clergyman would often consider his dissenting colleague brash, ‘dismal and illiberal’, and he could hardly have been expected to relish criticism of his own religious beliefs as lukewarm, Erastian and a betrayal of the principles of the Reformation. The dissenting minister, often debarred from performing burial and marriage rites; seeing the followers on whom he depended for financial support obliged to pay rates to a wealthy ‘state’ church and send their children to Anglican schools and churches; and finding himself despised by Anglican pastors for the very lack of university education which church and state denied him, could perhaps be understood if he angrily opposed policies which to him seemed designed to make use of schools to strengthen the position of the Established Church.

The committee of the National Society included, among others, all the Anglican prelates, and it naturally represented those most anxious to propagate Anglican doctrine: it became all the more important a guardian of the church’s interests because it was sometimes regarded as the only substitute for the church’s constitutional governing body – Convocation – which had not met since 1717 (Denison, L.E., 1902, 40). It naturally looked for support to the Tories. Though in general the Nonconformists sought help from the Whigs, many Wesleyans still looked upon themselves as faithful members of the Church of England, and it has been observed that ‘at the beginning of the Victorian era the dominant political tradition among the Methodists was Christian Toryism’ (Vidler, 1949, 115). The British and Foreign Society was supported politically and financially by many Whigs, and also by many Radicals, Socialists and others anxious to change the social order and to attack the power and pretensions of the Anglican Church: so that political antagonism and religious hostility were very frequently merged.

Attitudes of teachers and parents

Until 1870, at any rate, the opinions of teachers in the schools for the poor carried little weight. The two education societies from the first made arrangements to give rudimentary training to their own teachers: but Roman Catholic teachers were sometimes trained in Anglican establishments (Southey, 1844, III, 448), and, as we have seen, Anglican teachers were admitted to the training institutions and schools of the British Society. Some teachers set up professional organizations open to all denominations, though in 1823 Dr Bell showed disapproval of such associations (ibid., 293)- In general the qualifications, pay and status of teachers were so low that independent expressions of opinion could hardly be expected of them: they might at once be dismissed for any infraction of rules relating to religious instruction, or even at the whim of a new incumbent. When Samuel Wilderspin, already widely known for his influential advocacy of infant schooling, ventured to contradict an Anglican clergyman in 1837, he was contemptuously informed that the latter could not ‘consent . . . that a clergyman of the Church of England should stand to compete with a schoolmaster’ (Murphy, 1959, 116).

More remarkable were the attitudes of the parents. For most of the period covered by this book religious and political passions raged fiercely among many clergymen, politicians and their warmest supporters about the kind and degree of religious instruction to be given to the children of the poor; yet, broadly speaking, one can say that at the centre of this storm there was a great calm area occupied by the vast majority of the parents of the children concerned. (And we are not here discussing the mass of the desperately poor and brutalized inhabitants of the worst slums, who for most of the nineteenth century were scarcely touched at all by religion or by schooling.) It is true that working-class Roman Catholics tended to follow loyally the instructions of their priests, partly because of the more strict demands made on them by their religion, the greater sense of unity engendered by their position as a small minority and their close association with their clergy. But the Church of England had failed to develop in the quickly expanding towns the influence it had long possessed in rural areas: as one Anglican clergyman remarked in 1896, ‘It is not that the Church of God has lost the large towns: it has never had them’ (quoted Inglis, 1963, 3). Again, except in a few areas of England and in parts of Wales, as the nineteenth century went on, Nonconformity tended to become associated more and more with the lower middle classes and those just above them in the social scale, especially since prudent and thrifty workers (whether attracted to religion by being so or made so by their religious beliefs) naturally rose out of their class. In 1902 Charles Booth, writing on the Life and Labour of the People in London, found that ‘The great section of the population which passes by the name of the working classes . . . remains, as a whole, outside of all the religious bodies. The bulk of the regular wage-earning class still remain untouched, except that their children attend Sunday School’.

Not that most parents were unbelievers, in spite of the efforts of Radicals and Socialists to spread secularist views. It has been said that at the beginning of Victoria’s reign

. . . most slum pastors agreed that the poor were free or almost free of infidelity. They found apathy and indifference and hostility, not unbelief. . . . The literature of the working man was violently anticlerical, antichurch, antimethodist, antichapel. It rollicked in abuse of the establishment. But it was not usually heathen. Pamphlets and newspapers used simple texts of scripture to beat church of merchant and chapel of shopkeeper. Most working men would have been horrified to be told that they were not Christians (Chadwick, 1966,1, 333).

It was widely accepted that, rightly given and received, a modicum of religious instruction would im...