ABSTRACT
There had been comparative stagnation in the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Little had been done to meet the needs of an expanding industrial population. Eventually this position changed after 1815. Anglicanism revived with grants for church building in 1818 and 1824, so that over 4,500 churches were built or rebuilt by 1875. Abuses were reformed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners after 1840. Even so the 1851 Religious Census revealed that only half the population went to church and only half of these were Anglicans. The late nineteenth century saw church-going remaining high in the countryside but declining in urban areas. The scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century, especially Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), had done a great deal to undermine fundamental religious attitudes by questioning the authority of the Bible. Church building failed to keep pace with population growth and movement. After the First World War religious adherence was obviously on the decline.
