ABSTRACT
The religious census of 1851 made it abundantly clear that attendance at church or chapel was a practice much more associated with the middle than the working classes. As many historians of religion have pointed out, religious belief had become 'a character and function of class' rather than a basis for a wider social unity. Both religious beliefs and practice gave tenant farmers, small manufacturers and professionals who were struggling to establish themselves, a certainty about their claims and a reason for rejecting some of the values of the aristocracy and gentry. The Anglican Evangelicals made an impact on the religious state of the nation as early as the 1780s. The stress on an individual relation to Jesus and concern with the individual soul tended to take attention away from more secular matters and committed religionists tended to be apolitical, for politics could be another worldly trap.
