ABSTRACT
The relationship between science and religion has a long and complex history. In the nineteenth century it was marked by the evangelical revival and the diffusion of natural theology, the rise of liberal Anglicanism and movements of secular or alternative religion, including positivism and agnosticism, spiritualism and theosophy. The sciences played a role in challenges to the authority of the church and its divinely ordained hierarchies. Central to the more conservative regime of science and religion was natural theology. In much popular science writing, natural knowledge continued to be placed within a Christian framework. Theosophy had originated out of the more popular movement of spiritualism by transposing communications with the dead that were the staple of Victorian seances into channels of arcane knowledge, unlocking the wisdom of past lives and higher beings. The most influential poetic reflection on religion and science of the second half-century was Tennyson's In Memoriam.
