ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore what most accepted to be moderate views on the separation of religion and politics, the challenge presented by popular unrest, and the range of Christian responses to proposals of parliamentary reform. It demonstrates a general trend toward a more progressive understanding of the nature of industrial society and the movement of Christian radicalism into the mainstream of political debate. The profound changes suggested by reformers drew an inevitable conservative response in some quarters. Stephenson Bulmer warned the ministers of Whitby that ‘politics are dangerous, as the sin of witchcraft, to all men who have the slightest regard to a good conscience.’ George Henry Law, Bishop of Bath and Wells, likewise took a much more liberal view of the agricultural disturbances of 1830. His tract, Remarks on the Present Distresses of the Poor, set out causes for the unrest and offered remedies to prevent a recurrence.
