Anglican reaction in a period of rapid social change and theological controversy 1680-1730

What is it about?

The London churches built by Nicholas Hawksmoor—the architect required by the Commission for the Fifty New Churches to provide a template for the new churches according to the principles laid down in 1712—are often regarded as the idiosyncratic creations of the architect’s individual genius. They were however as much the creation of the particular intellectual, theological and political context of the late Stuart period, an expression of a high church attempt to reconnect the Church of England with the early centuries of the Christian Church, particularly the great basilicas built under Constantine and Justinian. Conservative in intent, they were at the same time fed by the new spirit of intellectual enquiry led by the Royal Society and the expansion of global trade at the the eighteenth century. These express a new Anglican denominational identity as the inheritor of the ‘purest’ traditions of the ‘primitive’ church, ancient yet modern, orthodox and, at the same time, reformed.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The conflict between scepticism and religious belief, scientific rationalism and faith set up in this period still form the basic context for debate within and between churches today, as well as with science and atheism. Denominationalism and church 'parties' as we know ithem today emerged in the controversies of the immediate post-Restoration period.

Perspectives