Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England [Hardcover]

Timothy Larsen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199287872 | ISBN-13: 978-0199287871 | Publication Date: January 18, 2007

The Victorian crisis of faith has dominated discussions of religion and the Victorians. Stories are frequently told of prominent Victorians such as George Eliot losing their faith. This crisis is presented as demonstrating the intellectual weakness of Christianity as it was assaulted by new lines of thought such as Darwinism and biblical criticism. This study serves as a corrective to that narrative. It focuses on freethinking and Secularist leaders who came to faith. As sceptics, they had imbibed all the latest ideas that seemed to undermine faith; nevertheless, they went on to experience a crisis of doubt, and then to defend in their writings and lectures the intellectual cogency of Christianity. The Victorian crisis of doubt was surprisingly large. Telling this story serves to restore its true proportion and to reveal the intellectual strength of faith in the nineteenth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A fascinating book."--John Wolffe, American Historical Review

"Crisis of Doubt is an impressively researched, clearly written, and forcefully, even polemically, argued work of scholarship. Larsen has amply demonstrated that at least among the plebian leaders of 19th-century secularism there was indeed a "crisis of doubt" to go alongside the more familiar meta-narrative of a "crisis of faith." --Books & Culture

"Well written and gently provocative... This book is an excellent and challenging addition to the literature on nineteenth-century religious thought and should lead on to further study." --Journal of Theological Studies

"Crisis of Doubt is an impressively researched, clearly written, and forcefully, even polemically, argued work of scholarship. Larsen has amply demonstrated that at least among the plebian leaders of 19th-century secularism there was indeed a "crisis of doubt" to go alongside the more familiar meta-narrative of a "crisis of faith." --Books & Culture

"Larsen accomplishes here revisionist history at its very best... Scholars on this side of the Atlantic would do well to take Larsen's conclusions and apply them to American intellectual or literary history of the same period. Such research would undoubtedly uncover similar results. Crisis of Doubt is a very welcome and timely study of how powerful many of those commonplace historical narratives can become -- and of how important it is that we keep questioning them." --Touchstone

"Well written and gently provocative... This book is an excellent and challenging addition to the literature on nineteenth-century religious thought and should lead on to further study." --Journal of Theological Studies

"Well-written and carefully argued." --Church History

About the Author

Timothy Larsen is Professor of Theology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199287872
• ISBN-13: 978-0199287871
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,764,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turning Historiography On Its Head...and that's a good thing, June 15, 2011

By 

Mark Lattimore (Wheaton, IL (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Paperback)

In the opening lines of Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (of which I read 100%), Timothy Larsen complains that "The nineteenth century crisis of faith is a motif that has become vastly overblown...When the Victorian landscape is painted, doubt is frequently exaggerated and faith dwarfed." Laying this charge squarely at the feet of Victorian period scholars, including the eminent Christian historian, Owen Chadwick, whose book title The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century Larsen found to be unfortunate, Larsen sets about the task of correcting the traditional portrayal of faith and doubt in Victorian England. Crisis of Doubt is a thoroughly researched study of the patterns of conversion, apostasy, and reconversion among Victorian-era British Christians who, during their stints as anti-Christian secularists, served as important "free thinker" leaders. Clearly provoked by statements such as, "Most thoughtful Victorians who lived through the middle years of the century experienced a crisis of faith," Larsen counters that there was also a "crisis of doubt" in Victorian England among those Christians who had lost their faith and found themselves, later in life, unable to reconcile their "doubt" of Christianity with their beliefs and experiences, ultimately returning to the faith of their youth. This is the story that has not previously been told. This is the story Larsen endeavors to tell and one he tells quite well.
Larsen makes his argument that the crisis of faith narrative is "overblown" by offering the reader short biographies of seven Christians, turn anti-Christian secularist leaders, turn Christians. At first, this methodology is somewhat disappointing, even to an admittedly sympathetic reviewer who, like Larsen, is an evangelical. Though the biographies are interesting reads, there is at first blush something quite suspect about building an historical argument based on the lives of seven hand-picked men who so perfectly support the author's thesis. Nevertheless, in what seems to be a common structural choice for Larsen, keeping the reader uneasy regarding the strength of his argument until the end, he discusses in depth the reasons for his methodological choices in the concluding, rather than the introductory, chapters. In Chapter 9, Larsen convincingly argues for the validity of his approach, observing that the criticisms he has previously received from other Victorian-era scholars reveal a disturbing double standard. To the question of how many people reconverted to Christianity from secularism, Larsen retorts, "I doubt very much that people routinely asked Basil Wiley, A.O.J. Cockshut, Susan Budd, or A.N. Wilson: `How many Victorians lost their faith?'"
Beginning by acknowledging the difficulty of quantitative analysis of such a subject (a difficulty shared, incidentally, by those offering the crisis of faith view) Larsen then points out that the case studies are those of prominent secular leaders, not run-of-the-mill doubters. He argues that the proportion of secularist leadership who reconverted is so great that it has no analogue in the converse situation, that is, the proportion of ecclesiastical leadership who lost their faith. Then, appealing to principles of sampling, Larsen concludes that the apostasy/reconversion scenario was not a statistically insignificant phenomenon. When one considers that many Victorians never lost their faith, one gets the sense that in a broad view faith may have even been the rule, not the exception. In any event, the prominent secular leaders chosen by Larsen constitute a statistically useful sample.
Equally as important as the numbers of secularists who reconverted are the reasons for their leaving and then returning to the faith. It is in this that the biographies that Larsen provides are particularly useful and enlightening. In reading the biographies, certain patterns unbelief and belief begin to emerge. It is not necessary here to recount each life. Larsen, citing the work of Susan Budd, summarizes in the concluding chapter the profile of the Victorian secularist as a nonconformist who, in a ministry role, studies the Bible, becomes disillusioned with apparent contradictions or inconsistencies, and ultimately rejects the Bible as either divine or true, leading to a loss of faith. He goes on to summarize the common reasons for reconversion, including a desire for a moral standard, objection to the negation tendencies of secularist thought, a reassessment of the nature and role of reason, and experiences with spiritualism.
Within these patterns of apostasy and reconversion, there are two themes, however, that are particularly worth noting by the twenty-first century reader as they demonstrate challenges facing the twenty-first century evangelical. The first is the role and veracity of the Bible. Central to the decision of each of the seven men profiled in Crisis of Doubt to abandon their Christian faith was a disillusionment regarding scripture. It is worth noting that these were not casual readers of the Bible or, more generally, were not casual readers at all. These were rather very intentional readers of a wide range of subjects. While they all shared an overly-literal hermeneutic which led to critiques of the Bible describing it in terms ranging from inconsistent to immoral, it was not an uncommon approach to Biblical interpretation - nor is it today. While certainly, as Larsen observes, there were many factors that led to the apostasy on the part of these men, including early commitments to political and philosophical ideologies and unique life experiences, central to all of their decisions was their view of scripture. It is also a "reappraisal" of scripture that often contributed to reconversion.
The second important theme is an outgrowth of the first. In an indictment of the atrophied North American evangelical "life of the mind," Mark Noll opens his 1994 volume thusly, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." In reading Crisis of Doubt, one gets the sense that many of Larsen's case study subjects would echo Noll's sentiment vis à vis their own time and geography. What many of Larsen's subjects had in common was the lack of sound teaching during crucial formative phases of their Christian growth, teaching which was on equal par with the contemporary ideas and philosophies being devoured by the learned at that time. "[T]he representatives of Christian thought in his life at that time, [John Bagnall] Bebbington reiterated, `were utterly incapable' of `dealing with my difficulties.'" Much as Augustine's departure from Manicheanism stemmed from the inability of Faustus to answer his objections, the men profiled in Crisis of Doubt had similar misgivings about a faith that seemingly no one could defend. Larsen notes, however, that it was also the ultimate influence of "intellectual influences generally - to reading, to the impact of sermons and lectures, to relationships with learned Christians" that contributed to the reconversions recounted in this book. These accounts serve as a critical reminder of the importance and impact of a vibrant, able and ready Christian intellectualism and the consequences of its absence or lack of engagement.
Crisis of Doubt is a history, and a good one at that. Larsen successfully turns the tables on traditional Victorian loss of faith scholarship, demonstrating that that narrative is indeed "overblown" and unfairly fails to consider the dynamic faith at work during the same period. Intentionally or not, however, Larsen has provided an even greater service to the modern evangelical. He has laid out historical patterns of rejection and conviction which can, when judiciously grafted onto the modern experience, serve as templates to inform the modern evangelical movement in its efforts.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Two-Way Crisis, October 10, 2011

By 

Kevin L. Morgan - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Paperback)

Through the return to belief of several notable Victorian skeptics, author Timothy Larsen delineates an alternate crisis in the Victorian age to the "crisis of faith." For many the times provided a "crisis of doubt." Larsen faithfully portrays the dissatisfaction that these men had with 'doubt' as a fuel for living life long-term. He freely acknowledges the Victorian crisis of faith, but recognizes that most treatments of later Victorian society lack balance in acknowledging the advance that faith made during this period as believers embarked upon far-reaching missions of compassion.

Many will note a touch of humor in the use of a Dawkinsesque image on the cover of the book.