Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The nineteenth-century crisis of faith is a motif that has become vastly overblown..." (more)
Key Phrases: freethinking lecturer, popular freethinkers, organized freethought, Joseph Barker, Thomas Cooper, William Hone (more...)

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

Product Description

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.

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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: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,227,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)