Civil Religion and the Enlightenment in England, 1707-1800

Reveals how Enlightened writers in England, both lay and clerical, proclaimed public support for Christianity by transforming it into a civil religion.

In the aftermath of the seventeenth—century European wars of religion, civil religionists such as David Hume, Edward Gibbon, the third earl of Shaftesbury, and William Warburton sought to reconcile Christian ecclesiology with the civil state and Christian practice with civilized society. They built their arguments in the context of England's ...