Nature and Modernity: J. C. Atkinson and Rural Ministry in England c. 1850–1900

• Published in: Studies in church history 2010, Vol.46, p.366-395
• Main Author: Sheils, William
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0424-2084; 2059-0644
• DOI: 10.1017/S0424208400000711

The impact of industrialization and urbanization in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the Churches’ responses to it, in terms of meeting pastoral needs and devotional impulses, has produced an extensive literature since Owen Chadwick’s magisterial study of forty years ago. Much of that has focussed on the social mission of the Church, but the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and the rapid transformation of parts of the physical landscape following industrialization and urbanization in the later nineteenth century also raised issues about humanity’s relationship to the natural world and in particular, for the purposes of this paper, the English countryside. Questions about that relationship have become even more pressing as industrialization has made a global impact and our use — and abuse — of the world’s natural resources threaten to deplete those life-giving assets upon which our future depends: clean air and clean water. Historians have much to contribute to the debate and the publication of The Oxford Handbook to Religion and Ecology in 2006 indicates the contemporary importance of the theme to theologians also.