Product Description

By the end of the nineteenth century, almost all the great writers, artists and intellectuals had abandoned Christianity, and many had abandoned belief in God altogether. A.N. Wilson demonstrates through such diverse lives as those of Gibbon, Kant, and Marx, the doubt about religion had many sources. By 1900 the Church was vastly rich and powerful, but was seen by many as spiritually empty, however full its pews might be of a Sunday. Echoes of the death of God could be heard everywhere; in the revolutionary politics of Garibaldi and Lenin; in the poetry of Tennyson, the plays of Shaw and the novels of Hardy; in the philosophy of Hegel and in the work of Freud; in the first stirrings of feminism. Wilson's fascinating and challenging account shows how the decline of religious certainty in Victorian times had its origins with the eighteenth-century sceptics - but brought a devastating sense of emotional loss which extends to our own times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #322275 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 539 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It is extraordinary that in the century that witnessed the greatest period of church-building in human history, the mass revivals of the Evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics and the founding of missionary societies to convert the heathen should also have been the period when atheism went from being an esoteric and secretive persuasion to being the religion of the suburbs. By the end of the 19th century the great mass of thinking men and women had come to abandon the religion which, for at least a millennium, had dominated the British Isles.

A.N. Wilson follows up his sensational biographies of Jesus and Paul with this fascinating account of the lives and ideas of those prominent men and women who, to differing degrees and for many different reasons, felt that they could not number themselves among the Christian faithful. Starting with the works of Hume and Gibbon, Wilson introduces us to the eccentric utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, the agonising doubts of Carlyle, the revolutionary atheism of Marx and the militant defence of unbelief by Huxley. Lyell, Darwin, Freud, George Eliot, Hardy--the list covers what seems like most of the great minds of the century.

Wilson's wit, warmth and erudition make God's Funeral enthralling throughout and this reviewer would strongly recommend it to people of all shades of belief. --Douglas Pretsell

Review
'Wilson's rare combination of extraordinary scholarship with an almost pathological sense of mischief makes him the most entertaining writer we have' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Wilson has so clear a grasp of opposing principles and personalities that he is able effortlessly to make them live again' THE TIMES 'An extraordinary arc of knowledge and astonishing range of reading' SUNDAY TIMES 'An illuminating analysis of Victorian religious doubt' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A work of great scholarship presented with wit and humour. Wilson's wide-ranging book is as entertaining as it is informative.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Believers, agnostics and athiests will all derive pleasure as well as instruction from this stimulating and convincingly argued volume.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'The easy swing of Wilson's erudition is impressive, but so is the sympathy he brings to bear, as one of the few intellectuals in this country who has undergone a comparable process of estrangement from religion.' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'It is extraordinary that in the century that witnessed the greatest period of church-building in human history, the mass revivals of the Evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics and the founding of missionary societies to convert the heathen should also have been the period when atheism went from being an esoteric and secretive persuasion to being the religion of the suburbs. By the end of the 19th century the great mass of thinking men and women had come to abandon the religion which, for at least a millennium, had dominated the British Isles. A.N. Wilson follows up his sensational biographies of Jesus and Paul with this fascinating account of the lives and ideas of those prominent men and women who, to differing degrees and for many different reasons, felt that they could not number themselves among the Christian faithful. Starting with the works of Hume and Gibbon, Wilson introduces us to the eccentric utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, the agonising doubts of Carlyle, the revolutionary atheism of Marx and the militant defence of unbelief by Huxley. Lyell, Darwin, Freud, George Eliot, Hardy--the list covers what seems like most of the great minds of the century. Wilson's wit, warmth and erudition make God's Funeral enthralling throughout and this reviewer would strongly recommend it to people of all shades of belief.' - Douglas Pretsell, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

SUNDAY TIMES
'An extraordinary arc of knowledge and astonishing range of reading'

Customer Reviews

Worth persisting with
I approached this book as someone with a keen interest in nineteenth century English Literature, and with a smattering of popular theology, but without knowing my Kant from my Kuhn (so to speak). Despite having recently developed an interest in the God question it wasn't clear to me from reading the synopsis whether this book was intended for me or not; but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. Well, I've just finished my second reading, and I still can't answer that question.

The book seems to fall between 2 stools, being a bit too jokey to satisfy the academics, and yet - at least in part - being too demanding (if not totally impenetrable) for the lay reader.

Also it is not written to a consistent intellectual standard. For example in the chapter on Science we find the following readily accessible - and perhaps even facile - comment: "In all likelihood, our post-modern habit of viewing science as only a paradigm would evaporate if we developed appendicitis. We should look for a medically trained surgeon who knows what an appendix was, where it was, and how to cut it out without killing us. Likewise, we should be happy to debate the essentially fictive nature of, let us say, Newton's Laws of Gravity unless and until someone threatened to throw us out of a top-storey window. Then the law of gravity would seem very real indeed."

Whereas in a later chapter on William James, we have the more cerebral: "The Idealist, however, seems to have, ready-made, a conception of knowledge which is in itself quite "religious". This is especially true if you follow Hegel in thinking that the universe itself, in so far as it has reality, is a spiritual reality. Human consciousness, itself a spiritual thing, responds to the spirit and truth of the universe. According to the Absolute Idealism of Fichte or Hegel, reality is a whole - that is, the Absolute. The great attraction of this seemingly mystical notion is that it jumps over the central stumbling block of the empiricist position - namely, how there can be forms of understanding or perceptions of truth which transcend any verification-principle which we could devise"

This may well be the sort of elementary stuff covered in Philosophy 101, but to me it just doesn't really mean anything.

On a more mundane level, there is also an irritating lack of consistency in the author's assumptions regarding the general educational background of his readership. For example, the book is peppered with French, Latin and German quotations and terminologies, some of which are translated, and others - quite arbitrarily, it would seem - are not.

Regardless of who the book was written for, it's pretty clear that the author had a whale of a time writing it. Despite pompously stating that "it is not for one generation to pass judgement on its ancestors..." (p 146), this is of course precisely what he proceeds to do...and with some relish, sticking the boot in left, right and centre. Few of the characters described in the potted biographies that form the core of the book escape without having some aspect of their personas vilified. All good stuff though.

Despite the above criticisms, this book tells a fascinating story, and anyone with enough interest in the subject to be reading this review would be able to extract enough from it to make it a worthwhile read. You might, however, need access to a good dictionary, as there are a lot of obscure "ologies" referred to, and no glossary!

History lite
I found this a peculiar read, simply because I was not at all clear as to who the intended audience would be for the book. Beyond the sensationalist title, whilst this is a relatively dense book, and a little off-putting for that, the breadth of knowledge displayed here is not matched by any real depth of understanding of key concepts in the changing ideas presented. There is a strong emphasis on British and literary sources, and some limited interest in church politics of the period (which is often more concerned with the sexuality of proponents than their understanding of German biblical criticism).
Across the book there is lots of knockabout stuff, which happily concentrates on crude caricatures of "eminent Victorians", rather than looking critically at the ideas they may have advanced. The Marx chapter is a good example of this, lots about his life and hard times, little critical analysis of his ideas on religion (and how they differed significantly from Engels', more importantly). A good example of the weak grasp of the more high order ideas touched upon is that of Thomas Kuhn, parodied as the most crass attack upon the "reality" of science, but with no real grasp of the arguments put forward in his work as to how normal science or paradigm shift occurs.
If you are content with history lite written by an Oxford generalist, more interested in Great Tradition "Eng Lit" than the history of ideas then this will do for you, whoever you are. If you are actually interested in a broad and authoritative historical and/or philosophical account of the relationship between religion and science, look elsewhere. It reads a little like a treatment for an overextended TV series buried somewhere late in the schedules which has yet to be made (and please that is NOT a plea to do so!).

This companionable journey through 19th Century thought
is prefaced by Hardy's poem God's Funeral, printed in full at the start of the book.

This device, and the further quoting of it many times in the text, is a successful focus for a well-guided intellectual tour.

The bookish reader is driven to return to Hardy and Spencer, and also to make new 'friends' (in the author's cheerful conceit) of both Wilson himself and unknowns like George Tyrrell of the 'Modernist Catholic' persuasion.

The non-bookish reader will not, I should think, get past the first chapter, or indeed past the cover and the well-chosen photographs; this is a dense book, and enjoyable to read, but it is for the thoughful and leisured reader who is prepared to commit time and attention.