The Changing Role of Religion

Professor Durant listed the “big ideas” of the Victorian era during our first session together. One of these big ideas was providence, or the preoccupation with religion, and the notion that we live under the care and governance of God. This concept has been evident throughout our studies this week, especially in medicine. However, the impression I got from the readings and excursions this week was that the presence of religion in medicine and science was not a given in the Victorian era; rather, that the influence of religion was waning, and a new era of reliance on natural history and science was being born.

This is not to say that religion did not play a large role in medicine and science. On our medical walking tour of London with Sue, we saw Guy’s Hospital. Sue told us that without a recommendation from a church, a patient would not be admitted to the hospital. The Royal Free Hospital was set up as a dispensery for the poor who would not be admitted to a traditional Christian hospital because they did not have a recommendation. We then saw the women’s operating theater, which was set up in the attic of a chapel, symbolically demonstrating the seemingly inexorable link between religion and medicine. Additionally, we learned in class that the two main medical schools, Oxford and Cambridge, had close ties with the Church of England.

However, clearly ideas were shifting during this period. One notable aspect of medicine during this time is the doctor as a heroic figure. While doctors could often do little to truly cure their patients, they were able to comfort them and be with them until their death. In the past, if a child were gravely ill, a religious figure would sit at his bedside and allow for safe passage into the next world. But in the Victorian era, the comforting figure at the bedside became the doctor. This represents a shift away from placing faith in religion to placing it in science.

Thomas Huxley’s “lay-sermon” captures the changing sentiment of the era quite well. He talks about the great tragedies of the 1660’s: the plague, and the great fire. Huxley then goes on to boldly claim that tragedies of this scale have been avoided in the modern era due to advances in science. He emphasizes the importance of the study of natural history and warns, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.” There is an interesting interplay between religion and science here. Huxley urges against blind faith in religion, but displays his own faith in natural history with an intense and devout zeal.