what was the most prominent religion in the victorian era
Victorian morality Religious morality changed drastically during the Victorian Era. When Victoria took the throne the Anglican Church was very powerfulâ€”running schools and universities, and with high ranking churchmen holding offices in the House of Lords.[6] The Church's power continued to rule in rural areas throughout the Victorian Era; however that was not the case in industrialised cities.[6] In the cities those against the Church were many and dissent was rampant.[6] However, dissent has been running its pressure since the onset of Puritanism in politics even before the Oliver Cromwell days. The dissenting sects were against what the Anglican church was using its power for.[7] The Church demanded obedience to God, submissiveness and resignation with the goal of making people more malleable to the will of the Church.[7] The Church was accused of appeasing the will of the elite, and of caring little if at all about the needs and wants of the lower, peasant class,[7] from which dissent emerged Methodism, Congregationalism, The Society of Friends (Quakers) and Presbyterianism.[7] The Methodists and Presbyterians in particular stressed personal salvation through direct individual faith in Jesus Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection on the behalf of sinners, citing the New Testament Gospels and the writings of the Apostles Peter, James and Paul.[7] This stress on individualism is seen throughout the Victorian Era and becomes even more developed in middle class life.
Catholic Church in England and Wales The English Church was brought back under papal authority in 1553 and doctrinal and liturgical conformity at the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary I.[11] The restoration of papal authority was celebrated by the majority of the nation[citation needed] and enforced by the Marian persecutions against Protestants. Her harshness was a success but at the cost of alienating a fairly large section of English society which had been moving away from some traditional Catholic devotional practices. The English it seems were quite caught up with the reforming movement on the Continent. At the time they were neither Calvinist nor Lutheran, but certainly leaning toward Protestantism (and by the late 16th century, were certainly Protestant).[12]