The following is excerpted from The Descent Into Unbelief: When Christendom Produces Cultists, Mockers and Atheists, by Jonathan Rice which originally appeared in the SCP Journal (29:2-29:3) . (Reprinted with permission). (Also check out Part I and Part II). So far, we have had a glimpse into the fruit-filled faith of the Victorians who so positively impacted their culture for Christ. Yet many of their children and grandchildren left the faith. Why? Essentially, Rice contends, they lost in the battle for the minds of their children. They failed to teach their children to reason biblically. As these children entered adulthood and were confronted for the first time with objections to Christianity, they were not adequately equipped to meet the challenge, instead leaving the faith.
Most of those who fell away fit into a similar pattern. On one hand, they resented the repressive narrowness of their upbringings, but they also appreciated the many good aspects. Their main problem was in the world of ideas: no longer were they protected, sheltered children, reading the religious propaganda of Hannah More or Thomas Bowdler’s expurgated editions of Shakespeare. They were now thinking adults in the real world, exposed to the ideas of atheists, agnostics, occultist, and sexual revolutionaries. Their parents and their churches hadn’t provided answers to such objections to their faith. Nor had they trained their children in the critical thinking skills needed to contrast biblical and other worldviews, which would have enabled them to find answers for themselves. The result was a severe “conversion crisis,” but this time a conversion away from the Christian faith to atheism or agnosticism.Many of them agonized deeply over their loss of faith. It was as though they had been robbed. They loved God and wished with all their hearts that they could still believe in him, but the evidence before them tore their faith away. Many held onto as much of their godly past as possible, trying to salvage the strong sense of morality, duty, hard work, and self-control, but without the God who had given them those qualities in the first place. One of them [Sir James Fitzjames Stephen] summed it up this way in 1873: “Let us dream no dreams and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever it may lead, with our eyes open and our heads raised.”[1] There is bravery and integrity in this statement, together with a horrible sense of the tragic. It is the practical creed of a man who had once known and loved God, but had lost all faith and was facing his short life alone and abandoned in a now empty universe.
The story of the great author George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) was quite depressing. She was raised an Evangelical and loved God with all her heart but unfortunately, she hadn’t learned to love God with her mind. Her hero was the great Christian political reformer William Wilberforce and at age 19 she wrote, “Oh that I might be made as useful in my lowly and obscure station as he [Wilberforce] was in the exalted one assigned to him.”[2] In a letter to a friend she wrote that she would be happy if she only listend to worship songs for the rest of her life. However, not all was well. Bradley notes that, “Three years later she rejected Christianity in a conversion which was almost as cataclysmic as those which had brought others to vital religion.”[3]
[1] Bradley, Ian C. The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact of the Victorians. (New York: MacMillan publishing Company, 1976) p. 200.
[2] Ibid, p. 199.
[3] Ibid.
The portrait, George Eliot at 30 by François D’Albert Durade, is in the public domain.
Next week, we will look more into the details of George Eliot’s “conversion.” The thesis of this article is very relavent today. As I observe the church, it seems to me that we are losing ground in the battle of ideas. This is not because Christianity does not have adequate defenses against the onlsaught of our postmodern, entertainment-driven culture, but because many seek to retreat from the battle. When we do this to the point of completely secluding our children from ideas contrary to our faith, they will be ill-equipped to confront them when they leave the home. It is also the heart of why we have chosen to use the Biblical Principle Approach in our homeschool.
homeschooling, Christianity, faith, reason
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
I have been thinking about the subject of our following generations following in our spiritual paths. And I do get concerned-Here I am investing greatly into their spiritual well being and then to have them turn away would be terrible. I know that God has promised His blessing to the Generations, but at what point is that promise guaranteed? What if I, with very good intentions, or even in my basic sinful nature, over look an area that I just can’t recognize as being important, and then have my children turn from the faith because of my own blindness? Does my heart intention mean anything? Does my own unintentioned blindness mean anything?
” Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost…” Titus 3:5
It is my understanding that we do our best to instruct our children in the Lord. We faithfully educate them and bring them up, teaching them the Word of God diligently and without ceasing. And while we protect them and shelter them to some degree, we need to make sure that we are laying a solid foundation, not just indoctrinating them. They need to be taught to reason…the story of George Eliot is kind of depressing. She walked away from the faith when exposed to anti-Christian materials that are weak and have since been soundly refuted. Had her faith been a foundation rather than a covering, she would have been able to see the errors for herself.
Of course, there are no guarantees. What the Lord has planned for each of our children may go against our own desires. Even in the best conditions, some walk away…many return later. Some do not. But I believe we must place our faith in the Lord rather than in our ability to teach them. We will always fall short, but He is faithful to bring about His will.
Dana, thank you for that verse.. We can’t save our children, no matter how faithful we are. To me, that’s the lesson of the Victorian age. While they were doing remarkable works for the Kingdom, many times their children were left with nothing but The Law and a Nanny, and that oppression burned great scars in their souls (”Daddy loves the church people more than me”). It reminds me of a Dobson line… “rules without relationships equals rebellion”. It also flies in the face of Proverbs 22.6: Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it. We love to turn that into “Train up a child in the way I want him to go…” A major part of raising children is finding out who God made them to be.. What makes them tick? Where are their gifts?
The Home School is the ideal place to learn who your child is and to raise them for God’s service, even if that service looks different than what you want for them. There are no recipes or formulas that will produce the perfect child… God wants us to pick up our cross daily and look to Jesus as our teacher. When children see that humility in us, then they become teachable “in the Lord”.
Thank you, Ross, and you are correct. I actually wrote about Proverbs 22 a while back as part of my series on motivation. It lines out my parenting philosophy a little better. And the scripture study linked near the end is kind of interesting, especially for those who use this verse to justify training their children according to their own wills using this verse.
This post is very interesting. I have read many of George Eliot’s works and recently looked into her life. I was sorely disappointed with what I found. It is hard to imagine such a radical change from what seemed like a vibrant faith. It could not have been though if her later life was the result.
The more I read of this time period the more the reality of vicar as just another “job” to choose if you were a second son becomes clear. The clergy was a profession the same as a soldier or merchant. This prevented more than one generation from knowing what was really true. They may have lived in the more simple or “moral” time in our minds, but in reality, much of the restraint they had was based upon societal pressure and not true belief in the dangers of immorality.
The veil of societal pressure has long since been torn down in our day and in some ways (sadly) it is easier to show our children the truth of an immoral life. It is all around us. Destroyed families and lives are everywhere and the church is not immune.
As Christian parents it is up to us to show a true faith, an honest walk, and to pray for our children. I believe it is truly the Holy Spirit that does the work of regeneration in our children’s hearts. We are, however, called to live and do all for the glory of God. If we live with the joy of the Lord as our strength, it is much more likely our children will not seek their own form of “joy” elsewhere.
May God make it so in His children who strive to be faithful.
Warmly,
Kate
Thank you, Kate. I’m hoping to add more on George Eliot tonight and please feel free to add anything you’ve learned from your studies. This section doesn’t go into great detail about her, but it is kind of depressing that she cast aside her faith after reading a book that reportedly contains only weak argumentation agains the faith. She seems like someone of enough talent to have been able to see through something like that, but as you pointed out, if the faith wasn’t real, there wasn’t much hope. It sounded as if her loss of faith was a great loss to her personally and that she struggled with it greatly. Kind of sad. But greater persecution than a few ideas await the faithful followers of Christ, and we must be prepared, “as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.”
You know she was not the only great writer from that time period who was off-course so to speak. I just read about Charles Dickens. He left his wife and multiple children for a mistress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens is a fairly decent source for his life story.
It is *so* hard for me to imagine because his work, in some respects, is so beautifully Christian and the giving of one’s self in books like A Tale of Two Cities is really remarkable (one of the best books ever written in my opinion once you get through the somewhat confusing first part). I was honestly surprised to read of his life choices after reading his work. I am not saying all his books are this way, but still, I think you understand my point.
There are actually (surprisingly to me) quite a few authors of that time that made very questionable moral choices yet they produced books we hail today as moral or at least clean. I suppose it could be said they wrote for their audience to some degree because they didn’t seem to write the way they were living. George Eliot certainly did pay to some degree at the time for her choice to live with a married man in Victorian England (and much of her family shunned her because of it too).
The more I read about some of my favorite authors the sader it makes me! I almost don’t want to know because it reveals they were not what they wrote about. There are some amazing moral characters in some of the books from that time that I have read and some very strong examples of making right choices for Christian reasons.
http://homeschoolblogger.com/UndertheSky/154913/ is my blog post about the books I have read and wish to read that were written during this time. It is fascinating to read from one time period because there was so much of the culture that makes its way into books written then. For example, there were some very strongly religious people in England at this time and Charlotte Mary Yonge is one of them. The Daisy Chain is her work and it was a fascinating look into some of the religious views as well as cultural views of the time. Beautiful Feet reproduced it and they sell it from their site. I highly recommend it if you are really interested in this subject.
It is hard to imagine attending a church that was pastored by someone who had no faith and having no other choices. I am thankful that we do have more today.
Warmly,
Kate
(Sorry to ramble on so!)
Thanks, Kate, and you can ramble on all you want. This is my personal philosophy and may only be worth the paper it isn’t even printed on…but I think that these not-so-Christian authors, being raised in Christian homes, were still somewhat restrained with some semblance of a Christian conscience. Hence they weren’t willing to challenge the status quo o much as our authors today. To some extent, it was the culture they were in, but I think they were still somewhat restrained by their upbringing and they were not yet ready to take their ideas to their natural conclusion.
Unlike Nietzsche. He was raised in a Christian home and studied Theology at the University of Bonn. But he worked in the Franco-Prussian War and the horrors of what he saw there lead him to the conclusion that any God who allowed this was not God. Perhaps it was due to the syphillis and the growing dementia, but he did seem capable of taking his ideas to their logical and natural conclusions, proclaiming God to be dead and hinting at the collapse of our social structures in the wake of his death.
Thanks for the link…I’ll check it out in a bit.
“What if I, with very good intentions, or even in my basic sinful nature, over look an area that I just can’t recognize as being important, and then have my children turn from the faith because of my own blindness? Does my heart intention mean anything? Does my own unintentioned blindness mean anything?”
Charlotte Mason talked about this. She said that there are Divine Laws that have to be followed, whether you’re a Christian or not. Even a faithful, God-loving person can’t expect to defy the law of gravity with impunity. She said that parents were responsible to find out the laws of human nature so they’d be properly able to train up their children. Parental errors, even when well-intentioned, do have very real repurcussions. In her first book, Home Education, she explained that love isn’t enough; mothers owe their children a THINKING love.
It seems to me that some parents in the Victorian era were evading controversial issues instead of learning how to deal with them. They meant well, they only wanted to shield their children from evil, but it cost those children their very faith in some cases when they came face to face with ideas and had no idea how to reason them through. And parents were also sending their children away to boarding schools. It’s hard to parent a child who isn’t even there.
Thanks, Tim’s Mom. I agree. Our intentions aren’t really as important as we make them out to be, I think. That may seem harsh, but I also believe that our intentions aren’t always all that good, either. We are basicaally sinful so I think it probably a very nice thing for us that God does not judge us by our actions or our intentions but by our faith in His son, and thus by His heart and actions. It is the same for our children, and the more we are able to show that, the more we can “win” them.