This innovative book challenges many of the widely held assumptions about the place of religion in Victorian society and in London, the world's first great industrial and commercial metropolis. Against the background of Victorian London it explores the religiosity of Londoners as expressed through the dynamic renewal of traditional faith communities, including Judaism and the historic churches, as well as fresh expressions of religion, including the Salvation Army, Mormons, spiritualism, and the occult. It shows how laypeople, especially the rich and women were mobilised in the service of their faith, and their fellow citizens. Drawing on research in social, economic, oral, cultural, and women's history Jacob argues that religious motivations lay behind concerns that subsequently preoccupied people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include the changing place of women in society, an active concern for social justice, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and provision of education for all classes and all ages. By examining religion broadly, in its social and cultural context and looking beyond conventional approaches to religious history, Religious Vitality in Victorian London illustrates the dynamic significance of religion in society influencing even the expression of secularism.

Contrary to its popular image as dull and stodgy, the Victorian period was one of revolutionary change. In its politics, its art, its economic aff airs, its class relationships, and in its religion, change was constant. A half-century after Queen Victoria's death, it was said that she was born in one world and died in another. Th e most interesting and valuable studies of the period take the long view, as does Schlossberg, in his fascinating analysis of religious life in this period. For the Victorians, religion was not cordoned off from the push and shove of real life. Th e early evangelicals got off to a shaky start, beset by hostility, but the movement spread within the churches despite the suspicion in which it was held. Evangelicals, frequently called Puritans by those who opposed them, called for fundamental reforms in both the Church and the society; a social ethic was part of their program of religious renewal. Th eir moral sense explains the social activism of both Church of England Evangelicals and Dissenters, including the half-century crusade for the abolition of slavery. Schlossberg shows how religion in England dealt with such issues as science and the eff ect of German scholarship on religious thinking. Church history cannot simply be explained by its response to external forces as much as by the internal responses to those challenges. Th e nature of the religious enterprise itself, its theologians, clergy, lay people--like all people and all institutions--all responded with alternatives. Schlossberg helps us understand the Victorian period, as well as the increasing secularity of English life today.