Liberation Society

The Liberation Society was an organisation in Victorian England that campaigned for disestablishment of the Church of England. It was founded in 1844 by Edward Miall as the British Anti-State Church Association and was renamed in 1853 as the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, from which the shortened common name of Liberation Society derived.

Nonconformism - which included Baptists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Wesleyans and other branches of Methodism - was a significant religious movement in mid-nineteenth century Britain. The UK census of 1851 reported that just under half the church-going population, which itself was around half of the total population, were Nonconformists. While no religious movement was able to grow its audience in proportion to the increase in population over the remainder of the century, it seems that the Nonconformists were more actively observant than their Church of England counterparts towards its end. Generally, those who followed the various Nonconformist sects tended to be supporters of the Liberal Party rather than its main opposition, the Conservatives. This cohesion, which increased with the left-ward movement of the Wesleyans as the century progressed, meant that they could play a major role in determining political outcomes, both as an influential block of opinion within the Liberal Party and more generally in the country as a whole.

The Nonconformist belief in freedom of conscience for individuals meant that they thought there should be no connection between the state and church because that would imply a corporate conscience. Among the theoretical objections to a church-state relationship was the possibility of conflicted loyalties in situations where the desire of the state differed from the conviction of the religion, potentially leading to extreme cases such as martyrdom. More specifically, while repeal of measures such as the Test Acts had done much to give Nonconformists freedom of worship they still felt the weight of what they considered to be inappropriate and discriminatory practices. These practices included compulsory local levies known as church rates that were imposed on people, regardless of their religious belief, for use by the Established Church of England for maintenance and running of their parish churches. Failure to pay, which happened as a form of protest, could lead to seizure of property and imprisonment.

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