Nonconformist conscience

The Nonconformist conscience was the moralistic influence of the Nonconformist churches in British politics in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Historians group Methodists together with other Protestant groups as "Nonconformists" or "Dissenters" standing in opposition to the established Church of England. In the 19th century the Dissenters who went to chapel comprised half the people who actually attended services on Sunday. They were based in the fast-growing urban middle class. The "Nonconformist conscience" was their moral sensibility which they tried to implement in British politics. The two categories of Dissenters, or Nonconformists, were in addition to the evangelicals or "Low Church" element in the Church of England. "Old Dissenters," dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, included Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers, Unitarians, and Presbyterians outside Scotland. "New Dissenters" emerged in the 18th century and were mainly Methodists. The "Nonconformist conscience" of the Old group emphasized religious freedom and equality, pursuit of justice, and opposition to discrimination, compulsion, and coercion. The New Dissenters (and also the Anglican evangelicals) stressed personal morality issues, including sexuality, temperance, family values, and Sabbath-keeping. Both factions were politically active, but until mid-19th century the Old group supported mostly Whigs and Liberals in politics, while the New --like most Anglicans -- generally supported Conservatives. In the late 19th the New Dissenters mostly switched to the Liberal Party. The result was a merging of the two groups, strengthening their great weight as a political pressure group. The joined together on new issues especially regarding schools and temperance, with the latter of special interest to Methodists. By 1914 the linkage was weakening and by the 1920s it was virtually dead.

The phrase gained wide currency during the campaign by the Welsh Methodist Hugh Price Hughes against the participation in politics of the divorcee Sir Charles Dilke (1886) and the adulterer Charles Stewart Parnell (1890), believing that political leaders should possess high moral integrity. In Britain one strong base of Liberal Party support was Nonconformist Protestantism, such as the Methodists and Presbyterians. The nonconformist conscience rebelled against having an adulterer (Parnell) play a major role in the Liberal Party. The Liberal party leader William Gladstone warned that if Parnell retained his powerful role the leadership, it would mean the loss of the next election, the end of their alliance and also of Home Rule.

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