IN WHAT WAYS WAS THE WORK OF THOMAS PAINE TO PROVIDE A CONTINUING CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE 19th CENTURY?

A feature of Christianity up until the 19th century in Britain was the close association the established church, the Church of England, had with the state. Orthodox Christianity was regarded as the very basis of the law and the constitution. Gradually however, during the course of the 19th century this constitution came under attack from a variety of sources. These were both of an institutional and intellectual context. The institutional criticism involved tensions from within the Church over its own theological identity, which could be traced as far back to the Reformation in the 16th century. The intellectual criticism, on the other hand, tended to come from outside the Church, and it is here we need to focus on.

One area that provided the intellectual criticism of orthodox Christianity, was that of Deism. Although Christianity had been criticised by the Deists since the 17th century, it was not until the 19th century that this criticism b...