Mark: You say: “We’re talking about people who were raised in an overwhelmingly Christian culture…”

Well, the institutions of established religion–and, though to a much lesser extent, the goings-on of the unestablished–were certainly part of the fabric of everyday life in the 18C, in a way they are not today. So far as matters of belief go, though, 18C Anglo-Saxon society does not strike me as very Christian at all. There were of course individual cases all over the shop, but the center of gravity, faith-wise, among educated Anglo-Saxon men (and that noun needs some elaborating…) in the 18C seems to me to have been well to the religious “left” of, say, the current NRO readership. I’m thinking of the poets and essayists, of Dr. Johnson’s circle (though not the man himself*), of Tom Jones, etc., etc. These were people who took their Christianity seriously as a matter of faith, as well as of observance? Hmmm.

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*Though even in Johnson’s case, and notwithstanding the many touching prayers he wrote–you can see some of the originals, in his own hand, at the Johnson Museums in London and Litchfield–there is evidence that he had to struggle to convince himself of the truths of Christianity. His inclination to fly off the handle when anyone questioned those truths in his presence has been taken by one biographer (Bate) as evidence that he was insecure in his faith–that he desperately wanted to believe, but could not always manage it.