Anglican Enlightenment and Christian Revelation: The Reception of Gibbon's Decline and Fall March 2, 2010

Sussex Centre for Intellectual History Lecture
Professor J.G.A. Pocock, The John Hopkins University, Baltimore
In 1776 Edward Gibbon published two chapters of his 'Decline and Fall' on the spread of Christianity; they aroused such controversy that it is still supposed that he wrote his history as an attack on religion. In this lecture, Professor Pocock will argue to the contrary that the two chapters were prematurely written, and that the controversy is to be understood in the setting of the Church of England's need to reconcile a civil religion with the belief in Christian revelation.



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