Abstract

Religious historians have increasingly rejected the idea that Britain before World War I was a society in which religion played a small and diminishing role; however, the implications of this conclusion have not been fully worked out in approaches to politics in the current period. Packer argues that religious developments were, in fact, crucial in allowing the party to accept the leadership's wish to steer toward the New Liberalism. He further reviews some of the major themes in the current historiography on the relationship between politics and religion in the Edwardian era and uses the Rowntree family as a detailed example of the close connection between aspects of the New Liberalism.