CINXE.COM
Coleridge's Religion
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <! -- footer icons correct 10 February 2005 -- > <html> <head> <title>Coleridge's Religion</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <link href="../../style1.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div id="whole-page"> <div id="head"> <h2>Coleridge's Religion</h2> <h4><a href ="../../misc/ge.html">Glenn Everett</a>, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Martin</h4></p> <img src="../icons/top.gif"/> <p class="bc"> <a href ="../../index.html">Victorian Web Home</a> —> <a href ="../misc/authors.html">Some Pre-Victorian Authors</a> —> <a href ="../misc/romanticov.html">British Romanticism</a> —> <a href ="stcov.html">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a>] </p> </div> <div id="main"> <br/><br/> <p class="one">Coleridge became known in the Victorian period as one of the most important apologists for the <a href ="../../religion/brdchrch.html">liberal</a> Anglican point of view, clearly foreseeing the difficulties which would inevitably beset the <a href ="../../religion/evangel1.html">Evangelicals</a> who insisted upon literal interpretation of the Scriptures in defiance of scientific discoveries. His father was an Anglican vicar, but Coleridge was an intellectually rebellious youth, earning his bread in 1796-97 as a <a href="../../religion/unitarian.html">Unitarian</a> preacher. </p> <p>He returned to the <a href ="../../religion/denom1.html">Church of England</a> in 1814, and his most significant writings on religion are <span class="book">Lay Sermons</span> (1817), <span class="book">Aids to Reflection</span> (1825), and <span class="book">The Constitution of Church and State</span> (1830).</p> <p> In his notebooks of 1795-97, Coleridge lists five stages of prayer, from "the pressure of immediate calamities" to "horrible solitude," "repentance and regret," "celestial delectation," and "self-annihilation." And shortly after his death in1834, his friend <a href="../dequincey/dequinceyov.html">Thomas de Quincey</a> wrote in <span class="book">Tait's Magazine</span>, "he told me as his own particular opinion that the art of praying was the highest energy of which the human heart was capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties." What sort of prayers do you find in his poetry? (Especially <span class="book">The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</span> ? Who prays, and which of the above conditions apply when they do so? What relation does prayer have to subsequent events? </p> <hr> <a href ="../../index.html"> <div class="nav-tile"> <br/> Victorian <br/> Web </div> </a> <a href ="../misc/authors.html"> <div class="nav-tile"> <br/> Authors </div> </a> <a href ="../misc/romanticov.html"> <div class="nav-tile"> <br/>The <br/> Romantics </div> </a> <a href= "stcov.html"> <div class="nav-tile"> <br/> S. T. <br/> Coleridge </div> </a> <p class="date">Incorporated in the Victorian Web July 2000</p> </div> </div> <script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> _uacct = "UA-1636363-2"; urchinTracker(); </script> </body> </html>