Shaftesbury and the Politics of Religion

• Published in: Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury 1621-1683 pp. 127 - 151
• Main Author: Spurr, John
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2011; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700; Protestant Religion; Superb; Young Man; Charles I; Royal Supremacy; TNA; Commission's Dealings; Denzil Holles; Secretaries Of State; Edward III; Wise; Osborn Shelves; True Protestant; MS 63057B; Exclusion Crisis; Andrew Marvell; Cromwellian Major General; Cooper's Decision; William III; Jesus Christ's Death; Exeter House; Clerical Profession; Charles II's England
• ISBN: 9780754661719; 0754661717
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315567273-6

Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, was a giant on the English political scene of the later seventeenth century. Predictably the identification of a prevalent politics of religion' in Restoration England has also provided an opportunity for historians to debate the balance of continuity and change across the seventeenth century. Shaftesbury measured his religion against his interest, said one newsletter writer, he endeavour's to render the Church of England as ridiculous as Popery'. The politics of religion' is a piece of shorthand that encapsulates the recent fashion among historians for identifying religious questions' as the main fault lines running through later Stuart politics. More dramatically, Steve Pincus argues that the pursuit of political economy' replaced religion' as the primary function of the state: the vast majority of the political nation' was ready for what he calls a politics of the world'.