WorkHenry Sidgwick

The Ethics of Conformity and Subscription

A short pamphlet on what a doubter owes the church he still belongs to, and when honesty obliges a clergyman to speak out.

by Henry Sidgwick37 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1870(aged 32)
Original language: English

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Overview

A fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, required its holder to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, the doctrinal statement of the Church of England. In 1869 Henry Sidgwick found he could no longer do so in good conscience and resigned, though he kept his post as a lecturer. This pamphlet came out the following year from the London publishers Williams and Norgate, its author named on the title page as a former fellow of Trinity, under the name of the Free Christian Union, a society that wanted Christians to share a fellowship without having to share every belief. Its question is what a member whose opinions have moved away from his church owes to the rest of it, and Sidgwick argues it as a matter of ethics rather than theology. A doubting layman may stay, provided he says plainly where he disagrees. The clergy are held to a stricter rule, because the country looks to them for the standard of truthfulness, and ministers known to say in church what they do not believe damage that standard for everyone. Sidgwick accepts that some insincerity in public worship cannot yet be avoided and should be kept as small as possible. What he refuses is the quiet solution of reading the creeds loosely in private: anyone who wants the terms relaxed should campaign for it openly. In June 1871 the Universities Tests Act abolished religious tests for fellowships and most other lay posts at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham, and his resignation is counted among the acts that helped bring the change about. Trinity made him an honorary fellow in 1881 and a full fellow again in 1885. In 1895 he opened an address to the West London Ethical Society with almost the same first sentence as this pamphlet, and took the question up again.

Key concepts

What does 'subscription' mean in this pamphlet?

Formally signing a church's statement of doctrine, in the Church of England the Thirty-Nine Articles, as a condition of holding certain offices. Sidgwick treats signing and reciting as acts of speech that fall under the ordinary rule of truthfulness, so the question becomes how far a person may affirm words they no longer believe in their natural sense.

What does Sidgwick mean by conformity?

Outward participation in the worship and membership of a church, whatever one's private convictions. His question is what conformity says about a person: for the layman, that depends on the common understanding of what membership and joining in a service imply; for the minister, who speaks the creeds on everyone's behalf, it amounts to an affirmation.

What is a 'non-natural sense'?

A meaning that the words of a creed or article will not bear according to the ordinary use of language, adopted so that someone can affirm them without believing what they plainly say. Sidgwick grants that the question whether this is ever legitimate admits no simple reply.

Why does Sidgwick separate the moral question from the ecclesiastical one?

Because the two are blended in most minds, and the blending is what makes the subject hazy. Whether the church's creeds and constitution ought to change is one question; how an individual should act while they remain unchanged is another. He thinks the first deserves organised effort, but argues the second as if the existing systems and doctrines were fixed.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Doubting Layman

May someone who no longer believes everything their church teaches stay in it and join its worship? Yes, the pamphlet answers, provided they do not pass for orthodox.

Sidgwick separates the moral question from the ecclesiastical one: whatever the church ought to reform, what should an individual do while its creeds stand as they are? Nobody, he observes, dreams of seceding from the Church of England because he cannot assent to one statement of the Apostles' Creed, and that common understanding shows what membership means. A layman need take no more part in a service than he wishes. What he may not do is deliberately pass for orthodox, for that links him to every other religious pretence.

religious conformity
church membership
religious membership
religious dissent
public worship
religious belief
religious community
religious toleration
religious pluralism
conscientious disagreement

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The Clergyman and the Creed

May a minister recite words in a sense they will not ordinarily bear? The pamphlet holds the clergy to a stricter rule, because people look to them for the standard of truthfulness.

No moral rule, Sidgwick writes, is simpler than strict veracity of speech, and in none is it more necessary that a minister of religion should not fall below the ordinary standard. Yet he admits that some insincerity in the Anglican ministry cannot yet be avoided, and says so openly rather than hide it. What he refuses is the private solution of reading the creeds in a non-natural sense. A clergy charged with habitual unveracity harms the spiritual interests of the country, and the remedy is to declare the actual state of opinion frankly.

clergy
creeds
sincerity
truthfulness
honesty
clerical ethics
professional ethics
professional obligations
promises and obligations
religious language
religious reform
freedom of inquiry
intellectual freedom
theology
law and morality
religious change
religious doctrine
conscience
trust

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Within this work

passages held: 37
distinct concepts: 93
by passages held, corpus-wide: #693

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “public worship” and “sincerity”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 4 pairings. 14 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
public worship	sincerity	3
religious conformity	truthfulness	2
sincerity	truthfulness	2
religious conformity	sincerity	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1870 The Ethics of Conformity and Subscription you are here EN
1874 The Methods of Ethics
Revised through five editions in Sidgwick's lifetime, this is the book he is read for; his editor called his later Cambridge lectures on Green, Spencer and Martineau supplementary to it.
EN
1886 Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers
The historical companion to The Methods of Ethics: Sidgwick telling the story of the moral debates that book had tried to settle by argument.
EN
1891 The Elements of Politics
A two-part treatise — the principles of legislation first, then the structure of government — that carries the utilitarian reasoning of The Methods of Ethics from private conduct into politics.
EN
1898 Practical Ethics: A Collection of Addresses and Essays
Written mostly for the ethical societies of London and Cambridge between 1888 and 1897, these are Sidgwick's applications of his ethics to questions of everyday conduct, for listeners outside the university.
EN
1902 Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau
Course lectures never meant for print, in which Sidgwick defended the position of The Methods of Ethics against the schools that had risen since it first appeared.
EN
1902 Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations
Where The Methods of Ethics works inside ethics, these lectures map how ethics, metaphysics, psychology and history fit together — the frame around the rest of Sidgwick's philosophy.
EN
1905 Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant and Other Philosophical Lectures and Essays
The fullest record of Sidgwick's work outside ethics — on Kant, on the theory of knowledge and on the Scottish philosophy of common sense.
EN

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