William Owen Chadwick

Regius Professor of Modern History, Cambridge

The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

In his series of lectures, Chadwick overviews the relationship between the religious and the secular. Beginning with the idea that ‘the religious is a social phenomenon’, he explores the societal forces acting in response to the secularization of the time. He points out the paradoxical relationship between religion and secular society, calling out the church’s liberal virtues that ultimately spread secularity. Acknowledging the decline of the church’s power, he shows how religion can still have an impact.

Biography

William Owen Chadwick was born on 20 May 1916 in Bromley, England. He was described as ‘one of the most remarkable men of letters of the twentieth century’ by The Guardian. Ordained in 1940, he served as curate at St John’s Church, Huddersfield and was Chaplain of Wellington College until the end of the Second World War. Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1947, he was made Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in 1958, and Regius Professor of Modern History in 1968. He retired as Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1983.

Knighted in 1982, he was Chairman of the Archbishop’s Commission on Church and State and President of the British Academy. He abolished religious tests for Fellows at Cambridge and because of his influence, women were admitted to Selwyn College. Important works include John Cassian: A Study in Primitive Monasticism (1950), The Sayings of the Fathers (1958), The Victorian Church, 2 vols. (1966, 1970), Hensley Henson: A Study in the Friction between Church and State (1983), and A History of Christianity (1955).

Published/Archival Resources

Published as The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century.