Matthew Arnold
Hawley, John C., S. J.  "Charles Kingsley and the Book of Nature," Anglican and Episcopal History Vol. 61, No. 4 (December 1991): 461-479.
Hawley examines Kingsley as natural theologian and his views on the “meaning” of nature.  He discusses Kingsley’s attempt to bridge the ever widening gap between the claims of science and religion and to establish a vocabulary that would be intelligible to and supportive of both fields.  In this respect he provides a comparison of Kingsley’s views on the theological beliefs of and the search for meaning in Arnold, Huxley, and Darwin.  Kingsley’s aim, according to Hawley, “was to circumvent fears and cynicism, and to move his readers into a world of scientific endeavor and Christian cooperation.  In choosing the commitment of faith over strict empiricism he became for many, in an age of increasing dichotomy between the realms of science and religion, a model of a Christian who hoped that the truths of both would ultimately coalesce” (479).

Nature; Science; Religion; Natural Theology; Arnold, Matthew; Huxley; Darwin.
 

Jones, Tod E.  “Matthew Arnold's 'Philistinism' and Charles Kingsley,” Victorian Newsletter No. 94  (Fall 1998): 1-10.
After examining the various characteristics of Matthew Arnold’s “Philistine”, Jones discusses Kingsley’s views on each of these characteristics and their representation in English society.  He then considers whether Kingsley himself may justifiably be termed a “Philistine”.  He concludes that “Kingsley cannot be fairly regarded as a Philistine or even as an anti-intellectual.  This is not to say that he never displayed a characteristic that is typically Philistine or that he never took an anti-intellectual position, but rather it is to affirm that in Kingsley not one of the attributes of Philistinism was prevalent” (9).

Philistinism; Arnold, Matthew; Social and Political Views; Christian Socialism.
 

Prickett, Stephen.  “Purging Christianity of its Semitic Origins: Kingsley, Arnold and the Bible,” in Juliet John and Alice Jenkins (eds.). Rethinking Victorian Culture (London: Macmillan, 2000): 63-79.
Prickett examines the role of pagan civilization and the Church in Hypatia.  Kingsley is favorable to neither.  Rather, his theory of history leads him to admire the Teutonic races who are civilization’s future.  The Catholicism of fourth-century Alexandria is as doomed as the pagan world it supplanted.  It is merely a proto-Christianity that is “saved only by the presence within it of certain forward-looking characters who dimly foreshadow, as it were, the coming age of Teutonic Protestantism a thousand years in the future” (68-9).

Hypatia; Religion; Racial Prejudices; Anti-semitism; Arnold, Matthew.

 

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