“Religion” in England

The English civil war, that is. Peter Harrison ( ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment ) traces the notion of comparative religious study to the confessional disputes in England, and the “diachronic pluralism” of the English monarchy: “As Locke put it, the kings and queens of post-Reformation England had been ‘of such different minds in point of religion, and enjoined thereupon such different things,’ that no ‘sincere and upright worshiper of God could, with a safe conscience, obey their several decrees.” This contributed to “secularisation, but it led also to the comparison of the various forms of Christianity with each other, and shaped to a significance extent the way in which the English were to view other ‘religions.’ The whole comparative approach to religion was directly related to confessional disputes within Christianity . . . . these confessional conflicts were the single most important factor in the development of comparative religion.”