Heterodoxy and Orthodoxy in Early Religious Thought

Abstract This chapter examines the contrasting movements of heterodox and orthodox philosophy of religion that characterized the early nineteenth century. First to be considered is unitarianism, focussing on the contributions of Theophilus Lindsey, Joseph Priestley, and Thomas Belsham. The chapter moves on to consider Wordsworth’s pantheism, examining both its ongoing philosophical influence and the relationship between poetry and philosophy. The third heterodox movement to be looked at is atheism, via discussion of Percy Shelley, William Lawrence, and George Grote. The contrasting voice of orthodox religion is found in the influential writings of William Paley, and further explored by looking at the Bridgewater Treatises. The chapter concludes by looking at S. T. Coleridge, who, although he came to expound a thoroughly conventional Anglican trinitarianism, perhaps never quite left behind the radical philosophizing about religion of his youth, suggesting that the two poles were not always quite so far apart as might be imagined.