Romism

Definitions

"Many Georgians rarely went through a church porch between their christening and burial. Yet practically everyone, in his own fashion, had faith. Much of it was a fig leaf of Christianity covering a body of inherited magic and superstition, little more than Nature worship (the polite, doctrinally correct form of this was known as 'natural religion'). But everyone had his own vision of a Creator, of a 'place' in Heaven, and convictions of Good and Evil, reward and punishment. Though many were careless about performing their devotions, Dr Johnson was right to say 'there are in reality very few infidels'. Deism — belief in a non-personal Deity, lacking Christianity's historical Incarnation — made headway among intellectuals early in the century, sickened by sectarian fanatics, Popery and clericalism. But once Christians allowed their sword of persecution to sleep in their hands, the particular attractiveness of Deism and free-thought waned. The most prickly intellectual challenges to the foundations of belief were to come not from atheists but from heretics on the inside. The most notorious Georgian materialist was not some flash philosophe but the Bible fundamentalist and millennialist Joseph Priestley. Debate within theology remained heated, Anglican theology oscillating between rationalism and obscurantism, Dissenters divided over free-grace and Calvinist predestination. The reason for this was that it was difficult to adjust literalist dogma to the new material prosperity, science and freedom of inquiry. Religious divides went deep — this is evident from the reams of sermons and theological polemics published and avidly read — and only bashing the old bogey of Romism ('No Popery!') could unite Protestants."

Etymology