Abstract
The Sandemanian church offers its members both a supportive social environment and also the moral standards and practical norms by which to live. Owing to the sect’s high social boundaries, its members tend to interpret events in very similar ways and to share almost identical responses to situations, including events in the world beyond the confines of the group. This perspective suggests that we can utilise the high degree of conformity among Sandemanians to understand better Faraday’s attitude towards various issues, such as his response to politics. The example of politics is particularly instructive, since the subject rarely occurs in his writings, even in his extant correspondence. The secondary literature likewise contains few discussions of this topic, which has been addressed briefly by L. Pearce Williams and Morris Berman.1 However, by setting Faraday’s few explicit statements on political issues in the context of the attitudes shared by Sandemanians we are not only able to interpret his political position more fully and accurately but also show that his responses were not idiosyncratic but were closely related to his membership of this tightly knit sect with its biblically certified and historically conditioned norms.
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Notes
L.P. Williams, Michael Faraday: A biography (London, 1965), pp.357–9;
M. Berman, Social change and scientiftc organization. The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (London, 1978), pp.173–86.
J. Tyndall, Faraday as a discoverer (5th ed., London, 1894), pp.176–7. As a non-proselytising sect, the Sandemanians had no reason to publicise their religious views. Religion is a matter of the spirit and human rhetoric plays no role. Moreover, to place their views before others would only invite wasteful disputes of the kind that littered the history of Christianity.
W.F. Pollock, Personal remembrances of Sir Frederick Pollock, second Baronet, sometimes Queen’s Remembrancer (two vols, London, 1887), vol.2, p.207; Dean Milman to Faraday, 3 November 1852: Royal Institution, Conybeare MS, f.94.
J. Glas, The testimony of the king of martyrs concerning his kingdom, in The works of Mr. John Glas (2nd ed., five vols, Perth, 1782), vol.1, pp.1–183. Quotation on p.85.
W. Norrie, Dundee celebrities of the nineteenth century: Being a series of biographies of distinguished or noted persons connected by birth, residence, official appointment, or otherwise, with the town of Dundee; and who have died during the present century (Dundee, 1873), pp.182–4.
Obituary of William Buchanan, Edinburgh Courant, 21 December 1863.
M. Tait and W. Forbes Gray, ‘George Square. Annals of an Edinburgh locality, 1766–1926. From authentic records’, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, 26 (1948), 45;
E.C. Anderson, Christian songs and occasional verses (Edinburgh, 1903).
J.F. Hankins, ‘A different kind of Loyalist: The Sandemanians of New England during the Revolutionary War’, New England Quarterly, 60 (1987), 223–49. Quotation on p.237.
C. Rossiter, ‘Conservatism’, in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (eighteen vols, New York and London, 1968–79), vol.3, pp.290–5. Thatcherism is conservative in that it takes Victorian Britain as its model, but the Thatcherite Revolution is not conservative in this traditional sense.
E.P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (Harmondsworth, 1984), pp.28–58, esp. pp.35 and 55.
M. Chase, ‘The people’s farm’: English radical agrarianism, 1775–1840 (Oxford, 1988), pp.39–42;
E. Mackenzie, A descriptive and historical account of the town and county of Newcastle upon Tyne, including the Borough of Gateshead (two vols, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1827), vol.2, pp.399–402. There are various rolls relating to the Newcastle meeting house among EMH MS.
P.H. Marshall, William Godwin (New Haven, 1984), pp.23–9.
Marshall’s claim that the Sandemanians practised a form of communism is overstated. There was no properly constituted Sandemanian church in Norwich and Samuel Newton’s name does not appear on any of the rolls I have been able to locate. He was probably one of many clergymen who were influenced by Sandeman’s writings but did not submit to the discipline of the Sandemanian church. A far more accurate account of Godwin’s relationship with the Sandemanians is given in D. Locke, A fantasy of reason: The life and thought of William Godwin (London, 1980).
Berman, op. cit. (n.1), pp.173–4. Cf. C.A. Russell, Cross-currents. Interactions between science and faith (Leicester, 1985), p.262.
T.H. Thornton, Colonel Sir Robert Sandeman: His life and work on our Indian frontier. A memoir with selections from his correspondence and official writings (London, 1895).
Faraday to William Vernon Harcourt, 24 October 1840: E.W. Harcourt, ed., The Harcourt papers (fourteen vols, Oxford, 1880–1905), vol.14, pp.96–7.
F. Greenaway, M. Berman, S. Forgan and D. Chilton, eds, Archives of the Royal Institution: Minutes of the managers’ meetings, 1799–1903 (fifteen vols, London, 1971–6), 10, 184. See also fragment from Faraday’s will dated 16 January 1855: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Special Collections.
Faraday to Thomas Andrews, 2 February 1843: ibid., 409–10; D. Knight, ‘Davy and Faraday: Fathers and sons’, in D. Gooding and F.A.J.L. James, eds, Faraday rediscovered: Essays on the life and work of Michael Faraday, 1791–1867 (Basingstoke and New York, 1985), pp.32–49.
Anon., ‘Shewing how the Tories and the Whigs extend their patronage to science and literature’, Fraser’s Magazine, 12 (1835), 703–9. Quotation on p.707.
[W. Maginn], ‘Michael Faraday, F.R.S., Hon.D.L.C. Oxon, etc. etc.’, Fraser’s Magazine, 13 (1836), 224.
M. Weber, The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (London, 1948);
J. Wesley, ‘The use of money’, in F. Baker, ed., The bicentennial edition of the works of John Wesley: Sermons (four vols, Nashville, 1984–7), vol.2, pp.263–80.
R. Sandeman, Discourses on passages of Scripture: With essays and letters (Dundee, 1857), p.103.
[R. Sandeman], Letters on Theron and Aspasio. Addressed to the author, (4th ed., two vols, Edinburgh, 1803), vol.2, p.224.
S.P. Thompson, Michael Faraday, his life and work (London, 1901), p.286.
C.W. Smith and M.N. Wise, Energy and empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989).
J.H. Gladstone, Michael Faraday (2nd ed., London, 1873), p.90.
Anon., The customs of the Churches of Christ as found in the New Testament (Edinburgh, 1908), p.10
‘I am bound to put it on record that, if their worship does not belie them, the Sandemanians must be the most dismal people on earth.’ C.M. Davies, Unorthodox London (new ed., London, 1876), p.173.
See also J.E. Ritchie, The religious life of London (London, 1870), pp.313–320.
C.A.H. Crosse, ‘Science and society in the fifties’, Temple Bar, 93 (1891), 33–51. Quotation on p.34. Pollock, op. cit. (n.9), vol.1, p.245.
Faraday, A course of six lectures on the various forces of matter and their relation to each other (London, 1860), p.2; Report, op. cit. (n.34), p.377.
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© 1991 Geoffrey N. Cantor
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Cantor, G. (1991). Faraday in Society. In: Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13131-0_5
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