The delicate balance between God and Caesar in modern Britain

At a well-reported political meeting at London’s Queen’s Hall during the first world war the preacher and suffragette Maude Royden used a phrase that would pass into history. ‘The Church shall go forward along the path of progress,’ she argued hopefully, ‘and be no longer satisfied to represent the Conservative party at prayer.’ ‘Conservative’ would soon slip to ‘Tory’, and one of the most popular and potent political epithets of the 20th century was born.

There was (and is) much evidence for Royden’s famous phrase. An Anglican-Conservative complex dominated much 19th-century politics when most English — indeed much British — politics could be effectively divided along the lines of church or chapel. Throughout the 20th century, with the exceptions of 1966 and 1997, self-identifying Anglicans were more likely to vote Conservative than Labour. Even today, as research conducted by the think tank Theos has shown, Anglicans are disproportionately Tory, although this has more to do with age and cultural identification than with theological conviction.