Rhetorics of Belief: Persuasive Style in the Gladstone- Réville-Huxley Debates

Abstract

In the six-month period between November 1885 and April 1886 a de-bate on the rise of religion exploded in the English press. Primarily fo-cused on the opposition of its main opponents – the British Liberal Prime Minister and theologically conservative High Churchman, William E. Gladstone (1809-1898), and the chief proponent of “new science,” Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) – the debate was prompted initially by Gladstone’s reaction to a critique of his views of religion by the French Protestant, Albert Réville (1826-1906), well-known in Gladstone’s day and although now forgotten, a central figure in establishing the liberal religious view that, in varying ways, shaped the pattern by which the Darwinian schema would be assimilated within the Christian world thereafter. This article is directed to the debate between these two men and the transition from Réville’s article to Huxley on the part of Glad-stone, as well as the implications for the ongoing debate between Glad-stone and Huxley, and science and religion.