1853 The crisis of Anglicanism in the mid-nineteenth-century

King’s College was founded as an Anglican university. Its denominational identity, manifested most tangibly by the chapel’s position at the heart of King’s life, remained central to its wider ethos and approach to education throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Yet, this enduring association has never been uncomplicated. From debates over Jewish emancipation to controversies surrounding King’s fellow F. D. Maurice (dismissed in 1853), many of nineteenth-century Anglicanism’s key doctrinal debates can be tracked through the college’s evolving relationship to its founding creed. These unfolded against a backdrop of expanded theological teaching and at a time when a growing number of King’s alumni departed the college to take up clerical and missionary positions across the British empire. This research will examine both the implications of these debates within the college and, at the same time, look outwards from King’s to track how those leaving carried with them ideas and training encountered at King’s in ways that informed both religious practice and imperial power across Britain, Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean.

King’s Future. Our secular and multifaith present

The place of religion in society is very different from what it was the mid-nineteenth century. Despite a recent return of religiosity in many areas, religion is much less important; but the way it is significant has changed. Students and staff practice multiple faiths. Religion is a sign of personal identity as well as source of faith. King’s reflects these changes with chaplains serving the Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities, and Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Baptist Christian denominations as well as the Church of England. But how else should a university founded as an Anglican institution respond to our sometimes secular, sometimes multifaith environment?