RELIGION AND CIVILIZATION IN COLERIDGE’S AIDS TO REFLECTION AND ON THE CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE
RELIGION AND CIVILIZATION IN COLERIDGE’S AIDS TO REFLECTION AND ON THE CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Summary/Abstract: The present paper aims to explore the connections between religion andcivilization in two Coleridgean prose works: Aids to Reflection, and more specifically, On theConstitution of Church and State. Interestingly, S. T. Coleridge has defined civilization as acivilizing process, which makes him a forerunner of Norbert Elias. Yet Coleridge was a critical,but more religious-oriented than Elias had been. On a par with Enlightenment thinkers such asImmanuel Kant, S. T. Coleridge thought that the Church should be maintained as an institution,but that its educational role in society should be rethought. Halfway through Coleridge’s Aids toReflection, one comes across a standard Enlightenment and Romantic critique of the Church asthe institution that seized truth and knowledge with a tight grip, as the Pharisees had once done,by denying the light of knowledge from reaching the believers. This view is balanced by the factthat Coleridge believes theology to be the root and trunk of all knowledge. The clerisy comprisedboth clerics and lay professors whose purpose was to cultivate the English nation and raise menthat would themselves promote civilization. The religious and cultural aspects of the clerisy mustbe understood as whole, as their starting point is common. The two terms often appear together,but Coleridge explains the transition from the the religious to the cultural turn historically; in theMiddle Ages, the priests also had the role of educators, whereas in modern times the educationalrole was taken up by the teacher. If Coleridge is sympathetic towards the idea of an intellectual,political, educational and ultimately religious establishment, Kant develops a negative idea of theso-called guardians of society, be they intellectuals, doctors or priests. In order to do justice toColeridge’s thought, one may affirm that, although he was more prolific in his prose concerningreligious and political subjects, a crossover between literature and politics remains a salientfeature in Coleridgean studies.

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