A high Anglican in his churchmanship, Gladstone joined the Liberals when he became convinced that the higher spiritual interests of the Church would suffer from Conservative attempts to bolster the privileged material position of the Church of England. Between 1852 and 1865 he was a prime mover in the ecclesiastical battles of the day, especially against the Divorce Bill of 1857, which permitted divorce on grounds of adultery.
Partnership with Nonconformism
Gladstone gradually came to share the belief of Nonconformists that a form of moral regeneration was needed in England: the second of Wilberforce's original objectives. He extended his Manchester School laissez-faire view of economics towards the Church, believing that if competition was increased between the denominations, with none of them privileged through establishment, they would increase their zeal for evangelising missionary work. Neither would Parliament any longer have to become involved with legislation. Under Gladstone, CampbellBannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George the Liberal Party remained defiantly disestablishmentarian in outlook. Gladstone's support for evangelism, his admiration for popular religious and moral passion, and his assault on Erastianism (particularly Palmerston's Divorce Bill)41 won him the general support of nonconformity in the early 1860s; and this was in tandem with the popular support which he gained during his tax cutting years as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1859-66) in Lord Palmerston's second administration. His support of disestablishment made him a popular figure amongst Irish Catholics too. His own theological and spiritual outlook was in some sympathy with theirs, although he remained fervently opposed to ultramontanism and was deeply opposed to the Oxford Movement after Newman's secession to Rome in 1845 and Manning's in 1851.42 Henry Wilberforce, who had brought the young Gladstone to his father's deathbed had, along with his brother Robert, also become Catholic, although the third brother, Samuel, stayed in the Church of England and became the 'High Church' Bishop of Oxford. Notwithstanding his antagonism to the Oxford Movement, Gladstone believed that Catholics should have full denominational rights in education and ultimately he came to believe that in Ireland they were entitled to control their religious and political destiny. In his fine book Democracy and Religion,43 J. J. Parry says that after 1867 there is a broad distinction which can be made between most whig-liberals and the Gladstonians and radicals: