"My dear child, you must believe in God despite what the clergy tells you"
About this Quote
The sharpness here is in the reversal: the clergy, supposedly God’s official voice, are recast as the very obstacle to faith. Jowett’s “my dear child” is not mere gentleness; it’s a strategic intimacy that frames belief as something tender, personal, almost endangered - something you protect from institutional mishandling. The line reads like pastoral counsel, but it’s also a quiet indictment.
Jowett was a liberal Anglican and an Oxford don who spent his career navigating the Victorian panic over higher criticism, Darwin, and the slow dethroning of biblical literalism. In that climate, “believe in God” doesn’t mean “accept the whole package.” It signals a distinction between the living idea of God and the church’s managerial apparatus: doctrine, discipline, and the anxious policing of thought. The subtext is that ecclesiastical certainty can become a kind of unbelief, because it replaces moral and spiritual imagination with bureaucracy and fear.
The quote works because it flatters the listener’s conscience while undercutting authority. “Despite what the clergy tells you” doesn’t accuse individual priests of bad faith so much as it suggests structural distortion: once religion is professionalized, it is tempted to defend itself rather than the divine. Jowett’s intent is both protective and insurgent - saving belief from its guardians, urging a faith mature enough to outgrow the scaffolding that first taught it.
Jowett was a liberal Anglican and an Oxford don who spent his career navigating the Victorian panic over higher criticism, Darwin, and the slow dethroning of biblical literalism. In that climate, “believe in God” doesn’t mean “accept the whole package.” It signals a distinction between the living idea of God and the church’s managerial apparatus: doctrine, discipline, and the anxious policing of thought. The subtext is that ecclesiastical certainty can become a kind of unbelief, because it replaces moral and spiritual imagination with bureaucracy and fear.
The quote works because it flatters the listener’s conscience while undercutting authority. “Despite what the clergy tells you” doesn’t accuse individual priests of bad faith so much as it suggests structural distortion: once religion is professionalized, it is tempted to defend itself rather than the divine. Jowett’s intent is both protective and insurgent - saving belief from its guardians, urging a faith mature enough to outgrow the scaffolding that first taught it.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
|---|
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