Religion played a very important role in Victorian England. Through the writings of period authors who described religious influences and the impacts on different social classes, one may understand the complexities religion was facing during the Victorian era. The Religious Census of 1851, Darwin's Faults (1860), and The Religion of the Costermongers (1851) are some of the important period writings describing the underlying complexities between classes and scientific discoveries.
             The Religious Census of 1851 was a census published on the Parliamentary Papers by census commissioners when an attempt was made to count all of the religious worshipers in England. According to the extremely analytical survey, England had at the time 17,927,609 inhabitants of which many individuals who didn't attend church. The census allowed for infants and young children, sickness, and employment to be left out of their figures. The figure they arrived at was 5,288 persons should be able to attend religious worship. According to the essay the alarming numbers of individuals who did not attend services were mainly made out of the laboring myriads class. The reasons given by the myriads was the "separation of class, insufficient sympathy exhibited by professed Christians for the alleviation of their social burdens, the misconception on their part of the motives by which Christian minister are actuated in their efforts to extend the influence of the gospel" (The Past Speaks, 203). According to the census, if all individuals that did not attend church decided to go, churches would not have enough seats. Also, the class separation enabled many of the laboring individuals from going to church due to their dislike of the class separation.
             Henry Mayhew's The Religion of the Costermonger (1851) investigated the religiousness of Costermongers (street sellers of fruit and vegetables). According to Mayhew, many costermongers did not have any religion. "Th...