When you think of the Victorian era, what jumps into your mind? For Dr. Timothy Larsen '89, M.A. '90, McManis Chair of Christian Thought, the mid–19th century was an important period in church history and a time when "the Bible loomed large" in Western culture.

Dr. Larsen recently returned to Wheaton after a five-month sabbatical as a visiting fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge University. Founded by Henry VIII in 1546, Trinity College boasts that it has taught "princes, spies, poets, and prime ministers." Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Isaac Newton, A.A. Milne, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are all alumni.

Because Trinity appoints only four visiting fellows at a time, and most often the American fellows are from Ivy League schools, Dr. Larsen felt honored to be chosen.

Much of his time was spent researching Victorian churchman Edward Pusey, one of a group of high church Anglicans who worked to prove that the Church of England was a direct descendent of the Christian church founded by the Apostles. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was also a member of this company, known as the Oxford Movement.

Dr. Larsen says that many who have written about the Oxford Movement have ignored the fact that the passion of Pusey's life was not church doctrine, but rather, the Bible. He hopes his work will "recover Pusey as a serious Bible scholar."

Dr. Larsen was also asked to be a part of a group of researchers who have received a large grant toward a Victorian studies project. Together they plan to present panels and papers, and down the road, write a book.

These new opportunities further indulge what Dr. Larsen calls his "long romance with England." He fell in love with Britain at age 13, after going on a missions trip to France that ended with a two-week debriefing in England.

After graduating from Wheaton, he moved to England to take a job with Covenant Ministries International. At Covenant College, he taught church history, wrote adult education curriculum, and edited a Christian magazine. He also spent time in Scotland, earning his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Stirling, and becoming acquainted with a Scottish medical doctor, Jane, who today is his wife.

After spending the first seven years of their marriage in Britain, Dr. Larsen says he didn't imagine they would ever leave. The choice to return west was, he says, "the hardest decision in my life." His mentor, Dr. Mark Noll '68, had informed him of a job opportunity at Tyndale University in Toronto, and after months of deliberation, he decided to take the position as professor of church history there.

He then returned to Wheaton in 2002 to teach theology, and was appointed McManis Chair of Christian Thought last spring following Dr. Noll's departure.

Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies Dr. Jill Baumgaertner has followed Dr. Larsen's career since he was a student at Wheaton. "He produces high quality work and just has a facility of language," she says. "I saw it way back when he was an undergraduate."

His most recent work, Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in 19th- Century England (Oxford University Press, 2006), was named Book of the Year for 2006 by Books & Culture. "It is creating a huge stir," Dr. Baumgaertner says, adding that it challenges the accepted perception of religious thought during the Victorian era.

Dr. Larsen's sabbatical research on the Bible and the Victorians will continue to overturn the notion that ideas introduced in the 19th century demonstrated the weakness of Christian thought and permanently drew great thinkers away from Christianity.

He argues that many secular leaders came to an abiding Christian faith during this time, asserting that scholars—regardless of their religious convictions—used the Bible as a benchmark against which they structured their intellectual work.

The book he began writing in Cambridge is "years away," he says. In it, he will highlight a representative figure from every religious tradition in 19th-century Britain, including significant Catholic, agnostic, Unitarian, and Jewish thinkers, and explore how the Bible affected each person's intellectual achievements.