author
Adam Storey Farrar
1826–1905
A Victorian theologian and historian, this Durham scholar wrote thoughtful, wide-ranging books on belief, doubt, and the meeting point of science and religion. His work is especially remembered for bringing intellectual history to big religious questions in a clear, serious way.
1 Audiobook
History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion
by Adam Storey Farrar
About the author
Born in London in 1826, Adam Storey Farrar was an English churchman, academic, and historian of religion. He studied at the Liverpool Institute and at Oxford, later building a long career in theology and church history.
He is best known for serving as Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History at the University of Durham from 1864. Alongside his university work, he was also a clergyman in the Church of England, and his writing often explored how Christian belief met modern criticism, free thought, and scientific debate.
Among his notable books is A Critical History of Free Thought in Reference to the Christian Religion, based on the Bampton Lectures he delivered at Oxford in 1862. Readers interested in nineteenth-century religious thought may find him especially engaging for the way he combined scholarship, controversy, and a serious effort to understand the intellectual currents of his age.