Germ Panic and Chalice Hygiene in the Church of England, c.1895–1930

The late‐Victorian medical revolution in bacteriology, and growing public awareness of hygienic standards and the danger of disease infection from germs, created alarm about the traditional Christian practice of drinking from a common cup at Holy Communion. Worried congregations looked for alternatives, and some experimented with individual communion cups, an innovation which began in North America but quickly spread globally. This article examines the impact of these public health anxieties upon the eucharistic practice of the Church of England over three decades, between the late 1890s and the late 1920s, under the leadership of two Archbishops of Canterbury, Frederick Temple and Randall Davidson. It offers a close reading of their archiepiscopal correspondence, the debates of the 1908 Lambeth Conference, and the various ways in which Anglican clergy and bishops wrestled with the dilemmas. It argues that Davidson's diplomatic strategy of focusing on medical opinion, rather than church law or doctrine, and of deliberately avoiding public disputation, successfully blunted the campaign to introduce individual cups into the Church of England. The article suggests that these debates were an important, but forgotten, chapter in Anglican eucharistic controversy and in the Church's fractious relationship with modern science.