Christianity has acted as a prop of the state since the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. The connexion of religion and political theory has a long history. A sacerdotal concept of the anointed monarch survived the Protestant Reformation in England, and the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century had an important religious element. The restoration of Charles II was celebrated with Anglican sermons which spoke unequivocally of divine hereditary right, passive obedience and non-resistance. James II's adherence to the Catholic faith posed a cruel dilemma to the Church of England, and desperate steps were taken to clothe the ensuing settlement in the language of Holy Writ by Whig and Tory alike. The dispute between Benjamin Hoadley and Francis Atterbury, and the trial of Dr Sacheverell established both the crucial differences between Whig and Tory views, and the common arena within which their positions stood. Between 1679 and 1719, abstract and normative principles relating to political authority and obligation and the possibility of revolution, which are fundamental to any scheme of political values, were related to a specific set of constitutional arrangements. Like those arrangements, the principles on which they were based had a long life, but neither were immutable.

In the period from 1760 to 1789 religion continued to be used to support and defend the constitutional principles upon which British government was founded, but noticeably more so by clerics than by laymen. The records of parliament from 1760 to 1789 show that religion was rarely invoked in purely secular debates.