The questions of disestablishment of religion and of spiritual independence from the state do not necessarily coincide, but both have been important features of the movement towards democratic freedom in the United Kingdom. As agents of democracy they have accompanied electoral reform, constitutional change, nationalism and legal freedom of action for trade unions. These different questions overlapped with each other. For example, the desire for voluntary, non-established religion or spiritual freedom depended on franchise extension for its more effective expression in politics and its greater hope of realisation. This connection helped to bear out Max Weber's contention that non-established denominations made a special contribution to the evolution of democracy.

In the 1860s Richard Masheder, a Fellow of a Cambridge college, was fearful that steps towards democracy, such as had been urged in the ‘People's Charter’, would directly encourage disestablishment. He wrote: ‘It is by annual Parliaments, equal electoral districts, and “a reasonable remuneration to members of Parliament”, that Dissent calculates upon reaching the goal proposed – the separation of Church and State’. Churchmen who wished to uphold their established status should therefore defend the existing constitution as eagerly as they championed the church establishment. He proceeded to depict the dangers which he thought would follow disestablishment: