"Robert Elsmere" by Mrs. Humphry Ward takes place in Northwest England and is about religious crises told through the eyes of an Oxford clergyman who begins to doubt the doctrines of the Anglican Church after encountering the writings of German rationalists like Schelling and David Strauss. Instead of succumbing to atheism or Roman Catholicism, however, Elsmere takes up a "constructive liberalism" stressing social work amongst the poor and uneducated.