English Civil War with no religious dimension?

Say that, for whatever reason, Charles I's religious views end up being slightly different to OTL, so when he becomes king he doesn't do anything to change established Anglican worship. Without the controversy this engendered IOTL, would England still descend into civil war, and if so, how (if at all) would it differ from OTL's Civil War?
 
Well part of the issue is that religion was a whole lot bigger than Charles I' "reforms". There were clear divides between the Puritan,established and Arminian factions from the Hampton Court conference in the early 1600s onwards. And if England's religious tensions are solved-what of Scotland's and Ireland's.

But say that these are solved in some remarkable way, then you have to answer the question of why the civil war happened in the first place. Now if Charles pursues similar economical policies in the 1620's -forced loan and close(ish) relations with France an Spain then perhaps he will have the term absolutist levelled him. But given that religious fears of crypto Catholicism were so key OTL then I doubt it would descend into a full blown civil war.

You have to remember that the chance of civil war was almost null in 1625,when Charles ascended the throne. Without religion it seems even more unlikely. OTL religion, social status, politics, the rise if pamphlets and economics all played a part. Remove anyone of these and civil war is unlikely.

Those of more whiggish inclinations than I might disagree....
 
Civil war happening maybe, but most likely 20 years later

Without Laud, and without the protestant gentry's fears that growing absolutism was linked to quasi-catholicism, however nuts that seems to us now, it would have removed a huge trigger that moved it from parliamentary protest to uprising

You could posit that growing absolutism eventually leads to a parliamentary reaction, for reasons of oligarchy versus autocracy, but probably this would happen in a Richard II way - a young or weak successor takes over, tries to be the strongman and a mixture of people seeing through this, and people trying it on leads to something
 
Well, you at least butterfly away the Scottish Convenanter portions of the rebellion. Without acting in the religious dimension, you can't use it as a vehicle to try to impose tigher links between the Scottish and English crowns (Book of Common Prayer, the Bishop issue, ect.), so baring butterflies the Scots are likely fairly content with their crowned head. Hell, I could see Charles raising his standard in Edinburgh rather than Oxford in this case.
 
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