On June 30, 1860 Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce engaged in a debate at the Oxford University Museum library. Bishop Wilberforce vehemently opposed the idea of evolution that Huxley passionately defended. This debate is a larger reprensentation of what is called the "Victorian Crisis of Faith." It was the struggle between science and religion that many people were dealing with at that time. If Darwin was correct, it threw into question everything that people had read in the Bible. Along with evolution, the use of geology also discovered that the Earth was older than the Bible said. These ideas pitted the men of science and the men of the church against each other more than ever before. This debate was a turning point for public opinion taking Darwin's theory more seriously as well. While this event may not have been the trigger of the Victorian Crisis of Faith, it is one of the most significant moments in that period.

Sources: 

Meyer, D. H. “American Intellectuals and the Victorian Crisis of Faith.” American Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 5, 1975, pp. 585–603. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2712443. Accessed 28 Sept. 2020.

Grigg, R. (2009, December 1). What did Wilberforce really say to 'Darwin's Bulldog'? Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://creation.com/wilberforce-huxley-debate