Pritchard held various Dissenting religious views over his lifetime, holding that science and religion were one. Through the Varleys he attended a Sandemanian church, where he became acquainted with Michael Faraday. In the end, he joined a Unitarian congregation, because religious freedom and self-improvement were the watchwords of the movement, which still struggled against civil disabilities. Money aside, Pritchard would not have been able to attend an English university as a young man, for example, because the only two, Oxford and Cambridge, restricted entry to members of the Church of England. "No-one exists divorced from immediate and larger social environments. Dissenters led educational reform, especially in giving "lower orders" scientific knowledge and skill."