Norman Sykes – författare

This short history of Christianity in England since the close of the Middle Ages was first published for the Religious Book Club in 1953. It was immediately welcomed. The Church Times called it `a miracle of accomplished comprehension', and the (Manchester) Guardian `quite extraordinarily good'. The Times Educational Supplement commented on its 'abounding momentum and not a single dull page'. The author has now revised the book for this cheap edition, and an Epilogue continues the story of the English churches down to 1960.

In this book Professor Sykes considers the Anglican attitude towards episcopacy, presbyterianism and papacy since the Reformation, with special reference to the Churches of England and Scotland. He begins by examining the Elizabethan rationale of 'the godly prince and the godly bishop', and then describes the aggressive presbyterian movement, in England and Scotland, and its effect upon the ecclesiastical settlements in the two churches. He considers the influence of this movement on Anglican apologetic for episcopacy during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; and the evidence of fraternal relationships between the Church of England and foreign Protestant churches, and particularly for the reception of their ministers for service in the Church of England without episcopal ordination.

The study of ecclesiastical history presents unique problems: the events it deals with are not ordinary events and fundamental questions of faith may be involved in their interpretation. The Church historian is often required to be a student of dogma as much as of history. It is the complex relationships between history, Church history and theology that Dr Sykes examines, using as illustrations some of the vital issues arising from the revival of interest in Church history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The disputes during the Reformation about the claims of the papacy centred on the historical question of Peter's supremacy over the other apostles. Another problem involving historical evidence was the relative authority of scripture and tradition. Finally, Dr Sykes reviews the changing pattern of relations between Church and states and particularly the way in which events in nineteenth-century Europe foreshadowed the problems of the Church under the modern totalitarian regime. This historical study displays how the secular and the theological are intertwined in many of the issues which confront the historian of the Church.

Norman Sykes was among the greatest church historians of the twentieth century and many scholars regard From Sheldon to Secker as perhaps his finest and most enduring work. Based on the Ford Lectures given in Oxford in 1958, From Sheldon to Secker is a penetrating analysis of what Professor Sykes describes as the single 'most influential epoch of English church history between the Reformation and the Victorian age'. Professor Sykes draws upon the scholarship of a lifetime in assessing these developments, and these challenges, and From Sheldon to Secker remains essential, and engaging, reading for all students of what would now be called the long eighteenth century.