Bangor History of Religion – serie

While the Christian faith has played a major part in the history of both Wales and Scotland, there has been little previous work looking at their histories in a comparative manner. In the light of the establishment of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, this issue is of particular contemporary importance. This collection discusses religion in Scotland and Wales from a historical perspective and examines the contribution of religion to the sense of national identity in the period from the Evangelical Revival to the present day. It suggests that the histories of the two nations are only understood when the religious dimension is taken seriously. The various essays collected here offer new perspectives on particular denominations, from the Scottish Covenanters to Welsh Methodism, as well as discussing individual figures such as Howell Harris, Edward Irving and Arthur Price, in order to examine the complex relationship between language, national identity and religion. Religion and National Identity is an original and timely contribution, not only to the religious histories of Wales and Scotland, but also to the collective history of Great Britain in the modern period.

This book is based on original research in the archive of the Council of Churches in Wales, housed in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, focusing on the work of the Council of Churches for Wales. Formed in 1956, it ceased to exist in 1990 when its successor body, Cytun: Churches Together in Wales came into being. This book provides a history of the modern ecumenical movement in Wales, a movement which has attempted to foster closer collaboration among the churches and denominations, and has promoted the search for closer union between the churches and has enabled the churches to work in partnership in responding to national and international social, economic and cultural list.

While twentieth-century Welsh Nonconformity and the Anglican Church in Wales have both received historical attention, there is no similar treatment of the Roman Catholic Church. This study redresses this imbalance, and is based largely on previously unseen evidence. The book begins by charting and accounting for the remarkable growth of the Roman Catholic Church in Wales between the formation of its Province of Wales in 1916 and the commencement of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. This growth was at a time when Nonconformity, hitherto predominant in Welsh religion, began its spectacular decline. The book goes on to examine critically the reaction to the Catholic expansion, both from within and outside the Church. This new paperback edition of the book includes a fully updated bibliography and a new chapter exploring progress in the field since the book’s original publication.

This work offers a modern appraisal of the Welsh Methodist leader and revivalist, Howell Harris. His influence on the development of early Methodism is charted and the period from his conversion in 1735 to his secession with Daniel Rowland is examined.

This study of the religious establishment in Wales and its impact on Welsh society in the three centuries leading up to the disestablishment continues the approach to Welsh church history begun by Sir Glanmor Williams in his 'Welsh Church and the Reformation' and continued in his 'Wales and the Reformation'.

Religion has been a defining characteristic in Welsh national identity from the beginning. This book demonstrates how religion and faith have informed Welsh national identity from the seventeenth century to the present, touching upon the Puritan period, the Older Dissent of the eighteenth century, nineteenth-century Nonconformity and the impact of secularism during the twentieth century. It asks whether religion has been part of the essence of Welshness, and whether that is still the case within the multicultural Wales of the twenty-first century.