Studies in Modern British Religious History – serie

The first general study of different attitudes to conformity and the political and cultural significance of the resulting consensus on what came to be regarded as orthodox.The different ways in which people expressed `conformity' or `nonconformity' to the 1559 settlement of religion in the English church have generally been treated separately by historians: Catholic recusancy and occasional conformity; Protestant ministerial subscription to the canons and articles of the Church of England; the innovations made by avant-garde conformist clerics to the early Stuart Church; and conformist support for the prayer book in the 1640s. This is the first book to look across the board at what was politically important about conformity, aiming to assess how different attitudes to conformity affected what was regarded as orthodox or true religion in the English Church: that is, the political and cultural significance of the ways in which one could obey or disobey the law governing the Church. The introduction places the articles in the context of the recent historiography of the late Tudor and early Stuart Church.PETER LAKE is Professor of History, Princeton University; MICHAEL QUESTIER is Senior Research Fellow, St Mary's Strawberry Hill.Contributors: ALEXANDRA WALSHAM, MICHAEL QUESTIER, PAULINE CROFT, KENNETH FINCHAM, THOMAS FREEMAN, PETER LAKE, ANDREW FOSTER, NICHOLAS TYACKE, DAVID COMO, JUDITH MALTBY.

The role of bishops in the process of Reformation in the 16th century, studied from their surviving writings and contemporary discussion.The English bishops played a crucial role in the process of Reformation in the sixteenth century, from the first arrival of continental Reformed thought to the virtual extinction of the office in 1559. This work has at its core the bishops' own understanding of the episcopate, drawn from their surviving writings and other contemporary discussions; such a study is key to understanding what became of the English Church of the middle ages and what it was to become under Elizabeth. Carleton examines the interplay between bishop and king, the episcopate in the context of other orders, and the social context of the office; he studies episcopal activity in key areas such as preaching, ordaining, and opposing heresy; and he notes the influence of the models which the bishops themselves set up as ideals, most notably Christ himself as the ideal bishop. The backgrounds of the bishops are set out in the appendix.

An examination of Puritan iconoclasm, the reasons which led to it, and the forces which sustained it.This work offers a detailed analysis of Puritan iconoclasm in England during the 1640s, looking at the reasons for the resurgence of image-breaking a hundred years after the break with Rome, and the extent of the phenomenon. Initially a reaction to the emphasis on ceremony and the 'beauty of holiness' under Archbishop Laud, the attack on 'innovations', such as communion rails, images and stained glass windows, developed into a major campaign driven forwardby the Long Parliament as part of its religious reformation. Increasingly radical legislation targeted not just 'new popery', but pre-Reformation survivals and a wide range of objects (including some which had been acceptable tothe Elizabethan and Jacobean Church). The book makes a detailed survey of parliament's legislation against images, considering the question of how and how far this legislation was enforced generally, with specific case studies looking at the impact of the iconoclastic reformation in London, in the cathedrals and at the universities. Parallel to this official movement was an unofficial one undertaken by Parliamentary soldiers, whose violent destructivenessbecame notorious. The significance of this spontaneous action and the importance of the anti-Catholic and anti-Episcopal feelings that it represented are also examined.Shortlisted for Historians of British Art Book Prize for2003Dr JULIE SPRAGGON is at the Institute for Historical Research, University of London.

Christabel Pankhurst, one of the leading champions of women's suffrage in Britain, entered the evangelical world after the first world war as a preacher of the second coming. Larsen shows that the two causes, far from being automatically antagonistic, could be complementary.Christabel Pankhurst was arguably the most influential member of her famous family in the struggle to win the vote for women in the years before the First World War. Paradoxically, she has also been the most neglected subsequentlyby historians. Part of the reason for this may be that, in the years after women's suffrage had been achieved in 1918, she turned her energies to Christian fundamentalism and carved out a new career as a writer of best-selling evangelical books and as a high-profile speaker on the fundamentalist preaching circuit, particularly in the United States. In this important work Tim Larsen provides the first full account of this part of Christabel Pankhurst's life. He thus offers both a highly original contribution to Christabel Pankhurst's biography and also a fascinating commentary on the relationship between fundamentalism and feminism. His book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the Pankhursts, in the history of the women's movement, or in fundamentalism in Britain and North America.TIMOTHY LARSEN is Associate Professor of Theology, Wheaton College, USA.

The first study to deal exclusively with the cult and the political theology underpinning it, taking the story up to 1859.The cult of King Charles the Martyr did not spring into life fully formed in January 1649. Its component parts were fashioned during Charles's captivity and were readily available to preachers and eulogists in the weeks and monthsafter the regicide. However, it was the publication of the Eikon Basilike in early February 1649 that established the image of Charles as a suffering, innocent king, walking in the footsteps of his Saviour to his own Calvary at Whitehall. The figure of the martyr and the shared set of images and beliefs surrounding him contributed to the survival of royalism and Anglicanism during the years of exile.With the Restoration the cult was given official status by the annexing of the Office for the 30th January in the Book of Common Prayer in 1662. The political theology underpinning the cult and a particular historiography of the Civil Wars were presented as the only orthodox reading of these events. Yet from the Exclusion Crisis onwards dissonant voices were heard challenging the orthodox interpretation. In these circumstances the cult began to fragment between those who retained the political theology of the 1650s and those who sought to adapt the cult to the changing political and dynastic circumstances of 1688 and 1714.This is the first study to deal exclusively with the cult and takes the story up until1859, the year in which the Office for the 30th January was removed from the Book of Common Prayer. Apart from discussing the origins of the cult in war, revolution and defeat it also reveals the extent to which politicaldebate in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was conducted in terms of the Civil Wars. It also goes some way to explaining the persistence of conservative assumptions and patterns of thought. ANDREW LACEY is currently Special Collections Librarian, University of Leicester, and College Librarian, Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

A window into the mental and cultural worlds of the Stuart period, capturing the existing religious, social and political tensions on the eve of the English Civil War.This book starts with an extraordinary event and document. The event is the trial and execution for infanticide of a puritan minister, John Barker, along with his wife's niece and their maid, in Northampton in 1637; the document,what appears to be a virtual transcript of Barker's last speech on the gallows. His downfall soon became polemical fodder in scribal publications, with Puritans circulating defences of Barker and anti-Calvinists producing a Laudian condemnation of the minister.Scandal and Religious Identity in Early Stuart England uses Barker's crime and fate as a window on the religious world of early modern England. It is based upon an extraordinary deposit of manuscript and printed sources, all produced between 1637 and 1640 by people living in close proximity to one another and all of whom knew one another, either as friends or more often as enemies. Marshalling evidence frompublic polemical sources and from almost entirely private ones - a diary, private letters and a spiritual autobiography - the book is able to examine the same events and persons, and beliefs and practices, from multiple perspectives: the micro and the macro, the personal and the political, and the affective and the doctrinal. Throughout, we meet a range of very different people putting various bodies of religious theory into practice, connecting the most local and particular of events and rivalries to the great issues of the day and responding, in certain cases, to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and the temptations of the devil.This approach enables a whole series of generalisations to be explored: about the relation between politics and religion, devotion and polemic, puritans and their enemies, local and national affairs; between rumour, manuscript and print; and, finally, about gender hierarchyand the social roles of men and women. The result is an extraordinarily detailed and intimate portrait of the religio- political scene in an English county on the eve of civil war.PETER LAKE is Distinguished University Professor of early modern English history at Vanderbilt. He is the author of several studies of English religion, culture and politics in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods.ISAAC STEPHENS is Assistant Professor of History at Saginaw Valley State University and has published on early modern marriage, religion, and life-writing.

The Primitive Methodist Connexion's mature social character may have been working-class, but this did not reflect its social origins.This book shows that while the Primitive Methodist Connexion's mature social character was working-class, this did not reflect its social origins. It was never the church of the working class, the great majority of whose churchgoers went elsewhere: rather it was the church whose commitment to its emotional witness was increasingly incompatible with middle-class pretensions. Sandy Calder shows that the Primitive Methodist Connexion was a religious movementled by a fairly prosperous elite of middle-class preachers and lay officials appealing to a respectable working-class constituency. This reality has been obscured by the movement's self-image as a persecuted community of humble Christians, an image crafted by Hugh Bourne, and accepted by later historians, whether Methodists with a denominational agenda to promote or scholars in search of working-class radicals. Primitive Methodists exaggerated their hardships and deliberately under-played their social status and financial success. Primitive Methodism in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became the victim of its own founding mythology, because the legend of a community of persecuted outcasts, concealing its actual respectability, deterred potential recruits.SANDY CALDER graduated with a PhD in Religious Studies from the Open University and has previously worked in the private sector.

Explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth centuryThis book explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century, a period which marked a critical moment of transition in their spiritual, political and intellectual culture. It is based on the experiences of the English Catholic baronet, Grand Tourist and politician Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745-1810). Gascoigne was born on the Continent into a devout Catholic family based in Yorkshire; however, following an unusual Continental upbringing and extensive series of Grand Tours to the courts of Catholic Europe, he would abjure his faith for a seat in Parliament. Throughout his life, he was an important advocate of agricultural reform, a considerable coal owner interested in mining engineering, as well as a keen developer of spa culture. By examining the experiences of Gascoigne and his milieu, this book explores English Catholic attitudes towards continental Catholicism, the influence of the European Enlightenment upon their education and outlook, and how this affected their Christianity, their estates and their conception of national identity. It demonstrates how increased toleration entailed a gradual rejection amongst English Catholics of a pious separatism for a more ecumenical and, ultimately, Enlightened approach to religion. Although this risked the loss of English Catholics to Anglicanism, many - like Gascoigne - remained crypto-Catholic in sympathy. They adapted their faith to the Enlightenment and regarded it as a matter of personal conviction and private choice.ALEXANDER LOCK is Curator of Modern Historical Manuscripts at the British Library.

This study of recruitment to the ministry of the Church of England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries overturns many long-standing assumptions about the education and backgrounds of the clergy in late HanoverianEngland and Wales.This study of recruitment to the ministry of the Church of England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries overturns many long-standing assumptions about the education and backgrounds of the clergy in late HanoverianEngland and Wales. It offers insights into the nature and development of the profession generally and into the role that individual bishops played in shaping the staffing of their dioceses. In its exploration of how it was possible for boys of relatively humble social origins to be promoted into the pulpits of the established Church, it throws light on mechanisms of social mobility and shows how aspirant clergy went about fashioning a credible social andprofessional identity.By examining how would be clergymen were educated and professionally formed, the book shows that, alongside the well-known route through the universities, there was an alternative route via specialist grammar schools. Prospective ordinands might also seek out clerical tutors to help them to study for the academic parts of ordination exams and to prepare for the spiritual and pastoral aspects of their role. These alternativemethods of ordination preparation were sometimes under the cognizance of bishops, and occasionally under their control, but they were generally authored by parish clergy and were small-scale, self-supporting, bottom-up solutions to the needs of upcoming generations of clergy.This book has much to interest historians of religion, culture, class and education, and illustrates how in-depth prosopographical study can offer fresh perspectives.SARA SLINN is Research Fellow at the School of History & Heritage, University of Lincoln.

Presents Scotland as a case study for a fresh interpretation of Archbishop William Laud, his career and his working partnership with Charles I.William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633-45), remains one of the most controversial figures in British ecclesiastical and political history. His rise to prominence under Charles I, his contribution to the shaping and implementation of contentious religious policies and his subsequent and catastrophic downfall are fundamental to our understanding of the religious and political developments which led to the collapse of royal authority in all three of theStuart kingdoms. Events in Scotland were central to this chain of events, and this book presents Scotland as a case study for a fresh interpretation of Laud, his career and his working partnership with Charles I. Casting new andmuch-needed light on Laud's engagement in Scottish affairs, this book reveals that his agency in Scotland was broadly consistent with - although differing in detail from - his approach in England and Ireland. It represents a majorcontribution to key debates on the nature of religion and politics in the 1630s and early 1640s and enhances current thinking on the role of both prince and prelate in the formulation of ecclesiastical policy, the 'British problem', and, indeed, the causes of the British Civil Wars.LEONIE JAMES is Lecturer in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

The 1689 Toleration Act marked a profound shift in the English religious landscape. By permitting the public worship of Protestant Dissenters (largely Presbyterian), the statute laid the foundations for legal religious pluralism,albeit limited, and ensured that eighteenth-century English society would be multi-denominational.The 1689 Toleration Act marked a profound shift in the English religious landscape. By permitting the public worship of Protestant Dissenters, the statute laid the foundations for legal religious pluralism, albeit limited, and ensured that eighteenth-century English society would be multi-denominational. However, the Act was rushed, incomplete and on many issues fundamentally ambiguous. It therefore threw up numerous practical difficulties for the clergy of the Church of England, who were deeply divided about what the legislation implied.This book explores how the Church reacted to the legal establishment of a multi-denominational religious environment and how it came to terms with religious pluralism. Thanks to the Toleration Act's inherent ambiguity, there was genuine confusion over how far it extended. The book examines how the practicalities of toleration and pluralism were worked out in the decades after 1689. A series of five case studies addresses: political participation; the movement for the reformation of manners; baptism; education; and the use of chapels. These studies illustrate how the Toleration Act influencedthe lived experiences of the clergy and the effects that it had on their pastoral role. The book places the Act in its broader context, at the end of England's 'long Reformation', and emphasises how, far from representing a defining constitutional moment, the Act heralded a process of experimentation, debate and adjustment.RALPH STEVENS is a Tutor in History at University College Dublin.

Mysticism in Early Modern England traces how mysticism featured in polemical and religious discourse in seventeenth-century England and explores how it came to be viewed as a source of sectarianism, radicalism, and, most significantly, religious enthusiasm.Mysticism in Early Modern England examines a vital juncture in the history of Christian mysticism. Exploring both Catholic and Protestant views across the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the book argues for a re-evaluation of the cross-denominational appeal of mystical spirituality. It traces the mysticism of figures such as the Benedictine Augustine Baker, the Familist preacher John Everard, the millenarian Jane Lead, and the Cambridge Platonist writers Henry More and John Worthington. At the same time, it explores the arguments of a number of early modern critics including Meric Casaubon and Edward Stillingfleet, who viewed mysticism with suspicion and ridicule, a product of melancholy and madness incompatible with learned theological and doctrinal discussions. The book contends that the early modern period ultimately saw the association of mysticism with sectarianism, radicalism and religious enthusiasm, resulting in a negative connotation that lasted well into the twentieth century. It also explores connections between England and the Continent, suggesting that parallel and interconnected criticisms of mysticism occurred in France, Italy and Germany over the period. In analysing this significant change in attitude towards mysticism, the book suggests that recent scholarly attempts to 'return' mysticism to modern religious institutions and mainstream histories of religion can be viewed as a direct response to the rejection of mysticism in the early modern period.LIAM PETER TEMPLE gained his PhD from Northumbria University, Newcastle.

Philanthropy was an essential feature of the relationship between Dissent and the society from which it sometimes felt itself to be separate.This collection examines the contribution made by Dissenters from the Church of England to the history and development of charity and philanthropy in Britain from 1660 to the beginning of the twentieth century. It looks at the importance of charity and philanthropy in supporting Protestant Dissent and the causes with which it was associated; the part charity and philanthropy played in helping to fashion a self-identity for Dissent and for individual denominations; and the distinctive contributions made both by Dissenters generally and by particular denominations. Dissent and philanthropy intersect at many different points and levels: between the public and the private, the state and the individual, the voluntary and the organized. Philanthropy was an essential feature of the relationship between Dissent and the society from which it sometimes felt itself to be separate. Each chapter not only covers the contribution of a particular denomination but forms a case study of a wider aspect of charitable or philanthropic activity within Dissent as a whole. This volume is the first study which examines the contribution of Dissenters to charity and philanthropy, one of the most important developments in British society between the Restoration of Charles II and the outbreak of the First World War.CLYDE BINFIELD is Emeritus Professor in History at the University of Sheffield. His publications have concentrated on nonconformist history, in particular its social, cultural, and political contexts, from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century. G. M. DITCHFIELD is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Kent. His publications include The Evangelical Revival, George III. An Essay in Monarchy, and The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808). DAVID L. WYKES is Director of Dr Williams's Trust and Library. He edited Parliament and Dissent with Stephen Taylor and, with Isabel Rivers, Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian and Dissenting Praise.CONTRIBUTORS: Clyde Binfield, John Briggs, Hugh Cunningham, G. M. Ditchfield, Jennifer Farooq, Mark Freeman, Elizabeth Gow, David Jeremy, Stephen Orchard, Alan Ruston, David L. Wykes

Bringing together researchers in modern British religious, political, intellectual and social history, this volume considers the persistence of the Church's public significance, despite its falling membership.During the twentieth century, the relationship between the Church of England and the British state was transformed. The character and dynamics of the connections shifted as politics became more democratic and society more secular,as the role of the Crown and parliament in Church government was curtailed, and as the Christian foundations of secular law were weakened. Yet the increasing formal separation of Church and state was not accompanied by ecclesiastical disengagement from politics and government. Despite its falling membership, the Church of England continued - and continues - to wield influence on political life in Britain.This volume of essays brings together researchers in modern British religious, political, intellectual and social history to consider the persistence of the Church's public significance. The introduction reviews the developing literature on the relationships between the Church, the state and politics from 1900 to recent times. The essays which follow consider aspects of these complex intersections: in parliament, party politics and the parish; on the nature of the Church establishment and conceptions of national identity; in religious and sexual education; on colonial and foreign policies; on race and the multi-faith society. In these various ways, the volume shows that pronouncements on a modern demise of ecclesiastical influence in political life have been premature.

This innovative book reveals how Enlightened writers in England, both lay and clerical, proclaimed public support for Christianity by transforming it into a civil religion, despite the famous claim of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Christians professed an uncivil faith.This innovative book reveals how Enlightened writers in England, both lay and clerical, proclaimed public support for Christianity by transforming it into a civil religion, despite the famous claim of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Christians professed an uncivil faith. In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century European wars of religion, civil religionists such as David Hume, Edward Gibbon, the third earl of Shaftesbury, and William Warburton sought to reconcile Christian ecclesiology with the civil state and Christian practice with civilized society. They built their arguments in the context of England's long Reformation, syncretizing 'primitive' gospel Christianity with ancient paganism as they attempted to render Christianity a modern version of Roman republican civil religion. They believed that outward observance of the reformed Protestant faith was vital for belonging to the Christian commonwealth of Hanoverian England.Uncovering a major theme in eighteenth-century intellectual and religious history that connected classical Rome with Italian Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment, this deeply interdisciplinary book draws from recent post-secular trends in social and political theory. Combining intellectual history with the political and ecclesiastical history of the Church of England, it will prove as indispensable for historians as studentsof political theory, theology, and literature.

Rational Dissent was a branch of Protestant religious nonconformity which emerged to prominence in England between c. 1770 and c. 1800. While small, the movement provoked fierce opposition from both Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters.Rational Dissent was a branch of Protestant religious nonconformity which emerged to prominence in England between c. 1770 and c. 1800. Based on the sole study of the Scriptures and the application of individual reasoning to understanding the word of God, Rational Dissent rejected the role and authority of Anglican priests but also stood apart from Orthodox Dissent in its denial of the Trinity and Original Sin, arguing that these concepts were 'irrational'. While small, the movement provoked fierce opposition from both Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters.Drawing on a wide range of contemporary published and unpublished sources, this study explores the theology of Rational Dissent in its entirety, arguing that it was considerably more diverse than has previously been acknowledged. Through an examination of lists of subscribers to Rational Dissenting publications and organizations, and of Unitarian libraries and their readers, the book uncovers the movement's less visible adherents, mapping them both socially and geographically. It also explores the impact of vehement attacks by Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters on the development of a Rational Dissenting identity. Within the context of the struggle for civil and political rights and of the American and French Revolutions, the book establishes that the theology of Rational Dissenters underpinned their political beliefs and concepts of liberty, drove their ideas on the nature of society, and determined the lives and priorities of its lay adherents. The final stage of the book explores the largely Unitarian legacy of Rational Dissent and its theological, cultural and social impact in England post 1800.

Explores the ways in which the British Religious Affairs Branch aimed to organise religious life in post-war Germany.It is well known that at the key allied conferences during the latter part of World War II the future victorious allies were already progressing their post-war planning. Duly, an Allied Control Commission, with the task of providing administrative functions and eventually handing them over to an elected government, was formed in post-war Germany. In the Western zones, the cornerstone of coordinated administration was a policy of denazification, demilitarisation and democratization. Almost all sectors of German life would thereafter to be administered by the Allies. German Churches and religious affairs had, however, been promised to the defeated Germany. Of course, Nazism hadn't spared the Christian churches, and so questions of denazification and the future relationship between church and state in Germany remained significant. This book examines the British approach towards post-war German religious and ecclesiastical life by highlighting the role of the British Element of the Control Commission, more specifically the Religious Affairs Branch that was separated from the Education Branch at the end of 1945. Considering British attitudes to Catholics and Protestants, as well as the remaining Jewish and Muslim communities in Germany, this book uncovers allied differences with regards to organising future religious life in Germany.

Examines the pursuit of orthodoxy, and its consequences for the history of Christianity.Christianity is a hugely diverse and quarrelsome family of faiths, but most Christians have nevertheless set great store by orthodoxy - literally, 'right opinion' - even if they cannot agree what that orthodoxy should be. The notion that there is a 'catholic', or universal, Christian faith - that which, according to the famous fifth-century formula, has been believed everywhere, at all times and by all people - is itself an act of faith: to reconcile it with the historical fact of persistent division and plurality requires a constant effort. It also requires a variety of strategies, from confrontation and exclusion, through deliberate choices as to what is forgotten or ignored, to creative or even indulgent inclusion. In this volume, seventeen leading historians of Christianity ask how the ideal of unity has clashed, negotiated, reconciled or coexisted with the historical reality of diversity, in a range of historical settings from the early Church through the Reformation era to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These essays hold the huge variety of the Christian experience together with the ideal of orthodoxy, which Christians have never (yet) fully attained but for which they have always striven; and they trace some of the consequences of the pursuit of that ideal for the history of Christianity.

Demonstrates the vital role Sunday schools played in forming and sustaining faith before, during, and after the First World War for British populations both at home and abroad.Sunday schools were an important part of the religious landscape of twentieth-century Britain and they were widely attended by much of the British population. The Sunday School Movement in Britain argues that the schools played a vital role in forming and sustaining the faith of those who lived and served during the First World War. Moreover, the volume contends that the conflict did not cause the schools to decline and proposes that decline instead set in much earlier in the twentieth century. The book also questions the perception that the schools were ineffective tools of religious socialisation and examines the continued attempts of the Sunday school movement to professionalise and improve their efforts. Thus, the involvement of the movement with the World's Sunday School Association is revealed to be part of the wider developing international ecumenical community during the twentieth century. Drawing together under-utilised material from archives and newspapers in national and local collections, The Sunday School Movement in Britain presents a history of the schools demonstrating their lasting significance in the religious life of the nation and, by extension, the enduring importance of Christianity in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century.

This book investigates a puzzling and neglected phenomenon - the rise of English Arminianism during the decade of puritan rule. Throughout the 1650s, numerous publications, from scholarly folios to popular pamphlets, attacked the doctrinal commitments of Reformed Orthodoxy. This anti-Calvinist onslaught came from different directions: episcopalian royalists (Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndike, Peter Heylyn), radical puritan defenders of the regicide (John Goodwin and John Milton), and sectarian Quakers and General Baptists. Unprecedented rejection of Calvinist soteriology was often coupled with increased engagement with Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant alternatives. As a result, sophisticated Arminian publications emerged on a scale that far exceeded the Laudian era. Cromwellian England therefore witnessed an episode of religious debate that significantly altered the doctrinal consensus of the Church of England for the remainder of the seventeenth century. The book will appeal to historians interested in the contested nature of 'Anglicanism' and theologians interested in Protestant debates regarding sovereignty and free will. Part One is a work of religious history, which charts the rise of English Arminianism across different ecclesial camps - episcopal, puritan and sectarian. These chapters not only introduce the main protagonists but also highlight a surprising range of distinctly English Arminian formulations. Part Two is a work of historical theology, which traces the detailed doctrinal formulations of two prominent divines - the puritan John Goodwin and the episcopalian Henry Hammond. Their Arminian theologies are set in the context of the Western theological tradition and the soteriological debates, that followed the Synod of Dort. The book therefore integrates historical and theological enquiry to offer a new perspective on the crisis of 'Calvinism' in post-Reformation England.

Examines the role of Christianity in British statecraft, politics, media, the armed forces and in the education and socialization of the young during the Second World War.This volume presents a major reappraisal of the role of Christianity in Great Britain between 1939 and 1945, examining the influence of Christianity on British society, statecraft, politics, the media, the armed forces, and on the education and socialization of the young. Its chapters address themes such as the spiritual mobilization of nation and empire; the limitations of Mass Observation's commentary on wartime religious life; Catholic responses to strategic bombing; servicemen and the dilemma of killing; the development of Christian-Jewish relations, and the predicament of British military chaplains in Germany in the summer of 1945.By demonstrating the enduring -even renewed- importance of Christianity in British national life, British Christianity and the Second World War also sets the scene for some major post-war developments. Though the war years triggered a 'resacralization' of British society and culture, inherent racism meant that the exalted self-image of Christian Britain proved sadly deceptive for post-war immigrants from the Caribbean. Wartime confidence in the prospective role of the state in religious education soon transpired to be ill-founded, while the profound upheavals of war -and even the bromides of 'BBC Religion'- were, in the longer term, corrosive of conventional religious practice and traditional denominational loyalties. This volume will be of interest to historians of British society and the Second World War, twentieth-century British religion, and the perennial interplay of religion and conflict.

Reveals how Enlightened writers in England, both lay and clerical, proclaimed public support for Christianity by transforming it into a civil religion.In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century European wars of religion, civil religionists such as David Hume, Edward Gibbon, the third earl of Shaftesbury, and William Warburton sought to reconcile Christian ecclesiology with the civil state and Christian practice with civilized society. They built their arguments in the context of England's long Reformation, syncretizing 'primitive' gospel Christianity with ancient paganism as they attempted to render Christianity a modern version of Roman republican civil religion. They believed that outward observance of the reformed Protestant faith was vital for belonging to the Christian commonwealth of Hanoverian England.Uncovering a major theme in eighteenth-century intellectual and religious history that connected classical Rome with Italian Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment, this deeply interdisciplinary book draws from recent post-secular trends in social and political theory. Combining intellectual history with the political and ecclesiastical history of the Church of England, it will prove as indispensable for historians as studentsof political theory, theology, and literature.

Examines one of the most significant events in the history of the late Georgian church, and revises accepted notions of Evangelical and Anglican ecclesiology and identity.This study examines the establishment and progress of the Western Schism (1815-1825), a dramatic group secession from the Church of England. In one of the most significant events of nineteenth-century Church history, this group secession - the first since the Nonjurors - threatened to produce a wave of Evangelical secessions throughout England. Its influence was focused principally in London and the counties of Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Somerset, Sussex and Wiltshire, while its leadership was comprised of a group of clergy and laity drawn largely from prominent and wealthy banking families bound by close ties of kinship and ideology. These factors, along with the Schism's heretical pronouncements and 'irregular' ecclesial practices, its inclusion of women's ministry, and its secretive nature, generated considerable sensationalism and a sustained period of criticism led by prominent religious figures, newspapers, and journals.While the Schism was denounced from every point on the religious compass, it was the Evangelicals who emerged as its principal critics. They castigated the Schism's heretical doctrines, opposed its inclusion of women's ministry, and criticised its abandonment of the Establishment, the 'gospel party', and the Reformed heritage of the English Church. This is the first extensive examination of the Western Schism. It revises accepted notions of Evangelical ecclesiology and identity during the late Georgian period, and discloses how a small (but influential and wealthy) group, alarmed by the Church's failure to respond to the disruptive social and spiritual events of the day, established a rival ecclesial body - an endeavour that, despite the investment of significant effort and resources, ultimately failed to coalesce into a viable and lasting alternative to the Established Church.GRAYSON CARTER is Professor of Church History at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California.

A vivid and accessible reappraisal of the frequently uneasy relationship between the Victorian clergyman and his congregation.The conduct of divine service was only one item on the agenda of the nineteenth-century clergyman. He might have to sit on the magistrates' bench, or concern himself with business as a farmer or landowner, or attend a meeting of the Poor Law guardians. He would, in all probability, be closely involved with the day-to-day running of the local school, and he would almost certainly be the principle administrator of the parochial charities. While some of theseroles were clearly predestined to bring him into conflict with certain members of his flock, others seem ostensibly designed to operate in their interests. None, however, seem to have earned him much in the way of devotion and respect: instead, each of them at one time or another attracted the direct hostility of parishioners, most particularly those attached to dissenting and/or radical groups. This book is a detailed exploration of the relationship between Anglican clergymen and the inhabitants of rural parishes in the nineteenth century. Taking Norfolk as a focus, the author examines the many and profound ways in which the Victorian Church affected the daily lives and political destinies of local communities.

A challenging interpretation both of the Holocaust and its wider context, and the Church of England's role during the period.This is the first book to consider the Anglican church's response to the Nazi persecution and then murder of Europe's Jews. Acting as a critique of the historiography of the 'bystanders' to the Holocaust, it reveals a community that struggled to understand the depravity of Nazi anti-semitism. The author outlines Anglican attitudes to war, anti-semitism and many related issues, demonstrating the extent and the limits of the Church's engagement with Europeanpolitics, and shows how Christian interpretations of Nazi persecution contributed to much wider assumptions about Germany and German history in Britain during the war years. He then moves on to the post-war world, indicating theimportant role played by the Church of England in forging memories of the Nazi era and especially the suffering of Europe's Jews. Overall, this book offers a challenging new interpretation of the Holocaust and its wider context, and of the history of the Church of England and its role in the intellectual life of the nation.Dr TOM LAWSON teaches in the Department of History, University of Winchester.

New scrutinies of the most important political and religious debates of the post-Reformation period.The consequences of the Reformation and the church/state polity it created have always been an area of important scholarly debate. The essays in this volume, by many of the leading scholars of the period, revisit many of the important issues during the period from the Henrician Reformation to the Glorious Revolution: theology, political structures, the relationship of theology and secular ideologies, and the Civil War. Topics include Puritan networks and nomenclature in England and in the New World; examinations of the changing theology of the Church in the century after the Reformation; the evolving relationship of art and protestantism; the providentialist thinking of Charles I;the operation of the penal laws against Catholics; and protestantism in the localities of Yorkshire and Norwich.KENNETH FINCHAM is Reader in History at the University of Kent; Professor PETER LAKE teaches in the Department of History at Princeton University.Contributors: THOMAS COGSWELL, RICHARD CUST, PATRICK COLLINSON, THOMAS FREEMAN, PETER LAKE, SUSAN HARDMAN MOORE, DIARMAID MACCULLOCH, ANTHONY MILTON, PAUL SEAVER, WILLIAM SHEILS

A fresh examination of the idea of martyrdom in the transition from the medieval to the modern periods.Concepts of Christian martyrdom changed greatly in England from the late middle ages through the early modern era. The variety of paradigms of Christian martyrdom (with, for example, virginity or asceticism perceived as alternateforms of martyrdom) that existed in the late medieval period, came to be replaced during the English Reformation with a single dominant idea of martyrdom: that of violent death endured for orthodox religion. Yet during the seventeenth century another transformation in conceptions of martyrdom took place, as those who died on behalf of overtly political causes came to be regarded as martyrs, indistinguishable from those who died for Christ.The articles in this book explore these seminal changes across the period from 1400-1700, analyzing the political, social and religious backgrounds to these developments. While much that has been written on martyrs, martyrdom and martyrologies has tended to focus on those who died for a particular confession or cause, this book shows how the concepts of martyrdom were shaped, altered and re-shaped through the interactions between these groups.THOMAS S. FREEMAN is Research Officer at the British Academy John Foxe Project, which is affiliated with the University of Sheffield; THOMAS F. MAYER is Professor of History at Augustana College. Contributors: JOHN COFFEY, BRAD S.GREGORY, VICTOR HOULISTON, ANDREW LACEY, DANNA PIROYANSKY, RICHARD REX, ALEC RYRIE, WILLIAM WIZEMAN

A survey and reassessment of the role of the army chaplain in its first 150 years.Few military or ecclesiastical figures are as controversial as the military chaplain, routinely attacked by pacifist and anticlerical commentators and too readily dismissed by religious and military historians. This highly revisionist study represents a complete reappraisal of the role of the British army chaplain and of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department in the first century and a half of its existence. Challenging old caricatures and stereotypes and drawing on a wealth of new archival material, it surveys the political, denominational and organisational development of the R.A.Ch.D., analyses the changing role and experience of the British army chaplain across the nineteenth century and the two World Wars, and addresses the wider significance of British army chaplaincy for Britain's military, religious and cultural history over the period c.1800-1950. MICHAEL SNAPE is Senior Lecturer in ModernHistory at the University of Birmingham. The volume has a Foreword by Richard Holmes.

One of the most significant works on Anglican and Women's history to be published in recent years. Includes a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury.This book tells the story of how a parish women's meeting started in 1876 by a Victorian vicar's wife is now the most authentic and powerful organization of women in the new global Christianity. Its cross-disciplinary approach examines how religious faith and shifting ideologies of womanhood and motherhood in the imperial and post colonial worlds acted as a source of empowerment for conservative women in their homes, communities and churches. In contrast to much of feminist history, A History of the Mothers' Union 1876-2008: Women, Anglicanism and Globalisation shows how the beliefs of ordinary women led them to become advocates and activists long before women had the vote or could be ordained priests.Having survived an identity crisis over social and theological liberalism in the 1960s, the Mothers' Union provides a model of unity and reconciled diversity for a divided world wide church. Today it is hailed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and international development practitioners as an outstanding example of global Christian engagement with poverty and social transformation issues at the grass roots.Thematerial is arranged both thematically and chronologically. Case studies of Australia, Ghana and South Africa trace how the Mothers' Union arrived with white British women but evolved into indigenous organizations. CORDELIA MOYSE is Adjunct Professor of Church History at Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, PA, USA.