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This series aims to differentiate `religious history' from the narrow confines of church history, investigating not only the social and cultural history of religion, but also theological, political and institutional themes, while remaining sensitive to the wider historical context; it thus advances an understanding of the importance of religion for the history of modern Britain, with volumes covering all periods of British history since the Reformation.
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Joseph Butler [1692-1752] is perhaps Britain's most powerful and original moral philosopher. He exercised a profound influence over the contemporary Protestant Churches, the English moralists and the Scottish philosophical school but his theory of the "affections", grounded in Newtonian metaphysics and presenting an account of human psychology, also set the terms of engagement with questions of education, slavery, missions and even labour relations. In the nineteenth-century English-speaking world he was an authority of first resort for Evangelicals, Tractarians, philosophers, scientists, psychologists, economists, sociologists, lawyers and educationalists alike. He remains a key reference point for modern American and British philosophers, from Broad to Rawls and beyond. Many analyses of Butler, however, have been distorted by aggressively secular readings. This book is based on a comprehensive reassessment of his published work and the surviving manuscripts and archival materials. These are set within an account of his spiritual and intellectual development and his ministerial vocation, from the protracted and painful process of conforming to the Church of England to his initial observations on a social philosophy. Demonstrating that even The Analogy originated in liturgical preaching, this book offers a refreshed and detailed account of Butler's key terms - conscience, consciousness, identity, affections, charity, analogy, probability, tendency - and suggests that exploration of his methods may contribute to modern thinking about ethics, language, the role of the Church, and the religion and science debates.
BOB TENNANT taught English Literature at the University of Sussex, spent many years as a senior manager in adult education, and was a trade union and political activist serving leading organisations at local, regional and national levels. He has written on political, economic and trade union matters for many newspapers and periodicals and is a founder of The British Pulpit Online, seeking to create an online catalogue and database of all printed British sermons from 1660 to 1901.
From the moment of its arrival in Britain in 1852, modern spiritualism became hugely popular among all sections of society. As well as offering mysterious and entertaining séance phenomena, spiritualism was underpinned by a belief that the living could communicate with the departed and even come to know what life after death looked like. This book, offering the first detailed account of the theology of spiritualism, examines what happened when the Church of England, itself already grappling with questions about the nature of the afterlife, met with such a vibrant and confident presentation. Although this period saw a gradual liberalising in the Church's own theology of heaven and hell this was not communicated to the wider public as long as sermons and liturgy remained largely framed in traditional language. Over time spiritualism, already embedded in common culture, explicitly influenced the thinking of some Anglican clergy and implicitly began to permeate and shape popular Christianity - to the extent that even some of spiritualism's harshest critics made use of its colourful imagery. This study sets one significant aspect of Christian doctrine alongside an attractive alternative and provides a fascinating example of the 'negotiation of belief', the way in which, in the interface between Church and culture, religious belief came to be refreshed and redefined.
GEORGINA BYRNE is an ordained Anglican priest and currently Director of Ordinands for the Diocese of Worcester and a Residentiary Canon at Worcester Cathedral.
Founded in 1415, the double monastery of Syon Abbey was the only English example of the order established by the fourteenth-century mystic St Bridget of Sweden. After its dispersal at the Dissolution, the community survived in exile and was briefly restored during the reign of Mary I; but with the accession of Elizabeth I, some of the nuns and brothers once again sought refuge on the Continent, first in the Netherlands and later in Lisbon.
This volume of essays traces the fortunes of Syon Abbey and the Bridgettine order between 1400 and 1700, examining the various ways in which reading and writing shaped its identity and defined its experience, and exploring the interconnections between late medieval and post-Reformation monastic history and the rapidly evolving world of communication, learning, and books. They extend our understanding of religious culture and institutions on the eve of the Reformation and the impulses that inspired initiatives for early modern Catholic renewal, and also illuminate the spread of literacy and the gradual and uneven transition from manuscript to print between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries. In the process, the volume engages with larger questions about the origins and consequences of religious, intellectual and cultural change in late medieval and early modern England.
E. A. Jones is Senior Lecturer in English, University of Exeter; Alexandra Walsham is Professor of Reformation History, University of Exeter
Contributors: E. A. Jones, Alexandra Walsham, Peter Cunich, Virginia Bainbridge, Vincent Gillespie, C. Annette Grise, Claire Walker, Caroline Bowden, Claes Gejrot, Ann Hutchison
By the time of his death at the stake in 1540, Robert Barnes was recognized as one of the most influential evangelical reformers in Henrician England. Friend and foe alike judged him the most popular and persuasive preacher of the 'new learning'. He enjoyed the patronage of King, Archbishop, and Vicegerent at home, and the praise of evangelical princes and theologians abroad. He wrote what would be the closest the Henrician reformers came to a systematic theology, as well as the first Protestant history of the papacy. Then his dramatic, and not entirely explicable, execution quickly ensured his lasting place in the century's popular propaganda. In this first extensive examination of Robert Barnes and his reformation significance the author provides a comprehensive survey of the reformer's stormy career, a clear and convincing analysis of his often misconstrued theology, and a persuasive argument that the influence of Barnes and his novel polemical programme extended not only into the century following his death, but was as prominent on the continent as it was in his native England.
KOREY MAAS is Associate Professor of Church History, Concordia University, Irvine, California
The book combines intellectual, cultural and social history to address a major area of encounter between Christianity and British culture: the world of leisure.
This is the first full length examination of a defining moment in the history of the Church of England in the twentieth century: the Prayer Book controversy of 1927-28. It argues that conceptions of national religion were influential in the debates surrounding liturgical revision, showing in particular how ideas of Protestant national identity clashed with both liberal Anglican and moderate Anglo-Catholic conceptions of Church and nation. It shows how the Church of England retained a significant position in national life in the interwar period; however, it also argues that the resilience of the anti-Catholic mindset amongst many Anglicans and Free Churchmen meant that the exact nature of the relationship between religion and nation was hotly contested.
This study sets the Prayer Book controversy in the context of early twentieth century British religious history, providing important insights into the history of Anglicanism, Nonconformity and ideas of English and British identity during the period.
JOHN G. MAIDEN is a Research Assistant at the Department of Religious Studies, The Open University.
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.
The material 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.
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
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 these roles 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 European politics, 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 the important 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.
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 subsequently by 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.