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This book addresses several dimensions of the transformation of English Nonconformity over the course of an important century in its history. It begins with the question of education for ministry, considering the activities undertaken by four major evangelical traditions (Congregationalist,Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian) to establish theological colleges for this purpose, and then takes up the complex three-way relationship of ministry/churches/colleges that evolved from these activities. As author Dale Johnson illustrates, this evolution came to have significant implicationsfor the Nonconformist engagement with its message and with the culture at large. These implications are investigated in chapters on the changing perception or understanding of ministry itself, religious authority, theological questions (such as the doctrines of God and the atonement), and religiousidentity.In Johnson's exploration of these issues, conversations about these topics are located primarily in addresses at denominational meetings, conferences that took up specific questions, and representative religious and theological publications of the day that participated in key debates or advocatedcontentious positions. While attending to some important denominational differences, The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825-1925 focuses on the representative discussion of these topics across the whole spectrum of evangelical Nonconformity rather than on specific denominationaltraditions.Johnson maintains that too many interpretations of nineteenth-century Nonconformity, especially those that deal with aspects of the theological discussion within these traditions, have tended to depict such developments as occasions of decline from earlier phases of evangelical vitality and appeal.This book instead argues that it is more appropriate to assess these Nonconformist developments as a collective, necessary, and deeply serious effort to come to terms with modernity and, further, to retain a responsible understanding of what it meant to be evangelical. It also shows thesedevelopments to be part of a larger schema through which Nonconformity assumed a more prominent place in the English culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Christianity and cultural aspirations are inevitably in tension: the combination invites a suspicion that temporal pursuits have slackened a quest for divine approbation. Nevertheless, as Christians generally believe that worldly success may be a position of influence worth seeking for noble reasons, it is truly an area of tension, rather than merely temptation. This volume explores this lively juxtaposition in the context of modern Britain and America. In fifteen original essays, a range of well-respected scholars examine the cultural aspirations of a broad spectrum of Christians, including Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and Anglicans, as they were expressed in arenas as diverse as politics, education, arthitecture, and sport.
This is a series of four substantial volumes designed to demonstrate the range of interests of the several Protestant Nonconformist traditions from the time of their Separatist harbingers in the sixteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It represents a major project of the Association of Denominational Historical Societies and Cognate Libraries. Each volume comprises a General Introduction followed by texts illustrative of such topics as theology, philosophy, worship and socio-political concerns. This work has never before been drawn together for publication in this way. Prepared by a team of twelve editors, all of whom are expert in their areas and drawn from a number of the relevant traditions, it will provide a much needed comprehensive view of Nonconformity told largely in the words of those whose story it is. The works will prove to be an invaluable resource to scholars, students, academics and specialist and public libraries, as well as to a wider range of church, intellectual and general historians. This volume gathers and introduces texts relating to English and Welsh Nonconformity. Through contemporary writings it provides a vivid insight into the life and thought of the Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians and other groups that formed pieces in the diverse mosaic of the nineteenth-century chapels. Each aspect of Nonconformity has an introductory discussion, which includes a guide to the secondary literature on the subject, and each passage from a primary source is put in context.
In his enthronement sermon as archbishop of Canterbury in 1942 William Temple famously declared the ecumenical movement to be "the great new fact of our era." In this book Martin Camroux tries to face honestly how hope met reality. By the end of the century the enthusiasm had largely dissipated, the organizations that represented it were in decline, and organic unity looked further away than ever. One significant ecumenical merger took place in Britain--the creation in 1972 of the United Reformed Church, which saw its formation as a catalyst for ecumenical renewal. Its hopes, however, were largely illusory. With the failure of its ecumenical hope the church had little idea of its purpose, found great difficulty establishing an identity, and faced a catastrophic implosion in membership. This first serious study of the United Reformed Church also includes groundbreaking analysis of the unity process, the mixed fortunes of Local Ecumenical Projects and how the national ecumenical organizations withered. All of this is put in the wider context of religion in British society including secularization, individualism, and post-denominationalism. What failed was not ecumenism but a particular model of it and the book ends with a commitment to a renewed ecumenical hope.
The Christian idea of a good death had its roots in the Middle Ages with ars moriendi, featuring reliance on Jesus as Savior, preparedness for the life to come and for any spiritual battle that might ensue when on the threshold of death, and death not taking place in isolation. Evangelicalism introduced new features to the good death, with its focus on conversion, sanctification and an intimate relationship with Jesus. Scholarship focused on mid-nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformist beliefs about death and the afterlife is sparse. This book fills the gap, contributing an understanding not only of death but of the history of Methodist and evangelical Nonconformist piety, theology, social background and literary expression in mid-nineteenth-century England. A good death was as central to Methodism as conversion and holiness. Analyzing over 1,200 obituaries, Riso reveals that while the last words of the dying pointed to a timeless experience of hope in the life to come, the obituaries reflect changing attitudes towards death and the afterlife among nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformist observers who looked increasingly to earthly existence for the fulfillment of hopes. Exploring tensions in Nonconformist allegiance to both worldly and spiritual matters, this book offers an invaluable contribution to death studies, Methodism, and Evangelical theology.
This second collection of essays exploring various dimensions of sacramental theology from a Baptist perspective includes biblical, historical and theological studies from scholars from around the world. Subjects covered are sacraments and sacramentality, sacrament and sacrifice in Hebrews, the sacrament of fearful intimacy, the church as sacrament, baptism and the Lord's supper for post-Christendom Baptists, Pauline baptism and Roman Insulae, open communion for the contemporary church, penance, sacred space, recovering a biblical understanding of baptismal regeneration, the Lord's supper and the spirituality of C.H. Spurgeon, Southern Baptist eucharistic sacramentalism and soul competency, re-thinking ex opere operato sacramentalism, the sacramentality of the word in Gregory of Nyssa, and searching for a common theology of baptism between Baptists and the Churches of Christ. This volume does not speak the final word on the subject, but is a step along the way toward the recovery and reconstruction of a rubust sacramentalism in a Baptist modality.
Goldwin Smith (1823-1910) was a celebrated, transatlantic writer on current events, politics, religion, history, and literature. While he made his academic mark teaching at Oxford, Cornell, and later as a resident guru at Toronto, his facile pen earned him a far greater reputation with general readers throughout the English-speaking world. Determined to rouse concern over issues that he deemed to be important to the advancement of humanity, Smith was deemed the controversialist by the Dictionary of National Biography. A study of his life and his writings provides new insight into liberalism, anti-semitism, the role of the journalist, and other aspects of life in late 19th century North America and Britain. As a public intellectual, Goldwin Smith spoke out on a variety of issues, frequently provoking intense debate. Phillips argues that the core of Smith's thought and the driving force behind his role as a controversialist lay in his moral philosophy, which provided a sense of direction to Smith's many and sometimes disparate writings and activities. This study will also probe the serious dilemma posed by Smith's path to agnosticism in the last decades of his life. By moving to a position of virtual unbelief, Smith risked damage not only to his carefully-crafted public persona, but also to a life's work as an impassioned moralist.
George MacDonald (1824–1905) was writing at a time of Evangelical unease. In a society ravaged by Asiatic cholera, numbed by levels of infant mortality, and fearful of revolution and the toxicity of industry (to name but a few of the many challenges), the ‘gospel’ proclaiming eternal damnation for unbelievers was hardly good news; rather, Christianity was increasingly viewed as the source of bad news and a tool of state oppression. MacDonald agreed: in his view, the church had become a vampire, sucking the blood of her children instead of offering them Eucharistic life. In contrast, like Christ, MacDonald offers us a child. Although at first sight a familiar Romantic incarnation, in MacDonald’s theology ‘the child’ becomes an unlikely icon challenging the vampire’s kingdom and confronting the foundations of much of Western theology. John R. de Jong’s meticulously researched study of MacDonald’s work – especially his ‘realist’ and fantasy novels – in its Victorian context is of more than historical interest. In light of the growth of fundamentalist expressions of Christianity, we are encouraged to consider embracing MacDonald’s radical solution to religious vampirism: becoming children.
Exploring the rich relationship between historical thought and religious debate in Victorian culture, God and Progress offers a unique and authoritative account of intellectual change in nineteenth-century Britain. The volume recovers a twofold process in which the growth of progressive ideas of history transformed British Protestant traditions, as religious debate, in turn, profoundly shaped Victorian ideas of history. It adopts a remarkably wide contextual perspective, embracing believers and unbelievers, Anglicans and nonconformists, and writers from different parts of the British Isles, fully situating British debates in relation to their European and especially German Idealist surroundings. The Victorian intellectual mainstream came to terms with religious diversity, changing ethical sensibilities, and new kinds of knowledge by encouraging providential, spiritualized, and developmental understandings of human time. A secular counter-culture simultaneously disturbed this complex consensus, grounding progress in appeals to scientific advances and the retreat of metaphysics. God and Progress thus explores the ways in which divisions within British liberalism were fundamentally related to differences over the past, present, and future of religion. It also demonstrates that religious debate powered the process by which historicism acquired cultural authority in Victorian national life, and later began to lose it. The study reconstructs the ways in which theological dynamics, often relegated to the margins of nineteenth-century British intellectual history, effectively forged its leading patterns.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was the most famous Baptist minister of his generation. For such a significant figure, he has received surprisingly little scholarly coverage. This present work seeks to make a contribution to Spurgeon studies by examining him through the lens of his "spirituality." A wealth of primary material, much of it previously untapped, is used to build up a picture of his spiritual life. Whereas older and more recent interpretations of Spurgeon have a tendency to be one-dimensional, examination of his spirituality reveals him to be a complex figure, one who was molded by a diverse range of factors. Despite this complexity, a unifying theme for Spurgeon's spirituality is traced and fresh light is shed on the foremost popular preacher of the Victorian age.