The Spiritual Home of W. E. Gladstone: Anne Gladstone’s Bible

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
David Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Alternative Sources ◽  
Devotional Reading

‘Popery is the religion of Cathedrals’, wrote J.W. Cunningham, the evangelical vicar of Harrow in his novel The Velvet Cushion (1815), ‘– Protestantism of houses’. It is a commonplace in the secondary literature that the household was the citadel of the evangelical version of Protestantism in nineteenth-century England. ‘Evangelicalism’, according to a representative comment by Ian Bradley, ‘was above all else the religion of the home.’ The head of the household conducting family prayers was the embodiment of the evangelical spirit. It is not the purpose of this essay to question that received image, but it does suggest that a clearer picture of the religious atmosphere of the evangelical home can be obtained from sources other than the manuals published for the paterfamilias to read to the assembled household. The books of family prayers tell us what was prescribed; but alternative sources show us what was practised. Spiritual journals, reflective meditations and candid correspondence can often be more revealing. Nowhere, however, is the kernel of household piety more evident than in the Bibles that some zealous believers annotated for their own benefit. The study of the Bible, as Edward Bickersteth, a leading evangelical divine, put it in his book A Scripture Help (1816), was ‘a great and important duty’. When members of evangelical families retired to the privacy of their own rooms, they might spend time in devotional reading of the Scriptures and leave a record of their reflections in the margins. Such Bibles, one of which is to be examined here, are treasuries of authentic domestic spirituality. They show something of the heartbeat of evangelical religion.

Sigurðr, Þórr and Ragnarök and their Christian Counterparts

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Manu Braithwaite-Westoby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
The Bible ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Stone Sculpture ◽  
Popular Subject ◽  
New Religion

Few scholars would deny that some Old Norse myths have Christian counterparts, a phenomenon first noticed by nineteenth-century archaeologists and antiquarians in their observations of Anglo-Scandinavian stone sculpture in northern England. It is strange, therefore, that despite this long tradition, there is no systematic study on the topic. While this ambition is unfortunately outside the scope of this article, it does seek to address a number of Old Norse myths/legends and place them in conjunction with their Christian counterparts. One of the most important myths for Anglo-Scandinavian craftsmen was probably Sigurðr, who has an obvious parallel in Christ. The apocalyptic narrative in Voluspa known as Ragnarök was also a very popular subject and has a clear cognate in the apocalyptic sections of the Bible. Þórr and the Miðgarðsormr, though less appealing to artists, strongly recalls accounts of the conflict between Christ and Satan or Leviathan. This article uses a theoretical methodology called ‘figural interpretation’ to examine the Old Norse myths and explore how they reflect certain myths from the new religion. While distinctly art historical in approach, this article also invokes some Old Norse texts where relevant, which may themselves have been influenced by Christian thinking.

scholarly journals Discipleship in Oriental Orthodox and Evangelical Communities

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 320
Author(s):  
Ralph Lee
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spiritual Disciplines ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Revival Movements ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Evangelical Protestant

In many countries with a strong Orthodox Christian presence there are tensions between Evangelicals and Orthodox Christians. These tensions are rooted in many theological, ecclesiological, and epistemological differences. In practice, one of the crucial causes of tension comes down to different practical understandings of what a Christian disciple looks like. This paper examines key aspects of discipleship as expressed in revival movements in Orthodox Churches Egypt, India and Ethiopia which are connected to the challenges presented by the huge expansion of Evangelical Protestant mission from the nineteenth century. Key aspects will be evaluated in comparison with aspects that are understood to characterize disciples in Evangelical expressions, including: differing understandings of the sacraments and their place in the life of a disciple; ways in which different traditions engage with the Bible and related literary works; contrasting outlooks on discipleship as an individual and a community way of life; and differing understanding of spiritual disciplines.

Pole's Piety? The Devotional Reading of Reginald Pole and his Friends

2012 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-474
Author(s):  
M. ANNE OVERELL
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
Devotional Reading

In this examination of the piety and devotional books of Reginald Pole and his friends, three booklists are compared: Pole's own, and those of Marcantonio Flaminio and Michael Throckmorton. The article also probes their comments and choices about reading and prayer, sacrament and preaching, as well as the observations of contemporaries. Piety in Pole's household was nourished principally by the Bible, the Fathers and the Imitation of Christ, but scriptural commentaries by suspect reformers also became part of their devotional reading, moulding religious identities which were unusual and became dangerous.

Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America.

1995 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 712
Author(s):  
R. Laurence Moore ◽  
Peter J. Wosh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Bible

Abandoned Quarries

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-136
Author(s):  
Seth Perry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Early National ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Period

This concluding chapter discusses the consequences of biblicism in the early national period for subsequent American religious history. It considers bible culture in the later nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the corporatization of religious printing amplifed the Bible's status as an abstract commodity. Responding to the arguments put forward by W. P. Strickland in his 1849 History of the American Bible Society, the chapter argues that attaching the Bible's importance to American national identity could not leave the Bible unchanged, because that is not how scripturalization works. It also explains how the Bible's availability for citation and re-citation fundamentally changed the desire, effectiveness, and circumstances of its citation. Finally, it uses the abandoned quarry—empty because it has flled other places—as a figure for the themes of citation, performance, and identity explored in this book.

The Bible and Popular Christianity in Modern China

2021 ◽  
pp. 574-590
Author(s):  
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee ◽  
Christie Chui-Shan Chow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Independent Churches ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Bible Reading

This essay investigates the influential role that the Bible played in the sphere of Chinese popular Christianity. It explores the widespread use of the Bible among the lay populace who were traditionally excluded from the concerns and pursuits of Chinese Christian elites in cosmopolitan cities. Beginning with an overview of the cultural influence of the Bible in the mid-nineteenth century, this study argues that the liberating power of the Word was leveraged by peasant converts looking for new cosmologies and norms to change society. The twentieth century witnessed multiple levels of direct engagement with biblical texts, unmediated by foreign missionaries, among Chinese evangelists and congregants. Some drew on new biblical inspirations to found independent churches and sectarian groups, and some relied on the practice of bibliomancy to seek guidance in times of chaos. These examples offer complex view of the symbiosis between Bible reading and conversion in Chinese popular Christianity.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Perry Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Construction Sites ◽  
European Descent ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Writings

This chapter introduces the book’s main argument: that the three original American races, “black,” “red,” and, “white,” were constructed first in the written archive before they were read onto human bodies. It argues that because of America’s uniquely religious history, the racial construction sites of Americans of Native, African, and European descent were religious archives. The Mormon people’s relationship with race serves as a case unto itself and a case study of the larger relationship between religious writings and race. During the nineteenth century early Mormons taught a theology of “white universalism,” which held that even non-whites, whom the Bible and the Book of Mormon taught were cursed with dark skin because of their ancestors’ sin against their families, could become “white” through dedication to the restored Mormon gospel. But Mormons eventually abandoned this “white universalism,” and instead taught and practiced a theology of white supremacy.

Afterword

Chronometres ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 191-196
Author(s):  
Krista Lysack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Devotional Poetry ◽  
Gift Books ◽  
Reading Materials ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Devotional Reading ◽  
Cheap Print

If we imagine that a Victorian common reader of devotion has accumulated all the devotional books and print that have been the subject of this study we might see, gathered together on a table or shelf, a jumble of things: devotional poetry, family prayer manuals, Sunday-reading books and periodicals, gift books, and daily textbooks. Reading meant for the masses lies alongside serious works, cheap print mingles with expensive gift volumes. Broad Church, Tractarian, and Nonconformist doctrine sit together in easy company. In considering the range of what counted as devotional reading materials for Victorians, I have endeavoured to think beyond generic categories and denominational affiliations. The companionability of these items, their miscellany and assortment, reminds us that they were objects that were handled and re-read by their owners. And even when they were not being read, they remained as materials on display and as available to the next reader who might come along. This was the case with Monica Madden’s only occasionally- (and possibly never-) read copy of Keble in Chapter One. The profusion of religious publishing in the nineteenth century meant that devotional observance could also be a leisurely and a consumerist pursuit. But Elaine Freedgood (2013), who has pointed out how “things … still do not get taken seriously” in literary criticism,...

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