John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Nonconformist Prison Literature

Author(s):  
Brett A. Hudson
Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell

Although Charles II had promised religious tolerance in the Declaration of Breda, during the opening decade of the Restoration multiple laws known as the Clarendon Code were passed, restricting religious worship among most puritans and Catholics. Many resisted including Fifth Monarchists, Quakers, and Baptists such as John Bunyan, who were imprisoned for illegal preaching and assembly. Those who did not accept the new laws were called nonconformists and their ministers were forbidden to preach. Anglican ministers such as Isaac Barrow, John Tillotson, and Edward Stillingfleet established a new style of rational preaching, frequently entering into debates with Catholic writers.


Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell

During the Commonwealth period, Parliament ejected over 2000 Church of England clerics from their livings, and multiple new Protestant congregations were formed, bringing new styles of discourses of religion and spirituality. Ministers ejected from their parishes, such as Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller, published ecclesiastical histories, books of devotion and meditation, and advice for enduring hardship. Protestant sectarians preached informed by the spirit rather than the university or ordination; such ‘mechanic preachers’ included John Bunyan and women such as Katherine Chidley, who led a London congregation. More radical sects such as the Fifth Monarchists preached the second coming of Christ, and prophets such as Anna Trapnel urged England to become a godly country for his return and judgment. The Quaker movement, begun by George Fox, gathered believers who challenged both social and religious hierarchies and customs, leading to their persecution and imprisonment.


Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Lehmann Sorenson

Jesus’ questions as recorded in the Gospels offer a prophetic challenge for Christian therapists who seek to integrate their faith with their clinical practice. One of my favorites is Jesus’ question in Luke 17 to the one leper who returned after all ten had been healed: “Where are the nine?” John Bunyan (1678/1969) in his classic The Pilgrim's Progresshad his protagonist, an Everyman he named “Christian,” traverse an allegorical odyssey en route to the Celestial City past adversarial characters with names like “Ignorance,” “Pliable,” and “Obstinate.” Taking inspiration from Bunyan, I propose putting the lepers in Luke to similarly imaginative use, recasting them for my purposes here as ten invented characters who represent different but common responses to the notion that integration is something indivisbly, irreducibly, and fundamentally personal. It is my thesis that we run from this notion just as the lepers ran from Christ. I have divided the lepers into four “colonies”: three of three lepers each, and the tenth as a colony of one. In this article I address the first two colonies, which I have named “No Need” and “No Good.”


Author(s):  
Marcelo Ramos Saldanha

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a alegoria religiosa The Pilgrim's Progress, do escritor inglês John Bunyan, buscando encontrar no enredo e no contexto histórico que se entrelaça à obra, alguns elementos que nos permitam compreender o ethos da vida peregrina desse indivíduo em busca da sua salvação. Assim, considerando que a obra foi escrita como resposta ao conturbado cenário religioso e político da Inglaterra do século XVII, analisaremos o enredo, os dogmas e os símbolos religiosos presentes no livro, buscando compreender a relação entre fé e vida “mundana”, indivíduo e comunidade e, principalmente, o valor das narrativas de devoção na experiência de conversão, para, então, entender como tais valores, expostos nas potentes alegorias de Bunyan, geraram um universo lúdico e concreto que validou uma ética  religiosa, profundamente individualista, que se tornou a marca do conversionismo puritano, e que continua a fazer sentido, mesmo para pessoas que não compartilham do contexto histórico e social do escritor.


1983 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 680
Author(s):  
Margot Heinemann ◽  
Lynn Veach Sadler
Keyword(s):  

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