The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume I

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Ecclesiastical Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Lay Experience ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume I traces the emergence of Anglophone Protestant Dissent in the post-Reformation era between the Act of Uniformity (1559) and the Act of Toleration (1689). It reassesses the relationship between establishment and dissent, emphasizing that Presbyterians and Congregationalists were serious contenders in the struggle for religious hegemony. Under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, dissent was largely contained within the Church of England, as nonconformists sought to reform the national Church from within. During the English Revolution (1640–60), Puritan reformers seized control of the state but splintered into rival factions with competing programmes of ecclesiastical reform. Only after the Restoration, following the ejection of 2,000 Puritan clergy from the Church, did most Puritans become Dissenters, often with great reluctance. Dissent was not the inevitable terminus of Puritanism, but the contingent and unintended consequence of the Puritan drive for further reformation. Nevertheless, in the half-century after 1640, religious pluralism became a fact of English life, as denominations formed and toleration was widely advocated. The volume explores how Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers began to forge distinct identities as the four major denominational traditions of English Dissent. It tracks the proliferation of Anglophone Protestant Dissent beyond England—in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Dutch Republic, New England, Pennsylvania, and the Caribbean. And it presents the latest research on the culture of Dissenting congregations, including their relations with the parish, their worship, preaching, gender relations, and lay experience.

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY IN POST-MARIAN ENGLAND

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-919 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT HARKINS
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Political Controversy ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACTThis article presents a new perspective on Elizabethan puritanism. In particular, it examines the ways in which the memory of Marian conformity continued to influence religious and political controversy during the reign of Elizabeth I. Drawing upon extensive archival evidence, it focuses on moments when the chequered pasts of Queen Elizabeth, William Cecil, and other chief officers of English church and state were called into question by puritan critics. In contrast to the prevailing narrative of Elizabethan triumphalism, it argues that late Tudor religion and politics were shaped by lingering puritan distrust of those who had revealed a propensity for idolatry by conforming during the Marian persecution. This fraught history of religious conformity meant that, for some puritans, the Church of England had been built on unstable foundations.

The Puritans

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Oliver Cromwell ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Movement ◽  
The Church

This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the story of America. Shedding critical new light on the diverse forms of Puritan belief and practice in England, Scotland, and New England, the book provides a multifaceted account of a cultural movement that judged the Protestant reforms of Elizabeth's reign to be unfinished. The book describes the movement's deeply ambiguous triumph under Oliver Cromwell, its political demise with the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, and its perilous migration across the Atlantic to establish a “perfect reformation” in the New World. It examines the tribulations and doctrinal dilemmas that led to the fragmentation and eventual decline of Puritanism. It presents a compelling portrait of a religious and political movement that was divided virtually from the start. In England, some wanted to dismantle the Church of England entirely and others were more cautious, while Puritans in Scotland were divided between those willing to work with a troublesome king and others insisting on the independence of the state church. The book traces how Puritanism was a catalyst for profound cultural changes in the early modern Atlantic world, opening the door for other dissenter groups such as the Baptists and the Quakers, and leaving its enduring mark on what counted as true religion in America.

Reformers and the Church of England under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts

1980 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Christianson
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Church

During the past forty years, the religious history of Elizabethan and early Stuart England has received a great deal of attention from intellectual, social and Church historians. Because of the nature of the general interpretation traditionally followed, most scholars have found it fruitful to concentrate their research upon particular groups or individuals and to fit the ensuing studies into either a rather narrow stream labelled ‘Anglican’ or a very broad one named ‘Puritan’. While the number of biographies of English bishops and analyses of ‘Anglican’ divines has increased at a more than respectable rate recently, studies of English ‘Puritans’ and their brethren in New England have grown to almost unmanageable proportions. With all of these riches at hand, however, no recent historian has published an overall synthetic history of the Church of England under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts to match that completed by W. H. Frere more than two-thirds of a century ago. Indeed, a good deal of controversy still ranges over the boundaries and validity of such terms as ‘Anglican’ and—especially— ‘Puritan’. Plunging into that dispute, this paper will examine the nature and historiographical origins of these categories, redefine them so that they better apply to the evidence from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and spell out some of the social and political implications that spring from this modified point of view. While the argument presented here, no doubt, will neither please nor satisfy all historians working in the field, one hopes that it will provide some with a glimpse at the outlines of a new synthesis.

Edmund Campion

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
The Self ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Tower Of London ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Edmund Campion (b. 1540–d. 1581) was born in London and educated there and at Oxford, as a member of the newly founded St John’s College, a pillar of Mary Tudor’s Catholic revival. By the time he graduated Mary had been succeeded by Elizabeth I and Catholicism by an episcopally led form of Protestantism. Campion remained in Oxford, as tutor, lecturer, and orator, and was ordained as a deacon of the Church of England in 1569, but retained strong Catholic sympathies. In 1570 Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pius V and Campion retreated to Ireland. The following year he made his way to Douai in the Spanish Netherlands, where he recanted his Protestantism, and, in 1573, proceeded to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus. His Jesuit novitiate was undertaken in Brno, after which he taught in Prague. In 1579 he was chosen to undertake a mission to England, supporting those of his fellow countrymen who had remained loyal to Rome and endeavoring to convert those who had not. Together with Robert Persons (or Parsons [b. 1546–d. 1610]) and Ralph Emerson, Campion left Rome in April 1580. Arriving in England, he issued a challenge to debate doctrinal matters with leading Protestants. This was his so-called Brag. It was followed by the lengthier Rationes decem. All the while, he ministered in secret to the Catholic minority, until he was arrested at Lyford Grange, Berkshire, on 17 July 1581. During his imprisonment in the Tower of London he was granted his wish to debate with Protestant divines, but the four events were rigged against him. In November he was tried and found guilty of treasonable conspiracy against the queen, and on 1 December hanged at Tyburn with two other priests, Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Briant. He was beatified by Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized (as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales) by Paul VI in 1970. As this article confirms, Campion’s story is related in numerous Reference Works, expanded and/or placed in context in Overviews and examined in detail in Journals and Collections of Papers. For present purposes, his career is divided chronologically: up to 1570 under London and Oxford, 1570–1571 under History of Ireland, and the self-explanatory Mission to England, 1580–1581, which is subdivided into Primary Sources and Analysis. His afterlife is addressed under Legacy, first for the period 1581–1618, and then From Hagiography to Biography.

The Report on Relations Between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches

1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 370-388
Author(s):  
Norman Sykes ◽  
Edward Symonds ◽  
J. L. M. Haire
Keyword(s):  
General Assembly ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Presbyterian Churches

‘Shall two walk together except they be agreed?‘ may well been a widespread question asked on both sides of the Border when the appointment of a joint Committee of Representatives, nominated respectively by the Archbishop of Canterbury and by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, to consider means of establishing closer relations between the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches was announced. The Report entitled ‘Relations between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches’ offers a provisional answer to this question, by affording evidence of a surprising degree of mutual rapprochement and by setting forth the bases for further action. Perhaps this measure of agreement is more surprising than ought to have been the case; for the history of the two national, established Churches of England and Scotland indicates how near they have been to each other in polity in the past; and how fortuitous were the circumstances which drove them apart. ‘This is the ideal which springs to light in the last months of 1558’ wrote F. W. Maitland of the relationship of the two nations at the accession of Elizabeth I, ‘deliverance from the toils of foreign potentates; amity between two sister nations; union in a pure religion.’ A Scottish contemporary, William Maitland indeed wrote to William Cecil in England, that ‘earnest embracing of religion will join us straitly together’. It was a consummation then devoutly to be wished; and no less still to be desired in the reign of Elizabeth II after the lapse of four centuries.

scholarly journals The New England Puritans: History, Social Order, and Gender

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Riley Bolitho
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New World ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

The article will address the history of the Puritan migration from England to early colonial America, contextualizing their social order and gender in culture in the New World given special emphasis to their theology. The methodology employed is qualitative analysis of factors that: caused Puritan emigration and their early experience in Massachusetts Bay; organized their social structure; and illuminated the position of gender in culture. Generally, Puritans migrated out of New England for varying reasons but primarily out of deep-seated theological frustrations with the Church of England. Their theology is then described and assigned its place as the organizing principle of society; understanding this, gender is consequentially realized as not a particularly useful category of culture for the Puritans although we can observe how cultural works articulated women’s position in society—which was principally as wives, mothers, and worshipers.

Edward Fisher and the Defence of Elizabethan Protestantism during the English Revolution

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 710-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER DURSTON
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Church

During the seventeenth century several attempts were made to change fundamentally the character of the Church of England founded by Elizabeth I. The innovations introduced by Laud in the 1630s precipitated a civil war and brought to power godly governments which restructured the Church on a Presbyterian model. The amateur theologian, Edward Fisher, opposed this new godly establishment, arguing for the continued celebration of Christmas, and against sabbatarianism and sacramental examination and suspension. His tracts in support of ‘Elizabethan Protestantism’ proved popular in the 1650s and helped to cement attachment to a more inclusive vision of the English Church.

ECCLESIOLOGY AND POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND, 1580–c. 1630

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHARLES W. A. PRIOR
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This article examines the ways in which debates on ecclesiology in the Church of England served as a venue for the examination of political precept. It argues in particular that polemical sources – whether sermons, pamphlets, or longer works – reveal that discussion of conformity, the nature of the church, and its doctrine and discipline led to a broader examination of law, sovereignty, parliament, and the political costs of religious discord. Underlying the dispute was a fundamental tension over civil and sacred authority, and the relationship between politics – the realm of human custom and history – and doctrine – the realm of the divine and immemorial. The article offers a number of revisions to current discussions of the history of political thought, while pointing to the importance of religious discourse for our understanding of the political tensions that existed in the years prior to the English civil war.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hefling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Book Of Common Prayer ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

Principal Booksellers and Publishing Outlets

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Publishing History ◽  
William Cowper ◽  
Religious Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
The Church

This chapter covers the publishing history of some of the main authors discussed in the book, the Congregationalists Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, and Elizabeth Rowe, the Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield, and the Church of England evangelicals James Hervey, John Newton, and William Cowper; the publications of the major London dissenting booksellers, Edward and Charles Dilly, and Joseph Johnson; the printers and sellers for the smaller denominations, the Quakers and the Moravians; and some important provincial printers and sellers of religious books, Joshua Eddowes, Samuel Hazard, Thomas and Mary Luckman, Robert Spence, William Phorson, and John Fawcett.

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