Dissenting Traditions and Politics in the Anglophone World
This chapter describes the ‘acts of self-invention’ inherent in the public and political orientations of Protestant dissenting movements in anglophone countries in the twentieth century. It illustrates how civic dissenting Protestantism emerged over the century in nation-building among Afrikaners in South Africa, and the establishment of political parties, and the divergence of attitudes to the state in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA. Two major trends (among the enormous diversity of dissenting political attitudes) include: changes within culture, the ‘exogenous factors’ that remained relatively out of the control of the churches but which had a direct bearing on their growth or decline; and changes within D/dissent itself. The chapter places these trends within the broader trends of secularization and the enormous diversification of (d)issenting movements ‘from the margins’. It points to the tensions between (to use Hans Mol’s words) the ‘priestly’ and the ‘prophetic’ roles of dissenting Protestantism in the West.