The Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company (1622–1639): Establishing Theocratic Corporate Governance

This chapter examines the development of a different form of corporate religious governance in the Atlantic in the years after the Jamestown massacre. It focuses on the denominational identity of its members and how this influenced the direction and formation of a theocratic model of governance that the company would adopt. This chapter illustrates how the leaders of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay companies, such as William Bradford, John Endicott and John Winthrop, established authoritarian governments by manipulating charter privileges, forming a theocratic model of governance in New England. It examines how the leaders and members of the Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company, as corporate bodies, established and nurtured a distinct form of governmental identity. By tracing the development of the Massachusetts Bay Company’s congregational theocratic governance through works such as Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, the Winthrop Papers, as well as the Records of the Town of Plymouth and the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay New England, it shows how the joint stock corporation offered its members the legal and structural framework that would dogmatically police the religious behaviour of its members to secure and establish a godly republic.

Dwight L. Moody in Ulster: Evangelical Unity, Denominational Identity and the Fundamentalist Impulse

The American evangelist Dwight L. Moody visited Ulster on three occasions – 1874, 1883 and 1892 – and his modern, respectable version of revivalism offered a welcome alternative to the ambiguous legacy of the 1859 Ulster revival. Moody stimulated an outpouring of interdenominational activism and may have contributed to a fundamentalist impulse amongst Evangelicals. His legacy in Ulster, as elsewhere, was to energise Evangelicals but at the expense of weakening the ability, perhaps even the desire, of church members to adhere to denominational principles. In that sense, both so-called ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘modernists’ in Northern Ireland in the 1920s were Moody's heirs.

Identity forging in the Hungarian Reformed press in the first part of the 20th century. The example of the Református Figyelő journal

"In my study, I am examining a significant step in the history of the national Re-formed press between the two world wars, i.e., the weekly paper Református Figyelő (1928–1933). It is well known that the interwar period which was also called a “religious renaissance” or the “period of the second confessionalization”, is considered to be a period of renewal of religious and ecclesiastical life, deepening of faith and strengthening of denominational identity for each historical church. My study approaches the issue of church press between the two world wars from the perspective of the process of community identity building of the Hungari-an Reformed people. On the one hand, I am looking for an answer to how the con-tent of the Reformed identity changed during the century, which were the defining phenomena, historical experiences that decisively influenced the Reformed self-awareness, which were its main problems, the central topics of church public dis-course. On the other hand, my research focuses on the role of the ecclesiastical press in shaping public discourses, in building identity, the way its organizational back-ground and internal system of relations developed. Keywords: religious ideintity, Reformed Church, interwar period, church press, Ravasz László. "

Working conditions for Catholic teachers in the archdiocese of Glasgow in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century

The Education (Scotland) Act, 1918, was a key point in the process towards full state funding for Catholic schools in Scotland. There has been important research on the political and ecclesial negotiations that led to the Act and into the conditions of the Act that preserved the denominational identity of the Catholic schools. This article examines the working conditions of Catholic teachers leading up to the Act and focuses on several themes, primarily in relation to the Archdiocese of Glasgow: school accommodation, the roll, and class sizes; the impact of disease, sickness and death; the working conditions for pupil-teachers; and, the major focus of the article, the remuneration for Catholic teachers.

In Search of Sylhet—The Fultoli Tradition in Britain

This article presents a case study of the Fultoli tradition, an expression of Islam dominant amongst Bangladeshi migrants to the UK, but which in general terms has failed to communicate itself to British-born Muslims. It is also a denominational identity that has been overlooked in academic literature on British Muslims, and regularly mischaracterized. To correct this, the article presents an overview of Fultolir Sahib, the late founder of the tradition, and the theological distinctiveness of his teachings, before considering its movement to Britain. A varied methodological approach is adopted in order to explore the topic, combining a textual exploration of Fultoli sources with qualitative interviews with members of the Fultoli tradition, and also autoethnography drawing upon the authors’ (who were both raised by Fultoli parents) experience of the tradition. The article argues that Fultolir Sahib’s authority is constructed in an idiom that is inaccessible to British-born Muslims and that Fultoli institutions have failed to create leaders capable of preserving the tradition. It concludes that despite the diminishing numbers of Fultolis in Britain, it is still important for academics to recognize their unique role in the landscape of Muslim denominational diversity.

Watchmen to the House of Israel? Irish Methodism and the Religious Press

This chapter shows that literacy in English could be utilized by the Methodist community in Ireland to create a countervailing religious and political discourse to that of their English brethren, allowing them to intervene in both political and religious issues. This discussion of literacy, denominational identity, and Irish Methodism provides a vivid example of the deep connections between religion and literacy outlined earlier in the volume. With the emergence of the ‘nonconformist conscience’ into British public life in the 1880s, Irish Methodists responded by developing their own denominational newspaper that articulated a peculiarly Irish Methodist view, distinct from that being promoted in England. The establishment of the weekly Christian Advocate in Belfast in 1884 marked the transfer of denominational influence from the wealth of Dublin to the popular heartlands in Ulster. Thus the establishment and distribution of an indigenous Irish Methodist journal drew together a geographically dispersed denomination and developed a distinctly Irish Methodist response to current affairs.

The Dutch Reformed Church as a prominent established South African church: In transition towards the 21st century

The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) is in transition because of the influences of the more recent South African epochs of democratisation, Africanisation and globalisation. The histories of these epochs extend over more than 20 years and have had a significant influence on the church. The Dutch Reformed (DR) Church changed institutionally because its place and influence within society changed considerably as a result of political and social transformation since 1994. The ongoing process of Africanisation that accompanies these transformations brings certain reactions to the bosom of the church via the experiences of its members. Most are Afrikaners being more inclined to westernised social frames of reference. Ironically, these people are more susceptible to the effects of globalisation, especially secularisation, which transposes the religious set-up of the DR Church into an open and individuated system. These developments pose major challenges to the DR Church in the sense that it has to reconsider how it approaches society, what it can contribute to the ecumenical church, why it is necessary to reflect on its denominational identity and what its academic, theological endeavours in these regards entail.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article has an interdisciplinary scope because the multiplicity of the present-day calls for interdisciplinary academic reflection. For the purpose of this article, Church Historiography helps to systemise recent ecclesiastical developments within the DR Church. To clarify the influences of these developments on the DR Church, sociological premises are incorporated to describe them within a broader social context. References to the conducted empirical study serve to explain respondents’ (members of the DR Church) social and religious constructs regarding these ecclesiastical and sociological phenomena.