The Reception of Continental Reformation in Britain


Book Description

This volume explores the relationship between reformations on the European continent and in Britain. Addressing issues from book history, to popular politics and theological polemic, it identifies how British reception contributed to continued reform on the continent, and considers the perception (and invention) of England's 'exceptional' status.




The Reformations in Britain, 1520–1603


Book Description

This entirely fresh narrative of the "British Reformations" focuses on the emotional as well as the material experience of living through the reformations in Britain during the sixteenth century. The Protestant reformations that took place in England and Scotland during the sixteenth century were, even by the standards of the period, unusually and uniquely fractious and complicated. By combining politics, theology, and culture – and by complementing its narrative with key documents from the period – this book arms readers to study, explore, and understand the British Reformations in new ways. More importantly, it considers this fascinating period in the round, understanding the reformations as a religious and cultural movement that had impacts upon politics, society, and individuals which combined to profound and lasting effects. Above all, it shows how an empathetic study of sixteenth-century religious and cultural history can expand our understanding of the past – and of how identities can form and be altered by powerful ideas and inspired individuals as well as mighty princes. Aided by a Who’s Who and Chronology, The Reformations in Britain is an invaluable resource for all students who study the religious and cultural history of sixteenth-century Britain.




The crisis of British Protestantism


Book Description

This book seeks to bring coherence to two of the most studied periods in British history, Caroline non-conformity (pre-1640) and the British revolution (post-1642). It does so by focusing on the pivotal years of 1638–44 where debates around non-conformity within the Church of England morphed into a revolution between Parliament and its king. Parliament, saddled with the responsibility of re-defining England’s church, called its Westminster assembly of divines to debate and define the content and boundaries of that new church. Typically this period has been studied as either an ecclesiastical power struggle between Presbyterians and independents, or as the harbinger of modern religious toleration. This book challenges those assumptions and provides an entirely new framework for understanding one of the most important moments in British history.




The Debate on the English Reformation


Book Description

Extensively revised and updated, this new edition of The debate on the English Reformation combines a discussion of successive historical approaches to the English Reformation with a critical review of recent debates in the area, offering a major contribution to modern historiography as well as to Reformation studies. It explores the way in which successive generations have found the Reformation relevant to their own times and have in the process rediscovered, redefined and rewritten its story. It shows that not only people who called themselves historians but also politicians, ecclesiastics, journalists and campaigners argued about interpretations of the Reformation and the motivations of its principal agents. The author also shows how, in the twentieth century, the debate was influenced by the development of history as a subject and, in the twenty-first century, by state control of the academy. Undergraduates, researchers and lecturers alike will find this an invaluable and essential companion to their studies.




The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume I


Book Description

The Oxford History of Anglicanism is a major new and unprecedented international study of the identity and historical influence of one of the world's largest versions of Christianity. This global study of Anglicanism from the sixteenth century looks at how was Anglican identity constructed and contested at various periods since the sixteenth century; and what was its historical influence during the past six centuries. It explores not just the ecclesiastical and theological aspects of global Anglicanism, but also the political, social, economic, and cultural influences of this form of Christianity that has been historically significant in western culture, and a burgeoning force in non-western societies today. The chapters are written by international experts in their various historical fields which includes the most recent research in their areas, as well as original research. The series forms an invaluable reference for both scholars and interested non-specialists. Volume one of The Oxford History of Anglicanism examines a period when the nature of 'Anglicanism' was still heavily contested. Rather than merely tracing the emergence of trends that we associate with later Anglicanism, the contributors instead discuss the fluid and contested nature of the Church of England's religious identity in these years, and the different claims to what should count as 'Anglican' orthodoxy. After the introduction and narrative chapters explain the historical background, individual chapters then analyse different understandings of the early church and church history; variant readings of the meaning of the royal supremacy, the role of bishops and canon law, and cathedrals; the very diverse experiences of religion in parishes, styles of worship and piety, church decoration, and Bible usage; and the competing claims to 'Anglican' orthodoxy of puritanism, 'avant-garde conformity' and Laudianism. Also analysed are arguments over the Church of England's confessional identity and its links with the foreign Reformed Churches, and the alternative models provided by English Protestant activities in Ireland, Scotland and North America. The reforms of the 1640s and 1650s are included in their own right, and the volume concludes that the shape of the Restoration that emerged was far from inevitable, or expressive of a settled 'Anglican' identity.




The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530-1700


Book Description

The Bible was, by any measure, the most important book in early modern England. It preoccupied the scholarship of the era, and suffused the idioms of literature and speech. Political ideas rode on its interpretation and deployed its terms. It was intricately related to the project of natural philosophy. And it was central to daily life at all levels of society from parliamentarian to preacher, from the 'boy that driveth the plough', famously invoked by Tyndale, to women across the social scale. It circulated in texts ranging from elaborate folios to cheap catechisms; it was mediated in numerous forms, as pictures, songs, and embroideries, and as proverbs, commonplaces, and quotations. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of fields, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, 1530-1700 explores how the scriptures served as a generative motor for ideas, and a resource for creative and political thought, as well as for domestic and devotional life. Sections tackle the knotty issues of translation, the rich range of early modern biblical scholarship, Bible dissemination and circulation, the changing political uses of the Bible, literary appropriations and responses, and the reception of the text across a range of contexts and media. Where existing scholarship focuses, typically, on Tyndale and the King James Bible of 1611, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in England, 1530-1700 goes further, tracing the vibrant and shifting landscape of biblical culture in the two centuries following the Reformation.




The Crisis of Calvinism in Revolutionary England, 1640-1660


Book Description

This book investigates a puzzling and neglected phenomenon - the rise of English Arminianism during the decade of puritan rule. Throughout the 1650s, numerous publications, from scholarly folios to popular pamphlets, attacked the doctrinal commitments of Reformed Orthodoxy. This anti-Calvinist onslaught came from different directions: episcopalian royalists (Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndike, Peter Heylyn), radical puritan defenders of the regicide (John Goodwin and John Milton), and sectarian Quakers and General Baptists. Unprecedented rejection of Calvinist soteriology was often coupled with increased engagement with Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant alternatives. As a result, sophisticated Arminian publications emerged on a scale that far exceeded the Laudian era. Cromwellian England therefore witnessed an episode of religious debate that significantly altered the doctrinal consensus of the Church of England for the remainder of the seventeenth century. The book will appeal to historians interested in the contested nature of 'Anglicanism' and theologians interested in Protestant debates regarding sovereignty and free will. Part One is a work of religious history, which charts the rise of English Arminianism across different ecclesial camps - episcopal, puritan and sectarian. These chapters not only introduce the main protagonists but also highlight a surprising range of distinctly English Arminian formulations. Part Two is a work of historical theology, which traces the detailed doctrinal formulations of two prominent divines - the puritan John Goodwin and the episcopalian Henry Hammond. Their Arminian theologies are set in the context of the Western theological tradition and the soteriological debates, that followed the Synod of Dort. The book therefore integrates historical and theological enquiry to offer a new perspective on the crisis of 'Calvinism' in post-Reformation England.




John Owen


Book Description

This book is a thorough study of John Owen. Owen has become recognized as one of the greatest Reformed theologians Great Britain ever produced, as well as one of the most significant theologians of the Reformed orthodox period. His theological interests were eclectic, exegetically based, and he sought to meet the needs of his times. This volume treats key areas in Owen’s thought, including the Trinity, Old Testament exegesis, covenant theology, the law and the gospel, the nature of faith in relation to images of Christ, and prolegomena. The common theme tying them together is that John Owen helps us better understand the development and interrelationship of theology, exegesis, and piety in Reformed orthodox theology. By setting him in his international and cross-confessional contexts, the author seeks to use Owen as a window into the trajectory of Reformed orthodoxy in several key areas.




The Universities of Scotland, Ireland, and New England During the British Civil Wars


Book Description

Highlights the contested nature of higher education in the British Atlantic world between the Reformation and the Enlightenment Universities in the early modern period were powerful institutions in the formation of societies, utilised as both tools to legitimise and perpetuate the power of states and archetypes upon which to model an idealised society that might maintain social order. In an era of upheaval and civil war, rival authorities clashed in the universities, where the conflicts and complexities of early modern state formation were regularly laid bare. The encroachment of the Stuart monarchy beyond England into Scottish and Irish academe stimulated broader resistance from Scottish and Irish authorities, while prompting the founding of institutions of higher learning among expatriate communities beyond the British Isles, especially in New England. In these spaces, universities were viewed as institutional bulwarks against external intrusions that promoted localised, competing visions of the godly church and state amid the conflicts and complexities of early modern state formation. This book provides new insight into the contested nature of higher education in the British Atlantic world between the Reformation and the Enlightenment and corrects outmoded notions about the universities' purported insularity and intellectual poverty. Rather, the image that emerges of these universities is one of genuine academies of strategic importance, employed to serve the agendas of ruling powers in Scotland, Ireland, and New England. Trinity College, Dublin, Harvard College, and the Scottish universities existed on the frontiers of a deteriorating composite monarchy with a centralizing impulse, becoming battle grounds of the mid-seventeenth-century's intellectual, political, and religious conflicts. SALVATORE CIPRIANO is Associate Director of Career Coaching and Education, Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Early Modern European History from Fordham University.




Memory and the English Reformation


Book Description

Recasts the Reformation as a battleground over memory, in which new identities were formed through acts of commemoration, invention and repression.