The Oxford Movement in Context


Book Description

This book offers a radical reassessment of the significance of the Oxford Movement and of its leaders, Newman, Keble, and Pusey, by setting them in the context of the Anglican High Church tradition of the preceding 70 years. No other study offers such a comprehensive treatment of the historical and theological context in which the Tractarians operated.




From Awakening to Secession


Book Description

A major study of the impact of the Swiss RTveil (Awakening) on British evangelicals in the 1820s. This book provides an important synthesis of a variety of tendencies and movements which have usually been treated and understood as separate. By resisting the temptation to read back into the 1820s the partisan labels of later decades, Timothy Stunt rediscovers the common ground which was shared by a wide spectrum of Christians who were later seen as mutually hostile. The author considers the influence of the Awakening on radical attitudes to mission and ecclesiastical radicalism in Ireland, pre-Tractarian Oxford, and Scotland. In dealing with the reluctant movement towards secession from the established church, Stunt illuminates and reinterprets the origins of the early Catholic Apostolic Church and the Brethren.







A Victorian Dissenter


Book Description

This book introduces the reader to Robert Govett (1813–1901), dissenting clergyman and author, who wrote as a scholar of biblical prophecy, primarily on the subject of the “exclusion” of believers in the Millennial Kingdom, an idea of which he conceived. The purpose of the book is threefold: (1) to describe Govett, his life, and his printed work; (2) to analyze Govett’s eschatological beliefs, especially those he originated; and (3) to investigate why a respected theologian in England, who had published over 180 books and tracts, disappeared from dissenting print culture early in the twentieth century. Govett’s doctrine of exclusion was heavily intertwined with most of his writings. It was a topic that he developed throughout his career. Yet, as the center of dispensationalism shifted to America, Govett’s views of the Rapture began to be seen as extreme. The book explains why Govett was eclipsed as the center of the evangelical movement shifted and its theology ossified. Since his death, Govett has been occasionally remembered in scholarship, but with increasing inaccuracies and skepticism. This book seeks to remove the mystery.




The Elusive Quest of the Spiritual Malcontent


Book Description

Timothy C. F. Stunt has gathered a range of his essays, both published and unpublished in a collection of largely biographical studies. His subjects range from discontented Quakers hesitating over their identity, to respectable Anglicans who were fascinated with the charismatic phenomena of tongue speaking and healing. Some of the characters with whom he is concerned can be described as "mavericks" on account of their strikingly individualist inclinations. Occasionally their unpredictability takes on a quasi-comic identity, which could even qualify them to be described as "loose cannons." On the other hand, some of them like Edward Irving, Norris Groves, and John Darby played a crucial part in the development of nineteenth-century evangelicalism. In their quest for the ideal church of their dreams, they were often disappointed but one cannot but admire the single-mindedness of their quest.




The Victorian Church, Part One


Book Description

Concerned here broadly with the period 1829-59, Professor Chadwick writes of the church's precarious position at the start of the period, and the problems of dissent; the Whig reform of the Church by the ministries of Peel and Melbourne; the Oxford Movement, the influence of Newman and the development of ritual; the relations of church and government under Lord John Russell; the growth of the seven principal dissenting bodies; the theory and practice of Church and State at mid-century, and the troubles that arose over eucharistic worship; and finally the unsettlement of faith and the several attempts at restatement at the close of the period. The history is completed in The Victorian Church, Part II 1860-1901.







Evangelicalism and Dissent in Modern England and Wales


Book Description

This book treads new ground by bringing the Evangelical and Dissenting movements within Christianity into close engagement with one another. While Evangelicalism and Dissent both have well established historiographies, there are few books that specifically explore the relationship between the two. Thus, this complex relationship is often overlooked and underemphasised. The volume is organised chronologically, covering the period from the late seventeenth century to the closing decades of the twentieth century. Some chapters deal with specific centuries but others chart developments across the whole period covered by the book. Chapters are balanced between those that concentrate on an individual, such as George Whitefield or John Stott, and those that focus on particular denominational groups like Wesleyan Methodism, Congregationalism or the ‘Black Majority Churches’. The result is a new insight into the cross pollination of these movements that will help the reader to understand modern Christianity in England and Wales more fully. Offering a fresh look at the development of Evangelicalism and Dissent, this volume will be of keen interest to any scholar of Religious Studies, Church History, Theology or modern Britain.




Calvinism, Communion and the Baptists


Book Description

This book is concerned with English Calvinistic Baptist churches from the later 1600s until the early 1800s, arguing that there was then no connection between restricted communion and hyper- or high Calvinism. A minimal definition of restricted communion would be the reception at the Baptist communion of those alone who had been immersed in water upon a profession of faith. A sketch of English Calvinistic Baptists in the years preceding and following the 1689 Act of Toleration stresses that they were a denomination other than that of the General Baptists, and that most Baptists, irrespective of party lines, were de facto Strict Baptists. Historical arguments for and against restricted communion will demonstrate that during that period there was no definitive link between the Particular Baptists' communion discipline and their interpretations of Calvinism. Attention is given to John Gill's and Andrew Fuller's interpretations of the relation between the atonement and evangelism.




Oxford's Protestant Spy


Book Description

Charles Golightly (1807-1885) was a notorious Protestant polemicist. His life was dedicated to resisting the spread of ritualism and liberalism within the Church of England and the University of England. For half of a century he led many memorable campaigns, such as building a martyrs' memorial and attempting to close a theological college. John Henry Newman, Samuel Wilberforce, and Benjamin Jowett were amongst his adversaries. This is the first study of Golightly's controversial career.