This seminal work by one of the world’s most distinguished liturgical scholars fills an important gap in the history of the Church of Scotland and of Scottish worship. It offers an in-depth narrative of a neglected liturgical legacy and a perceptive analysis of the Church’s evolving patterns of worship from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.
Unwilling on conscientious grounds to submit to the religious tests imposed by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the English and Welsh Dissenters of the second half of the seventeenth century established academies in which their young men, many of them destined for the ministry, might receive a higher education. From the eighteenth century onwards, theological colleges devoted exclusively to ministerial education were founded, while in Scotland historically, and in England and Wales over the past 120 years, freestanding university faculties of divinity/theology have provided theological education to ordinands and others. These diverse educational contexts are all represented in this collection of papers, but the focus is upon those who taught in them: Caleb Ashworth (Daventry Academy); John Oman (Westminster [Presbyterian] College Cambridge); N. H. G. Robinson (University of St. Andrews); Geoffrey F. Nuttall (New [Congregational] College, London); T. W. Manson (University of Manchester); Owen Evans (University of Manchester and Hartley Victoria Methodist College)--the lone Methodist scholar discussed here; and W. Gordon Robinson and J. H. Eric Hull (University of Manchester and Lancashire Independent College). Between them these scholars covered the core disciplines of theological education: biblical studies, ecclesiastical history, philosophy, doctrine, and systematic theology.
A volume of significant contributions to our understanding of John Oman. With an impressive list of contributors (Adam Hood, Alan Sell, Fleur Houston, David Thompson, Eric McKimmon, Stephan Bevans, John Hick, John Nightingale and Ashok Chaudari) the volume is unique in a number of ways. It provides a more detailed historical account of Omans life and work than that offered before, often drawing on primary sources.
Gauvreau explores the persistence and development of the evangelical creed as the intellectual expression of Protestant religion which largely defined English-Canadian culture in the Victorian period. This popular theology, which linked Methodist and Presbyterian church colleges to the world of popular preaching, was based on the Bible not only as the foundation of personal piety but as a sacred record of human history: past, present, and future. Gauvreau shows that the evangelical creed proved flexible when faced with the challenges of Darwinian evolution, higher criticism, and other new intellectual currents, and that it remained central to the intellectual life of the churches. By accommodating those aspects of modern thought most compatible with evangelicalism and filtering out those more threatening, clergymen-professors such as Samuel Nelles, Nathanael Burwash, George Monro Grant, and William Caven were able to find creative ways to move their churches toward social reform in the late nineteenth century. The evangelical synthesis lost its cultural supremacy only in the twentieth century, when the complexity of theological discussion in the church colleges broke down the close links between professor and preacher.