In 1801, the United Kingdom was a semi-confessional State, and the national established Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland were vital to the constitution. They expressed the religious conscience of the State and served as guardians of the faith. Through their parish structures, they provided religious and moral instruction, and rituals for common living. This book explores the struggle to strengthen the influence of the national Churches in the first half of the nineteenth century. For many, the national Churches would help form the United Kingdom into a single Protestant nation-state, with shared beliefs, values and a sense of national mission. Between 1801 and 1825, the State invested heavily in the national Churches. But during the 1830s the growth of Catholic nationalism in Ireland and the emergence of liberalism in Britain thwarted the efforts to unify the nation around the established Churches. Within the national Churches themselves, moreover, voices began calling for independence from the State connection - leading to the Oxford Movement in England and the Disruption of the Church of Scotland.
Providing a comparative study of the national churches of England, Ireland and Scotland, Brown traces the end of the confessional state idea in the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1846.
Providing a comparative study of the national churches of England, Ireland and Scotland, Brown traces the end of the confessional state idea in the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1846.
A compelling study of Anglican Evangelicalism in the Age of Wilberforce revealing its potency as a political machine whose reach extended into every area of the British establishment and its nascent Empire.
The church of the eighteenth century was still reeling in the wake of the huge religious upheavals of the two previous centuries. Though this was a comparatively quiet period, this book shows that for the whole period, religion was a major factor in the lives of virtually everybody living in Britain and Ireland. Yates argues that the established churches, Anglican in England, Irelandand Wales, and Presbyterian in Scotland, were an integral part of the British constitution, an arrangement staunchly defended by churchmen and politicians alike. The book also argues that, although there was a close relationship between church and state in this period, there was also limited recognition of other religions. This led to Britain becoming a diverse religious society much earlier than most other parts of Europe. During the same period competition between different religious groups encouraged ecclesiastical reforms throughout all the different churches in Britain.
Rowan Strong looks at the religious component of the nineteenth-century British and Irish emigration experience, by examining the varieties of Christianity adhered to by most British and Irish emigrants in the nineteenth century, and consequently taken to their new homes in British settler colonies.
A historical study of the most influential and important Protestant group in Northern Ireland - the Presbyterians. Andrew R. Holmes examines the various components of public and private religiosity and how these were influenced by religious concerns, economic and social changes, and cultural developments.
The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement reflects the rich and diverse nature of scholarship on the Oxford Movement and provides pointers to further study and new lines of enquiry. Part I considers the origins and historical context of the Oxford Movement. These chapters include studies of the legacy of the seventeenth-century 'Caroline Divines' and of the nature and influence of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century High Church movement within the Church of England. Part II focuses on the beginnings and early years of the Oxford Movement, paying particular attention to the people, the distinctive Oxford context, and the ecclesiastical controversies that inspired the birth of the Movement and its early intellectual and religious expressions. In Part III the theme shifts from early history of the Oxford Movement to its distinctive theological developments. This section analyses Tractarian views of religious knowledge and the notion of 'ethos'; the distinctive Tractarian views of tradition and development; and Tractarian ecclesiology, including ideas of the via media and the 'branch theory' of the Church. The years of crisis for the Oxford Movement between 1841 and 1845, including John Henry Newman's departure from the Church of England, are covered in Part IV. Part V then proceeds to a consideration of the broader cultural expressions and influences of the Oxford Movement. Part VI focuses on the world outside England and examines the profound impact of the Oxford Movement on Churches beyond the English heartland, as well as on the formation of a world-wide Anglicanism. In Part VII, the contributors show how the Oxford Movement remained a vital force in the twentieth century, finding expression in the Anglo-Catholic Congresses and in the Prayer Book Controversy of the 1920s within the Church of England. The Handbook draws to a close, in Part VIII, with a set of more generalised reflections on the impact of the Oxford Movement, including chapters on the judgement of the converts to Roman Catholicism over the Movement's loss of its original character, on the spiritual life and efforts of those who remained within the Anglican Church to keep Tractarian ideas alive, on the engagement of the Movement with Liberal Protestantism and Liberal Catholicism, and on the often contentious historiography of the Oxford Movement which continued to be a source of church party division as late as the centennial commemorations of the Movement in 1933. An 'Afterword' chapter assesses the continuing influence of the Oxford Movement in the world Anglican Communion today, with special references to some of the conflicts and controversies that have shaken Anglicanism since the 1960s.
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 exports 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 three of The Oxford History of Anglicanism explores the nineteenth century when Anglicanism developed into a world-wide Christian communion, largely, but not solely, due to the expansion of the British Empire. By the end of this period an Anglican Communion had come into existence as a diverse conglomerate of often competing Anglican identities with their often unresolved tensions and contradictions, but also with some measure of genuine unity. The volume examines the ways the various Anglican identities of the nineteenth century are both metropolitan and colonial constructs, and how they influenced the wider societies in which they formed Anglican Churches.
