That Was The Church That Was
That Was The Church That Was

Author: Andrew Brown

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-07-28

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1472921658

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The unexpectedly entertaining story of how the Church of England lost its place at the centre of English public life - now updated with new material by the authors including comments on the book's controversial first publication. The Church of England still seemed an essential part of Englishness, and even of the British state, when Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979. The decades which followed saw a seismic shift in the foundations of the C of E, leading to the loss of more than half its members and much of its influence. In England today 'religion' has become a toxic brand, and Anglicanism something done by other people. How did this happen? Is there any way back? This 'relentlessly honest' and surprisingly entertaining book tells the dramatic and contentious story of the disappearance of the Church of England from the centre of public life. The authors – religious correspondent Andrew Brown and academic Linda Woodhead – watched this closely, one from the inside and one from the outside. That Was the Church, That Was shows what happened and explains why.

Our Church
Our Church

Author: Roger Scruton

Publisher: Atlantic Books

Published: 2014-02-01

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1782395040

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For most people in England today, the church is simply the empty building at the end of the road, visited for the first time, if at all, when dead. It offers its sacraments to a population that lives without rites of passage, and which regards the National Health Service rather than the National Church as its true spiritual guardian. Here, Scruton argues that the Anglican Church is the forlorn trustee of an architectural and artistic inheritance that remains one of the treasures of European civilization. He contends that it is a still point in the centre of English culture and that its defining texts, the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are the sources from which much of our national identity derives. At once an elegy to a vanishing world and a clarion call to recognize Anglicanism's continuing relevance, Our Church is a graceful and persuasive book.

Anglican Social Theology Today
Anglican Social Theology Today

Author: Malcolm Brown

Publisher: Church House Publishing

Published: 2014-07-25

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0715144405

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In periods of recession, churches frequently respond to social need in practical ways. These responses are often driven by pastoral concern rather than a theology of church and society. But without theological roots, such social action can be vulnerable and episodic. This volume, commissioned by a group of Bishops in hard-hit dioceses, looks to develop strong theological foundations for local social action initiatives by churches, especially for activists who are not familiar with the Church of England’s tradition of social theology, developed by William Temple and others a century ago. In exploring what a renewed Anglican social theology might look like, this also draws on the impact of Catholic Social Teaching and focuses on the core topics of multiculturalism, economics, family patterns, ecology and other key issues.

Historians and the Church of England
Historians and the Church of England

Author: James Kirby

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0191081000

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Historians and the Church of England explores the vital relationship between the Church of England and the development of historical scholarship in the Victorian and Edwardian era. It draws upon a wide range of sources, from canonical works of history to unpublished letters, from sermons to periodical articles, to give a clear picture of the influence of religion upon the rich and flourishing world of English historical scholarship. The result is a radically revised understanding of both historiography and the Church of England. It shows that the main historiographical topics at the time-the nation, the constitution, the Reformation, and (increasingly) socio-economic history-were all imprinted with the distinctively Anglican concerns of leading historians. It brings to life the ideas of time, progress, and divine providence which structured their understanding of the past. It also shows that the Church of England remained a 'learned church', concerned not just with narrowly religious functions but also scholarly and cultural ones, into the early twentieth century: intellectual secularization was a slower and more fragmented process than accounts focused on natural science (especially Darwinism) to the exclusion of the humanities have led us to believe. This is not just the history of a coterie of scholars, but also of a wealth of texts and ideas that had a truly global circulation at a time when history was second only to the Bible (and perhaps the novel) in its cultural status and readership.

Religious Thoughts
Religious Thoughts

Author: James Watson

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2014-06-24

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 149173759X

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Religion is a small word, but it has a huge impact on both life and death. In Religious Thoughts, author James Watson takes a look at the history of religion through the years and delves into how the various manmade religions were formed and why. Through this historical exploration of religious texts, Watson addresses a host of questions addressing religion, its origins, and its mutations. Religious Thoughts asks: - Why, in the beginning, were just three major religions formed? - Why were the minor religions-such as Protestant, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian-started? - Did these religions coincide with or cause directly or indirectly major military conflicts? - How did religion become so diverse and corrupt? - Why and how did the manmade religions evolve? Thoroughly researched, Religious Thoughts asks a wide range of thought-provoking questions and presents Watson's opinions and concerns. It presents a historical time travel through centuries of religious changes, documenting the history of the Abrahamic religions.

The Evangelical Party and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Return to the Church of England
The Evangelical Party and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Return to the Church of England

Author: Christopher Corbin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-18

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0429638337

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It has long been accepted that when Samuel Taylor Coleridge rejected the Unitarianism of his youth and returned to the Church of England, he did so while accepting a general Christian orthodoxy. Christopher Corbin clarifies Coleridge’s religious identity and argues that while Coleridge’s Christian orthodoxy may have been sui generis, it was closely aligned with moderate Anglican Evangelicalism. Approaching religious identity as a kind of culture that includes distinct forms of language and networks of affiliation in addition to beliefs and practices, this book looks for the distinguishable movements present in Coleridge’s Britain to more precisely locate his religious identity than can be done by appeals to traditional denominational divisions. Coleridge’s search for unity led him to desire and synthesize the "warmth" of heart religion (symbolized as Methodism) with the "light" of rationalism (symbolized as Socinianism), and the evangelicalism in the Church of England, being the most chastened of the movement, offered a fitting place from which this union of warmth and light could emerge. His religious identity not only included many of the defining Anglican Evangelical beliefs, such as an emphasis on original sin and the New Birth, but he also shared common polemical opponents, appropriated evangelical literary genres, developed a spirituality centered on the common evangelical emphases of prayer and introspection, and joined Evangelicals in rejecting baptismal regeneration. When placed in a chronological context, Coleridge’s form of Christian orthodoxy developed in conversation with Anglican Evangelicals; moreover, this relationship with Anglican Evangelicalism likely helped facilitate his return to the Church of England. Corbin not only demonstrates the similarities between Coleridge’s relationship to a form of evangelicalism with which most people have little familiarity, but also offers greater insight into the complexities and tensions of religious identity in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain as a whole.