The Glasites or Sandemanians were a branch of the church with their roots in Scotland, but who spread much wider. This study seeks to explore their distinctives, both of theology and practice, and to place them in a wider context. The examination of a small sect serves to illuminate the wider story, and this particular community nurtured within it several eminent thinkers whose influence has been of deep importance—not the least, the scientific pioneer Michael Faraday. In exploring both their growth and their decline, the author seeks to convey something of the flavor of this part of the church and to consider what their legacy is.
During the course of the 19th and 20th centuries Brighton grew from a small fishing village on the Sussex coast to a large thriving city, popular with residents and visitors alike. Much building work went on during this time, but sadly many of the theatres, cinemas, dance halls and churches that were such a part of life in these earlier times have either been made redundant or converted for other uses or demolished. One of the iconic buildings of the city is St Peters Church. When it was first built it stood at the entrance to the main part of Brighton, on the road that goes past the Royal pavilion to the Palace Pier. It was the first important design that Sir Charles Barry created. He later became one of the foremost architects of Victorian times being responsible for the Houses of Parliament and Highclere Castle (now known to millions of television viewers as Downton Abbey). St Peters is a fine example of Barrys work, but this book will record how a chancel was added to the north of the building seventy-five years after the original structure had been completed. We will also see how the incumbent of St Peters became Vicar of Brighton which put him at the centre of the building and development of other churches throughout the town. In the twentieth century St Peters continued to be the spiritual hub for civic life in the town, but there was one occasion when the vicar failed to get to the church for the Sunday morning service. Later on the church suffered an arson attack, and the century ended with an extraordinary impromptu time of reflection in the early hours of 1st January 2000. However as the new century began, it was recognised that falling attendances and failing masonry could lead to St Peters going the same way as other older buildings in the city. The church authorities did not have the financial resources to cover all the expenses that this grand old building was requiring, and thus St Peters came under the threat of closure. This horrified the inhabitants of the city who saw St Peters as being just as much a part of the cityscape as the Pavilion and the Pier. To the great delight of all, the church was eventually saved through the last minute intervention of Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. This book documents the story of a church that, amid many ups and downs along the way, has come to be much loved in Brighton, Hove and Sussex.
With some 6,000 entries, A Bibliography of Tennessee History will prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone--students, historians, librarians, genealogists--engaged in researching Tennessee's rich and colorful past. A sequel to Sam B. Smith's invaluable 1973 work, Tennessee History: A Bibliography, this book follows a similar format and includes published books and essays, as well as many unpublished theses and dissertations, that have become available during the intervening years. The volume begins with sections on Reference, Natural History, and Native Americans. Its divisions then follow the major periods of the state's history: Before Statehood, State Development, Civil War, Late Nineteenth Century, Early Twentieth Century, and Late Twentieth Century. Sections on Literature and County Histories round out the book. Included is a helpful subject index that points the reader to particular persons, places, incidents, or topics. Substantial sections in this index highlight women's history and African American history, two areas in which scholarship has proliferated during the past two decades. The history of entertainment in Tennessee is also well represented in this volume, including, for example, hundreds of citations for writings about Elvis Presley and for works that treat Nashville and Memphis as major show business centers. The Literature section, meanwhile, includes citations for fiction and poetry relating to Tennessee history as well as for critical works about Tennessee writers. Throughout, the editors have strived to achieve a balance between comprehensive coverage and the need to be selective. The result is a volume that will benefit researchers for years to come. The Editors: W. Calvin Dickinson is professor of history at Tennessee Technological University. Eloise R. Hitchcock is head reference librarian at the University of the South.
As its name implies, the Reformed tradition grew out of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. The Reformed churches consider themselves to be the Catholic Church reformed. The movement originated in the reform efforts of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) of Zurich and John Calvin (1509-1564) of Geneva. Although the Reformed movement was dependent upon many Protestant leaders, it was Calvin's tireless work as a writer, preacher, teacher, and social and ecclesiastical reformer that provided a substantial body of literature and an ethos from which the Reformed tradition grew. Today, the Reformed churches are a multicultural, multiethnic, and multinational phenomenon. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches contains information on the major personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Reformed churches. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on leaders, personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Reformed churches.
Both the North and the South viewed the Civil War in Christian terms. Each side believed that its fight was just, that God favored its cause. Rebuilding Zion is the first study to explore simultaneously the reaction of southern white evangelicals, northern white evangelicals, and Christian freedpeople to Confederate defeat. As white southerners struggled to assure themselves that the collapse of the Confederacy was not an indication of God's stern judgment, white northerners and freedpeople were certain that it was. Author Daniel W. Stowell tells the story of the religious reconstruction of the South following the war, a bitter contest between southern and northern evangelicals, at the heart of which was the fate of the freedpeople's souls and the southern effort to maintain a sense of sectional identity. Central to the southern churches' vision of the Civil War was the idea that God had not abandoned the South; defeat was a Father's stern chastisement. Secession and slavery had not been sinful; rather, it was the radicalism of the northern denominations that threatened the purity of the Gospel. Northern evangelicals, armed with a vastly different vision of the meaning of the war and their call to Christian duty, entered the post-war South intending to save white southerner and ex-slave alike. The freedpeople, however, drew their own providential meaning from the war and its outcome. The goal for blacks in the postwar period was to establish churches for themselves separate from the control of their former masters. Stowell plots the conflicts that resulted from these competing visions of the religious reconstruction of the South. By demonstrating how the southern vision eventually came to predominate over, but not eradicate, the northern and freedpeople's visions for the religious life of the South, he shows how the southern churches became one of the principal bulwarks of the New South, a region marked by intense piety and intense racism throughout the twentieth century.
The story of Christianity in the West has often been told, but the history of Christianity in the East is not as well known. The seed was the same: the good news of Jesus Christ for the whole world, which Christians call "the gospel." But it was sown by different sowers; it was planted in different soil; it grew with a different flavor; and it was gathered by different reapers. It is too often forgotten that the faith moved east across Asia as early as it moved west into Europe. Western church history tends to follow Paul to Philippi and to Rome and on across Europe to the conversion of Constantine and the barbarians. With some outstanding exceptions, only intermittently has the West looked beyond Constantinople as its center. It was a Christianity that has for centuries remained unashamedly Asian. A History of Christianity in Asia makes available immense amounts of research on religious pluralism of Asia and how Christianity spread long before the modern missionary movement went forth in the shelter of Western military might. Invaluable for historians of Asia and scholars of mission, it is stimulating for all readers interested in Christian history. --
