Christianity, in its Catholic, Protestant and Nonconformist forms, has played an enormous role in the history of Wales and in the defining and shaping of Welsh identity over the past two thousand years. Biblical place names, an urban and rural landscape littered with churches, chapels, crosses and sacred sites, a bardic and literary tradition deeply imbued with Christian themes in both the Welsh and English languages, and the songs sung by tens of thousands of rugby supporters at the national stadium in Cardiff, all hint at a Christian presence that was once universal. Yet for many in contemporary Wales, the story of the development of Christianity in their country remains little known. While the history of Christianity in Wales has been a subject of perennial interest for Welsh historians, much of their work has been highly specialised and not always accessible to a general audience. Standing on the shoulders of some of Wales’s finest historians, this is the first single-volume history of Welsh Christianity from its origins in Roman Britain to the present day. Drawing on the expertise of four leading historians of the Welsh Christian tradition, this volume is specifically designed for the general reader, and those beginning their exploration of Wales’s Christian past.

This anthology of Welsh poetry and English translations presents some of Wales's radical and reactionary responses to the French Revolution and its cultural legacy, 1789-1805.

Marks the centenary of the Church in Wales and critically assesses landmarks in its evolution.

This four-volume historical resource provides new opportunities for investigating the relationship between religion, literature and society in Britain and its imperial territories by making accessible a diverse selection of harder-to-find primary sources. These include religious fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, sermons, travel writing, religious ephemera, unpublished notebooks and pamphlet literature. Spanning the long nineteenth century (c.1789–1914), the resource departs from older models of ‘the Victorian crisis of faith’ in order to open up new ways of conceptualising religion. This first volume looks at ‘Traditions’, offering an overview of the different religious traditions and denominations present in Britain during this period.

This four-volume historical resource provides new opportunities for investigating the relationship between religion, literature and society in Britain and its imperial territories by making accessible a diverse selection of harder-to-find primary sources. These include religious fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, sermons, travel writing, religious ephemera, unpublished notebooks and pamphlet literature. Spanning the long nineteenth century (c.1789–1914), the resource departs from older models of ‘the Victorian crisis of faith’ in order to open up new ways of conceptualising religion. A key concern of the resource is to integrate non-Christian religions into our understanding and representations of religious life in this period. Each volume is framed around a different meaning of the term ‘religion’. Volume one on ‘Traditions’ offers an overview of the different religious traditions and denominations present in Britain in this period. Volume two on ‘Mission and Reform’ considers the social and political importance of religious faith and practice as expressed through foreign and domestic mission and philanthropic and political movements at home and abroad. Volume three turns to ‘Religious Feeling’ as an important and distinct category for understanding the ways in which religion is embodied and expressed in culture. Volume four on ‘Disbelief and New Beliefs’ explores the transformation of the religious landscape of Britain and its imperial territories during the nineteenth century as a result of key cultural and intellectual forces. The resource is aimed primarily at researchers and students working within the fields of literature and social and religious history. It supplies an interpretative context for sources in the form of explanatory headnotes to each source or group of sources and volume introductions that explore overarching themes. Each volume can be read independently, but they work together to elucidate the complex and multi-faceted nature of nineteenth-century religious life.

Writing Welsh History is the first book to explore how the history of Wales and the Welsh has been written over the past fifteen hundred years. By analysing and contextualizing a wide range of historical writing, from Gildas in the sixth century to recent global approaches, it opens new perspectives both on the history of Wales and on understandings of Wales and the Welsh - and thus on the use of the past to articulate national and other identities. The study's broad chronological scope serves to highlight important continuities in interpretations of Welsh history. One enduring preoccupation is Wales's place in Britain. Down to the twentieth century it was widely held that the Welsh were an ancient people descended from the original inhabitants of Britain whose history in its fullest sense ended with Edward I's conquest of Wales in 1282-4, their history thereafter being regarded as an attenuated appendix. However, Huw Pryce shows that such master narratives, based on medieval sources and focused primarily on the period down to 1282, were part of a much larger and more varied historiographical landscape. Over the past century the thematic and chronological range of Welsh history writing has expanded significantly, notably in the unprecedented attention given to the modern period, reflecting broader trends in an increasingly internationalized historical profession as well as the influence of social, economic, and political developments in Wales and elsewhere.

A new and wide-ranging study of Christianity in Scotland, from the eighteenth century to the present.The contributors include D. W. D. Shaw, Ian Campbell, Kenneth Fielding, William Ferguson, Barbara MacHaffie, Peter Matheson, John McCaffrey, Owen Chadwick, David Thompson, Keith Robbins, Andrew Ross, Stewart J. Brown and George Newlands.Topics encompass varieties of unbelief, challenges to the Westminster confession, John Baillie, Queen Victoria and the Church of Scotland, the Scottish ecumenical movement, the disestablishment movement, and Presbyterian-Catholic relations.

A core introductory textbook that provides students with a concise overview of the full sweep of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh history, from pre-Roman times right through to the present day. Jeremy Black offers a balanced and absorbing account of a group of islands, their peoples, their extraordinary shared past and their remarkable impact on the rest of the world. This is an ideal set text for dedicated modules on British history, or a supplementary text for broader modules on European history, which may be offered at all levels of an undergraduate history or European studies degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying the history of Britain for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in British or European history. New to this Edition: - Revised and updated throughout in light of the latest research - Provides coverage of recent events - Pays greater attention to social developments

In the broad context of Christianity as it developed over two millennia, and with special reference to the last three centuries, this discussion finds that Evangelicalism has repeatedly offered a reduced and distorted understanding of the faith. The evangelical outlook is much less scriptural than evangelicals generally assume. When it comes to appreciating the order of creation, our calling to develop integral Christian thinking and living, the religious significance of culture, and the coming of the kingdom, reductionist Evangelicalism struggles with its only rarely acknowledged deficiencies. As a result, we have all too often ended up with a Christianity shorn of its cosmic scope and wide cultural implications, and restricted to institutional church life and the cultivation of private spiritual experience. The consequences are frequently enervating and corrosive. Without disregarding what is important in the past, evangelicals are here challenged to take the Bible much more seriously, and thereby transcend the limitations of their habitual reductionism. Evangelicals are encouraged to embrace an integral and full-orbed understanding of Christian discipleship that will equip the faithful to address the deep and complex challenges of the twenty-first century.