The Nonconformists of England and Wales, the Protestants outside the Church of England, were particularly numerous in the Victorian years. From being a small minority in the eighteenth century, they had increased to represent nearly half the worshipping nation by the middle years of the nineteenth century. These Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians, and others helped shape society and made their mark in politics. This book explains the main characteristics of each denomination and examines the circumstances that enabled them to grow. It evaluates the main academic hypothesis about their role and points to signs of their subsequent decline in the twentieth century. Here is a succinct account of an important dimension of the Christian past in Britain.

Over the course of nearly forty-five years of pastoral ministry, Octavius Winslow (1808–1878) effectively demonstrated the practice of applying doctrine to life through his experimental preaching. In Heart to Heart: Octavius Winslow’s Experimental Preaching , Tanner G. Turley surveys Winslow’s life and ministry and demonstrates how a strong theology of preaching provided the foundation for his preaching methodology. Turley highlights the doctrinal precision and Christological focus of Winslow’s preaching, revealing an aim at holistic change in hearers through the use of application, discrimination, inquiry, illustration, exhortation, and persuasion. By introducing us to this influential preacher of the past, this study shows the significance of Winslow’s homiletic for the church of today. Table of Contents: 1. Life and Ministry 2. Theology and Method of Preaching 3. Preaching Grounded in Doctrine 4. Preaching Centered in Christ 5. Theory and Practice 6. Contemporary Significance Appendix 1: Sermon on Psalm 130:3 Appendix 2: Sermon on Galatians 2:20 Appendix 3: Annotated Bibliography of Winslow’s Works

The Christian idea of a good death had its roots in the Middle Ages with ars moriendi, featuring reliance on Jesus as Savior, preparedness for the life to come and for any spiritual battle that might ensue when on the threshold of death, and death not taking place in isolation. Evangelicalism introduced new features to the good death, with its focus on conversion, sanctification and an intimate relationship with Jesus. Scholarship focused on mid-nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformist beliefs about death and the afterlife is sparse. This book fills the gap, contributing an understanding not only of death but of the history of Methodist and evangelical Nonconformist piety, theology, social background and literary expression in mid-nineteenth-century England. A good death was as central to Methodism as conversion and holiness. Analyzing over 1,200 obituaries, Riso reveals that while the last words of the dying pointed to a timeless experience of hope in the life to come, the obituaries reflect changing attitudes towards death and the afterlife among nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformist observers who looked increasingly to earthly existence for the fulfillment of hopes. Exploring tensions in Nonconformist allegiance to both worldly and spiritual matters, this book offers an invaluable contribution to death studies, Methodism, and Evangelical theology.

The first biography of a long-forgotten Congregationalist minister who had a significant role in Cornish non-conformist evangelicalism and, above all, played a central and critical role in promoting the modern missionary movement.

This volume explores the cultural, political, and intellectual forces that helped define nineteenth-century British Christianity. Larsen challenges many of the standard assumptions about Victorian-era Christians in their attempts to embody and their theological commitments. He highlights the way in which Dissenters and other free church Evangelicals employed the full range of theological resources available to them to take stands that the wider culture was still resisting - e.g., evangelical nonconformists enfranchising women, siding with the black population of Jamaica in opposition to their own colonial governor, championing the rights of Jews, Roman Catholics, and atheists. These stances belie the stereotypes of Victorian Evangelicals currently in existence and properly shift the focus to Dissent, to plebeian culture, to social contexts, and to the cultural and political consequences of theological commitments. This study brings freshness and verve to the study of religion and the Victorians, bearing fruit in a range of significant findings and connections.