The story of the English churches, concentrating on the lives of church-goers and their clergy.

In this ambitious book, Michael D. Hurley explores how five great writers – William Blake, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot – engaged their religious faith in poetry, with a view to asking why they chose that literary form in the first place. What did they believe poetry could say or do that other kinds of language or expression could not? And how might poetry itself operate as a unique mode of believing? These deep questions meet at the crossroads of poetics and metaphysics, and the writers considered here offer different answers. But these writers also collectively shed light on the interplay between literature and theology across the long nineteenth century, at a time when the authority and practice of both was being fiercely reimagined.

Representing the first substantial English-language text on Industrial Archaeology in a decade, this handbook comes at a time when the global impact of industrialization is being re-assessed in terms of its legacy of climate change, mechanization, urbanization, the forced migration of peoples, and labour relations. Critical debates around the beginning of a new geological era - The Anthropocene - have emerged over the last decade. This approach interrogates the widespread exploitation of natural resources that forged industrialization from its early emergence in 18th century northern Europe to its contemporary ubiquity, environmental impacts, and social legacy within our globalized world. Through a broad international and multi-period set of chapters, this volume explores the complex origins, processes, and development of industrialization through both its physical remains and human consequences - both the good and the bad. It provides a diverse material framework for understanding our modern world, from its industrial origins through its future paths in the 21st century.

Every Christian is assailed by the gales of temptation, but those in professional ministry face fiercer storms than the rest. As C. H. Spurgeon warned, contrary to what is often assumed, our dangers are more numerous and more insidious than those of ordinary Christians. This perspective was shared by the unified voice of the historic church, leading some patristic church fathers to initially flee the call to ministry. The same dangers were repeatedly identified in the writings of the early English pastoral theologians as they sought to mentor their protŽgŽs in successful ministry. A Most Dangerous Profession surfaces these gems so often overlooked in historic Christian literature, and ends with their practical advice on how to overcome. As both a pastoral and spiritual theology, A Most Dangerous Profession is bound to add an important voice to the ongoing dialog about pastoral self-care.

In this pathbreaking book, award-winning author Douglas Jacobsen describes global Christianity and provides a framework for understanding the varied experiences of Christians around the world. Focusing on the five big continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America, Jacobsen recounts their differing histories, contemporary experiences, and cultural theologies. In the current era of massive and dynamic global challenges, this accessible and fair-minded volume sets the stage for Christians worldwide to engage the gospel--and each other--more deeply. Global Gospel contains numerous maps, charts, and illustrations that aid comprehension. Accompanying videos can be found on YouTube's "Global Christianity" channel (www.youtube.com/globalchristianity).

The dominant activities of the eighteenth century Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, in terms of expenditure, were the support of itinerant preaching, and the construction and maintenance of preaching houses. These were supported by a range of both regular and occasional flows of funds, primarily from members' contributions, gifts from supporters, various forms of debt finance, and profits from the Book Room. Three other areas of action also had significant financial implications for the movement: education, welfare, and missions. The Financing of John Wesley's Methodism c.1740-1800 describes what these activities cost, and how the money required was raised and managed. Though much of the discussion is informed by financial and other quantitative data, Clive Norris examines a myriad of human struggles, and the conflict experienced by many early Wesleyan Methodists between their desire to spread the Gospel and the limitations of their personal and collective resources. He describes the struggle between what Methodists saw as the promptings of Holy Spirit and their daily confrontation with reality, not least the financial constraints which they faced.

This is a series of four substantial volumes designed to demonstrate the range of interests of the several Protestant Nonconformist traditions from the time of their Separatist harbingers in the sixteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It represents a major project of the Association of Denominational Historical Societies and Cognate Libraries. Each volume comprises a General Introduction followed by texts illustrative of such topics as theology, philosophy, worship and socio-political concerns. This work has never before been drawn together for publication in this way. Prepared by a team of twelve editors, all of whom are expert in their areas and drawn from a number of the relevant traditions, it will provide a much needed comprehensive view of Nonconformity told largely in the words of those whose story it is. The works will prove to be an invaluable resource to scholars, students, academics and specialist and public libraries, as well as to a wider range of church, intellectual and general historians. This volume gathers and introduces texts relating to English and Welsh Nonconformity. Through contemporary writings it provides a vivid insight into the life and thought of the Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians and other groups that formed pieces in the diverse mosaic of the nineteenth-century chapels. Each aspect of Nonconformity has an introductory discussion, which includes a guide to the secondary literature on the subject, and each passage from a primary source is put in context.

This book uses a wide range of primary sources - legal, literary and demographic - to provide a radical reassessment of eighteenth-century marriage. It disproves the widespread assumption that couples married simply by exchanging consent, demonstrating that such exchanges were regarded merely as contracts to marry and that marriage in church was almost universal outside London. It shows how the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 was primarily intended to prevent clergymen operating out of London's Fleet prison from conducting marriages, and that it was successful in so doing. It also refutes the idea that the 1753 Act was harsh or strictly interpreted, illustrating the courts' pragmatic approach. Finally, it establishes that only a few non-Anglicans married according to their own rites before the Act; while afterwards most - save the exempted Quakers and Jews - similarly married in church. In short, eighteenth-century couples complied with whatever the law required for a valid marriage.

This volume brings together new approaches to music history to reveal the interdependence of music and religion in nineteenth-century culture. As composers and performers drew inspiration from the Bible and new historical sciences called into question the historicity of Scripture, controversies raged over the performance, publication and censorship of old and new musical forms. From oratorio to opera, from parlour song to pantomime, and from hymn to broadside, nineteenth-century Britons continually encountered elements of the biblical past in song. Both elite and popular music came to play a significant role in the formation, regulation and contestation of religious and cultural identity and were used to address questions of class, nation and race, leading to the beginnings of ethnomusicology. This richly interdisciplinary volume brings together musicologists, historians, literary and art historians and theologians to reveal points of intersection between music, religion and cultural history.

There has never been much doubt about the faith of the “infidel historian” Edward Gibbon. But for all of Gibbon’s skepticism regarding Christianity’s central doctrines, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire did not merely seek to oppose Christianity; he confronted it as a philosophical and historical puzzle. Gibbon’s Christianity tallies the results and conditions of that confrontation. Using rich correspondence, private journals, early works, and memoirs that were never completed, Hugh Liebert provides intimate access to Gibbon’s life in order to better understand his complex relationship with religion. Approaching the Decline and Fall from the context surrounding its conception, Liebert shows how Gibbon adapted explanations of the Roman republic’s rise to account for a new spiritual republic and, subsequently, the rise of modern Europe. Taken together, Liebert’s analysis of this context, including the nuance of Gibbon’s relationship to Christianity, and his readings of Gibbon’s better- and lesser-known texts suggest a historian more eager to comprehend Christianity’s worldly power than to sneer at or dismiss it. Eminently readable and wholly accessible to anyone interested in or familiar with the Decline and Fall, this groundbreaking reassessment of Gibbon’s most famous work will appeal especially to scholars of eighteenth-century studies.