From The Reformation To The Permissive Society

This volume is a tribute to the value of one of the world's great private libraries. Thirteen historians have selected texts which together offer an illustration of the remarkable resources preserved by the Lambeth Palace Library for the period from the Reformation to the late twentieth century.

This is a study of the relationship between Anglicans and the armed forces, of the military heritage and history of the Anglican Communion, and the changing nature of this relationship between the mid-Victorian period and the 1970s. This era spanned a period of imperial expansion and colonial conflict round the turn of the twentieth century, the two World Wars, the Cold War, wars of decolonisation, and Vietnam. In terms of armed conflict, it was the bloodiest period in the history of humanity and marked the advent of weaponry that had the capacity to extinguish human civilization. This book assesses the contribution of an expansive Anglican Communion to the armed forces of the English-speaking world, examines the ways in which this has been remembered, and explores its challenging legacy for the twenty-first century Church of England.

Originating in 1867 under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference has proactively shaped the modern world by influencing areas as diverse as the ecumenical movement, post-war international relations, and the spiritual lives of hundreds of millions. A team of distinguished scholars from around the world now detail the historical legacy, theological meaning, and pastoral purpose of the Anglican Communion's decennial councils. The next Lambeth Conference will be crucial for the Anglican Communion, which is currently afflicted by destructive tensions over matters long central to Christian identity, such as the nature of holy orders, the definition of sexual morality, and the scope of ecclesial authority. Whether in supplication or celebration, both nurtured by diverse cultural contexts and furthered by the scope of ecumenical horizons, these essays break new ground. The Lambeth Conference is a faithful testament to generations past, and a spur to the ongoing restoration of Anglican theology and devotion in the present.

This book is the first collection of essays dedicated to the work of C. H. Sisson (1915-2003), a major English poet, critic and translator. The collection aims to offer an overall guide to his work for new readers, while also encouraging established readers of one aspect (such as his well-known classical translations) to explore others. It champions in particular the quality of his original poetry. The book brings together contributions from scholars and critics working in a wide range of fields, including classical reception, translation studies and early modern literature as well as modern English poetry, and concludes with a more personal essay on Sisson’s work by Michael Schmidt, his publisher.

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the principal legal landmarks in the evolution of the law of the established Church of England from the Reformation to the present day. It explores the foundations of ecclesiastical law and considers its crucial role in the development of the Church of England over the centuries. The law has often been the site of major political and theological controversies, within and outside the church, including the Reformation itself, the English civil war, the Restoration and rise of religious toleration, the impact of the industrial revolution, the ritualist disputes of the 19th century, and the rise of secularisation in the twentieth. The book examines key statutes, canons, case-law, and other instruments in fields such as church governance and ministry, doctrine and liturgy, rites of passage (from baptism to burial) and church property. Each chapter studies a broadly 50-year period, analysing it in terms of continuity and change, explaining the laws by reference to politics and theology, and evaluating the significance of the legal landmarks for the development of church law and its place in wider English society.

The Parish Church was the primary site of religious practice throughout the early modern period. This was particularly so for the silent majority of the English population, who conformed outwardly to the successive religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What such public conformity might have meant has attracted less attention - and, ironically, is sometimes less well documented - than the non-conformity or semi-conformity of recusants, church-papists, Puritan conventiclers or separatists. In this volume, ten leading scholars of early modern religion explore the experience of parish worship in England during the Reformation and the century that followed it. As the contributors argue, parish worship in this period was of critical theological, cultural and even political importance. The volume's key themes are the interlocking importance of liturgy, music, the sermon and the parishioners' own bodies; the ways in which religious change was received, initiated, negotiated, embraced or subverted in local contexts; and the dialectic between practice and belief which helped to make both so contentious. The contributors - historians, historical theologians and literary scholars - through their commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, provide fruitful and revealing insights into this intersection of private and public worship. This collection is a sister volume to Martin and Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Together these two volumes focus and drive forward scholarship on the lived experience of early modern religion, as it was practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The period 1689-1901 was 'the golden age' of the sermon in Britain. It was the best selling printed work and dominated the print trade until the mid-nineteenth century. Sermons were highly influential in religious and spiritual matters, but they also played important roles in elections and politics, science and ideas and campaigns for reform. Sermons touched the lives of ordinary people and formed a dominant part of their lives. Preachers attracted huge crowds and the popular demand for sermons was never higher. Sermons were also taken by missionaries and clergy across the British empire, so that preaching was integral to the process of imperialism and shaped the emerging colonies and dominions. The form that sermons took varied widely, and this enabled preaching to be adopted and shaped by every denomination, so that in this period most religious groups could lay claim to a sermon style. The pulpit naturally lent itself to controversy, and consequently sermons lay at the heart of numerous religious arguments. Drawing on the latest research by leading sermon scholars, this handbook accesses historical, theological, rhetorical, literary and linguistic studies to demonstrate the interdisciplinary strength of the field of sermon studies and to show the centrality of sermons to religious life in this period.