James Nayler The Rebel Saint 1618 1660

"The Puritian victory in the English Civil War occasioned a relgious as well as a political revolution. Freed from the restraints of the Anglican faith, the country erupted into a multitude of new sects and religious persuasions threatening religious anarchy ... From the muddle of beliefs, many individuals came to prominence. Some were branded lunatics, self-appointed messiahs ... Others were thoughtful men, dedicated to the search for religious truth and destined to establish lasting movements, as the founders of Quakerism, one of the few sects of the period which survived ... The Quakers, or the Society of Friends, grew out of the turmoil of the interregnum beginning with the ministry of George Fox, cobber turned itinerant preacher, in 1647 ... James Nayler was an early adherent of the Quaker movement in which he soon gained a prominence second only to the acknowledged founder, George Fox. His preaching and publishing activities were of paramount importance to the early growth of the movement, and events in his later career, particularly those culminating in his trial by the Second Protectorate Parliament, are among the most widely celebrated, and most often misinterpreted, in early Quaker history. His significance reaches both the religious and constitutional history of the period"--P. 1-2.

This study explores theological themes visible within the writings of James Nayler, and locates them within their radical religious context. There is a powerful Christological vision at the heart of Nayler’s religious thought that engendered a practical theology with radical political, economic, and ecological implications.

In 1644, the news that Antonio de Montezinos claimed to have discovered the Lost Tribes of Israel in the jungles of South America spread across Europe fuelling an already febrile atmosphere of messianic and millenarian expectation. By tracing the process in which one set of apocalyptic ideas was transmitted across the Christian and Islamic worlds, this book provides fresh insight into the origin and transmission of eschatological constructs, and the resulting beliefs that blurred traditional religious boundaries and identities. Beginning with an investigation of the impact of Montezinos’s narrative, the next chapter follows the story to England, examining how the Quaker messiah James Nayler was viewed in Europe. The third chapter presents the history of the widely reported - but wholly fictitious - story of the sack of Mecca, a rumour that was spread alongside news of Sabbatai Sevi. The final chapter looks at Christian responses to the Sabbatian movement, providing a detailed discussion of the cross-religious and international representations of the messiah. The conclusion brings these case studies together, arguing that the evolving beliefs in the messiah and the Lost Tribes between 1648 and 1666 can only be properly understood by taking into account the multitude of narrative threads that moved between networks of Jews, Conversos, Catholics and Protestants from one side of the Atlantic to the far side of the Mediterranean and back again. By situating this transmission in a broader historical context, the book reveals the importance of early-modern crises, diasporas and newsgathering networks in generating the eschatological constructs, disseminating them on an international scale, and transforming them through this process of intercultural dissemination into complex new hybrid religious conceptions, expectations, and identities.

Scholars continue to dispute the foundations of Quakerism. James Nayler, his prophetic Bristol 'sign' of 1656, and George Fox's relation to him have been of especial interest in defining the movement's identity. Conventionally, historians and theologians have taken either a 'traditional' approach, which assesses Nayler by the standards of orthodoxy, or a 'revisionist' one, which absolves him by the standards of early Quaker relativism and Christology. This study by Euan David McArthur mediates between these positions, finding that Nayler and Fox developed an ambiguous theology, but adopted a consistent approach to Quaker performances. The latter dissuaded against performances such as Nayler's 'sign'; Nayler is argued, instead, to have diverged from other Quaker leaders following disputations between 1655 and 1656. The lessons his person and actions hold for us are concluded to be complex, but worthy of study for a wide range of historians and thinkers.

Patricia Crawford explores how the study of gender can enhance our understanding of religious history, in this study of women and their apprehensions of God in early modern England. The book has three broad themes: the role of women in the religious upheaval in the period from the Reformation to the Restoration; the significance of religion to contemporary women, focusing on the range of practices and beliefs; and the role of gender in the period. The author argues that religion in the early modern period cannot be understood without a perception of the gendered nature of its beliefs, institutions and language. Contemporary religious ideology reinforced women's inferior position, but, as the author shows, it was possible for some women to transcend these beliefs and profoundly influence history.

In First Among Friends, the first scholarly biography of George Fox (1624-91), H. Larry Ingle examines the fascinating life of the reformation leader and founding organizer of the Religious Society of Friends, more popularly known today as the Quakers. Ingle places Fox within the upheavals of the English Civil Wars, Revolution, and Restoration, showing him and his band of "rude" disciples challenging the status quo, particularly during the Cromwellian Interregnum. Unlike leaders of similar groups, Fox responded to the conservatism of the Stuart restoration by facing down challenges from internal dissidents, and leading his followers to persevere until the 1689 Act of Toleration. It was this same sense of perseverance that helped the Quakers survive--the only religious sect of the era still existing today. Firmly grounded in primary sources and enriched with gripping detail, this well-written and original study reveals hitherto unknown sides of one who was clearly "First Among Friends."