Religion Politics And Dissent 1660 1832

The idea of the long eighteenth century (1660-1832) as a period in which religious and political dissent were regarded as antecedents of the Enlightenment has recently been advanced by several scholars. The purpose of this collection is further to explore these connections between religious and political dissent in Enlightenment Britain. Addressing the many and rich connections between political and religious dissent in the long eighteenth century, the volume also acknowledges the work of Professor James E. Bradley in stimulating interest in these issues among scholars. Contributors engage directly with ideas of secularism, radicalism, religious and political dissent and their connections with the Enlightenment, or Enlightenments, together with other important themes including the connections between religious toleration and the rise of the 'enlightenments'. Contributors also address issues of modernity and the ways in which a 'modern' society can draw its inspiration from both religion and secularity, as well as engaging with the seventeenth-century idea of the synthesis of religion and politics and its evolution into a system in which religion and politics were interdependent but separate. Offering a broadly-conceived interpretation of current research from a more comprehensive perspective than is often the case, the historiographical implications of this collection are significant for the development of ideas of the nature of the Enlightenment and for the nature of religion, society and politics in the eighteenth century. By bringing together historians of politics, religion, ideas and society to engage with the central theme of the volume, the collection provides a forum for leading scholars to engage with a significant theme in British history in the 'long eighteenth century'.

The idea of the long eighteenth century (1660-1832) as a period in which religious and political dissent were regarded as antecedents of the Enlightenment has recently been advanced by several scholars. The purpose of this collection is further to explore these connections between religious and political dissent in Enlightenment Britain. Addressing the many and rich connections between political and religious dissent in the long eighteenth century, the volume also acknowledges the work of Professor James E. Bradley in stimulating interest in these issues among scholars. Contributors engage directly with ideas of secularism, radicalism, religious and political dissent and their connections with the Enlightenment, or Enlightenments, together with other important themes including the connections between religious toleration and the rise of the 'enlightenments'. Contributors also address issues of modernity and the ways in which a 'modern' society can draw its inspiration from both religion and secularity, as well as engaging with the seventeenth-century idea of the synthesis of religion and politics and its evolution into a system in which religion and politics were interdependent but separate. Offering a broadly-conceived interpretation of current research from a more comprehensive perspective than is often the case, the historiographical implications of this collection are significant for the development of ideas of the nature of the Enlightenment and for the nature of religion, society and politics in the eighteenth century. By bringing together historians of politics, religion, ideas and society to engage with the central theme of the volume, the collection provides a forum for leading scholars to engage with a significant theme in British history in the 'long eighteenth century'.

The first major study of the historical writings of religious dissenters in England between the 1690s and the 1790s, this book redefines the way we understand religious and political identities in the eighteenth century.Dissenting Histories provides a synoptic overview of the development of religious dissent in England between the Restoration and the early nineteenth century, using Dissenters' writings to open up new and different perspectives on how the past was perceived in this period. These writings are located within the wider political culture and the author explores how the long shadow of 'the Great Rebellion' of the 1640s stretched across the division between Church and Dissent.The author is not simply concerned with history as a representation of the past, but history also as part of the bitterly divided collective memory of the present. Focusing on the relationship between the history that historians wrote, and the history that men and women experienced, John Seed provides the reader with new perspectives on eighteenth-century England.

This book creates a new framework for the political and intellectual relations between the British Isles and America in a momentous period which witnessed the formation of modern states on both sides of the Atlantic and the extinction of an Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical order. Jonathan Clark integrates evidence from law and religion to reveal how the dynamics of early modern societies were essentially denominational. In a study of British and American discourse, he shows how rival conceptions of liberty were expressed in the conflicts created by Protestant dissent's hostility to an Anglican hegemony. The book argues that this model provides a key to collective acts of resistance to the established order throughout the period. The book's final section focuses on the defining episode for British and American history, and shows the way in which the American Revolution can be understood as a war of religion.

An extensively revised edition of a classic of modern historiography.

This book examines the social and political activities of the English Dissenters in the age of the American Revolution. By comparing sermons, political pamphlets, and election ephemera to poll books, city directories, and baptismal registers, this book offers an integrated approach to the study of ideology and behavior.

Eighteenth-Century Dissent and Cambridge Platonism identifies an ethically and politically engaged philosophy of religion in eighteenth century Rational Dissent, particularly in the work of Richard Price (1723-1791), and in the radical thought of Mary Wollstonecraft. It traces their ethico-political account of reason, natural theology and human freedom back to seventeenth century Cambridge Platonism and thereby shows how popular histories of the philosophy of religion in modernity have been over-determined both by analytic philosophy of religion and by its critics. The eighteenth century has typically been portrayed as an age of reason, defined as a project of rationalism, liberalism and increasing secularisation, leading inevitably to nihilism and the collapse of modernity. Within this narrative, the Rational Dissenters have been accused of being the culmination of eighteenth-century rationalism in Britain, epitomising the philosophy of modernity. This book challenges this reading of history by highlighting the importance of teleology, deiformity, the immutability of goodness and the divinity of reason within the tradition of Rational Dissent, and it demonstrates that the philosophy and ethics of both Price and Wollstonecraft are profoundly theological. Price’s philosophy of political liberty, and Wollstonecraft’s feminism, both grounded in a Platonic conception of freedom, are perfectionist and radical rather than liberal. This has important implications for understanding the political nature of eighteenth-century philosophical theology: these thinkers represent not so much a shaking off of religion by secular rationality but a challenge to religious and political hegemony. By distinguishing Price and Wollstonecraft from other forms of rationalism including deism and Socinianism, this book takes issue with the popular division of eighteenth-century philosophy into rationalistic and empirical strands and, through considering the legacy of Cambridge Platonism, draws attention to an alternative philosophy of religion that lies between both empiricism and discursive inference.