Voice Of Nonconformity

In the second half of the nineteenth century Scottish Baptists like other Evangelical Protestant denominations were focusing more on things they had in common, such as a commitment to home evangelization and church-planting; providing a common fund to assist small and struggling congregations; the provision of theological education for the training of prospective pastors, together with the need to disseminate information between the churches concerning their progress in the work of the gospel. From the start of this Baptist Union in 1869 the numbers of churches and members grew steadily until 1935. It was a remarkable story of dedicated Christian service. Scottish Baptists came through two world wars, the social revolution of the 1960s, and the materialistic emphases of the 1980s with a significant degree of success in adapting their evangelistic activities to relate to their social context. There is little doubt that from the late 1980s the growing secularization in this country ensured that mission strategies adopted by these Scottish Christians were less successful than in previous decades. However, a revitalization of its work in the early years of the twenty-first century has given renewed grounds for hope for its work and witness in the coming years.

This is a pioneering study of philosophy in the English and Welsh Dissenting academies and Nonconformist theological colleges from the Toleration Act of 1689 to 1920. The author discusses the place of philosophy in the curriculum and the philosophical works published by tutors, professors, and alumni, among them Isaac Watts, Henry Grove, Richard Price, James Martineau, and Robert Mackintosh. It is shown that particular attention was paid to natural theology, moral philosophy, and apologetics, and some of the ideas propounded are of continuing interest. This important book will interest historians of philosophy, of the Church, and of education.

Protestant Nonconformity, the umbrella term for Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Unitarians, belongs specifically to the religious history of England and Wales. Initially the result of both unwillingness to submit to the State's interference in Christian life and a dissatisfaction with the progress of reform in the English Church, Nonconformity has been primarily motivated by theological concern, ecclesial polity, devotion and the nurture of godliness among the members of the church. Alongside such churchly interests, Nonconformity has also made a profound contribution to debates about the role of the State, to family life and education, culture in general, trade and industry, the development of philanthropy and charity, and the development of pacifism. In this volume, for the first time, Nonconformity and the breadth of its activity come under the expert scrutiny of a host of recognised scholars. The result is a detailed and fascinating account of a movement in church history that, while currently in decline, has made an indelible mark on social, political, economic and religious life of the two nations.

Early modern books were not stable or settled outputs of the press but dynamic shape-changers, subject to reworking, re-presentation, revision, and reinterpretation. Their history is often the history of multiple, sometimes competing, agencies as their texts were re-packaged, redirected, and transformed in ways that their original authors might hardly recognize. Processes of editing, revision, redaction, selection, abridgement, glossing, disputation, translation, and posthumous publication resulted in a textual elasticity and mobility that could dissolve distinctions between text and paratexts, textuality and intertextuality, manuscript and print, author and reader or editor, such that title and author's name are no longer sufficient pointers to a book's identity or contents. This collection brings together original essays by an international team of eminent scholars in the field of book history that explore these various kinds of textual inconstancy and variability. The essays are alive to the impact of commercial and technological aspects of book production and distribution (discussing, for example, the career of the pre-eminent bookseller John Nourse, the market appeal of abridgements, and the financial incentives to posthumous publication), but their interest is also in the many additional forms of agency that shaped texts and their meanings as books were repurposed to articulate, and respond to, a variety of cultural and individual needs. They engage with early modern religious, political, philosophical, and scholarly trends and debates as they discuss a wide range of genres and kinds of publication including fictional and non-fictional prose, verse miscellanies, abridgements, sermons, religious controversy, and of authors including Lucy Hutchinson, Richard Baxter, John Dryden, Thomas Burnet, John Tillotson, Henry Maundrell, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, John Wesley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The result is a richly diverse collection that demonstrates the embeddedness of the book trade in the cultural dynamics of early modernity.

Ranging from the nineteenth-century to the present, this book explores several central aspects of the ways in which the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales has responded to what was, for a crucial period of a century or so, the dominant culture of Wales: the culture of Welsh Nonconformity. In the introduction, the author reflects on why no sustained attempt has hitherto been made to investigate one of the formative cultural influences on modern 'Anglo-Welsh' literature, the Nonconformist inheritance. The importance of addressing this strange and significant cultural deficit is then explained, and a preliminary attempt made to capture something of the spirit of Welsh Nonconformity. The succeeding chapters address and seek to answer such questions as: What exactly did the Welsh chapels believe and do? Why have the English-language writers of Wales, from Caradoc Evans and Dylan Thomas to R.S. Thomas and the authors of today, been so fascinated by them? How accurate are the impressions we've been given of chapel life and chapel people in the English-language poetry and fiction of Wales? The answers offered may alter our views both of the Welsh Nonconformist past and of Welsh writing in English. One of the ideas advanced is that many of Wales' most important writers went to war with the preachers in their texts, and that their work is therefore the site of cultural struggle. Theirs was a war in words waged to determine who would have the last word on modern Welsh experience.

A study of William Robertson Nicoll, a non-conformist individual who had considerable influence in the late 19th Century. Originally a minister, he was considered a great leader and was also a theological conservative, and therefore committed to maintaining the orthodox stance of the Christian Churches, but at the same time, he encouraged many of the new ideas, which he felt would prove a useful and hopeful benefit for the Church. Due to health issues he was later forced to retire his position and focused on work as an editor and journalist, bringing with him the same sense of leadership he had previously been known for. The debate over his legacy continues and is addressed within this study using previously unstudied information on Nicoll's life.