British Christian Research Articles

T. Robert Malthus's Comparative Political Economy of Prudential Restraint

Abstract Examination of the second and subsequent editions of T. Robert Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population shows that the author created a more expansive examination of his political economy of population than that of the simple model in the Essay's first edition. In subsequent editions, the simple, ecological model gives way to a sophisticated general model of a commercial society with property rights, the rule of law, marriage laws similar to those of the British Christian tradition, and expanded markets. The result was not the “dismal” prognostication that Malthus is often identified with. Rather, he was reasonably optimistic that steady growth in per capita income could be accomplished along with a rising population. Biology could never be conquered, but within the right institutional context, reason might interrupt its career.

Book Review: British Christianity and the Second World War

Book Review: British Christianity and the Second World War

Followership in British Christian churches: A comparative study

AbstractEmerging research on followership has overwhelmingly been focused on for‐profit organizations. This research investigates four British congregations from different Christian denominations to explore how differing contexts shape the understanding of followership in nonprofit organizations. Using implicit followership theory, we analyze the value sets deriving from theological‐ideological, institutional, and local contexts and explore informants' perceptions of ideal followership attributes. By conducting 26 semi‐structured interviews with three different types of actors, we found that church members found themselves in a dialectic relationship between institutional norms and local settings, which shape the way followership is perceived. In terms of follower attributes, we identified faith‐related and ethical as well as relational attributes to be prevalent. With this research, we advance current understandings of how effective leader‐follower relationships in nonprofit organizations can be formed highlighting the importance of differing contexts for perceiving the role of followers.

Michael Snape and Stuart Bell, eds.British Christianity and the Second World War. Studies in Modern British Religious History 45. The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2023. Pp. 242. $99.00 (cloth).

Michael Snape and Stuart Bell, <scp>eds.</scp>British Christianity and the Second World War. Studies in Modern British Religious History 45. The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2023. Pp. 242. $99.00 (cloth).

‘Those Who Plead for Thee’

Abstract The Particular Baptists are often regarded as a marginal group in the panorama of British Christianity, and yet by the close of the long eighteenth century a number of sterling preachers had emerged from their ranks, including Benjamin Beddome and Robert Hall, Jr. This essay provides an overview of the fundamental ideas behind Particular Baptist preaching in the eighteenth century and details of the plain-style preaching promoted in this community.

British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations, written by Andrew Chandler

British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations, written by Andrew Chandler

‘The True Physicians Here are the Padres’: British Christian Army Chaplains and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Abstract When a senior medical officer summarised the work of army chaplains in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he said: ‘The true physicians here are the padres, and they are doing more good to the patients than anyone else’. Chaplains, however, have been largely absent from the extensive scholarship on Belsen. Similarly, widespread interest in post-Holocaust Christian–Jewish relations has ignored the accounts of those Christians who encountered the aftermath of the Holocaust in the liberation of the camps. This article shows that chaplains fulfilled a unique role at Belsen, providing pastoral care which encouraged survivors as they shared their stories. This process of listening was the first encounter of British Christian ministers with the realities of the Holocaust as experienced by its survivors. As a consequence, they differ from most contemporary British narratives of Belsen in their appreciation of the Jewishness of the experience: they largely recognised survivors as Jews and sought to understand the specific nature of Jewish suffering. Finally, this article shows that chaplains recorded their experiences and displayed a sensitive approach to survivor testimony, ensuring not only that a wider audience learned the truth of the liberation of Belsen, but that those accounts were defined by the experiences of the Jewish survivors themselves. The article concludes that the experience of Christian chaplaincy in the liberation of Belsen uncovers a singular example of Christian–Jewish encounter in the aftermath of the Holocaust, one in which Christian ministers demonstrated a profound care for survivors, their identities and their stories.

British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations. By Andrew Chandler

In contrast to much existing historiography, which tends to emphasize Christian complicity or indifference to fascism, Andrew Chandler’s fascinating new monograph argues that British Christians pursued “a succession of initiatives which sought to protest against a … dangerous dictatorship and demonstrate sympathy for its victims” (pp. 51–52). We are introduced early on to the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, the book’s main protagonist, due to his affiliation with Germany’s oppositional Confessing Church. Other important figures include Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Manchester (later Canterbury), William Temple, and the relatively sympathetic (to Nazism) Bishop of Gloucester, Arthur Headlam. The “political” pastors on the German side include ardent Nazis, such as the Reich Bishop Lüdwig Müller, whose German Church sought to eliminate all “Jewish” elements from Protestant theology; and non-conformists, such as the conservative Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, and more liberal Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, whose June 1934 Barmen Declaration, which Niemöller and Bishop Bell also signed, became the founding document of the Confessing Church in its defense of traditional Protestant theology.

British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State and the Judgement of Nations, by Andrew Chandler

Since the 1990s, Andrew Chandler has published a series of important studies of the reactions of leading figures in the Church of England to Nazi Germany. In articles and essays, he has described and assessed their attitudes towards the persecution of Jews during the 1930s, the British government’s foreign policies during the decade, the Munich settlement of 1938, and the ‘obliteration bombing’ of Germany during the Second World War. In books and editions, he has been especially concerned with the deep engagement of George Bell, bishop of Chichester, with the pastors of the Protestant ‘Confessing Church’ who resisted Nazi attempts to create a comprehensive state church. In this new book he draws together, broadens and extends these earlier studies, to produce a wide-ranging account of the practical and moral responses of British churchmen to Nazi policies from Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933 to the Nuremberg trials in 1946. Although Chandler might not welcome an allusion to a once-controversial work, this is an investigation of the ‘impact of Hitler’ on the British churches.

Phenomenon of Fasting in the Early Christian Anglo-Saxon Tradition

: The Old English poem Seasons for Fasting was written in the X century and consists of 230 lines. This article describes it through the prism of fasting in the Old English tradition. Like any other Old English Christian sermon, Seasons for Fasting focused on the moral rules of Christian life. It represented the first procedures for seasonal fasts. The author translated the poem and performed an interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of fasting against the background of the indisputable position of faith in the Anglo-Saxon culture. The Old and New Testaments, as well as the Indo-European myths, showed the deep cultural interconnection of archaic traditions. A detailed idea of divinely revealed truth was reflected already in the earliest Christian texts where references to commandments from the Old Testament intertwined with the moral principles of the New Testament. The goal of the study was to determine the complex nature of the traditional methods used for philological analysis of texts and the semiotic approach to texts. The view of food as sacred and profane was manifested already at the early stages of the religious consciousness development. Traditionally, fasting issues were considered as part of prayer appeals. Seasons for Fasting stressed the New Testament idea that sinners could not enter the Kingdom of God without repentance and awareness of their unrighteous life. The paper highlights the symbolism of fire, mountains, cosmos, sacrifice, submersion, burial, and the Kingdom of Heaven. The article also provides a list of variant addresses to God used in the poem: the Old English period saw a well-developed Christian tradition, which had no direct naming for the devil.

Black Diaspora Christian Activity in Britain from the Late Eighteenth Century to 1950

Black men and women from across the Americas were a common feature of the British Christian scene in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They came as missionaries en route to Africa, as fugitives from British or United States slavery and as suppliants for financial aid for black-led churches. Much transatlantic shipping, dominated by British vessels, came to British ports which served as transit points for further travel. Black travellers to Britain had indeterminate times of stay when often they were aided by white British patrons who provided opportunities for preaching, for further study, to acquire new skills, gain financial support, and in some cases to marry. And for black missionaries proceeding to Africa, Britain’s pivotal location remained as a place for rest and recuperation, for the education of children, for medical care, deputation work, and for retirement. These processes and opportunities are analysed in this paper.

Feudal and Christian Socialism in British Public Thought in the Second Half of the 19 — Early 20 Centuries and Its Perception in Russia

The article is devoted to further stages in the development of British feudal and/or Christian socialism in the second half of the 19th century. The socio-economic teaching and practical achievements of J. Ruskin and the evaluation of his activities in European and Russian / Soviet historiography are considered in detail. An assessment is made of the views and activities of W. Morris. A brief description of the British feudal socialists of the 20th century is presented. The personal and ideological connections of Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris with Russian conservatives are considered. Attention is paid to the reception of English Christian socialism by both right-wing and left-wing Russian thinkers in the era of the industrial revolution at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The significance of S. Bulgakov’s lectures and research on the British feudal socialists for the history of Russian social thought is considered in detail.

Remembering Hodson’s Horse: Commemoration and the Indian Uprising of 1857–58

Abstract This article presents analysis of the memorial to William Hodson in Lichfield Cathedral, designed by George Edmund Street between 1859 and 1862, focusing on the iconography of the monument and way that it was influenced by Muscular Christianity and ecclesiology. The attitude of Hodson and his brother George Hodson, who commissioned the monument, is examined through analysis of the publication that presented Hodson’s career to the Victorian public: Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India (1859). The memorial raises urgent questions about the future of Victorian cultural heritage as it demonstrably misrepresents a highly symbolic event within British imperial history. Hodson was represented as a hero by Victorian ecclesiologists but is now seen by many as an unscrupulous and ruthless imperialist. This paper will demonstrate that the extraordinary form of the tomb was determined by an alteration to the design: the inclusion of a sculptural panel representing the ‘Surrender of the King of Delhi’. This change was instigated by the committee of the Ecclesiological Society headed by A. J. Beresford Hope. The panel turns a relatively peripheral event into a symbolic tableau: the surrender of Indian Islam to British Christianity, a distortion typical of British culture in the aftermath of the Indian Uprising of 1857–1858. The historiography of Hodson’s career shows that the tomb has acted as a focus for those wishing to perpetuate a conservative interpretation of Hodson’s career.

Preraphaelites and Christian Literature Renewal in Great Britain

The article considers about the general tendencies of Christian and Catholic art renewal in Great Britain. This movement is the part of the wider one i.e. Christian art renewal, which is the important phenomenon in all western literatures and cultures (Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Julien Green, Paul Claudel, Charles Péguy, Gertrud von Le Fort, Heinrich Boll, Sigrid Undset, Graciya Deledda, Ramiro de Maeztu, Hose Bergamin, Miguel Unamuno, Maurice Denis, Paul Gauguin, Georges Rouault, Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen, etc.) English Christian and Catholic Renewal were caused by the deep crisis, which found its place after the period of positivism. In British literature the phenomenon of Christian renewal manifested itself in the creative work of Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh, Muriel Spark, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Graham Green, Clive Staples Lewis and others. Tendencies of Christian renewal also appeared in the other kinds of art. In the painting of Great Britain of the period these tendencies display themselves in the intention of the painters to find the sense of the life, which in the same time also include the interest in Christianity. It made itself apparent in new approaches to sacred matters, which include Bible themes as well as Church tradition. In the fine art of Great Britain Christian renewal echoed in the works of Pre-Raphaelites (William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Madox Brown, Edward Berne-Jones, William Morris, Arthur Hughes, Walter Crane, and John William Waterhouse. Strong will to return to the cultural and religious roots of Europe is the core of this art movement of Christian and Catholic renewal in Britain. Revision of “Good News Bible” message actuality for their contemporaries, which is manifested in the sense of the works, images and structural elements, is the important task and inspiration for painters and writers of this style.

The crisis in British Christian social thought: evidencing the need for a new ‘empirical political theology’

Analysing Christian contributions to academic and public debates since Faith in the City, this article suggests that there is a crisis in British ‘political theology’. It arises because it is narrowly conceived even by its strongest advocates. Contrary to the expansive claims made by political theologians, it suggests, rather, that they have deliberately narrowed the field to make it fit with their constrained encounter with the political and their longing for a welfare consensus that has passed. This in turn has left them entirely unengaged with the complex realm of governance between the inputs of words and the outcomes of policy choices – in short, they have absented ‘political theology’ from public leadership, public finance, political anthropology, changing governance and the everyday life of states and churches in societies. Exploring four brief counterpoints or sites of enquiry across contrasting settings, the article makes the case for a fresh ‘empirical political theology’ to expand the field once again and to reconnect it concretely to the constantly moving and dynamic challenges that the most vulnerable face and regarding which churches ought properly to be able to more credibly evidence their care, advocacy and empowerment with the vulnerable.

Multilingualism in Periodical studies — A Social History Perspective

Multilingualism in Periodical studies — A Social History Perspective

Transcultural Utopian Imagination and the Future: Tagore, Gandhi, Andrews, and India–Britain Entanglements in the Early 1930s

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the transcultural utopian imaginings of futures in early twentieth-century India and Britain, with Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, anticolonial politician M. K. Gandhi, and British Christian activist C. F. Andrews at the center. Homing in on two trips made to England by Tagore (1930) and Gandhi (1931), especially their visits to Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham, and on Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire, the article shows how British Christian and Quaker utopians and Indian utopians cooperated with each other. The article excavates the utopian experiments of Corder Catchpool, also a Quaker, in Darwen, Lancashire, where Gandhi stayed. Religion should be accorded an important place in our understanding of utopia, the article argues. A human propensity to create a paradoxical sense of futurity that does not negate the past, one that Tagore highlights in The Religion of Man (1931), is found in all the utopians discussed.

Rebel Angels: Space and Sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon England

Rebel Angels: Space and Sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon England

The Buddha's Shadow and God's Flesh: Image and Anti-Image in Huiyuan and Julian of Norwich

This essay compares the ideology of visualization of the late fourth-century Chinese Buddhist monk Huiyuan 慧遠 (334–417) and the late fourteenth-century English Christian mystic Julian of Norwich (1342–1430). Specifically, it compares how the two authors deal with the limits and possibilities of visualization in understanding the relationship between the transcendent and the immanent. Although Huiyuan and Julian lived a thousand years apart, their articulations of the imagistic representation of the transcendent reveal synchronic connections between Buddhist and Christian ideas about the absolute presence and necessary absence of the divine. Both religious thinkers use details related to the skin and to textiles when they address the representation of the "ineffable." The ways they treat the boundaries between skin and textiles expose fundamental differences between the Trinity of the Christian God and the Buddha's three bodies (the Trikāya), but the two religious writers reflect on a similar oscillation between the active generation and passive reception of mental images.

SCHOOL CULTURE, PRACTICES AND STRUCTURE AS PREDICTORS OF PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN EDO STATE, NIGERIA

&lt;p&gt;Quality in education can be seen as fitness for purpose and one indicator of this is the quality of the learning environment within the school system. At play in this environment are factors of school culture, practice and structure and one measure of the quality of schools is students’ performance. The relationship between each of these factors and performance has been variously investigated but their combined predictive ability of performance does not seem to have been examined in the literature. This is the focus of the study. The survey design was utilized in the study. The population consists of all the 1700 teachers in Edo State, Nigeria who teach in the three hundred and nine public senior secondary schools. Out of the schools, 62 schools representing 20% of the schools were selected. From the schools selected, five teachers each of whom teach English Language, Mathematics, Economics, Biology and Christian Religious Studies were selected to provide the information. On the whole, 285 teachers returned usable questionnaires. The draft questionnaire adapted from those constructed earlier by Gruenert and Valentine (1998) was composed of four sections, namely personal information of the teachers, School structure, school practices and school culture. The questionnaire was given to five experts knowledgeable in assessment, educational management and experienced senior secondary school principals. These experts were expected to examine the items on the questionnaire to ensure that they were adequate in content, comprehension and readability. Based on their comments, the items were modified and the resulting instrument was administered to 30 teachers outside the sample used in the study for purposes of determining the reliability using Cronbach alpha. The reliability coefficients that emerged were .78, .83 and .75 for school culture, school structure and school practice respectively. Cooperation of Principals of the schools selected for the study was solicited for the administration of the questionnaire and making available records of WASSCE results for their schools for the year 2018. The performance of the school was calculated by finding a weighted mean for the grades obtained by the students who sat for the WASSCE in each of the subjects and cumulated across the school subjects for each school. Multiple regression was used in the analysis at 5% level of significance. School culture was related to performance while school practice and structure were not. In addition, the three factors were useful in jointly predicting performance in schools. It was therefore recommended that schools should examine these factors properly if they intend to shore up their performance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt; Article visualizations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0948/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;