British Evangelicals Research Articles

“Wherfore Amend Your Lyves Yff Yowe Wyll be Savyd”: The Soteriology of Thomas Bilney

ABSTRACT Among the few things scholars can agree about Thomas Bilney (1495–1531), the enigmatic figure at the heart of early English evangelicalism, is that he embraced Luther’s teaching of justification by faith. This consensus is based chiefly on two of Bilney’s statements on justification in a 1527 letter to Cuthbert Tunstall, then Bishop of London. By putting these statements in the broader context of Bilney’s extant writings, this essay aims to show that while Bilney used some of the same language and concepts as Luther, the way he developed and understood those concepts was fundamentally distinct. In his views of the law, the reception of grace, and of the nature of justification, Bilney’s soteriology differed markedly from that of the German reformer. In his distinctive development of evangelical soteriology, Bilney illustrates the experimental nature of early evangelicalism and the dangers of seeking prematurely to pigeonhole its proponents with anachronistic confessional labels.

Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688–1843, ed. Misty Krueger

<i>Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688–1843</i>, ed. Misty Krueger

The Last Embers of British Fundamentalism

This article unearths the little-remembered history of British fundamentalist organisations of the Cold War era. These bodies constituted the last embers of an organised movement in Britain: the British Evangelical Council after 1953; the English Consultative Committee and the British Council of Protestant Christian Churches from the mid-1950s; the Christian Bible Unity Fellowship in the 1960s; and the British and European Reformation Fellowship in the 1980s. Based on archival and published material, the article argues that these organisations tried to render US-style fundamentalism into a new Anglicised version, but that each failed due to confessional disagreements and personal rivalries.

William Holland's Short Account of the Beginnings of Moravian Work in England (1745)

ABSTRACT William Holland's Short Account describes church life in the City of London in the 1730s with special reference to the religious societies and their connections with Wesley's “Oxford Methodists.” He shows how the Moravian Peter Böhler's preaching cross-fertilized these networks' High-Church Anglicanism with the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone and thereby sparked the English Evangelical Revival. Recounting the early life of the resulting Fetter Lane Society, which served as the Revival's London headquarters, Holland emphasizes the frequent visits to and from the Moravian congregations in Germany and the Netherlands. All of this was intended to support his argument that the English Anglican members of Zinzendorf's Brüdergemeine, while accepting the Lutheran doctrine of justification, were neither Dissenters nor “Old Lutherans” (the name Zinzendorf had invented for them in order to distance the Moravian tradition from them). Rather, they had joined the Moravian Church on the understanding that in doing so they were not separating themselves from England's established church but joining a “sister church” in a form of “double belonging.” This text thus illuminates not only the early history of the Moravian Church in England but also Anglican church life in 1730s London and the origins of Wesleyan Methodism.

From Whence Cometh My Help? Psychological Distress and Help-Seeking in the Evangelical Christian Church.

Seeking professional help for psychological distress is generally associated with improved outcomes and lower levels of distress. Given the saliency of religious teachings, it has been shown that aspects of Christian belief may influence adherents’ attitudes towards mental health help-seeking. Based on existing research on American Evangelicals, it was hypothesised that religious social support would positively predict attitudes towards mental health help-seeking, whilst fundamentalism, mental distress, and the belief that psychopathology is caused by immoral or sinful living would negatively predict participants’ attitudes. On a convenience sample of 252 British Evangelicals, our hypotheses were supported and these variables significantly predicted participants’ attitudes towards seeking mental health help, F(7,243) = 9.64, p < 0.001, R2 = 0.195. These findings together suggest that whilst religious support positively predicts help-seeking attitudes, Evangelical fundamentalism, in addition to beliefs that mental illness has a spiritual cause, as well as experiences of mental distress may be associated with more negative attitudes towards psychotherapeutic intervention. Thus, mental health practitioners should be aware of clients’ religious worldviews and tailor interventions appropriately, acknowledging that working with religious organisations may yield the most positive outcomes for patients.

The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter: A Biography of James Rendel Harris (1852–1941)

The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter: A Biography of James Rendel Harris (1852–1941)

The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World by D. Bruce Hindmarsh

Reviewed by: The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World by D. Bruce Hindmarsh John Coffey D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World ( Oxford Univ. Press, 2018). Pp. 376; 29 illus. $38.95 cloth. If the eighteenth century was the century of "Enlightenment," it also witnessed the rise of "Evangelicalism." Both abstract nouns still function in public discourse as umbrella terms that disguise the complexity beneath, and both are still pitted against each other. We do well to remember that eighteenth-century English-speakers talked of neither "the Enlightenment" nor "Evangelicalism." Yet the terms have proved indispensable to historians, and the book under review is necessary reading for students of each. Bruce Hindmarsh is one of the leading authorities on eighteenth-century evangelical religion, having published two important monographs in the field: a study of the eminent Anglican preacher, hymnodist and spiritual director John Newton, and a brilliant comparative analysis of different models of conversion—Methodist, Moravian, Scottish Presbyterian, and Evangelical Anglican. This book, dedicated to John Walsh and Mark Noll, is a magnum opus, the culmination of thirty years of deep reflection on eighteenth-century religion and culture. Crucially, it is not a narrow exercise in ecclesiastical history. Instead, it [End Page 489] situates evangelicals in relation to the history of reading, science, law, and art—and to the emergence of an even grander abstraction, "modernity." In the Introduction, Hindmarsh describes evangelicalism as "a distinctive form of Christian spirituality" that first appeared in the midst of the transition from the authority of the ancients to the authority of the moderns, and "a profound turning towards nature and natural knowledge" (3–4). It "emerged on the trailing edge of Christendom and the leading edge of modernity" and can be defined as "a protest against the idea that adhering to Christian civil society as a nominal Christian was sufficient for salvation" (100). In chapter 1, Hindmarsh scrutinises the manuscript journals of the most famous evangelical preacher of the era, George Whitefield, highlighting the fear that "religion had cooled" (9). The world was full of "nominal Christians," who needed to become "serious Christians," "real Christians," Whitefield's evangelical fire fed on various combustible materials: the discipline of Oxford Methodism, the fearlessness of Lutheran Pietism, the Calvinism and biblicism of English Nonconformists, and an emphasis on the indwelling Holy Spirit arising from personal experience. Evangelical spirituality, Hindmarsh argues, "was part of the story of modern agency, or one of the 'sources of the self'" (42). Chapters 2 and 3 develop one of the book's main arguments, that evangelical devotion was "a form of traditional Christian spirituality expressed under modern social conditions" (48). Chapter 2 emphasises the modernity of evangelicalism: its exploitation of markets, trans-Atlantic communications, the periodical press, the advent of celebrity, religious toleration, and urbanization. "The dominant forms of social organization among evangelicals were not traditional, based on the territorial and hierarchical parish, but modern, based on voluntary gatherings" (49). Evangelical religion was "surprizing" and "new"—it promoted personal narratives, small cell groups, and ecumenical ideals. It has thus become—and here Hindmarsh paraphrases Martin Marty—"the typical Protestant way of relating to modernity" (60). At the same time, evangelicalism was "ancient and modern." Chapter 3 explores "the classical sources of evangelical devotion": Scripture, Anglican formularies, and Puritan and Reformed theology. There are case studies of key texts appropriated by evangelicals: The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677) by the Scottish Episcopalian Henry Scougal, and The Imitation of Christ (c. 1441) by the medieval mystic Thomas à Kempis. Evangelicals naturalized, simplified, and popularized both, though their libraries were dominated by seventeenth-century authors, especially Puritans. Chapters 4 through 8 explore how evangelicals related to new developments in science, law, and art. Chapters 4 and 5 argue that English evangelicals, like German Pietists, created a "culture in which scientific literacy was fostered and new natural knowledge was widely disseminated" (120). There remained traces of older Platonic and alchemical philosophies, but the evangelical intelligentsia broadly "accepted Locke's sensationalist epistemology and Newton's union of terrestrial and celestial mechanics" (115). John Wesley was a keen reader of scientific literature and...

British Evangelicals and German Pietists Promoting Revival through the Work of the Bible and Tract Societies in Hungary

This article demonstrates how British evangelicals, German pietists, and Hungarian Protestants sought to ‘educate’ the masses outside the educational framework of ecclesiastical and state structures within the Hungarian Kingdom in the nineteenth century. More specifically the study intends to offer a concise overview of the history of Protestants who spread the gospel through the distribution of affordable Bibles, New Testaments and Christian tracts. It shows how various denominations worked together and directs attention to their theological outlook which transcended ethnic boundaries. It is a well-known fact in mission and church history that such undertakings were carried out to stir revivalism. The study also throws light on the influential role the Scottish Mission, as well as Archduchess Maria Dorothea, played in stirring revivalism through the aforementioned means. The history of these endeavours, especially those of the British and Foreign Bible Society and Religious Tract Society, has not been treated adequately by intellectual historians, social historians or historians of religion and education. This account adds to scholarly understanding of the multi-ethnic and trans-denominational work of international Protestantism in Central Europe.

Journeying to Heaven with The Children’s Encyclopaedia: Arthur Mee’s Territorial Spirituality for Young Pilgrims

ABSTRACTArthur Mee, Baptist editor of The Children’s Encyclopaedia (CE), offers CE readers a ‘territorial spirituality’ for ‘scenery pilgrims’ between the wars. Devotee of English countryside, acculturated to believe that ‘life’s a journey’, Mee encourages young travellers to tread this ‘enchanted land’ as pilgrims, who slowly journey to old, quiet places (by rail) and visit ‘sources of vision’, becoming habituated to mystical, Romantic experience of the natural world in sacred spaces of hidden England. Basically Baptist (Bunyanesque?), Mee’s ‘pilgrimage’ ethos is of its time, reflecting the open-air values of inter-war English evangelicals in the A.E.G.M. and Oxford Group.

Rights and Relationships: Rhetorics of Religious Freedom among English Evangelicals

AbstractThis paper uses evangelical reflections on the meaning of “rights” to explore the juridification of religion in contemporary England. Drawing on sixteen months of participatory fieldwork with evangelicals in London, I argue that English evangelicals’ critiques of Christian-interest litigation reflect the interaction of local theologies with developments in the law’s regulation of religion, developments that have contributed to the relativization of Protestant Christianity even as historic church establishment is maintained. Through an exploration of the tension between the goals of (rights-based) individualism and (Christian) relationalism as they concern the law, I show how litigation can affect religious subjectivity even in the absence of a personal experience with the pageantry of the court.

Which Books and Wordings? Two Problems with Divine Inspiration in British Evangelicalism

The doctrine of divine inspiration is of great importance within Evangelicalism and is often articulated in the official doctrinal statements of major British evangelical organisations. There are, however, two problems with what several of these statements affirm: they do not specify (i) which books and (ii) which wordings were the products of divine inspiration. These problems render the doctrine of divine inspiration ineffective as, without such clarity, it cannot be justifiably applied in the Church today. This essay seeks to highlight these two problems in order to prompt a response from the affected organisations.

‘Mothers Have Become Monsters’: Danger, Distress and Deviance in British Evangelical Depictions of Indian Motherhood, 1757–1857

ABSTRACTImages of maternal distress and maternal deviance were frequently invoked in order to mobilise British women in support of her ‘heathen’ sisters overseas. Yet these accounts were not uniform in their interpretation of Indian maternity, or its relationship to emerging Victorian ideals of motherhood. This paper explores ideas of maternal danger, distress and deviance as they appeared in evangelical and colonial discourses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, revealing complex and ambivalent responses and challenging the idea that Indian woman were simply one-dimensional signifiers of victimhood within gendered constructions of the ‘civilising mission’.

Religion and Brexit: populism and the Church of England

ABSTRACTDrawing on our own recent surveys on beliefs and values in Great Britain (Woodhead) and evangelical Christians in the UK (Smith) this article explores the links between religion, views and votes on leaving or remaining in the EU in the UK’s 2016 referendum. Poll data gathered shortly after the 2016 referendum (n = 3,243) allows us to test associations between religious identity and behaviour and attitudes to voting Leave, while controlling for other demographic variables. The main finding is that identifying as Church of England (Anglican) is an important independent predictor of voting Leave even when other relevant factors like age and region are corrected for. By contrast, self-defined English evangelicals (from an opportunity sample of 1,198, collected and analysed by Smith) appear to be more pro-EU and generally internationalist in outlook. Previous surveys by Woodhead on religion and values in the UK provide some explanation for these findings, and for the striking difference of UK and US evangelicals, 81% of whom supported Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. The article ends with reflections on whether the term ‘populist’ can be usefully applied to the evangelical pro-Trump vote in the US or the Church of England pro-Brexit vote in the UK.

John Cennick: The Forgotten Evangelist: The Story of the First Methodist Lay Preacher Who Became the Apostle of Northern Ireland

John Cennick, who came to faith independently in 1737, became the English Evangelical Revival's first lay preacher, and one of its best. Despite having left school at thirteen, he published a treatise replete with quotations from the Fathers, and wrote hymns that are still sung today. Initially the Methodist leader in Kingswood, Cennick sided with Whitefield when he parted company with the Wesleys. He formed societies in Wiltshire, and then led the English Calvinistic Methodists and their London Tabernacle during Whitefield's absence in America. His defection to the Moravians in 1745 (shortly before his twenty-seventh birthday) had a significant adverse effect on Calvinistic Methodism. He founded the Moravians' work in Dublin and Northern Ireland and led it until his death in 1755, building several chapels. The Moravian congregations there, and in Bristol, Kingswood, Bath, Wiltshire, and Leominster, all grew out of his evangelism.Given Cennick's significance for Wesleyan, Calvinistic Methodist, and Moravian history, he deserves greater attention than he has received. This first full-length biography helpfully highlights an important and interesting but neglected figure. Gary Best ably sets Cennick's life in the context of the Revival's early history. Cennick being the only person who played a significant role in all three groupings, the story is told from a unique and novel vantage point at the centre of the triangle. Best emphasizes Cennick's irenic character, striving for unity, peace, and reconciliation within and between the Revival's warring factions. He was bold in the face of persecution and danger, but reluctant to enforce discipline. He felt guilty at leaving the Tabernacle, but pleaded that internal infighting had left him no option.By contrast, John Wesley does not emerge well from this telling of the story. Best points out that it was Cennick's resistance to Wesley's encouragement of emotional—even hysterical—responses to his preaching, far more than the dispute over Calvinism, that divided them in 1739. It was ‘not without justification’ that some of the Wesleys' comments about Whitefield were ‘seen as character assassination’ (109). Cennick fell out with John in November 1740 over John's claim that some achieve sinless perfection in this life, not over predestination. The ‘harsh judgement’ that led John to expel Cennick in February 1741 was ‘perfectly understandable … but … heavy-handed and over-stated’; having turned against someone, Wesley could be ‘needlessly vindictive in what he chose to say’ (129). He later ‘falsely denied’ having made personal comments against Whitefield (143). Charles Wesley was usually more irenic. When the Dublin Methodists leased the hall from which the Moravians had been evicted, Charles threatened to leave Dublin if it were not returned, but when negotiations ended, John ‘sent a note insincerely wishing Cennick “much happiness”’, and ‘it may well have been true that consciously or subconsciously he engineered events so the house remained with the Methodists’ (318). Much of the content of Wesley's 1749 anti-Moravian tract was, in Best's view, ‘grossly unfair’ (340).Best has mastered most of the primary sources, using them to compile a narrative that is informative, contextualized, and often enriched by sound judgement and insightful comment. With regard to Moravian history and practice, there are occasional minor factual errors. More seriously, the discredited perspective of the early twentieth-century English Moravian apologist J. E. Hutton sometimes appears unduly influential. Recognition by Parliament as an ancient Protestant episcopal church conferred respectability on the Moravians but did not alter their status as Dissenters. Describing the anti-Moravian propaganda of 1753 as a ‘farrago of lies’ (395) is at best simplistic. The story's ending is less complete than the sources allow. In his last two years Cennick was not only tired, ill, and distressed by the public criticism of the Moravian Church: Best does not mention that he was also deeply disillusioned with its leadership, privately criticizing their debts, their ‘pomp’, and ‘tyranny’. In these ecumenical days, describing Cennick as ‘the apostle of Northern Ireland’ (where the gospel had already been preached for more than a millennium) jars.The many quotations are all footnoted, but sometimes older, obscure, secondary works or manuscript copies are referenced, rather than original manuscripts and/or recent publications. Citing the 1872 edition of John Wesley's works may be ‘fine for the purposes of this biography’ (426), but less idiosyncratic referencing—plus a select bibliography and an index—would have increased the book's usefulness to scholars. By contrast, to ask for the narrative structure to be similarly supported by references would certainly be to ask for a different kind of book.Gary Best has sought to produce not an academic treatise but a highly readable narrative, rooted in scholarship but accessible to the interested general reader (and sold at a remarkably low price). In this he has succeeded admirably. Ninety-two black-and-white illustrations enhance the book's attractiveness and help bring the early eighteenth-century context alive.

Glyn J. Ackerley, Importing Faith: The Effect of American ‘Word of Faith’ Culture on Contemporary English Evangelical Revivalism

Glyn J. Ackerley, <i>Importing Faith: The Effect of American ‘Word of Faith’ Culture on Contemporary English Evangelical Revivalism</i>

Human Rights and Broken Cisterns: Counterpublic Christianity and Rights-based Discourse in Contemporary England

ABSTRACTAlthough human rights are often framed as the result of centuries of Western Christian thought, many English evangelicals are wary of the U.K.’s recent embrace of rights-based law. Yet this wariness does not preclude their use of human rights instruments in the courts. Drawing upon fieldwork with Christian lobbyists and lawyers in London, I argue that evangelical activists instrumentalise rights-based law so as to undermine the universalist claims on which they rest. By constructing themselves as a marginalised counterpublic whose rights are frequently ‘trumped’ by the competing claims of others, they hope to convince their fellow Britons that a society built upon the logic of equal rights cannot hope to deliver the human flourishing it promises. Given the salience of contemporary political conservatism, I call for further ethnographic research into counterpublic movements, and offer my interlocutors’ instrumentalisation of human rights as a critique of the inconsistencies of secular law.

Tudor Brexit: from Ecclesia Anglicana to Anglicanism

Studies • volume 106 • number 424 425 Tudor Brexit: from Ecclesia Anglicana to Anglicanism Alec Ryrie All the German Reformation has this year is an anniversary; the English Reformation has gone one better: we have a full-scale reenactment. A piece of massive political performance art. Because, of course, one central feature of the English Reformation, which then resonated across other realms, was a bitterly contested, far-reaching, almost unimaginable but, as it turned out, unstoppable act of unilateral separation from an international network of laws, norms, bureaucracies, frustrations and profound fraternal connections of which England had been an enthusiastic and disproportionately significant member for, in this case, almost a millenium. But even the hardest of Brexits is never a clean break, and even England’s Reformation story can’t be told in isolation. In these brief remarks, I’ll be suggesting that England’s Protestant Brexit was, at least to begin with, much more European than it looks; but that it contained within it the seeds of the much more radical separation that followed. So, first, I think we have to recognise that Henry VIII’s schism could not have happened without the context of the Reformation that was unfolding in Germany. Although the English Reformation looks at first glance like an act of state driven by the English King’s marital problems, it was profoundly linked to the unfolding Lutheran crisis in three ways. First, diplomatic. Taking England into open-ended schism was an insanely disproportionate and risky thing to do under any circumstances, but it was only conceivable because England was not going into schism alone. The Schmalkaldic League was formed in 1531; Denmark was already plainly moving in the same direction; Sweden had gone into schism in 1527. From at least 1528, the English were warning Rome that they might emulate the German schism. Henry VIII repeatedly explored the possibility of an alliance with the Lutherans and, when in 1541 it briefly seemed possible that the Germans might be reconciled with Rome, Henry was ready to submit to papal authority rather than be left out in the cold. However fond he was of Tudor Brexit: from Ecclesia Anglicana to Anglicanism 426 Studies • volume 106 • number 424 his schism, he would not take the risk of maintaining it unilaterally. Like the British government actively pursuing new trade links post-Brexit, he was painfully aware of the dangers of isolation. Second, domestic politics. The schism was intensely politically controversial, and strongly opposed. If Henry was going to push this through, he needed allies. Political opportunists and careerists might support him but that would only get him so far. There weren’t many English evangelicals at this point, and they didn’t agree with Henry about very much, but they did agree about the papacy, and neither they nor Henry could afford to be too picky about their allies. He needed them as much as they needed him. Plainest demonstration of this: the rising churchman of the moment in 1530 and 1531, the man who seemed set to succeed to Canterbury when the elderly Archbishop Warham finally died, was Stephen Gardiner, whom Henry made bishop of Winchester when he was still in his thirties, and who had cut his teeth on the divorce. But as the crisis morphed into serious threats of schism, Gardiner began to show alarming signs of having a conscience. When Warham finally died in 1532, Henry needed not an opportunistic careerist, but a true believer, to replace him: someone genuinely convinced that papal authority was false, who would not go rogue once in office. And so he whisked Thomas Cranmer out of obscurity. Cranmer swiftly did what he’d been appointed to do and annulled the king’s first marriage. One of the many prices Henry paid for this victory was the installation of a serious evangelical reformer as the primate of all England. Third,ideology.Henrywasnoevangelical,butitdoesseemoverwhelmingly likely that the one belief he truly clung to from 1530 onwards – that he himself was divinely appointed head of the Church of England – was derived from or at least crystallised by evangelical writings. He may have reviled William Tyndale, but he also said that Tyndale’s Obedience...

English Evangelical Historians on the Origins of “the Reformation”

Although Luther’s protest of indulgences in 1517 is often considered to be the point of origin for “the Reformation”, first- and second-generation English evangelicals understood that origin differently. Knowing their fledgling movement needed to be grounded in history for legitimacy, evangelicals searched historical records for evidence of their movement prior to Luther’s protest. This essay examines the work of two leading historians during the English Reformation, John Bale (d. 1563) and John Foxe (d. 1587), to analyze what they made of the beginnings of the English Reformation. Specifically, it explores the place of the lollards, late medieval English dissenters condemned by the Church, in the histories written by Bale and Foxe between the 1540s and 1570. It argues that Bale and Foxe saw their own reform movement through an apocalyptic prism; reading the historical records through the light of Scripture, especially the Book of Revelation, led them to recognize the career of John Wyclif (d. 1384), the putative progenitor of the lollards, as the beginning of the final age of the world. Alongside Bale and Foxe, Luther, William Tyndale (d. 1536) were living at the end of that age. The essay concludes that early English evangelicals understood “the Reformation” to be a process, not a single event, and this is further demonstrated by a brief case study examining the issue of vernacular Scripture in the reform movement.

Book Review: The American Prosperity Gospel and English Evangelicals: Glyn J. Ackerley, Importing Faith: The Effects of American “Word of Faith” Culture on Contemporary English Evangelical Revivalism

Book Review: The American Prosperity Gospel and English Evangelicals: Glyn J. Ackerley, <i>Importing Faith: The Effects of American “Word of Faith” Culture on Contemporary English Evangelical Revivalism</i>

‘The Person God Made Me to Be’: Navigating Working-Class and Christian Identities in English Evangelical Christianity

This article explores the lived experience of class in relation to English evangelical Christianity. It examines how the subjective, affective impacts of class are felt, navigated and negotiated by working-class evangelical church leaders in the context of everyday ministry. Recent class analysis ( Abrahams and Ingram 2013 ; Friedman 2016 ; Reay 2015 ) has mobilized and developed the Bourdieusian concept of ‘cleft’ or divided habitus ( Bourdieu 2000 ) in empirical study of the emotional impact of movement across class fields. Examining data produced in interviews with evangelical leaders, this article draws on this work, exploring how working-class evangelical leaders experience cleft habitus as they engage with different class fields in the course of their work in ministry. It is argued that, whilst often overlooked in research on classed subjectivities, religious identity plays a critical role in provoking distinctive responses to the everyday experience of class. The accounts suggest that, in the negotiation of feelings of cleft habitus, interviewees’ Christian subjectivity prompts a proactive seeking of an integrated identity that is both evangelical and working-class.