Evangelical Anglican Research Articles

Orphans of the Orissa Famine: Capital, Charity, and Coercion in the Missionary System

Some of the most profound effects Britain imposed on society in Orissa, India came as a result of the missions that formed the majority of the protective infrastructure during the Orissa famine. Shortly after the British began their occupation of Orissa, a network of Protestant Christian missions based in England began to move into the region. Leadership came from the Christian Missionary Society, an Evangelical Anglican group, as well as Baptist figures such as Rev. J. Buckley. Their move was difficult, and for many years unsuccessful. However, the British East India Company and the Raj that followed it would pave the way for an increase in mission power through their laissez-faire policies of ignoring preexisting infrastructure and discontinuing preexisting social support systems. The missions, through their network of periodical publications, were then able to position themselves as a charitable counterpoint to the mainstream ideology of free markets at the time. In 1865, when a harvest failed as a result of British lack of infrastructure maintenance, the Protestant mission network’s opportunity arrived. The famine left many children without caretakers, and the missions, having begun a precedent of taking in orphans, became one of the only options for these children. The missions completed their takeover after the British first refused to acknowledge the famine, and then offered an ineffective response. The mission takeover quickly became so complete that secular authorities turned those seeking to give charity to the missions, since missions were some of the only organizations with a history of working directly with people in the region. The lives and identities of these famine orphans formed a microcosm of the changes to Orissa over the course of the Orissa famine.

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, by Winter Jade Werner

Reviewed by: Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature by Winter Jade Werner Kimberly VanEsveld Adams (bio) Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, by Winter Jade Werner; pp. vii + 210. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2020, $79.95, $24.95 ebook. I always thought that in Jane Eyre (1847), the dangerous passion of St. John Rivers is for Rosamond Oliver, the bewitching daughter of a wealthy mill owner. He suppresses his emotions, since he considers her unfit to be a missionary’s wife. But no—the danger [End Page 702] is the “‘hot action’ of India,” or the attractiveness of native women. St. John manfully seeks to resist temptation by pressuring his unloved cousin Jane to become his helpmeet, or, as Jade Winter Werner says, his “prophylactic” (134). In Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Werner explores the development of missionaries’ claims to, and concern with, world citizenship. Charlotte Brontë’s novel provides the most vivid example. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, intermarriage between British missionaries and female converts (preferably from influential native families) was seen as positive, a demonstration of universal human kinship. But misgivings began to emerge by the 1820s: missionaries’ “going native,” the challenge to British superiority of biracial bicultural families, the disapproval of white slaveholders in South Africa, and what came to be seen as the corrupting effect of interracial union. The last is exemplified in Jane Eyre by Mr. Rochester’s brutal descriptions of his marriage to Bertha Mason, a Jamaican-born planter’s daughter. The new policy of British missionary societies was for men to marry before going overseas. St. John’s endogamous proposal to his cousin, Werner argues, shows an extreme effort to avoid contamination. The thesis of Werner’s book is that “cosmopolitanism both fueled and found an unlikely champion in the modern missionary movement” (3). The Dissenting missionaries who are her primary focus were not, as opponents claimed, irrational enthusiasts, ill-educated “pious tinkers” (77), or as Sydney Smith said, “little detachments of maniacs” (qtd. in Werner 3). Nor were they unthinkingly allied with empire, as some scholars contend. The missionaries’ often-repeated claims to be “cosmopolites,” or world citizens, were based, Werner found, on the ongoing interactions between Protestantism and Enlightenment (or Enlightenment-Liberal) beliefs and values, such as a common human nature, individual freedom and tolerance, reason, and the benefits of scientific knowledge and global trade (71). A difficulty with this argument is that the core religious beliefs and practices of the denominations—Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, and evangelical Anglicans—are not described. That makes it difficult for the reader to assess when the missionaries’ use of Enlightenment ideas is a matter of Christian morals, as they claimed, or when it is strategy, or appropriation of available terminology. Moreover, some points would have been clarified or strengthened with use of a wider range of materials and more extensive historical evidence. Werner for example shows that during the French Revolution, missionary cosmopolitans who spoke of universal benevolence and the rights of man were accused of republican sympathies, despite their professions to have no political agenda. But Werner’s discussion here might have gone beyond the quarreling periodicals, since there is some basis for the charge of republicanism. Dissenters were prominent not just in missionary societies but also among British working-class radicals and American revolutionaries, particularly those from colonies such as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In Britain, Dissenters resented legal restrictions on their religious and civic liberty. Only with the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 was their access to political and military office unrestricted (if they were men). Werner centers the four chapters of her book on literary texts because these reveal the tensions within missionary cosmopolitanism, in contrast to the propaganda of the various societies. In her second chapter, “Robert Southey and the Case for Christian Colonialism,” Werner demonstrates the Romantic author’s interest in Dissenting missions. Southey published reviews of societies’ periodicals between 1802 and 1809. But he broke [End Page 703] from the missionaries in considering forceful colonization necessary for the spread of Christianity. In A Tale of Paraguay (1825), Southey’s verse narrative based on the 1784 account...

Simeon and the Restoration of Israel

Charles Simeon, one of the leading founders of modern Anglican Evangelicalism, was a staunch advocate of missions to the Jews, whom he regarded as God’s chosen people. Basing himself entirely on the witness of the prophets and apostles, he believed that the church held the gospel message in trust against the day when those for whom it was originally intended would hear it and turn to Christ. The church had a responsibility to proclaim the message of salvation to the Jewish people but was failing in its duty. In his sermons on the subject, Simeon called Christians back to faithful witness among Jews and did much to further the cause of Jewish evangelism in the Church of England and beyond. KEYWORDS: Jews, Israel, conversion, restoration, prophecy, fulfillment, miracle, mission

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, Country House Science, and Personae for British Women in Science at the turn of the Twentieth Century

Higher education for women in the fields of science and mathematics significantly expanded in the United Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. A major force in that expansion was Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (1845–1934), the mathematically talented head of Newnham College, Cambridge, and researcher in experimental physics at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. In this article I examine Sidgwick’s role in advancing science education for women, focusing on her construction of a scientific persona for British women that drew upon her evangelical Anglican values of family and domesticity. I argue that Sidgwick’s work contributed to an enterprise of ‘country house science’ in which other members of her extended family were engaged, and that her case contributes to a reorientation of the historiography from a focus on recovery of women’s peripheral contributions to the positioning of the work of science education for women more centrally in our narratives about women in science.

Religion and the American Revolution. By Katherine Carté

In Religion and the American Revolution, historian Katherine Carté interprets changing relationships in religion between Britain and its American colonies from the Toleration Act (1689) and the Acts of Union (1706–1707) to the 1790s through the concept of “imperial Protestantism,” a political theology that defined the British Empire as a Protestant political and religious project. Carté tells this long and complex story from the perspective of the Empire’s religious constitution and its government in the London metropole, an orientation embodied by elite figures like William Legge (1731–1801)—2nd Earl of Dartmouth, a celebrated evangelical Anglican, patron of the colonial college that still bears his name, and Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1772 to 1775—who is featured in the book. This angle of vision, following recent scholarly emphasis on the transatlantic dimension of colonial American culture, marks a refreshing change from decades of debate about whether or not religion...

Identities in flux: evangelical identity in the time of Brexit and Trump

ABSTRACT Since the British referendum vote in 2016 to leave the European Union, scholars have analysed various aspects of this political landmark moment. However, one area that has lacked attention is the role of religion. This article fills that gap by using identity as a theoretical object of analysis to demonstrate the impact Brexit had, in conjunction with the election of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee and later US President, on British evangelical identities. I show how identities fracture and re-formulate during moments of political upheaval, focusing specifically on ethnographic data collected during fieldwork at a prominent evangelical Anglican church in London during the period 2015–2016. I ask: what does it mean to be British and evangelical? How do these religious and national identities interact with each other? Most importantly, how did this interaction change during the referendum and Trump’s election campaign? By investigating how evangelical British identity altered during these two important political events, this article brings attention to one of the most overlooked aspects of the British referendum: religion.

Churches and Faith: Attitude Towards Church Buildings During the 2020 covid-19 Lockdown Among Churchgoers in England

Abstract Attitude toward church buildings was assessed among a sample of 6,476 churchgoers in England during the first covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020. The six-item Scale of Attitude toward Church Buildings (sacb) assessed a range of aspects of attitude that included the importance of buildings for Christian faith generally, and buildings as central to the expression of Christian faith. Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics showed similar positive attitude towards buildings, Anglican Evangelicals showed a less positive attitude on average that was similar to those from Free-Churches, while Broad-Church Anglican attitude lay between these two extremes. Younger people had a more positive attitude than older people, especially among Catholics. On average, men had more a positive attitude than women, and lay people a more positive attitude than clergy. These findings suggest that the significance of buildings varies among traditions in ways that may still reflect historical issues of the Reformation.

The impacts of Covid-19 on the spiritual area of believers: Case of Assembly of God Evangelical Church, Mozambique Island, 2020

The Bibliography relates directly or indirectly to freestanding articles by the author on the overall subject: ‘Finding the Evangelical Anglican Way: 1375 - 2020.’ The papers have been uploaded to Academia and may be viewed or downloaded free on the internet. <https//independent.academia.edu/IanBunting> In the Bibliography each of the highlighted works has made a contribution to one or more of the individual papers, and thereby has served the work as a whole. The title of each listed paper indicates its subject, and hints at its drift. In addition to the 'Introduction and Conclusion', summarizing a passage of more than 700 years, there is a Timeline of historic national and church events. The contributions of 'Faith Markers', in the form of 'statements', and those of 'Faith Shapers' in twelve sections of 'quotations', relate to the headings in the compiler’s website, www.faithshapers.co.uk but also derive from reflection upon his own personal spiritual journey.

Empire of Hell: Religion and the Campaign to End Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1788-1875, by Hilary Carey

Reviewed by: Empire of Hell: Religion and the Campaign to End Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1788–1875 by Hilary Carey Ann Curthoys (bio) Empire of Hell: Religion and the Campaign to End Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1788–1875, by Hilary Carey; pp. xii + 359. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019, $99.99, $34.99 paper, £75.00, £26.99 paper. Hilary Carey’s Empire of Hell: Religion and the Campaign to End Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1788–1875 provides a fresh, detailed perspective on British and colonial [End Page 458] debates over convict transportation. The notion of Britain’s transportation system and its penal colonies as a hell on earth was a powerful one in the period and retains considerable hold today. In tracing the political, religious, and cultural contexts of the system’s creation and dissemination, Carey unsettles a good deal of popular understanding and academic scholarship. The 1780s to the 1870s saw intense, troubled debates in Britain and its penal colonies over how lawbreakers should be punished, with varying views on the role and effectiveness of physical punishment, the penitentiary, and transportation. Entwined with debates over the advantages of one system or another was the question of what purposes punishment should serve. Should it be designed primarily to deter further crime? Was it best seen as a necessary form of retribution and justice? Or should it aim to reform the offender? Supporters and opponents of transportation could emphasize its horrors: the former so that fear of transportation would deter further crime, and the latter to secure reform or, increasingly, abolition of the system altogether. With religious figures and ideas prominent among both the architects and opponents of transportation, religion becomes in Carey’s hands an excellent lens through which to rethink the history of British convict transportation. Carey’s detailed study begins with Anglican Evangelicals who thought imprisonment should aim to reform the offender. These Evangelicals could be found among both opponents and supporters of transportation. Evangelical members of Parliament joined with Whig and Liberal reformers to form the Prison Discipline Society in 1816, which campaigned against transportation and for improved prison discipline. Yet one of the chief managers and defenders of transportation, George Arthur, was also an Anglican Evangelical. As governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1823 to 1837, he firmly believed that transportation could achieve reform and, under his regime, clergy participated in the reforming project. As a penal administrator, Carey writes, Arthur was “scrupulous and fair-minded” (57) and much admired by two visiting Quakers, James Backhouse and George Washington Walker, who were “travelling under concern” in the Australian penal colonies (80). Quakers figured variously in the debates over punishment; while those who had visited the colonies generally supported transportation, those campaigning in Britain, such as Elizabeth Fry, sought and to some degree achieved prison reform at home. In the early 1830s, Governor Arthur engaged in a major dispute over transportation with the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whateley, a dispute that Carey characterizes as “the intellectual high point in religious debate” on transportation (71). Whateley strongly disagreed with Arthur’s view that religion had a role to play in reform of the convict through transportation and wanted the system abolished entirely. Transportation’s chief purpose, deterrence against further crime, was undermined, he argued, by the uncertainty and slowness of the system and the fact that, for the poor, it was less something to be feared than a chance for a new life. Another important figure, Reverend William Ullathorne, Roman Catholic Vicar General of New South Wales, originated the term the “horrors of transportation” after a visit to a Norfolk Island penal settlement in 1834 (148). Appalled by what he witnessed, Ullathorne became an eloquent opponent of the system, characterizing convicts as slaves without earnings and magistrates as having far too much power over convict lives. He was, in Carey’s view, exceptional [End Page 459] for his absence of contempt for the culprit; he asked that the convict be “imagined not as a social outcast but as a penitent whose physical torments recalled the suffering body of Christ” (142–43). One valuable chapter in Empire...

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...

Karubiu wa Munyi and the making of modern Kirinyaga, Kenya

The article sets out to explore the lessons that can be drawn from the selfless and integrity-driven leadership offered by some pioneer post-independent Kenyan leaders such as Karubiu wa Munyi. With more financial scandals increasing in the public domains, as in the case where over 15 mega corruption scandals remained unaccounted for, by 2018, the need to draw some lessons from the likes of wa Munyi becomes an important matter worth consideration in the 21st century. As we seek to demolish both colonial mentality and neo-colonialism in the 21st century, there is a need to reconstruct the memories of some of our key actors in our African societies, as we seek to rebuild our respective contexts. Having lived under deadly and complicated theo-historical times, but eventually overcame hunger and famine, war, colonial bombs and general poverty, the article hypothesises, he stands out on a pedestal and remains a critical reflective case for masses of people who are walking through the valleys and shadows of death in Africa and beyond. In its methodology, the article develops mainly from the researchers’ interviews with wa Munyi who is eventually chronicled, as it seeks to ascertain whether there are lessons to draw from his ‘philanthropic’ and integrity-driven leadership. Was the virtue-driven leadership of Karubiu wa Munyi a by-product of Africa’s Ubuntu [caring for the other] cultural heritage and the evangelical Anglican Christianity that settled in his locality since 1912? And has the society lost its cultural morality and the virtue-leaning evangelical Christianity that was ushered in by the Church Mission Society at the beginning of the 20th century? In this article, Gitugi kia bururi [the critical cornerstone] – the casual description of wa Munyi – symbolises the ideal leaders who remain at peace with themselves and the general society even after retiring from active public duties; as their respective consciences are above board. Africa has to take lessons from such selfless leaders. The materials in this article are gathered through interviews with wa Munyi and other people who are connected to issues under consideration. A review of relevant literature has also been done. Contribution: The article adds to the growing knowledge by its originality; a phenomenon where a little-known civic leader (Karubiu wa Munyi) is used as a lens through which we can understand the modern day Africa. Has the continent that sought independence from the colonialists who came after the Berlin Conference of 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885 recolonising itself through neo-colonialism and corrupt practices of unimaginable proportions? The article is relevant to the HTS Journal and the world of scholarship as it shows God’s works in history, as it confirms that a people who walk through the desolate valleys and shadows of death, and are starring at the total annihilation, do also have a future.

The Watson Family, the Association for the Discountenancing of Vice and the Irish Cheap Repository Tracts*

Abstract Although the history of Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts in England and America is well known, little has been written about the 270 or more editions published in Ireland 1795-c. 1830. They were first published by William Watson, a Dublin bookseller who, in 1792, had founded The Association for the Discountenancing of Vice (ADV). This article describes the founding and growth of the Association and the involvement of Watson and his son in the publishing of the tracts during the late 1790s. It also describes the role of the Watson family, the ADV and the Cheap Repository tracts during the Anglican Evangelical Crusade (1801–1830) after the 1798 rebellion in Ireland. Whilst many members of the Dublin book trade suffered from a severe economic depression after 1801, the Watson family continued to prosper, thanks to the printing and publishing work undertaken on behalf of the ADV. The Watson family business closed in 1832, but the ADV has lasted to the present day operating under a different name.

Psychological type theory, femininity and the appeal of Anglo-Catholicism: A study among Anglican clergymen in England

ABSTRACT This study draws on psychological type theory to test the hypothesis that the appeal of the Anglo-Catholic tradition is connected with higher levels of psychological femininity. In this context preference for feeling in contrast with thinking is taken as an indication of psychological femininity. Drawing on data from 1,107 clergymen who participated in the Church Growth Research Project, comparison is made between 405 who identified as Evangelical Anglicans, 328 who identified as Anglo-Catholics, and 374 who identified as Broad Church Anglicans. While 47% of the Evangelicals identified as feeling types, the proportion rose to 60% among Anglo-Catholics. These data support the underlying thesis. However, the proportion rose even higher to 69% among Broad Church Anglicans. These data qualify the underlying thesis, and suggest that it is the Evangelical Anglican clergy who stand apart from a more pervasive appeal of Anglicanism connected with higher levels of psychological femininity.

Comparing Religious Beliefs and Strategies in Rural Ministry among Catholic and Evangelical Anglican Clergy

ABSTRACT This study explores the way in which rural parishes served by Anglican clergy shaped in the Evangelical tradition and rural parishes served by clergy shaped in the Catholic tradition may experience different forms of Christian teaching and different styles of pastoral ministry. Findings from a survey completed by 212 clergy serving in a defined area of a rural diocese demonstrated considerable difference between these two groups of clergy.

Josephine Butler, Women's Rights, and Low Church Anglicanism

Josephine Butler, Women's Rights, and Low Church Anglicanism Timothy Larsen (bio) It was an article in the Edinburgh Review (October 1853) on "Church Parties" that crystalized the assumption that members of the Church of England could be sorted into three basic ways of being Anglican. The author, W.J. Conybeare—opting for spatial reasoning—called them High, Low, and Broad (Burns). By "Broad," he meant an openness to liberal theology and a desire for inclusiveness rather than the dogmatic policing of boundaries. Many, both at the time and to this day, have considered F.D. Maurice to be the most important theological voice for the Broad Church in the second half of the nineteenth century. By "High," Conybeare meant an emphasis on the Catholic nature of the Church. In the Victorian age, this tradition was transformed and dominated by the Tractarian, or Oxford Movement. One of its leaders, E.B. Pusey, was so important that many referred to these Anglicans as "Puseyites." "Low Church" meant an emphasis on the Church of England's Protestant identity. Therefore, strictly speaking, Victorian Broad Church Anglicans were also Low Church. Conybeare, however, was clear that he was using the term to refer only to those who also were marked by the evangelical movement. Low Church Anglicans who were neither Broad Church nor evangelical tended to think of themselves as just garden-variety or generic Anglicans and therefore did not found journals or societies or otherwise make themselves visible through organizing as a distinct group. It is Conybeare's evangelical, Low Church Anglicans that are our focus. In the Church of England Calendar today, leaders of all three traditions are celebrated. Pusey is commemorated on 16 September. One wonders, however, if a bit of party mischief was behind F.D. Maurice being commemorated on April Fool's Day (maybe the day of his birth would have been a better choice than that of his death). More important than either of these, however—not a mere "commemoration" but a "lesser festival"—is the observance on 30 May for the evangelical, Low Church Anglican Josephine Butler (1828–1906). Butler is famous for her deep commitment to the rights of women. Although the term was not in general use at the time, scholars often identity some Victorians as "feminists," with Butler being a prime example (Caine). Indeed, in 1866, Butler was a prominent supporter of the first attempt in Britain to legislate for women's suffrage (Jordan). Her first publication was in support of the opening up of higher education to women: The Education and Employment of Women (1868). She is best known, however, for defending women who were sex workers—or who were suspected of being so. The Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s empowered authorities in areas with concentrations of military personnel to inspect women thought to be [End Page 146] prostitutes for venereal diseases. Butler was outraged. Why were the men not inspected? (She even used the phrase "double standard.") Why were women not presumed innocent, as men were? And many more such arguments. She fought the good fight until, in 1883, Parliament finally gave in. In his landmark study, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, D.W. Bebbington formulated what has become the standard definition of evangelicalism. The Bebbington Quadrilateral identifies four distinguishing marks of evangelicals: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism (Bebbington 2–17). Butler exemplified all these traits. Her entire career was a manifestation of evangelical activism. It was in conscious succession to an eminent evangelical Anglican from earlier in the century, William Wilberforce, and his campaign to end the slave trade. Butler was clear that sex trafficking was a form of slavery and that therefore she too was an abolitionist. As to crucicentrism (a focus on Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross), Butler could even end a pamphlet written to rally women's rights activists with this conclusion: "We are learning now more deeply than ever the power of Christ's Crucifixion and Death" (Truth Before Everything 23). By the late nineteenth century, even many self-described evangelicals had become squeamish in regards to the old articulation of the Atonement and had turned...

They ‘Come for a Lark’: London Ragged School Union Teaching Advice in Practice, 1844–70

Ragged schools provided a free education to impoverished children in the mid-nineteenth century. Inspired by religious fervour and presided over by Lord Shaftesbury, that figurehead of evangelical Anglicans, the schools taught the most destitute to read and write, as well as about the God who loved them. By 1870 the London schools alone recorded an average attendance of 32,231 children. The missionary aspect of the classroom shaped the recommended character of the teacher. Teachers were to be benevolent, while corporal punishment was discouraged. Teaching advice demonstrates that the classroom could prove difficult terrain and suggests that the respect of scholars was hard-won and highly valued. With children attending freely, it was necessary that they desired to return. The children were consumers whom teachers sought to please; their responses determined the success or failure of lessons. This article responds to recent scholarship that interprets the teachers as imposed and powerful agents. By focusing on advice given to teachers, it highlights both how the children were perceived and the impact evangelical theology had upon ideas regarding the teacher's character. Largely overlooked by church historians, the ragged school movement embodies the profound impact of evangelical Christians on popular education in the nineteenth century.

Evangelical Anglican missionaries and the London Jews Society: Palestine Place at Bethnal Green and related developments, 1813-1895*

Evangelical Anglican missionaries and the London Jews Society: Palestine Place at Bethnal Green and related developments, 1813-1895*

Spatial Consciousness and Spiritual Practice in Austen’s Mansfield Park

Spatial Consciousness and Spiritual Practice in Austen’s Mansfield Park Toby R. Benis (bio) Space is everywhere in the scholarly conversation about jane Austen; she is the writer of the rural village, of the country estate, of the far-flung empire.1But rather than assuming the analytical primacy of any one kind of space, this article begins with a broader question: how do different scales of space operate together to shape the developmental arcs of the novelist’s heroines?2In a work like Persuasion (1817), the answer seems clear: women’s domestic experiences of loneliness and trial are compared in detail with those of naval professionals in theaters of combat. The narrative dramatizes mutually reinforcing scales of space and community in ways that Edmund Burke proclaims are a particularly British characteristic: “to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”3 [End Page 333] Postcolonial scholars have identified similarities, as well as a good deal of friction, between Austen’s representations of “little platoons” like those Burke idealizes and the diverse inhabitants of the sprawling Georgian empire.4Valuable as they are, these analyses have tended to pass over fundamental ways in which space itself is always a social product resulting from a complex array of spatial practices. Austen criticism has reinforced what Henri Lefebvre has called the illusion of transparency: “space appears as luminous, as intelligible, as giving action free rein.”5Lefebvre emphasizes the dialectical character of codes governing social spaces, generated by interactions between subjects and their surroundings in specific historical contexts.6In Austen’s work, female protagonists attain their romantic objectives only when they develop some competence in navigating such codes. Elsewhere, I have discussed Catherine Morland’s development in North-anger Abbey (composed in the 1790s, though published in 1817) in terms of her difficulties in negotiating changing eighteenth-century public spaces, from city streets to rural neighborhoods.7Written some 15 years later, Mansfield Park (1814) approaches the question of space from the point of view of the profession most represented in Austen’s corpus: the clergy. Fanny Price’s transformation from cowering waif to self-possessed young woman depends on her acquired ability to understand codes at work in Evangelical Anglicanism and to enact them in spaces over which she has some control. Mansfield Park has been dubbed Austen’s “Evangelical novel,” since many of the views associated with Evangelicals are in evidence here. Seeking to infuse a new seriousness and piety into religious practice and social life, Evangelical Anglicans promoted mandatory residency for clergymen [End Page 334] in the parish of their living; the abolition of the slave trade; calls for private reflection; a condemnation of decadence in the Regency beau monde; and a distrust of amateur acting.8The novel’s extended arguments over where the clergy should live, and why, reflect the Evangelical conviction that the space of the parish was the foundational unit of the clergyman’s identity. Only by inhabiting small-scale spaces could neighbors and clergymen interact through social routines that possess spiritual and moral force, or what Austen calls “habits.” This dimension of the novel’s discussions about the clergy suggests a spatially informed way of approaching the Evangelicals’ critique of imperial slavery. The Evangelical requirement that clergymen devote themselves to their home parishes points to an ethos at odds with an increasingly globalized British economy in which the absenteeism of West Indian plantation owners like the Bertrams is of a piece with their disregard for the suffering that occurs there. Accordingly, the man who takes clerical orders during the course of novel—Edmund Bertram—cannot resolve the contradictions between the Evangelical principles he appears to endorse, most notably parish residency for priests, and the colonial source of his family’s wealth. When the family conversation turns to how men like his father profit from distant human misery, Edmund does nothing to fill the “dead silence” that follows Fanny Price’s question about the slave trade.9Austen...

Devotion and Polemic in Eighteenth-Century England: William Mason and the Literature of Lay Evangelical Anglicanism

Devotion and Polemic in Eighteenth-Century England: William Mason and the Literature of Lay Evangelical Anglicanism

Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism by Ryan Nicholas Danker

Reviewed by: Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism by Ryan Nicholas Danker Kenneth M. Loyer Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism. By Ryan Nicholas Danker. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic. 2016. Pp. 304. $26.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8308-5122-5.) In this work, Ryan Danker explores the significant but often contentious relationships between John Wesley and other Anglican clergy involved in the eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival. Danker challenges the standard explanation that the separation of Wesley and Evangelicals within the Church of England toward the end of the 1760s was simply the outcome of theological debate, primarily about predestination and Christian perfection—the Arminianism of the Wesleyan Methodists versus the Calvinism of Anglican Evangelicals. He argues instead that while theology certainly played a role in the Evangelical Revival and in the ultimate separation of these two groups, important social and political pressures also need to be considered. Chapter One describes the Evangelical clergy within the Church of England in order to begin to delineate their relationship to Wesley. In Chapter Two Danker shows how Wesley fit within the larger picture of English Evangelicalism. He situates Wesley and his evangelical conversion at Aldersgate, where his heart was "strangely warmed," in the overarching context of the trans-Atlantic revival. Use of public tracts by Wesley and his opponents alike is the subject of Chapter Three, which provides a fascinating glimpse into the power of print materials in shaping public perceptions of the broader evangelical movement. That section is followed by a contextual examination of Methodist structure and its implications for the eventual separation between Wesleyan Methodists and Anglican Evangelicals, an endeavor that spans the next three chapters and covers a range of topics including Methodist society, class, and band meetings; Wesley's use of lay preachers; and eucharistic administration by lay preachers. These distinctive practices espoused by Wesleyan Methodists strained their relationships, and particularly Wesley's relationships, with Evangelical Anglicans, to the point of sometimes arousing suspicion of Methodist rebellion against the Church of England. For example, the work of Methodist lay preachers within parishes with an already established Evangelical Anglican presence raised concerns about Methodist incursions into [End Page 595] Anglican Evangelical enclaves and contributed to growing divisions between these two groups. Taken together, these practices critical to the formation of Methodist identity reflected an increasingly distinct ethos and polity for Wesleyan Methodists over against Anglicans, and those social and structural differences contributed in their own right to the later split between Methodists and Anglican Evangelicals. Chapter Seven highlights political dynamics that further divided these groups. A changing political environment under George III led to a certain imperialistic hegemony and tainted public impressions of evangelicalism. Danker describes the expulsions of six Oxford students in 1768 for "methodistical behaviour" and the ensuing political and ecclesiastical fallout, which exemplified a larger political and cultural trend toward marginalizing Evangelicals and squashing dissent, perceived or actual. These emerging political realities added to the forces pushing Wesley and the Methodist movement to the periphery of Anglican life. In chapter Eight, Danker proposes a new Anglican historiography, one that views Wesley as a high churchman influenced by traditional elements common to Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christianity (such as an emphasis on the centrality of the Eucharist and ancient forms of liturgy) and focused on patristic writings. By contrast, the Evangelical Anglicans of Wesley's day were primarily influenced by renewed interest in the theology of the English Reformers and the Puritans. This paradigm sheds light on the theological controversies that erupted between these groups throughout the eighteenth century. The conclusion brings together salient themes and analyzes Wesley's failed attempts in the 1760s to form an Evangelical union based on shared theological commitments. As Danker concludes, such efforts had little or no chance of effectiveness, given the convergence of various factors—including social, political, and ecclesiastical dynamics, and not simply theological concerns—that together account for the deterioration of Evangelical/Methodist relations. From beginning to end, Danker effectively locates ecclesiastical and theological differences within their broader context in eighteenth-century England. The result is an engaging and richly detailed account of the development of evangelicalism and early...