International Protestantism Research Articles

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.

Un réfugié au service de l’Empire : la vie et l’expérience de Paul Mascarene

The life of Paul Mascarene demonstrates the importance of religious diasporas in building the British imperial state. A Huguenot refugee who became a military officer in Nova Scotia, he attempted to make the empire a force for international Protestantism, even trying to settle some of his fellow Huguenots in the colony. When that plan failed, he became an ambassador to Acadian Catholics, using his French experience to try to build a Protestant empire that tolerated some degree of diversity. He did not succeed in saving the Acadians from expulsion but he showed a path forward for future imperial leaders.

Dynastic Politics, International Protestantism and Royal Rebellion: Prince George of Denmark and the Glorious Revolution

Abstract This article reveals the importance of Prince George of Denmark to James II and William of Orange. It places George in the world of early modern European politics, when foreign policy and international relations were inextricably linked with dynastic politics, and many were concerned about the future well-being of Protestantism. The religious component is crucial as the evidence strongly suggests that George felt he belonged to a ‘Protestant International’, not defined by membership of a particular nation. By drawing attention to the polycentric nature of the Stuart court in the 1680s, the workings of dynastic politics in the international arena that involved secret political manoeuvrings in the run up to the invasion, and then detailing the way in which George behaved following William’s arrival, this article argues that Prince George played a crucial role in the Glorious Revolution. It will also demonstrate that in the 1690s George helped to consolidate and promote the new regime. During the period in question the Prince and Princess of Denmark were a political partnership, and rather than being led by others, they joined forces with William and Mary because they each had a distinct political agenda. George pursued policies he believed would benefit the Stuart–Oldenburg dynasty in England, and its related houses in Europe, and the cause of international Protestantism. A subsidiary theme of this article will be the continuing importance of ceremonies involving royalty to the political culture of urban communities in early modern England.

Sir Dudley Carleton and Sir Thomas Roe: English Servants of the Queen of Bohemia and the Protestant International during the Thirty Years War

Carleton and Roe were an identifiable team within the early Stuart diplomatic establishment. Notable for their ideological outlook, grand strategic awareness, and commitment to international Protestantism, they influenced the course of the Thirty Years War. Out of sympathy with the Caroline regime, they had difficulty in negotiating between their sixteenth-century backgrounds and the realities of generational political change, as well as between their vision and forces opposed to their conception of strategy. They constituted a significant link between English and European developments and prefigured issues involved in the British Civil Wars.

The SPCK and the American Revolution: The Limits of International Protestantism

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) occupied an unusual position in the British Atlantic as an internationally minded voluntary organization rooted in Anglicanism but also able to unite members of different Protestant groups. Its history during the American Revolution provides opportunity to examine the ideal of international Protestantism in the latter part of the eighteenth century. This investigation indicates that, despite many international ties and a strong sense of politically based international Protestant unity during the early decades of the century, members of the SPCK did not experience the Revolutionary crisis that ruptured the British Atlantic as a spiritual separation from their fellows in North America. International Protestant engagement within the SPCK was largely personal in nature, based on the experiences of a few individuals. Though the SPCK's regular publications create the impression of an organization leading an international Protestant community, an analysis of its membership reveals a profoundly English group. Thus, during the Revolution, the SPCK rallied to the British cause without a sense that an idealized Protestant union had been divided by fratricidal violence. This article builds on and supports the transnational perspective put forth by scholars in recent years and suggests that international Protestantism was varied and, in the case of the SPCK, politically limited.

George Herbert, Calvinism, and Reading “Mattens”

In November 1973 Dame Helen Gardner, distinguished editor of Donne and Herbert, wrote me, saying think study of Herbert as 'Calvinist' would be very valuable thing to do (letter to author). Since then literary critics including Barbara Lewalski, Richard Strier, Gene Veith, Christopher Hodgkins, Elizabeth Clarke, Ron Cooley, Cristina Malcolmson, and I have been claiming that George Herbert is significantly Calvinist. Far from reflecting credulity about Lewalski's Protestant Poetics and Seventeenth-Century English Lyric (1979), as Stanley Stewart suggests (A Priest to Geneva Temple 167), such interpretations in fact follow up fruitful suggestions made as early as Joseph Summers' ground-breaking book in 1954. While Rosemond Tuve, Louis Martz (The Poetry of Meditation), and R. V. Young have effectively related elements in Herbert to continental medieval and Roman Catholic backgrounds, other writers named have paid attention to recent historical insights into English church, main leadership of which in most of Herbert's time was Calvinist (Collinson, Fincham, Lake, Tyacke). But objections by Martz (Donne, Herbert, and Worm of Controversy, The Generous Ambiguity of Herbert's Temple), Stewart (Priest), and Young (Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry) to Protestant interpretations deserve an answer. As Stewart notes (Priest 168), there is tendency for critics to pay most attention to those poems or writings in Herbert they find most appealing, or about which they feel equipped to write. That approach should be supplemented and corrected by considering case made for other views. It is no accident that Herbert has attracted good critics with many different approaches, because, as I argue elsewhere (Doerksen, Generous' Ambiguity Revisited), this poet was deliberately reaching out to people of different viewpoints within and outside his church. Herbert scholarship is, and should be, joint enterprise. Critics who use term should explain what they mean by it. William J. Bouwsma in Encyclopaedia Britannica Online says Calvinism is the theology advanced by John Calvin ... and its development by his [Also,] doctrines and practices derived from works of Calvin and his followers.... Historian Anthony Milton, in an important book on Church of from 1600-1640, defines English Calvinism as a general sympathy with continental Reformed tradition in all its purely doctrinal aspects, and sense of identification with West European Calvinist Churches and their fortunes (8). This definition silently acknowledges that other writers, such as Bucer and Bullinger, and of course English ones, were influential in movement. Milton also recognizes that Calvinism, like other aspects of Early Modern Church of England, comprised range of views, and changed as it developed. Milton's definition of Calvinism includes Herbert, who had an enduring in success of international Protestantism (Malcolmson 21)--an interest not shared by Laudians. (1) More specifically, English Calvinism had doctrinal core of Protestant theology, emphasizing God's grace. Although Calvinism was not tied exclusively to writings of Calvin, in those writings were widely circulated and had enormous significance. According to Pettegree, tally of revised Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, 1475-1640 indicates that English editions of Calvin's works easily outstripped all other continental writers, and dwarfed production of native English theologians (281). Pettegree reports that Leedham-Green's substantial survey of books recorded in Cambridge wills, carefully analyzed, confirms the preeminent position of Calvin as dominant theological influence in Elizabethan England (280). Also, he cites Francis Higman's bibliographical studies showing that was far and away biggest market for Calvin's work in translation. …

Philip of Marnix and ‘International Protestantism’: The Fears and Hopes of a Dutch Refugee in the 1570s

This study focuses on aspirations and strategies of Philip of Marnix, one of the most famous Dutch refugees, best known as an effective and prolific counsellor to William of Orange. He served the leader of the Dutch Revolt as a publicist and a diplomat from 1568 onwards until William's death in 1584. Marnix embarked on several missions in order to convince foreign princes and other potential allies of the legitimacy of the uprising in the Netherlands against Spanish domination. Many of the contacts he established and consolidated during his travels and through his correspondence are part of a wider network that can be described as ‘international Protestantism.’ Marnix also contributed to the dynamics of European Calvinism by publishing well-translated and widely disseminated pamphlets and books on the Dutch Revolt and on confessional strife in general. This article highlights some of Marnix's fears and hopes relating to the existence and effectiveness of international Protestant solidarity as they are particularly expressed in his political writings and letters of the 1570s.

:Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch and Swedish Public Churches, 1685-1772

Acknowledgements A Note on References, Dates and Quotations Abbreviations Introduction 1. State Sermons as a Medium of Official Political Ideology 2. Israelite Parallels in the Language of Nation 3. Interaction Between the Concepts of Nation and Protestantism 4. International Protestantism and the Limits of the Nation 5. The Stereotype of Popery in Constructions of the National Community 6. Interaction Between the Concepts of Nation and Protestant Prince 7. Definitions and Redefinitions of the Nation and Fatherland 8. The Rise of Classical Patriotism in the Language of Nation 9. Associations Between Freedom and Protestantism in the Language of Nation 10. The Rise of a Commercial Nation 11. The Language of Nature in Protestant State Sermons Conclusion Appendix: 'National' as an attribute in state sermons preached in the presence of the highest English/British authorities on national anniversaries, 1685-1772 Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects Index of Places

George Herbert: A Literary Life (review)

Reviewed by: George Herbert: A Literary Life Daniel W. Doerksen Cristina Malcolmson, George Herbert: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. xxv + 175 pp. $55 cloth; $19 paper. Cristina Malcolmson's George Herbert: A Literary Life – not to be confused with her previous Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic (1999) – is a timely and welcome updating of Herbert's biography. It is one in a series of Literary Lives that "follow the outline of the writers' working lives, . . . aiming to trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing" (p. i). For that reason, perhaps, it begins with George Herbert's first writings, rather than dwelling on his childhood and family. It also features a substantial and useful "Chronology of Herbert's Life," with relevant contextual events given on facing pages. This book is timely because in the almost three decades since the publication of Amy M. Charles's Life of George Herbert (1977), significant new information and viewpoints have come to the fore. While Malcolmson admits that exactly why Herbert became first University of Cambridge Orator and then the parson of Bemerton may always remain a mystery, she proposes in this book to counter the long-standing view of Herbert as retreating from the world, and show him instead as "publicly engaged, active within an important social circle, and [to the end of his life] directly concerned with the future of world Protestantism" (p. ix). Malcolmson keeps this goal in mind as she relates Herbert's writings to their contexts, literary and historical. Her first chapter examines the Sidney-Herbert coterie (which she also dealt with in Heart-Work), showing why and how his family and religious ties influenced George's "formation as a poet" (p. 2). Thus Herbert's "answer" poems involve relationships, as she shows, to verse by Sidney, Sidney's nephew and "cultural heir" (p. 8) William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke), Benjamin Rudyerd, and Shakespeare, among others. William Herbert, the central [End Page 119] figure of this coterie and one of George Herbert's patrons, was also the "leading spokesperson" for the Protestant cause in the England of his time (p. 22). Herbert's writings while at the University of Cambridge (1612-23), Malcolmson claims, "signaled his dedication to international Protestantism, as well as his interest in high office in church or state" (p. 21). She reads his Latin poems in defense of English church ritual, Musae Responsoriae (which she dates 1620-21), as "an ambitious effort by . . . Herbert to become a spokesperson for King James and the established church" (p. 30). In keeping with the king's views to this date, he presented Puritanism in these poems not as a theological issue, but one of obedience to authority. Further, Malcolmson suggests that Herbert's Latin pacifist writings may have reflected not only a personal antipathy to war but also a "politic deference" to the views of King James (p. 39), "perhaps an opportunity to play Virgil to James's Augustus" (p. 51). At the same time these writings, and the poems to the Queen of Bohemia (recently proven to be by Herbert) show the poet's continuing commitment to international Protestantism (p. 37). However, Malcolmson can find no evidence that Herbert actually received patronage from James. Malcolmson singles out 1624 and 1627 as important dates for Herbert and his writings. In the first of these years Herbert cut off his chances of secular employment by seeking permission to be ordained deacon immediately. His reason, Malcolmson suggests, is that he wanted to avoid voting against James in Parliament, as his political relationship to the Earl of Pembroke would have required (p. 56). She goes on to claim that the poetry of The Temple reflects "issues significant to Herbert" during that year: "the problems of Arminianism and Puritanism, the importance and difficulties of a Protestant empire, and his own pursuit of patronage and employment" (pp. 56-57). Here as in Heart-Work Malcolmson notes signs of the Protestant work ethic, or doctrine of vocation, in "The Church-porch." In her view, throughout "The Church" itself Herbert "comments on contemporary controversies about theology and liturgy" (p. 60), emphasizing the Calvinist view that salvation...

"One Soul, tho' not one Soyl"?: International Protestantism and Ecumenism at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

"One Soul, tho' not one Soyl"?: International Protestantism and Ecumenism at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

No Bishop, No King, No Millennial Republic

No Bishop, No King, No Millennial Republic A. G. Roeber (bio) Mark Y. Hanley. Beyond a Christian Commonwealth: The Protestant Quarrel with the American Republic, 1830–60. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994. x 210 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds. Religion in a Revolutionary Age. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the United States Capitol Historical Society, 1994. xvii 350 pp. Notes and index. $39.50. Historians of Protestantism in what became the United States have long assumed that, sooner or later, religion drove politics. British observers in the 1770s believed, as do some British historians today, that the American Revolution was the work of Congregational and Presbyterian rascals whose machinations merely echoed the nonconformist cry, “No bishop, no king” of their forebears. Thus, patriots drew their inspiration from the evangelicals who cheered on the revival of international Protestantism that had included George Whitefield’s transatlantic tours. Doubting specialists have pointed out, with limited success, that all opponents of evangelicalism did not become Loyalists, and that most New and Old Light/Side protagonists had departed for judgment by the time of the Imperial Crisis. The suspicion remains deeply rooted, nonetheless, that a millennial marriage of republican politics and evangelical religion came to dominate the Protestant ethos of post-Revolutionary America. Patricia Bonomi’s subtle reworking of this idea in Under the Cope of Heaven (1986) provided a refined affirmation of the Revolution’s religious roots. The triumph of revolutionary dissent constitutes a real — not an imaginary — case of American exceptionalism for Bonomi, a theme she reiterates in her essay in the Hoffman-Albert collection. Her singular contribution has been to expand the horizons of historians seeking to understand eighteenth-century religion in North America beyond the earlier New England focus. Bonomi provided a synthetic and cosmopolitan perspective anchored in the proper transatlantic eighteenth-century Christian context. Whatever their disagreements, scholars now concur that this transatlantic perspective did inform the overwhelmingly Protestant ethos in which the Revolution occurred. 1 [End Page 202] Jon Butler’s alternative scenario in Awash in a Sea of Faith (1990) concurs with Bonomi’s transatlantic contextual argument, but dramatically departs from it to contend that the Revolution was a “profoundly secular event” (p. 90). Butler continues to advance (again, in an essay in the Hoffman-Albert collection) a vision of weak, imported European Protestantism in North America. Held up only by bootlegged authoritarian institutions, Euro-Protestants crushed alternative “religions” both Native American and African. The legitimacy of Euro-Protestant institutions and beliefs was called into question by a secular Enlightenment-inspired Revolution Butler sees hijacked by evangelical pirates in the early nineteenth century. That century belonged to his denizens of various sectarian and visionary Protestant hothouses. Only by the Civil War did a triumphant “mainstream” evangelical religion emerge as handmaiden to bourgeois, capitalist society. Whatever the suasive power of these two models, neither makes much room for critical distance from emerging American political culture within an increasingly parochial North American Protestantism. In the hands of the incautious, a supposed happy marriage of evangelicalism and republican politics has produced two equally bizarre images of early-nineteenth-century American Protestantism, each in its own way hostage to a millennialist theme. Either early nineteenth-century capitalist thugs emerge, the Whiggish builders of “benevolent empire” bent on patriarchal political, economic, and social dominance of both churches and states. Or, alternatively, unpleasant evangelical white males who as vulgar Jacksonians plundered environment, women and children, Native Americans, African-Americans, and Catholic immigrants remained unswayed in conscience by any critical theological distance from the political and social free-for-all created by the Revolution. Only the most marginalized, self-proclaimed prophets or persecuted emerge with a shred of moral integrity in this literature. The essays on religion and Revolution begin to question the adequacy of these scenarios. Some of the authors reflect a predictable fascination with the tried and true — evangelical revivals, New England women, slavery and African-American religion, the supposed alienation of working-class believers from mere bourgeois conformity to a Protestant ethos. Paul Conkin’s lonely piece on Priestley and Jefferson reminds that not everyone was enamored of...