Patricia Crawford argues that religion in the early modern period cannot be understood without a perception of the gendered nature of its beliefs, institutions and language. The book focuses on women and their apprehensions of God in early modern England. Contemporary religious ideology reinforced the assumption that women were inferior to men but, as Patricia Crawford shows, it was possible for some women to transcend these beliefs and profoundly influence history within a social structure which was not of their making. The book is organized around three broad themes: the role of women in...

Striving to cover a broad geographical and chronological span, and to bring new material to light, this title aims to provide an overview of religious images and iconoclasm, starting with the consequences of the Byzantine image controversy and ending with the Eastern Orthodox churches of the nineteenth century. The author argues that the image question played a large role in the divisions within European Protestantism and was intricately connected with the Eucharist controversy. He analyzes the positions of the major Protestant reformers - Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Karlstadt - on the...

The Anabaptists were at the radical, utopian edge of the Reformation, ruthlessly repressed by Catholic, Lutheran and secular authorities alike. Hans-Jurgen Goertz gives a comprehensive account of their political and religious significance, their views, and their social setting within the wider context of the Reformation. Particular attention is paid to the role and experience of women and of 'ordinary' Anabaptists in addition to those of the educated elite. Whilst the focus of the book is on Germany, extensive coverage is also given to Anabaptism in England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and...

Women in Early American Religion, 1600-1850 explores the first two centuries of America's religious history, examining the relationship between the socio-political environment, gender, politics and religion. Drawing its background from women's religious roles and experiences in England during the Reformation, the book follows them through colonial settlement, the rise of evangelicalism, the American Revolution, and the second flowering of popular religion in the nineteenth century.
Tracing the female spiritual tradition through the Puritans, Baptists and Shakers, Westerkamp argues...

The Death of Christian Britain uses the latest techniques to offer new formulations of religion and secularisation and explores what it has meant to be 'religious' and 'irreligious' during the last 200 years.

By listening to people's voices rather than purely counting heads, it offers a fresh history of de-christianisation, and predicts that the British experience since the 1960s is emblematic of the destiny of the whole of western Christianity.

Challenging the generally held view that secularization has been a long and gradual process beginning with the industrial...

Historians of the First and Second World Wars have consistently underestimated the importance of religion in Britain during the war years. Through a study of the experience of the officers and men of Britain's vast citizen armies, and also of the numerous religious agencies which ministered to them, this book shows that religion had much greater currency and influence in twentieth-century British society than has previously been realized.
Drawing on a wealth of new material from military, ecclesiastical and secular civilian archives, Snape argues that religion provided a key component of...

This compelling study presents the most comprehensive examination available of the role of religion in the army during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Through extensive analysis of official military sources, religious publications and personal memoirs, Michael Snape challenges the widely-held assumption that religion did not play a role in the British Army until the mid-Victorian period, and demonstrates that the British soldier was highly susceptible to religious influences long before the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny rendered the subject of wider public concern.

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