From the moment of its arrival in Britain in 1852, modern spiritualism became hugely popular among all sections of society. As well as offering mysterious and entertaining seance phenomena, spiritualism was underpinned by a belief that the living could communicate with the departed and even come to know what life after death looked like. This book, offering the first detailed account of the theology of spiritualism, examines what happened when the Church of England, itself already grappling with questions about the nature of the afterlife, met with such a vibrant and confident...

Joseph Butler (1692-1752) is perhaps Britain's most powerful and original moral philosopher. He exercised a profound influence over the contemporary Protestant Churches, the English moralists and the Scottish philosophical school but his theory of the -affections-, grounded in Newtonian metaphysics and presenting an account of human psychology, also set the terms of engagement with questions of education, slavery, missions and even labour relations. In the nineteenth-century English-speaking world he was an authority of first resort for Evangelicals, Tractarians, philosophers, scientists,...

Revelation Restored is a study of apocalyptic thought in the later seventeenth century in England. It explores an under-examined aspect of early modern British history: despite the prominence of millenarian beliefs in historians' explanations of the early modern English church and state up to 1660, little has been said about these convictions in the years following the Restoration. The examination of applications of prophetic language and interpretation to explain the events in England from 1660 to 1700 illustrates their continued capacity to comprehend ecclesiastical and political...

This volume makes a considerable contribution to the understanding of twentieth-century Anglicanism and evangelicalism. It includes an expansive introduction which both engages with recent scholarship and challenges existing narratives. The book locates the diverse Anglican evangelical movement in the broader fields of the history of English Christianity and evangelical globalisation. Contributors argue that evangelicals often engaged constructively with the wider Church of England, long before the 1967 Keele Congress, and displayed a greater internal party unity than has previously been...

The Primitive Methodist Connexion's mature social character may have been working-class, but this did not reflect its social origins.

This book explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century, a period which marked a critical moment of transition in their spiritual, political and intellectual culture. It is based on the experiences of the English Catholic baronet, Grand Tourist and politician Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745-1810). Gascoigne was born on the Continent into a devout Catholic family based in Yorkshire; however, following an unusual Continental upbringing and extensive series of Grand Tours to the courts of Catholic Europe, he would abjure his faith for...