With origins as far back as the 14th Century, Westminster School is one of the oldest in the country with a long tradition of scholarship - and outstanding results, both in academic and public life.

When Baptists in 17th-century England wanted to talk about freedom, they unfailingly began by reading the Bible-and what they found in Scripture inspired their compelling (and, ultimately, successful) arguments for religious liberty. In an age of widespread anxiety, suspicion, and hostility, these early Baptists refused to worship God in keeping with the king's command. This book is about how these early English Baptists read the Bible together and were led by that reading to the startling faith convictions-startling, at least, in the context of 17th-century England-that eventually came to define them as a distinctive type of Christians. Author Lee Canipe believes that it's not only possible for Baptists in the 21st century to recover this habit of using Scripture to articulate their faith convictions about religious freedom, but that doing so is essential to preserving our unique Christian witness. With the boundaries between church and state as contested as ever, "Loyal Dissenters" offers scholars, clergy, and laypeople a fresh look at what Baptists believe-and how we can once again learn to talk about religious liberty in distinctively Christian language.

This third and final volume of Michael Watts's study of dissent examines the turbulent times of Victorian Nonconformity, a period of faith and of doubt. Watts assesses the impacts of the major Dissenting preachers and provides insights into the various movements, such as romanticism and the higher, often German, biblical criticism. He shows that the preaching of hell and eternal damnation was more effective in recruiting to the chapels than the gentler interpretations. A major feature of the volume is a thorough analysis of surviving records of attendance at Nonconformist services. He provides fascinating accounts of Spurgeon and the other key figures of Nonconformity, including of the Salvation Army. Dr Watts also provides a fresh discussion of the contribution which Nonconformity made to the politics of mid- to late-Victorian Britain. He examines such issues of reform as Forster's Education Act of 1871, temperance, and Balfour's Education Act of 1902, and considers Nonconformist interventions in such controversies as the Bulgarian Agitation, Home Rule for Ireland, the Armenian massacres of the mid 1890s, and the Boer War. The volume concludes with the Liberal landslide in the 1906 general election, which saw probably more Nonconformists elected than any time since the era of Oliver Cromwell.

This third and final volume of Michael Watts's study of dissent examines the turbulent times of Victorian Nonconformity, a period of faith and of doubt. Watts assesses the impacts of the major Dissenting preachers and provides insights into the various movements, such as romanticism and the higher, often German, biblical criticism. He shows that the preaching of hell and eternal damnation was more effective in recruiting to the chapels than the gentler interpretations. A major feature of the volume is a thorough analysis of surviving records of attendance at Nonconformist services. He provides fascinating accounts of Spurgeon and the other key figures of Nonconformity, including of the Salvation Army. Dr Watts also provides a fresh discussion of the contribution which Nonconformity made to the politics of mid- to late-Victorian Britain. He examines such issues of reform as Forster's Education Act of 1871, temperance, and Balfour's Education Act of 1902, and considers Nonconformist interventions in such controversies as the Bulgarian Agitation, Home Rule for Ireland, the Armenian massacres of the mid 1890s, and the Boer War. The volume concludes with the Liberal landslide in the 1906 general election, which saw probably more Nonconformists elected than any time since the era of Oliver Cromwell.

This book takes the concept of repetition beyond older anthropological debates over habit, structure, or cultural continuity and demonstrates its value in attempts to comprehend the temporal, spatial and ideological fields in which contemporary social scientists must operate. Repetition has an ambiguous value in human societies. It may contribute to desired social and cultural reproduction or, equally, represent experiences of being trapped in cycles of routine and stasis. In this book, six anthropologists demonstrate the capacity of repetition to open up fertile areas of comparative ethnographic and historical work. Focusing on religious case-studies drawn from around the world, contributors ask when and how repetition is observed by interlocutors or fieldworkers. In the process, they explore the ethical, political and experiential dimensions of repetition as it operates at numerous scales of activity, ranging from intimate ritual, to forms of religious dissent, to haunting forms of historical recurrence. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.