Marks the centenary of the Church in Wales and critically assesses landmarks in its evolution.

This volume is an essential reference guide that draws together an impressive collection of academics and religious practitioners to map out for the first time the religious multiplicity and diversity of Wales. For the first 1,500 years or so of its existence, the Christian Church in Wales was a unified entity. The Welsh Church, initially Celtic, but then Roman Catholic, held a virtual monopoly over religious life and belief in the country. The 16th-century Reformation ended the notion of a monolithic Christendom; the proliferation of Protestant sects guaranteed that competition and variety would be the norm. By charting the gradual proliferation of religious communities in Wales, from the 17th to the 21st centuries, this volume seeks to dispel many of the myths of a monochrome Christian, Protestant, or even Nonconformist Wales. Each chapter also uniquely examines the persistence of faith, often in surprising places, in post-Christian Wales. The following religious institutions are discussed: The Church in Wales * Independents (Congregationalists) * Baptists * The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) * Roman Catholicism * Calvinistic Methodism * Wesleyan Methodism * The Moravian Church * Unitarianism * Salvation Army * Pentecostalism * United Reform Church * Seventh-Day Adventism * The Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) * Jehovah's Witnesses * Evangelicalism * Judaism * Islam * Sikhism * Baha'i Faith * The Ecumenical Dimension. [Subject: History, Welsh Studies, Religious Studies]

A comprehensive study of the religious establishment in Wales and its impact on Welsh society, Sir Glanmore Williams' The Welsh Church from Reformation to Disestablishment, 1603-1920 is an important contribution to the study of Welsh history and its relation to the history of Britain as a whole.

This first full-length theological study of sources from early medieval Wales traces common Celtic features in early Welsh religious literature. The author explores the origins of the earliest Welsh tradition in the fusion of Celtic primal religion with primitive Christianity, and traces some considerable Irish influence. These specific Celtic spiritual emphases are examined in the religious poetry of the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Book of Taliesin and the Poets of the Princes, and in prose texts such as The Food of the Soul and the Life of Beuno. Many of these Welsh texts appear here in English translation for the first time.

The evangelical or Methodist revival had a major impact on Welsh religion, society and culture, leading to the unprecedented growth of Nonconformity by the nineteenth century, which established a very clear difference between Wales and England in religious terms. Since the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist movement did not split from the Church to form a separate denomination until 1811, it existed in its early years solely as a collection of local society meetings. By focusing on the early societies in south-west Wales, this study examines the grass roots of the eighteenth-century Methodist movement, identifying the features that led to its subsequent remarkable success. At the heart of the book lie the experiences of the men and women who were members of the societies, along with their social and economic background and the factors that attracted them to the Methodist cause.

A one-volume history of Christianity in Wales, from its Roman origins to the present.

First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.

It is a study of the relationship between identity and religion in women’s lives in Wales today. It will help the reader have a better and more comprehensive understanding of the religious context in Wales to the present day. It will introduce the reader to theological and religious themes as well as reflections on identity in the work of several key female Welsh writers – Menna Elfyn, Jasmine Donahaye, Jam Morris, Charlotte Williams and Mererid Hopwood. It will help the reader to engage with issues of Welsh identity and religion and gain insight into challenges facing the churches today and engage with the lived experience of women in Wales.

This highly successful, illustrated Pocket Guide has been revised and expanded. the Celts to the invasion by Romans and Normans, the conquest by Edward I of England, the passage of the Acts of Union, the impact of the Reformation, Puritanism and Methodism, the effects of the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions and the changes in political, social and economic life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. historical sites, a glossary of terms and a list of important dates are included, making this an ideal introductory study for the general reader.