Here leading religious historians examine the ways anticlericalism manifested itself in Britain.

Recent debates about the definition of national identities in Britain, along with discussions on the secularisation of Western societies, have brought to light the importance of a historical approach to the notion of Britishness and religion. This book explores anti-Catholicism in Britain and its Dominions, and forms part of a notable revival over the last decade in the critical historical analysis of anti-Catholicism. It employs transnational and comparative historical approaches throughout, thanks to the exploration of relevant original sources both in the United Kingdom and in Australia and Canada, several of them untapped by other scholars. It applies a 'four nations' approach to British history, thus avoiding an Anglocentric viewpoint.

Victorian Christianity and Emigrant Voyages to British Colonies c.1840 - c.1914 considers the religious component of the nineteenth-century British and Irish emigration experience. It examines the varieties of Christianity adhered to by most British and Irish emigrants in the nineteenth century, and consequently taken to their new homes in British settler colonies. Rowan Strong explores a dimension of this emigration history that has been overlooked by scholars--the development of an international emigrants' chaplaincy by the Church of England that ministered to Anglicans, Nonconformists, as well as others, including Scandinavians, Germans, Jews, and freethinkers. Using the sources of this emigrants' chaplaincy, Strong also makes extensive use of the shipboard diaries kept by emigrants themselves to give them a voice in this history. Using these sources to look at the British and Irish emigrant voyages to new homes, this study provides an analysis of the Christianity of these emigrants as they travelled by ship to British colonies. Their ships were floating villages that necessitated and facilitated religious encounters across denominational and even religious boundaries. It argues that the Church of England provided an emigrants' ministry that had the greatest longevity, breadth, and international structure of any Church in the nineteenth century. The book also examines the principal varieties of Christianity espoused by most British emigrants, and argues this religion was more central to their identity and, consequently, more significant in settler colonies than many historians have often hitherto accepted. In this way, the Church of England's emigrant chaplaincy made a major contribution to the development of a British world in settler colonies of the empire.

Henry VIII's decision to declare himself supreme head of the church in England, and thereby set himself in opposition to the authority of the papacy, had momentous consequences for the country and his subjects. At a stroke people were forced to reconsider assumptions about their identity and loyalties, in rapidly shifting political and theological circumstances. Whilst many studies have investigated Catholic and Protestant identities during the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary, much less is understood about the processes of religious identity-formation during Henry's reign.

The 1960s were a time of explosive religious change. In the Christian churches it was a time of innovation, from the 'new theology' and 'new morality' of Bishop Robinson to the evangelicalism of the Charismatic Movement, and of charismatic leaders, such as Pope John XXIII and Martin Luther King. But it was also a time of rapid social and cultural change when Christianity faced challenges from Eastern religions, from Marxism and feminism, and above all from new 'affluent' lifestyles. Hugh McLeod tells in detail, using oral history, how these movements and conflicts were experienced in England, but because the Sixties were an international phenomenon he also looks at other countries, especially the USA and France. McLeod explains what happened to religion in the 1960s, why it happened, and how the events of that decade shaped the rest of the 20th century.

Examines the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and the nature of that Enlightenment itself. A tribute to the work of the late Justin Champion, this volume explores the radical religious and political ideas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England which were at the heart of Champion's intellectual contributions. Drawing on the debates and upheavals that dominated the period from the British Civil Wars to the mid-eighteenth century, the essays in this collection interrogate the challenging relationship between politics and religion which prompted what Champion called a 'Crisis of Christianity'. Diverse perspectives on that crisis are reconstructed, encompassing the experiences of republicans and radicals, philosophers and historians, atheists and clergymen. Through these individuals, a complex discourse which defies easy categorisation is recovered, but which speaks to central discussions concerning the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and indeed the nature of that Enlightenment itself.

The fullest account yet of the British home front in the First World War and how war changed Britain forever.

In Parish Clergy Wives in Elizabethan England, Anne Thompson shifts the emphasis from the institution of clerical marriage to the people and personalities involved. Women who have hitherto been defined by their supposed obscurity and unsuitability are shown to have anticipated and exhibited the character, virtues, and duties associated with the archetypal clergy wife of later centuries. Through adept use of an extensive and eclectic range of archival material, this book offers insights into the perception and lived experience of ministers’ wives. In challenging accepted views on the social status of clergy wives and their role and reception within the community, new light is thrown on a neglected but crucial aspect of religious, social, and women’s history.

Reformation Fictions rehabilitates a body of little-known Elizabethan texts. It takes some twenty polemical Protestant dialogues written predominantly by puritan clerics, and for the first time gives them a literary, historicist and, to a lesser extent, theological reading.

For many generations, Guy Fawkes and his gunpowder plot, the 'Man in the Iron Mask' and the 'Devils of Loudun' have offered some of the most compelling images of the early modern period. Conspiracies, real or imagined, were an essential feature of early modern life, offering a seemingly rational and convincing explanation for patterns of political and social behaviour. This volume examines conspiracies and conspiracy theory from a broad historical and interdisciplinary perspective, by combining the theoretical approach of the history of ideas with specific examples from the period. Each contribution addresses a number of common themes, such as the popularity of conspiracy theory as a mode of explanation through a series of original case studies. Individual chapters examine, for example, why witches, religious minorities and other groups were perceived in conspiratorial terms, and how far, if at all, these attitudes were challenged or redefined by the Enlightenment. Cultural influences on conspiracy theory are also discussed, particularly in those chapters dealing with the relationship between literature and politics. As prevailing notions of royal sovereignty equated open opposition with treason, almost any political activity had to be clandestine in nature, and conspiracy theory was central to interpretations of early modern politics. Factions and cabals abounded in European courts as a result, and their actions were frequently interpreted in conspiratorial terms. By the late eighteenth century it seemed as if this had begun to change, and in Britain in particular the notion of a 'loyal opposition' had begun to take shape. Yet the outbreak of the French Revolution was frequently explained in conspiratorial terms, and subsequently European rulers and their subjects remained obsessed with conspiracies both real and imagined. This volume helps us to understand why.