The Broad Church: A Biography of a Movement is an account of the origins and directions of the Broad Church liberal movement of the 19th century. Author Tod Jones provides readers with a unique approach to the movement, illuminating the complex web of friendships and mutual influences that made it such a social and cultural power in Victorian England, as well as providing a comparative analysis of its principal thinkers.

"The Spiritual Lives series features biographies of prominent men and women whose eminence is not primarily based on a specifically religious contribution. Each volume provides a general account of the figure's life and thought, while giving special attention to his or her religious contexts, convictions, doubts, objections, ideas, and actions. Many leading politicians, writers, musicians, philosophers, and scientists have engaged deeply with religion in significant and resonant ways that have often been overlooked or underexplored. Some of the volumes will even focus on men and women who were lifelong unbelievers, attending to how they navigated and resisted religious questions, assumptions, and settings. The books in this series will therefore recast important figures in fresh and thought-provoking ways"--

Chronic Vigour is a study of the development of Christian thought and the doctrine of Providential Evolution. The author argues that the renovation of Anglican theology, as a response to Darwin's evolutionary theory, actually began at the moment of Darwin's first publication of The Origin of Species. Chronic Vigour is unique because it examines a school of clergymen who knew Darwin and corresponded with him. The book demonstrates how these clergymen came to endorse Darwinian biology as early as 1884 in Britain. It places the history of the principle of 'providential evolution' squarely in its English context. The book consists of five chapters. The first chapter is devoted to Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), the Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and the leader of the Tractarian movement. The second chapter evaluates the religious proposals which were offered within the Church itself as a direct reaction to biological evolution. In the third chapter, the author investigates St. George Jackson Mivart (1827-1900), the key person to generate the doctrine of Providential evolution. The subject of the fourth chapter is the Reverend Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), who was the model of the progressive Victorian parson and the first Anglican priest to be an evolutionist. Finally, chapter five brings together many of the book's themes by examining Bishop Frederick Temple's (1821-1902) contributions to the providential evolution cause.