Anglican Evangelical Theology,c. 1820–1850: The Case of Edward Bickersteth

The period between the 1780s and the 1830s is widely acknowledged to be a formative one for Anglican Evangelical identity. It was the age of Simeon, Wilberforce, and the Clapham Sect, a time when polite culture became imbued with moral seriousness, and when pious causes came to the centre of the political stage. Yet while it is equally well known that the late 1820s witnessed a significant change in mood and direction, prompted by the passing of an earlier generation of leaders, missionary failure and theological fragmentation, the Anglican Evangelical movement in the second quarter of the nineteenth century has received comparatively little attention. Evangelicals appear frequently in work on the Oxford Movement and Broad Church, but often only as two‐dimensional reactionaries ripe for the protagonists to trample. Edward Bickersteth (1786–1850) is therefore a particularly interesting figure, having risen to prominence in the 1810s and 1820s but in the 1830s and 1840s becoming one of the movement's acknowledged leaders. By showing how the coming man of the earlier period negotiated rockier territory later on, this article seeks to explore not just the changes but also the striking continuities in Evangelical thought. For even if, as Grayson Carter has argued in an excellent recent study, the ecclesiastical changes of the 1820s and 1830s forced Anglican Evangelicals, like others, to reconsider their place in the Church of England, Bickersteth was among the most prominent of the majority who, while unhappy with developments in politics and theology, remained loyal to their Church.     

Balancing and Limiting Episcopal Power: Bishop Thomas Barlow’s Use of Common Law in Disputes with Arminian Anglican Clerics

Thomas Barlow was a Reformed theologian simultaneously fighting on three fronts against Catholic, Dissenting Protestant and Arminian Anglican opponents. The first two of these groups threatened the Church of England from the outside, while the last group was transforming Anglican doctrine through its domination of the most important posts in the episcopal hierarchy. Barlow could not argue directly against the power of bishops without assisting the external opponents, yet he had to find a way to prevent other bishops from interfering in his continued support for Reformed theology. In order to reduce their power within the Church of England, Barlow had to look outside the institution for ways to limit his superior’s power. This essay examines two arguments in which Barlow ventured into polemics about the secular law of England in an effort to maintain limits on his Anglican opponents’ exercise of power.     

A Vision of an Anglican Imperialism: The Annual Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1714

This article examines the first two decades of the oldest continuing Anglican missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1710. It argues that, contrary to the prevailing historiography of the British missionary movement, this early eighteenth‐century society was genuinely evangelistic and marks the real beginning of that movement. The society also marks the beginning of a formal, institutional engagement by the Church of England with the British Empire. In the Society's annual anniversary sermons, and influenced by the reports sent by its ordained missionaries in North America, the Church of England's metropolitan leadership in England constructed an Anglican discourse of empire. In this discourse the Church of England began to fashion the identities of colonial populations of Indigenous peoples, white colonists, and Black slaves through a theological Enlightenment understanding.     

Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and the Eucharist: Review and Prospects

This article reviews the history of the important dialogue on the Eucharist by the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) underway since the second half of the twentieth century and continuing into the present. Agreed statements from the commission addressing the Eucharist and comments from various bodies of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church are critically reviewed. Prospects for future dialogue are assessed and suggestions made about areas that may be the subject of future dialogue.     

Anglican Church Expansion and the Recruitment of Colonial Clergy for New South Wales and the Cape Colony,c. 1790–1850

This article provides the first study of the recruitment of colonial Anglican clergymen in the sixty or so years after the establishment of the first colonial Anglican bishoprics in the late eighteenth century. While studies on the social and educational backgrounds of missionaries abound, the clergymen who ministered primarily to European settlers have been largely overlooked. Nothing comparable to the Clergy of the Church of England Database exists for colonial clergy. This article examines the educational backgrounds of those recruited for service in New South Wales and the Cape Colony and highlights the problems which both the Colonial Office and high churchmen faced when they tried to recruit men from particular church parties and educational institutions. The evidence presented here questions the established chronology of Anglican Church expansion, and casts new light on the tensions which existed in the colonial churches in the first half of the nineteenth century.     

Reviews

M ircea E liade : Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe, translated by Willard Trask.
S. G. F. B randon : Religion in Ancient History. Studies in Ideas, Men and Events.
S idney R. P ackard : Twelfth Century Europe, an Interpretative Essay.
A. L ynn M artin : Henry HI and the Jesuit Politicians.
T ai L iu : Discord in Zion: The Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution 1640-1660.
J ohn M iller : Popery and Politics in England, 1660-1688.
W alter E bsworth : Pioneer Catholic Victoria.
W. P. M orrell : The Anglican Church in New Zealand.
C laude W elch : Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Volume I, 1799-1870.
D enis G rundy : 'Secular, Compulsory and Free'. The Education Act of 1872.
A lbert M arrin : The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War.
J ohn M offitt : Journey to Gorakhpur. Reflections on Hindu Spirituality.     

Reviews

O tto N eugebauer : Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus.
R obert B anks : Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting.
R. N. S wanson : Universities, Academics and the Great Schism.
P atrick C ollinson : Archbishop Grindal, 1519-1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church.
P hyllis M ack C rew : Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569.
R obert L. N ichols and T heofanis G eorge S tavrou (eds): Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime.
W illiam J. C allahan and D avid H iggs (eds): Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century.
N orman S. M oon : Education for Ministry: Bristol Baptist College 1679–1979.
H arry W. P aul : The Edge of Contingency: French Catholic Reaction to Scientific Change from Darwin to Duhem.
A llan M. G rocott : Convicts, Clergymen and Churches: Attitudes of Convicts and Ex-Convicts Towards the Churches and Clergy in New South Wales from 1788 to 1851.
R alph M. W iltgen : The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania
D avid W etherell : Reluctant Mission: The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, 1891–1942.     

Provincialising God: Anglicanism,Place, and the Colonisation of Australian Land

This article investigates the importance of Anglican religion and the physical structures of faith to how some believers understood their surrounds in a British settler colony. Its central figure, William Grant Broughton, was head of the Church of England in Australia during the 1830s and 1840s. At the time when the position of the Church was changing both at home and abroad, it was his responsibility to establish the physical and spiritual presence of Anglicanism throughout the colony. He faced the particular challenges of negotiating the Church's formal relationship to the land and Anglicanism's cultural contribution to settler notions of local place and community. In meeting these challenges, Broughton “provincialised God” by articulating the Anglican faith with consequences specific to his Australian context and particularly to the British colonisation of Aboriginal territory.     

The Church of England and the First Vatican Council

In 1870 the First Vatican Council defined the dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility. It has been claimed that in England this development was "greeted with virtual silence" until the publication of W. E. Gladstone's The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance in 1874. This article fills a gap in the historiography by showing that, in the years preceding the appearance of Gladstone's pamphlet, leaders of the Church of England elaborated a substantial case in opposition to the decrees, and that there were Anglican initiatives to promote international opposition to them.     

English Evangelicals,Protestant National Identity,and Anglican Prayer Book Revision, 1927–1928

This paper examines English Anglican and Free Church evangelical reactions to the Church of England's Prayer Book revision proposals in 1927–1928, arguing that their responses reveal the resilience of Protestant national identity and anti‐Catholicism within English evangelicalism during this period. The concept of a Protestant nation, reformed heritage and Protestant constitution remained integral to the English evangelical identity. The robust “no‐popery” response of evangelicals in 1927–1928 points to the durability of the Protestant national narrative in English culture and society beyond the nineteenth century and suggests that the liberal Anglican vision of a broadly Christian national identity had a significant ideological rival in the interwar period.     

Why Worldwide Bible Translation Grows Exponentially

The number of languages into which the Bible has been translated has grown exponentially during the past 2,300 years. The history of Bible translation can be divided into three periods of growth, each with its distinct limiting and driving forces. In the low‐growth period between 260 BCE and 1814 CE growth was constrained by the rise of Islam and later by the information monopoly of the Catholic Church. The year 1815 was the inflection point, at which annual growth rates rose from below 1 to above 1 per cent. The century 1815–1914 was a period of substantial growth due to the co‐occurrence of three driving forces: Christian revivalism, internationalisation, and industrialisation. This was followed by a third period—the era of explosive growth between 1915 and today—in which information technology and the organisational structure of translation agencies have spurred growth. An array of multinational organisations of Anglo‐Saxon origin have created a quasi‐monopoly for worldwide Bible translation. The exponential growth of worldwide Bible translation can be modelled by a mathematical function. Using this function and assuming the continuation of current trends, it is possible to project the end of the history of pioneer Bible translation sometime between 2026 and 2031.     

The Anglican Understanding of Nazism 1933-1945: Placing the Church of England's Response to the Holocaust in Context

This article seeks to revise the understanding of the Churchof England's response to the Holocaust by placing it in thecontext of the Anglican understanding of the Nazi state as awhole. Exploring these perceptions from 1933, it is argued thatthe Anglican community consistently understood Nazism as primarilyan anti-Christian force, which in turn prevented the churchfrom understanding the import of Nazi anti-semitism. In doingso, this article illuminates both the understanding of Europeanpolitics within the Church of England up to and including theSecond World War and, as a contribution to the study of bystandersto the Holocaust, further explains British reactions to themurder of the European Jews.     

Propaganda in Stone: Medieval Style in 17th Century Anglican Churches

It has long been realised that it was not until a long time after it was deployed in secular architecture in England that the Renaissance style was used systematically in English church building. The use of Perpendicular Gothic continued until the middle of the 17th century at least. Among those churches which used Gothic style, however, was smaller number of churches which did not use the Perpendicular version, but deployed motifs going back to the 14th century, notably in window tracery. It is suggested here that these features were included in the building of churches under James I and Charles I and to the 1660s in order to reinforce a particular view that the Anglican Church had a special place within the story of the Reformation in general.     

An Anglican Clergyman on the Frontier: Benjamin Glennie on the Darling Downs 1848–1860

Benjamin Glennie was an Anglican clergyman on Queensland's Darling Downs from 1851 to 1876. From 1848 until 1860 he kept a diary of his ministry. Using this diary as its primary source, this article considers how Anglicanism was fostered in a frontier society. It argues that being a clergyman in a frontier society was arduous work. Environmental and social conditions made clerical work considerably more challenging than in places were the Church of England enjoyed the privileges of Establishment. Furthermore, the attitude towards religion on the part of frontier settlers is examined. Religious practice was compromised by the exigencies of frontier life, and adherence to religious forms and rituals did not always conform to clerical expectations.     

Reviews

Book review in this Article
M. J. V ermaseren : C ybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult.
J. W ytzes : Der letzte Kampf des Heidentums in Rom (Etudes preliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'empire romain, 56).
C harles S aumagne : Saint Cyprien, Eveque de Carthage,'Pape'd'Afrique (248–258): Contribution a Vetude des'persecutions'de Dece et de Valerian (Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientirique: Etudes d'Antiquites Africaines).
G erald B onner (ed.): Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede.
Robert T. Farrell (ed.), Bede and Anglo-Saxon England: Papers in Honour of the 1300th Anniversary of the Birth of Bede, given at Cornell University in 1973 and 1974
B rian H eeney : A Different Kind of Gentleman: Parish Clergy as Professional Men in Early and Mid-Victorian England.
A. D. G ilbert : Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740–1914.
B ernard R eardon : Liberalism and Tradition: Aspects of Catholic Thought in Nineteenth-Century France.
O wen C hadwick : Catholicism and History: The Opening of the Vatican Archives (The Herbert Hensley Lectures in the University of Oxford).
J. S. G regory : Church and State.     

Ordained Ministry in Maori Christianity, 1853–1900

From 1853 an ordained clergy emerged in the Protestant (but not the Catholic) churches founded by missionary organisations in New Zealand in the first half of the nineteenth century. Ordained indigenous ministers succeeded and largely superseded an earlier large force of lay "teachers." Although the Maori churches might in other circumstances have been seen as progressing towards self–reliance and autonomy, the colonial context of the second half of the nineteenth century confined them and their clergy to a restricted place in the ecclesiastical life of New Zealand. The transition from "teachers" to "ministers" in the Church Missionary Society (Anglican) and Wesleyan missions is examined, and a study is made of the place of indigenous ministers in the Maori Anglican and Wesleyan churches, the Mormon church, and the Maori religious movements such as Ringatu.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Lynette Olson, ed., Religious Change, Conversion and Culture Tord Fornberg and David Hellholm, eds, Texts and Contexts: BiblicalTexts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of theChristians in the Second Century Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Divine Domesticity: Augustine of Thagasteto Teresa of Avila W. David Myers, ‘Poor Sinning Folk’: Confession and Conscience in Counter‐Reformation Germany A. Lynn Martin, Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease inthe 16th Century Francis Edwards, SJ, Robert Persons: The Biography of an ElizabethanJesuit, 1546‐1610 Peter Kaufman, Prayer, Despair, and Drama. ElizabethanIntrospection Nigel Aston, ed., Religious Change in Europe, 1650‐1914: Essaysfor John McManners Alan P. F. Sell, John Locke and the Eighteenth‐Century Divines B. W. Young: Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth‐Century England, Theological Debate from Locke to Burke Simon Ross Valentine, John Bennet and the Origins of Methodismand the Evangelical Revival in England Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican HighChurchmanship, 1760‐1857 Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus Adrian Desmond, Huxley: Evolution’s High Priest M. Gauvreau and N. Christie, A Full‐Orbed Christianity: TheProtestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900‐1940 M. R. MacGinley, A Dynamic of Hope: Institutes of Women Religiousin Australia Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Ursula Frayne: A biography Antony Copley, Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contactand Conversion in Late‐Colonial India Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Religions of China in Practice     

Four Decades of “Discreet” Charismata: The Catholic Apostolic Church in Australia 1863–1900

For some years, the historiography of Australian Pentecostalism has been dominated by the belief that Pentecostalism came to Australia in 1909 through the agency of Sarah Jane Lancaster who had, in turn, been influenced by news of overseas events. There had, apparently, been little or no influence in the Australian context by such groups as the Catholic Apostolic Church, which formed in Britain in 1835, in the wake of Edward Irving's proto‐Pentecostal theology. Although members of the Catholic Apostolic Church arrived in Melbourne in the 1850s, the general view was that they had by then abandoned their earlier pursuit of the charismata. In 2012, I argued (based on a limited sample of evidence) that the adherents of the Catholic Apostolic Church in Australia both taught and practised the charismata throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. This evidence is contained in the Angels’ Report Books, located in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Since then, the Bradford collection has been fully digitised, thereby allowing a comprehensive review of the Catholic Apostolic Church's charismatic activity and further evaluation of the Lancaster hypothesis. The significance of this research is that it allows a considerable re‐framing of the pre‐history of Australian Pentecostalism, demonstrating that the Catholic Apostolic Church taught and practised glossolalia, prophecy and divine healing through the last four decades of the nineteenth century.     

Anglo‐Saxon attitudes: In search of the origins of English racism

In this article I examine the attitudes of the dominant ethnic group in Anglo‐Saxon England, the Germanic ‘settlers’, to the subordinate group, the indigenous British. 1 confine myself to the earlier period, before the tenth century, because the British population of England has disappeared from the historical record by that time. This probably means they had been absorbed into Anglo‐Saxon society and were no longer recognised as a distinctive group. Then, partly by means of a comparison with white English attitudes to black people today, I ask whether Anglo‐Saxon attitudes constituted, in modem terms, a racist ideology, and conclude that they did. Realising that this question will be held by some historians to be illegitmate, I finish by considering why they might take this view, and suggesting that racism has in fact been part of English national identity from the beginning.     

Reviews

Book reviews in this Article: Hans von Campenhausen : Tradition and Life in the Church Robert Meredith : The Politics of the Universe: Edward Beecher, Abolition and Orthodoxy. Bertram Wyatt -Brown : Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery. Patrick O'Farrell : The Catholic Church in Australia: A Short History, 1788-1967. Lillian G. Keys : Philip Viard, Bishop of Wellington. Peter G. Gowing : Islands Under the Cross, The Story of the Church in the Philippines. Kalman H. Silvert (Ed.): Churches and States: The Religious Institution and Modernization.