The Evangelical Alliance, Religious Liberty, and the Evangelical Conscience in Nineteenth-Century Britain

This article explores the difficulties nineteenth-century British evangelical ecumenists faced as they attempted to develop distinctive practical initiatives that could commend widespread support across the denominational spectrum. In particular, it focuses on the nascent Evangelical Alliance's growing concern to promote religious liberty overseas. By following the debates within the Alliance about the need to pursue religious liberty and attending to the obstacles preventing such a course of action this article suggests the need to distinguish between a qualified agenda committed to securing religious rights (religious liberty) and a broader agenda committed to securing political rights (religious equality). By favouring the former, the Evangelical Alliance succeeded in developing a distinctively pan-evangelical initiative that commended relatively widespread support. Thus evangelical concern for religious liberty must be distinguished from the distinctively Nonconformist promotion of religious equality.     

Christian Capital: Singapore,Evangelical Flows and Religious Hubs

Recent scholarship has pointed out the ways in which religions are increasingly commodified, primarily through two mechanisms: the monetisation of religious objects and practices, and the materialisation and extension of religious-symbolic power through new technologies and practices. These two mechanisms of monetisation and materialisation provide very concrete ways of understanding religious commodification, but they do not provide a complete picture of how religious capital is created and sustained in the holistic context of society, city and nation considered in relation to international capital flows. “Christian Capital” includes not only the commodity, consumerist and media empires particularly associated with global-reach “megachurches”, but also the less-tangible situational, relational, human-social and influential wealth created between religious agencies and their urban-national contexts. Using the case of Christian agencies in Singapore and their strategic creation of transnational influences, this paper offers a conception of Christian capital that incorporates not only the materialisation of religious influence in terms of finances and commodities, but also its expression in less tangible but significant ways in terms of the creation of an international “brand” of Singapore Christianity.     

Green Allies: Speculative Realism,Evangelical Christianity,and Political Pluralism

This essay addresses the question of how to build political coalitions to address global warming. For speculative realists such as Levi Bryant, responding to climate change demands materialist ontologies that recognize the efficacy of things themselves, e.g. fossil fuels. And yet, I argue, Bryant does not sufficiently address the political assignment of building political coalitions with people who endorse different ontologies. To illuminate this possibility, I show how the American evangelical David Gushee arrives at similar conclusions by a different route. The essay encourages speculative realists to fold modesty into their political thinking for the sake of building coalitions with theists about matters of common concern.     

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.     

Radical (Evangelical) Democracy: The Dreams and Nightmares of Martin Luther King,Jr. and Antonio Negri

Abstract

This essay critically examines the theories of radical democracy offered by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of the beloved community and Antonio Negri's vision of the multitude. The radical democratic visions of King and Negri continue to critically inform progressive reflections on democratic theory and propel new dreams of democracy. Despite their similarities, the differences between Negri and King are substantial. I argue that Negri's dream of the multitude and King's dream of beloved community have been shaped by different conceptions of radical democracy. While Negri works out of a tradition of Italian Marxism, King works within a critical tradition of prophetic evangelicalism. Thus, the political task, according to King, is to translate Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God into a beloved community on earth. King's creative negotiation of transcendence and history provides the requisite theological and political resources to develop a truly transcendent and immanent vision of a radical democratic society that is attentive to the demands and dignity of "all God's children."     

Dwight L. Moody in Southern Ireland: Modern Evangelical Revivalism,the Protestant Minority,and the Conversion of Catholic Ireland*

Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899) established the blueprint for modern evangelical revivalism. He targeted a broad audience and so avoided contentious points of theology and local political issues. The result was that how Moody was interpreted by those who heard him is often more revealing than the content of his addresses. Moody's three evangelistic campaigns in southern Ireland (1874, 1882–1883, 1892) offer a suggestive case study of how his brand of modern revivalism was accepted and challenged in a particular context. His first tour was significant because it was the first time he had worked in a location with a Catholic majority; his second and third missions took place against a background of political unrest associated with the growing demand for Irish “Home Rule”. This article examines the effect of Moody's brand of modern revivalism on unity amongst southern Ireland's protestant minority. It also investigates the impact of Moody's missions on Catholic Ireland, and the extent to which he was able to transcend religio-political divisions. It demonstrates that Moody promoted evangelical unity yet generated friendly criticism as well as opposition from Protestants, and that the efforts to convert Catholic Ireland that he stimulated provoked a variety of responses that ranged from tolerance to outright hostility.