Search Results

This chapter discusses the struggles of the established churches outside Ireland. It explains that the recognition of the collapsed New Reformation in Ireland contributed to fundamental constitutional changes in the United Kingdom, in which a more democratic political order was born, one in which the conformity to one of the established Churches was no longer a requirement. The chapter also shows that the strong union of the Church and State seemed to be breaking up. The established Churches could no longer count on support from the Parliament, and would now need to seek cultural support. It also discusses the efforts of Sir Robert Peel (leader of Melbourne Government) to establish a new commission for the English Church reform, made up exclusively of clergymen and lay members of the Church of England.

From 1776 until approximately 1970, American Protestant clergy and academics argued that Calvinism was crucial to their nation’s political institutions and ideals. It was common among the mainstream Presbyterian groups (termed "libertarian Calvinists") to aver that Calvinism provided the only adequate basis for the American experiment of a republic based on limited government and civil liberty. This chapter examines the contortions necessary for these arguments. Then, the chapter examines the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (termed "authoritarian Calvinists"). It holds closely to the language in the original Westminster Confession, which calls upon the state to protect and foster Christian faith. Given these differing perspectives, the chapter concludes, agreeing with Philip Benedict, that Calvinism’s importance has less to do with its contributions to political theory and more to do with its role as a religion that shapes the personal and familial identities of its adherents.

This chapter deals with the continuing hopes and frustrations that the established Churches of Britain faced from 1841 to 1846. Sir Robert Peel, who was appointed Prime Minister, believed that there were real abuses that needed reform within the established Churches. His appointment offered hope to the established Churches that they would be able to gain support from Parliament. However, Peel's appointment was accompanied by other problems, including a severe downturn in the economy that resulted from poor harvests. Because of these, Peel was pressured (to increase church accommodation and Parliament support to the established Churches) by not only the church leaders, but also the parliament. Everything led to the resignation of Peel as Prime Minister, the conversion to free trade, and disruption of the established Church of Scotland.

Holland's Baltic trade flourished as never before, and skilled immigrants helped revive local industries. But prosperity raised a political issue: should Holland trade with provinces loyal to Spain? The more Holland's leaders pushed for free trade, the more confederates in the Union of Utrecht saw them as selling out the cause to boost profits. Meanwhile, Holland upheld the public supremacy of the Reformed religion. Yet Reformed religion embraced two theologies. One, based in Geneva, required a church free of state control; the other, based in Zurich, sanctioned governance of the Church by magistrates. Most Holland clergy preferred the former view, while magistrates favored the latter. Thus several towns had major conflicts over appointment of preachers; at the provincial level, each side ignored the other's pronouncements on church governance.

This chapter discusses the main purpose of this book which is to supplement the arguments regarding the nature of the Church of England and its place in society between the Restoration and the reform movements of the 1830s and 1840s. It examines three major historiographical issues — the nature of the Restoration ecclesiastical regime; the character of the clerical profession and the quality of the clergy's pastoral work; and the question of Church reform. It also evaluates the quality of the clergy and their pastoral work in the late Stuart and Hanoverian period. It examines two overarching methodological assumptions to discuss the issues mentioned in this book. It also explains the reasons of this book for focusing on the diocese of Canterbury.

The inevitable consequence of the Reformation in those parts of Europe where reform was carried out as a matter of state policy was that the existing churches had to be adapted to new liturgical requirements. In the short term, of course, many of the clergy and congregations of the new Reformed Churches were identical to those that had worshipped in the same church buildings as Catholics. Although the new forms of service enacted by statute were observed in most churches, other aspects of liturgical change, particularly in relation to church furnishings, occurred more slowly. On the whole, it was the towns where reform was carried out most quickly, and isolated rural areas where there was the most resistance to change. In parts of Wales, Catholic practices survived until the end of the 16th century.

During the first half of the 17th century the conflict over the altar position had dominated Anglican liturgical concerns. It had been generally accepted firstly that churches should in effect be two separate rooms with the chancel for the sacrament and the nave for preaching, and secondly that in the nave pulpit and reading-desk should be placed at the east end with the seats facing eastwards. These arrangements, however, were in very many churches inconvenient in practice, since the liturgical action was not clearly visible from all parts of the building, and after 1660 a number of experiments were introduced, mostly borrowing from the experience of other Reformed Churches, to create more practical liturgical arrangements. The radical experiments of the late 17th to the early 19th centuries can broadly be grouped into four main categories: the north-south rectangle, the east-west rectangle, the T-plan, and most radical of all, the circular, elliptical, or octagonal church.

In Flanders and Brabant, guilds had a share in urban government. Holland's cities were ruled by self‐perpetuating town councils. Whether brought to power by Orange, or merely adapting to new conditions, these magistrates secured their authority against challenges arising from the unsettled circumstances. The clergy of the Dutch Reformed Church, granted a monopoly on the public exercise of religion, had to accept supervision by the magistrates. Villages, no matter how large, could not claim the privileges of towns. Civic militia companies, though vital to the initial success of the Revolt, would not have a voice in civic affairs. The prince of Orange must be obeyed as commander in chief, but his writ did not run to matters of finance. Even the authority of the Lords States was limited: if a new tax was proposed, no town could be made to pay against its will.

This chapter explains Spinoza's reasons for writing and publishing the Treatise. His central goal is, as he says, to establish that the freedom to philosophize is compatible with the peace and piety of the republic, and to show that, without this freedom, peace and piety cannot be maintained. An understanding of these insights is currently blocked by superstitious forms of religion, which rely on misinterpretations of the Bible to subordinate philosophy to theology, and condemn philosophizing as politically dangerous. The Treatise will uncover the errors and suspect motivations on which these claims are based. Spinoza begins by setting out the traditional conception of superstition (espoused by Plutarch and Bacon among others) that he will discredit, and implicitly accuses the Dutch Reformed Church of upholding it. By explaining what it is directed against, he sets the stage for his own argument.

This chapter examines the debate over Church–state relations in Muscovy in the late seventeenth century. It first considers some of the key figures in the early stages of the Church reform, including the Archpriest Stefan Vonifat’ev and the Patriarch Nikon. In particular, it looks at Nikon’s attempt to raise the Russian Orthodox Church’s status vis-à-vis the state, along with his theoretical discussion of the relative powers of the patriarch and the tsar. It then turns to the archpriest Avvakum Petrovich and the so-called Old Believers, focusing on the development of his thinking about politics and his opposition to the Church reforms. It also explores Simeon Polotskii’s “Scholastic” approach to politics before discussing Sil’vestr Medvedev’s views of the transubstantiation controversy and his version of religious enlightenment as well as his tragic life. The chapter concludes with an analysis of faith and politics in the age of Peter the Great.

Spinoza now sets out to explicate the religious doctrine taught by Scripture and to reinforce his claim that it does not threaten the division between theology and philosophy or challenge the freedom to philosophize. Following a line of ecumenically inclined writers (Arminians, Socininans and Mennonites among them), the Treatise advocates a minimal theology. All that the Bible teaches is that we must love our neighbours by treating them justly and charitably. Biblical doctrine is thus compatible with religious pluralism and does not pronounce on philosophical matters. This chapter examines Spinoza's nuanced defence of this position. It explores the affective basis of his account of a truly religious life, identifies the distinctive role that he allots to tenets of faith, and traces the challenges he mounts to the theology of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Though there is a growing literature on the metropolitan support for conventional missionary activity, it is only recently that scholars have turned to consider the subject of metropolitan involvement in settler Churches. This chapter examines the nature of the flows of information and ideas, as well as men and materiel that travelled between the ‘mother Church’ and its branches in the colonies. One of the chapter’s key findings is that influence did not always run out from the metropole to the colonial periphery: he we shall see that the reorganisation of the Church’s missionary arm—the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel—was intimately linked to the reform and revival of the home Church’s institutional structures in the ‘age of reform’ period in the 1830s and 1840s. The chapter’s other broad aim is to identify the distinct contribution that the branches of the Church in England, Ireland and Scotland made to the expansion of the colonial Church. Given the range of metropolitan Anglicans who had a hand in overseas Church expansion, it is not surprising that churchmen found it difficult to establish a coherent British support base that did not impair the unity of the colonial Church.