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A new episode in the history of spiritual autobiography opened in the late 1730s with the advent of transatlantic Evangelical Revival, and the distinguishing characteristic of this revival or ‘work’ in all its manifestations was the increased incidence of the conversion of individuals. Unlike earlier periods of heightened religious fervour, the revival was uniquely concentrated in time and extended across space. Changes in the North Atlantic world helped to create ‘modern’ conditions for this phenomenon, particularly with the rapid spread of religious news through itinerancy, letter-writing, and the periodical press and the more extensive movement of people, goods, and ideas in the period generally. Includes the case study of the early evangelical Joseph Humphreys—since Humphreys’s experience illustrates how the larger Evangelical Revival was itself constituted by individual conversion experiences, and how these experiences so often compelled converts to retell their life’s story from the beginning, even venturing sometimes to do so in print before an anonymous public.

Very few of the early leaders of the Evangelical Revival were separatists in principle. The most obvious point of conflict between early Evangelical clergymen and the Establishment came over the issue of Church order. The call to ‘go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ was not easily obeyed within the legal confines of the Church of England, and early Evangelical clergymen often found themselves driven to adopt evangelistic expedients that conflicted with existing Anglican practice or rule. There were a number of points of potential conflict — both ideological and ecclesiastical — which often forced even loyal establishmentarian Evangelical clerics to consider the grounds for their allegiance to the state church. One problem was the primary issue of obtaining ordination. Another problem was episcopal discipline, which could be brought to bear on disorderly Evangelicals. A final anxiety-inducing factor was the Church's patronage system. Most of the Evangelical clergy avoided secession and remained within the Established Church.

During the 1820s, the spiritual and intellectual focus of the Evangelical Revival began to shift back to Oxford University. The intense political and religious excitement at Oxford accompanying the Reform Bill crisis and the ‘constitutional revolution’ of 1828–1832 gave rise to what has often been characterized as a golden age, enlivened by political intrigue, spiritual richness, and uncertainty. Of the diverse manifestations of this effervescence, the Oxford Movement is the most obvious and the best chronicled. Yet those at the other end of the Anglican spectrum, the Oxford Evangelicals, were also experiencing conflicts, both external and internal. Although overshadowed in Oxford by High Churchmanship, Evangelicalism nevertheless made its presence felt in the university during the 1820s. Seen in the intense atmosphere of Oxford in the late 1820s and early 1830s, Evangelicalism could be understood as given over to eccentricity, waywardness, and irregularity; it could be plausibly seen as high or hyper in its Calvinism and antinomianism and extremely ambivalent about, if not actively disloyal to, the formularies of the Church of England.

Eighteenth-century England presented a picture of substantial religious diversity. The Restoration Church of England had not regained all the ground lost after the Civil War, but despite some evidence of laxity among its clergy and institutions, the Church of the eighteenth century was not moribund. Roman Catholics and the various groups of Protestant Dissenters pursued an active independent existence through the century, but some of the latter (like some sections of the Church of England) were subject to doctrinal heterodoxy. The Evangelical Revival that encompassed the Church of England and established Dissent, as well as spawning new denominations, was a reaction against spiritual and theological laxity, and elevated the doctrine of grace in preference to High Church religious austerities.

This chapter draws together the conclusions of the study. It notes the continued activity of Reformed writers into the eighteenth century, despite the opposition which they faced from the Arminian majority. Whilst acknowledging that there were also many other areas of disagreement, it argues that the later Stuart Church cannot be understood without reference to the continuing debate between Reformed theologians and their Arminian contemporaries. It suggests that acknowledging the continuing vitality of the Reformed tradition after the Restoration is key to understanding the Evangelical revival. It also suggests that the fact that Anglicanism was a contested tradition throughout its formative period is relevant to wider contemporary discussions about Anglican identity.

The chief origins of the Evangelical Revival are to be found in the Church of England. A sizeable proportion of the growing band of ‘Gospel clergymen’ still stayed within the Church into which they were ordained. These came to be known as Evangelical clergymen, a title that taxonomically distinguished them from the ‘Methodism’ of the more irregular evangelical bodies. In historical categorization, ‘Evangelical’ has come to be equated with this large body of Christians who subscribed to a theology and spirituality characterized by the general evangelical attributes of conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism, but who practised their piety within the State Church. If Evangelicalism produced few students of ecclesiology to compare with those of the Oxford Movement, nevertheless Evangelicals, as aggressive and innovative evangelists, were forced constantly to come to terms with ecelesiological issues in ways seldom faced by the ordinary incumbent who took the existing ecclesiastical order and status quo for granted. Central to Evangelical ecclesiology was the idea of the ‘Church of Christ’.

This chapter deals with Hannah More's religious conversion, which is seen as part of the wider story of the 18th century Evangelical revival. The preachers who most influenced her were Thomas Scott and the former slave-trader, John Newton. In 1782, she attempted to bring together the two halves of her life by publishing Sensibility (dedicated to Frances Boscawen) and Sacred Dramas. In the late 1780s, she became involved with the abolitionist circle around Sir Charles and Lady Middleton and Elizabeth Bouverie at Teston in Kent. She became friends with William Wilberforce and her poem, Slavery (1788), was timed to coincide with the start of the campaign to abolish the slave trade. At the same time she became part of the growing movement for the reformation of manners when she published Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society in support of the newly founded Proclamation Society.

This chapter begins by observing that the historiography of the post-Restoration period has tended to marginalise the Anglican Reformed tradition. It suggests that this is the result of a twin pressure from those, on the one hand, who wish to argue for the increasingly unitary nature of Anglicanism as the 17th century wore on, and those, on the other, who are defending the idea of an Evangelical revival in the 18th century of doctrinal emphases abandoned after the Commonwealth. The chapter argues aginst this trend that the Anglican Reformed were a significant and coherent group within the later Stuart church. Heavily represented within Oxford University, and with numerous representatives amongst the Church of England's bishops, the Anglican Reformed exercised a significant influence over the theological debates of this period, and preserved their tradition as a viable theological option for Anglicans well into the 18th century.

Chapter one places the Evangelical Revival in its European context especially the birth and significance of Methodism and the formation of missionary societies to spread the Gospel to Africa. Evangelicalism overlapped chronologically and ideologically with the growth in momentum of the anti-slavery movement in the 1790s. This chapter highlights how Sierra Leone emerged as early prototype of an African settlement that focused on agricultural industry and Christianity, a model that missionaries of all denominations tried to emulate in some format throughout the nineteenth century. The chapter also explores how the social geography of the Cape Colony delimited pioneer missionary work between 1799 and 1834, particularly the work of the London Missionary Society. Early LMS evangelical work, by fusing African political advocacy with evangelism, left a legacy the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society tried to distance itself from when they arrived on the scene in the 1820s.

To understand Edwards's theology of revival, it is important to interpret his revival writings in chronological order. Early writings, such as Faithful Narrative, are optimistic in tone and aimed primarily at cautioning detractors not to reject them because of particular external features. Over time, the writings become more tentative and are directed toward those who trusted in their exalted spiritual experiences. Yet throughout his life he always sought to provide a theology of revival that was empirically based and biblically informed. Ultimately he would urge the Old Lights not to reject a revival as spurious if it involved bodily and visionary experiences, and New Lights not to embrace a revival as genuine merely because it exhibited these phenomena. Despite differences between America's Great Awakening and Great Britain's Evangelical Revival, Edwards became the leading theological interpreter of the transatlantic revivals.

Although the Evangelical Revival was cradled in the Church of England, its relationship to its mother Church was not always an easy one. From the outset, its presence aroused hostility. There were persistent claims that Evangelicals were suspect as churchmen, that they were half-hearted in their attachment to the Establishment, if not downright disloyal. Their theology aroused uncomfortable memories of militant Puritanism. Evangelical ecclesiology was regarded with similar suspicion, for it placed paramount stress on the overriding claims of the invisible ‘Church of Christ’. This book explores the complexities of Evangelicalism by looking at those clergymen who were so discontented with the status quo in the Established Church that they were propelled into outright secession. The main focus of this study is on the period between 1800 and 1850, especially that of the 1830s and 1840s, which produced the greatest number of secessions.

Contains 15 hymns from the period of the Evangelical Revival, featuring writers such as Toplady, Newton, Cowper, and Smart. It also features two great Welsh hymns from the period, and three paraphrases from the Scottish metrical psalm and paraphrase book of 1781.

Chalmers's Free Church failed to reach the poorest working-class neighbourhoods. At the same time as he was pursuing his West Port model operation, Chalmers had worked vigorously to create public enthusiasm for his interdenominational community-building campaign. Unfortunately, Chalmers died in his sleep before his efforts came to fuition. This chapter describes Chalmers as a man of one seminal vision—the elevation of the nation through a communal social ideal, based upon a shared Christian purpose. With his communal vision, he provided a social direction to the early 19th-century Evangelical revival. Chalmers was an ecclesiastical politician. He was an idealist, and once firmly convinced of the righteousness of his cause—once he believed he was representing God's will for mankind—he found it difficult to retreat from his principles. He also made significant contributions to the development of method and theory in the administration of charity.